YMMV / Star Trek The Next Generation S 7 E 12 Homeward

• Broken Base: This is one of those episodes where the depiction of the Prime Directive is a particularly thorny issue among fans. On the one hand, Nikolai's original plan to save the people of the village comes across as completely half-baked, since it would only have saved a few dozen people, confined them to a very small geographical area, and if the equipment maintaining the atmospheric bubble ever malfunctioned they would all be killed in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, instead of just gently explaining that they can't stop the planet's atmosphere from being destroyed or feasibly save enough Boraalans to create a sustainable population, the Enterprise crew treat the Prime Directive as all the justification they need not to do anything, which comes across as pretty callous.

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