06-12-2022, 11:45 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-12-2022, 05:41 PM by FaceInTheCrowd.)
In both the episodes where Kirk destroys the society-running tech, the AI is trying to blow the Enterprise out of space, so once he manages to rationalize taking action as not violating the Prime Directive, saving the ship becomes the primary objective. There are episodes where it is stated that the Enterprise leaves people behind or that the Federation will send others to assist the newly emerging society, and presumably that also includes people who will study what's left of the technology. The current "Lower Decks" cartoon series follows the exploits of one of those "second contact" ships.
There are maps that depict the location of the Federation relative to the Klingons and Romulans, and they show that the bulk of the Federation's inhabited planets are at one end of its sphere of influence near those adversaries, with a lot of unexplored space in the other direction. So how available Kirk's superiors are probably depends on whether the Enterprise is out in the unexplored regions or has been sent toward one of the boundary DMZs. The original series tended to flip-flop between these different kinds of missions, but the episodic nature of that series compared to the later, more serialized series means that we were not necessarily viewing the Enterprise's missions in the order in which they happened.
There are maps that depict the location of the Federation relative to the Klingons and Romulans, and they show that the bulk of the Federation's inhabited planets are at one end of its sphere of influence near those adversaries, with a lot of unexplored space in the other direction. So how available Kirk's superiors are probably depends on whether the Enterprise is out in the unexplored regions or has been sent toward one of the boundary DMZs. The original series tended to flip-flop between these different kinds of missions, but the episodic nature of that series compared to the later, more serialized series means that we were not necessarily viewing the Enterprise's missions in the order in which they happened.