In Star Trek: Insurrection, the Enterprise protected the Baku from the So'na, though if I remember right, there was some debate as to whether the prime directive applied as the Baku weren't native to the planet.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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there was some debate as to whether the prime directive applied as the Baku weren’t native to the planet.
...which is an absolutely insane debate. No one tries to argue that the PD doesn't apply to the Romulans, even though they're not native to their world.
Colony planets aren't considered "fair game" for interference.
And... Spoiler... It was an internal conflict anyway
There was that one episode where they tried to save a planet from Satan. I dont think the planet was technically pre-warp, though, especially since there were federation scientists/engineers on the planet working with the population.
which series
TNG, Devil's Due
The planet had previously industrialized and since de-industrialized by choice.
The Prime Directive is that the Federation won’t interfere with the development of a pre-warp society.
It is NOT foreign policy that they try to enforce against other warp-capable civilizations.
A couple that come to mind is VOY “False Prophets” where they expel a couple parasitic Ferengi or ENT “Civilization” where warp-capable aliens are causing toxic pollution in a pre-warp society.
It is NOT foreign policy that they try to enforce against other warp-capable civilizations.
But this is not about foreign policy! This is about developing planets within Federation space. Federation space is a specific region of the Alpha and Beta quadrants and I'm assuming may refer to both members and non-member worlds within that region.
The only reason I ask is because the Fan page for the Federation says they enforce the prime directive on any invaders in fed space. I think False Profits is probably the only example that I can think of! Enterprise is pre-federation and pre-prime directive unfortunately.
ENT “Civilization” where warp-capable aliens are causing toxic pollution in a pre-warp society.
I'm going to turbo nitpick here. That episode took place before the Prime Directive was written, so it can't be held up as an example of how the PD is treated.
The Prime Directive is that the Federation won’t interfere with the development of a pre-warp society.
While warp capability (or a rough equivalent) is the prerequisite for first contact, the Prime Directive is broader, forbidding intervention in the internal affairs of any non-Federation civilization.
Literally watching False profits as this comes up.
In false prophets, were they in federation space? In civilization did the federation exist?
No they weren't. Janeway really stretched the Prime Directive to fit what she wanted to do.
She reasoned that the ferengi were stuck in the delta quandrant during negotiations facilited by the Federation, so therefore the Federation had caused the cultural contamination, so therefore going down to the planet to clean it up was actually following the Prime Directive.
Weren't they working against the prime directive? Otherwise they wouldn't have beamed them back down after beaming them up. They had to trick the ferengi into leaving of their own accord... well the accord of the mob burning them in a pyre, but still.
The whole plan was to convince the Ferengi to go along with leaving in a way that fulfilled a local prophecy and supposedly did the least lasting cultural damage.
In the minds of the Voyager crew they were upholding the Prime Directive by minimizing/reversing the cultural damage which Janeway reasoned could be traced back to the Federation's fault.
There's the TNG episode where Federation scientists are observing a non-warp capable civ from on the planet, when an accident exposed their lab and the aliens take one of the scientists hostage thinking they are demons. In this case, the external influence they are trying to limit and fix is the federation itself.
There is also another in the same vein where Data is damaged during an away mission on a planet with a non-warp capable civ and inadvertently is spreading radioactive material around the settlement because he lost his memories, and then has to correct all the damage when he is repaired.
These are the only two I can think of that even come close while also being within Federation space. As others have pointed out, the Voyager episode where they run into the Farenghi that ended up there from another episode of TNG is the exact thing you are asking... Just not in the right part of space.
I think these two are almost if not entirely exclusionary. It cannot be Federation space if the inhabitants are pre-warp.
There are prime directive eff-ups. Like the flower bed trespasser assassins of S1 TNG. The Fed is in contact with the Edo although they shouldn't be but somehow s happened. We don't really know where they're located in reference to everything else in the Fed or the universe. But even if everything around them was warp hopping mad, the system of the Edo or at least their planet Rubicun III should be an exclave. In the scenario where the Fed would have to defend them from a hypothetical anti-prime-direxxer it could be a protectorate but not Fed territory.
I can think of two other instances with the PD that come close to this scenario but are no cigar. Data's long-fingered pen pal Salenka or something like that and Worf's adopted brother trying to save his knocked up pre-warp Penny Johnson. In both cases I don't think we know if the territory was Fed, Fed adjacent, or something else. And it's a moot point anyway because they were defending against natural disasters, not other species.