I’ve always assumed the Prime Directive was Rodenberry’s attempt to explain why we aren’t being obviously contacted by more advanced aliens attempting to fix all our problems for us, and his awareness how we would likely react to such intervention at the height of the Cold War.
The prime directive came about due to his concerns about western interventionalism. i.e leave other countries alone became dont interfere in the development of non warp capable species’ development.
“You will be remembered for a week or so.”
Still more time than Tuvix got.
It’s an interesting space version of non-interventionism. In the real world, intervention is a very complex issue to navigate. Particularly since most forms of national intervention have monetary drivers that make the choice much more about how it benefits the intervening country rather than the intervened.
I think DS9 is the only series to really address Statfleet’s long term effects of intruding onto other cultures and forcing them to change.
Meanwhile:
GCU The Gravitas Meme is so Last Year: I’m gonna sort out that extension event, then we should probably send a couple of Special Circumstances operatives to guide them in the right direction. In the past picosecond I’ve absorbed and analysed their global information net so know exactly what actions we need to take to give them the correct nudge.
The “correct nudge” has been determined to be “give a specific citizen a cheese danish.”