Starfleet General Order One—better known as the Prime Directive, the rule that Federation members cannot interfere with the development of pre-warp civilizations in a way that would expose them to the galaxy of societies beyond their worlds—is one of the most defining rules of Star Trek , metatextually or otherwise. But, more often than not, Star Trek ‘s heroes treat this purportedly most sacred of all rules as less of a guiding point and more of a pesky roadblock. And according to the franchise’s first captain , that’s kind of the point of the whole thing.

“Was the Prime Directive violated? By who? The Directive was infinitely malleable,” William Shatner recently opined at the ST: CHI convention in Chicago (via TrekMovie ), when asked by a fan about the ethical dilemma at the

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