General Order 2

[James H. Hawk]

So I was reading the General Orders and I find General Order 2 to be a bit strange. For those of you who don't know this is General Order 2:

"2nd General Order
Under no circumstances, even not to protect his/her own life or that of his/her crew, an officer is allowed to do harm to an intelligent lifeform.
A break of this General Order is only tolerated if otherwise the Prime Directive would be offended."

What I find strange is that is prohibits harming any Intelligent Life unless it violates the Prime Directive. This strikes me as strange is it essentially says that Starfleet Officer cannot partake in combat. This order means that just about every time a Starfleet Officer fires their phaser they are violating the Second General Order.

This makes no sense to me because it has no section allowing a Starfleet Officer to use force in situations such as war or defending a civilian freighter from pirates.

Is it just me or does this Order seem strange?

[Jada]

I figure they're mostly guidelines.

Where is that from anyway? I can't find it in on Memories Alpha or Beta:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_General_Orders_and_Regulations
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_General_Orders_and_Regulations

[James H. Hawk]

I got it from Shadowfleet's help files here: http://www.shadowfleet.org/forum/index.php/topic,1072.0.html

I assumed they were taken from Memory Alpha or Beta but it looks like I was wrong.

Also, on reading Shadowfleet's list of General Orders number 3 seems to contradict number 2. This is what it is:

"3rd General Order
It is an officer's duty to use all devices under his or her command to protect the life of intelligent lifeforms, even if this means to endanger him/herself, or his/her ship. If an intelligent lifeform is harmed due to an officer acting or not acting this is treated equal as a violation of the 2nd General Order."

One could interpret that this means that it's an officer's duty to use leather (EDIT: Lethal, autocorrect decided to change what I wrote) force if nessasary to protect others (such as in the scenarios I spoke of in the original post) which is a direct contradiction to General Order 2.

[Jada]

In that GO 2, "Under no circumstances, even not to", the "not" is redundant. As it is, it's a technically a double-negative, so we can harm intelligent lifeforms to protect ourselves. Fun with grammatical loopholes!

[James H. Hawk]

In that GO 2, "Under no circumstances, even not to", the "not" is redundant. As it is, it's a technically a double-negative, so we can harm intelligent lifeforms to protect ourselves. Fun with grammatical loopholes!

Ah I didn't see that. Well spotted!

[Jada]

The curse of being a scientific editor. I read everything!

[Kali Reyes]

General Order 2 according to Alpha/Beta is pretty straightforward:

Starfleet regulation against the taking of intelligent life.

It's pretty vague and there's not much to go by here for situational reasons, but I did find something a little more concrete in the Star Trek Minutiae:

No Starfleet personnel shall unnecessarily use force, either collectively or individually, against members of the United Federation of Planets, their duly authorized representatives, spokespersons, or designated leaders, or members of any sentient non-member race, for any reason whatsoever.

This one sounds a lot more reasonable, though we can't be sure since there's no canon source for this one. However, another site, Starbase 118, uses the same definition for theirs.

Federation Sim Fleet uses a similar definition, but elaborates it with stipulations:

General Order 2: Under no circumstances, shall an officer of Starfleet willfully inflict harm or injury on any lifeform without the authorization to use force from a commanding officer, unless it is the final recourse to justly save one's own life or the lives of others when General Order 1 is not warranted.

This one is similar to ours, but with better wording.

From Reddit, /u/bremo93 from the Star Trek's board made his own Starfleet Regulation Handbook that he gleaned off of sources found on the web. Order 2 is the same definition as Star Trek Minutiae and Starbase 118's.

I seriously think bremo93's regulation handbook is the best, closest thing I've seen to canonical orders and regulations.

[Ian Galloway]

General Order 2 according to Alpha/Beta is pretty straightforward:

It's pretty vague and there's not much to go by here for situational reasons, but I did find something a little more concrete in the Star Trek Minutiae:

No Starfleet personnel shall unnecessarily use force, either collectively or individually, against members of the United Federation of Planets, their duly authorized representatives, spokespersons, or designated leaders, or members of any sentient non-member race, for any reason whatsoever.

This one sounds a lot more reasonable, though we can't be sure since there's no canon source for this one. However, another site, Starbase 118, uses the same definition for theirs.

I seriously think bremo93's regulation handbook is the best, closest thing I've seen to canonical orders and regulations.

The regulation quoted above comes from the old FASA Star Trek RPG's supplement "The Federation" which lists a total of 25 General Orders for Starfleet Personnel.

[Constance Lafayette]

Yeah the source is an old RPG book but I think as "general orders" they are more "guiding principles" than "if you kill someone- you are drummed out of Starfleet". Remember- we are not a military first, we are scientific, diplomatic, and exploratory force before a military one.

In that light:
"Oh cool- an alien life form. Man... I'm hungry. Let's eat it... oh shoot, it was sentient and now we are going to war with the natives!"
or
"Uh... my laws prohibit me from hurting people on diplomatic missions... so no ritual combat Mr. Klingon."
is probably more what they were thinking with that than:
"So we are at war with the Romulans and we need to destroy them before they make it to that planet of orphans with a planet-busting bomb."