Basic Trope: An advanced civilization strictly forbids itself from interfering with primitive ones to avoid harming them.
- Straight: The Star Alliance - a confederation of advanced alien worlds - has a policy of not interfering with the "natural path" of races that have not attained lightspeed travel.
- Exaggerated: The Star Alliance will not interfere with pre-lightspeed races even to prevent their extinction. Not even if they contact and ask the Star Alliance help.
- Downplayed:
- Non-Interference isn't really an official policy. It's more of a suggestion by a leading cultural theorist, but many organizations go against this.
- The Star Alliance's policy is not total. There are a few explicit cases where they would interfere, such as to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth and wiping out humanity.
- The Star Alliance will sometimes grant protectorate status to pre-lightspeed races, protecting them from alien threats while respecting their internal sovereignty.
- Justified:
- The last expedition of the Star Alliance was killed off when they interacted with the primitive Tv'Tropians and they attacked out of fear. Not wanting to lose more scientists and face bad publicity, the Star Alliance forbids interacting with primitive species.
- When the Star Alliance interacted with the primitive Tv'Tropians, they accidentally killed them off by introducing diseases. Thus they do not interact with more primitive species to avoid a repeat of the disaster.
- The leaders of the Star Alliance see no value in interacting with "lesser" species and institute this policy to keep from wasting time and resources.
- The Star Alliances' founding species were the victims of Well Intentioned Extremists whose "help" was worse than the problems they alleged to solve. After overthrowing the shackles of their would-be "helpers", the Star Alliances' founders swore to never make the same mistakes.
- The Star Alliance are studying humans, in the same way that they study animals without intervening in their lives.
- It is a case of Bizarre Alien Psychology, and its behavior is very different from that of humans
- The Star Alliance pre-FTL has a long history of colonalism turned far nastier than anything humanity has done and deeply regret it. They previously used doing good as a pretext to greed and now don't trust themselves not to wind up doing horrible things as a Alliancian's Burden situation even with genuinely good intentions.
- The Star Alliance's non-interference policy isn't a matter of principle; rather, it's a clause in a treaty with another confederation of alien worlds that was added in order to keep either side from "drafting" pre-lightspeed civilizations.
- Members of the Star Alliance were very proud of themselves for figuring out lightspeed travel and don't want to deprive humans the chance to figure it out on their own.
- The Star Alliance believes humans are evil, and should they have access to light speed travel, the consequences could be dire. At the same time, they are pacifists, so simply exterminating human life would also be unacceptable.
- Inverted:
- Earthlings refuse to interact with the Star Alliance, deciding the technologically superior race would just dismiss anything they have to say.
- Humans have a rule of not interfering with other less advanced races
- Subverted:
- Earthlings initially think the Star Alliance is ignoring them, but it turns out the Star Alliance ship they've been observing is actually heavily damaged- Meaning all the inhabitants couldn't be awoken from their Human Popsicle state.
- When several starships enters the Solar System, and ignores Earth's hails despite communicating with one another with technology humanity can hail them with, and departs in silence, the Wide-Eyed Idealist suggests that's the reason. Until the aliens return with the extermination fleet.
- Although the Star Alliance has an official policy against non-interference, most of its member nations operate "covert uplift" programs intended to ensure less advanced civilizations develop along ideologically compatible lines.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Yet, when the Star Alliance crew finally awaken, they refuse to interact with Earthlings and proceed to leave after repairing their ship.
- A second fleet warps in and proceeds to fire on the first fleet in assistance to Earth. It turns out the extermination fleet is sent/led by someone either breaking the treaty or not part of it in the first place, while the second fleet is sanctioned by the proper Star Alliance authorities to stop them. Although trying to fully enforce the Clause is futile by this point even though the Star Alliance wins, the Clause's main philosophical goal of letting all intelligent races find their way is still there and the Alliance keeps their contact with Earth to a minimum for the time being.
- Parodied: Earth is overall more advanced than the Star Alliance, but are written off as blabbering fools just because they don't have lightspeed travel.
- The Star Alliance and the Assembly of Systems both consider each other primitives, the Star Alliance considers Assembly of Systems not qualifying because they don't technically break the lightspeed limit by using their Portal Network. The Assembly of Systems considers the Star Alliance primitive for not mastering dimensional technology. Nobody else follows that set of restrictions and they all consider them both completely out of their minds, especially since it /isn't/ from a passive-aggressive cold war or something similar.
- Zig Zagged: The different members of the Star Alliance discuss whether or not to interfere with humans, even violating the clause directly.
- Averted: Either other lifeforms don't exist, or the Star Alliance never really thought about it.
- Enforced: "We need to show that Humanity Is Special, so have the Star Alliance explicitly refuse to uplift other species. That way, nobody can think Earth got outside help to be so awesome."
- The author believes that advanced human civilizations should not interfere with uncontacted or primitive peoples, and writes the story to explain why non-interference is good.
- The author believes that advanced human civilizations are morally obligated to give a Technology Uplift to uncontacted or primitive peoples, and writes the story to explain why non-interference is evil.
- The Light Speed Alliance lives in a Crossover universe, wherein interfering with canon characters would break Continuity.
- Lampshaded: "Sir, those 'Hugh Manns' could really use our help. Probably all be dead within a century if we don't help..."
- Invoked: Humanity deliberately underplays their technological and societal progress to avoid joining the Star Alliance by necessity.
- Exploited: The Star Alliance does not interfere with Earth, but does observe and spy on it to study the early stages of sentient species.
- Defied: Some in The Star Alliance disagree with non-involvement policy and illegally go to Earth to give it a Technology Uplift.
- Discussed: "You mean to tell me you had advanced medicine but purposely avoided sharing it with us?? My wife died in childbirth and three of our children died of cancer! My uncle was disabled for most of his life!! You're monsters! Selfish arrogant tentacled monsters!!!"
- Conversed: "I don't believe in the existence of advanced extra-terrestrials, but if they do exist, they've done a good job enforcing a non-interference policy."
- Implied: Humanity is a sworn enemy of The Star Alliance. Though the story is vague about why this is, human propaganda often depicts the Star Alliance as greedy cowards while at the same time blaming them for a plague that previously wiped out 9/10ths of Humanity's population.
- Deconstructed:
- When Earth learns that The Star Alliance watched and did nothing throughout all the genocides and diseases and suffering humanity suffered, despite having the power to prevent it, the human race is furious and considers The Star Alliance to be an Accomplice by Inaction to all that suffering. The Humans bide their time, build advanced weapons in secrecy, and wage a massive against The Star Alliance. They win, execute all Star Alliance leaders, and enslave all the other races.
- Space Pirates and Space Drug Runners reach Earth first because The Star Alliance didn't want to go there. So Earth got all the bad parts of The Star Alliance's civilization without any of the good parts.
- Reconstructed:
- When Earth learns that The Star Alliance watched and did nothing throughout all the genocides and diseases and suffering humanity suffered, despite having the power to prevent it, the human race is initially furious. When the Star Alliance tells them the shameful story of what happened the last time they tried to "help" a pre-FTL civilization, however, they realize the Star Alliance's fears were not unjustified, though many humans do join the already-existing interventionist faction.
- The Star Alliance realizes their mistake when they go to apprehend the pirates and finds the Earth in sorry shape. They then attempt to remove the pirates and clean up the mess left behind.
- Played For Laughs: Official Star Alliance policy is to not interfere, merely to observe. Their observation is so blatant and poorly disguised that humanity plays along while pilfering the technology that's supposed to be silently watching them.
- Played For Drama:
- The fact the Star Alliance refuses to interfere means countless people and worlds have died, just because they weren't "advanced" enough to merit interference.
- Alternatively, the cultural shock produced by the Star Alliance contacting with the Earthlings is so high that the civilization of the latter suffers at best profound sociocultural changes and at worst collapses.
- Played For Horror: While the Star Alliance doesn't interfere with humanity, they observe, closely. Worse yet, if they ever went back on this policy, there's nothing humans could do to save themselves.
Back to Alien Non-Interference Clause for advanced peoples. But primitive ones should stay here - You Are Not Ready.
