It’s interesting, this is true in the early days of the show but around season 4-5 it’s clear that while the humans (of earth) are still technologically primitive, they essentially are making use of huge swathes of the American military industrial complex. Especially in terms of r&d. Theyre also not beholden to centuries of rigid doctrine around combat. So even though a staff weapon is far more technologically advanced than a gun using gunpowder, the gun is more ergonomic, more usable, more accurate, comes in specialized forms, etc etc. Plus they can implement novel tactics like shooting laser guided missiles through the gate and painting targets with a laser.

That show was pretty cool.

This raises some interesting questions about how the Federation Council would treat an interstellar race that hasn’t cracked warp. Thing is, by the time they are in contact with other warp-capable alien species like the Asgard, trading information and technology, they would probably then themselves be considered warp-capable, even if it was bootstrapped, so the window of time where they are traveling to other worlds and immune from the prime directive is extremely brief.

One block of C-4 at a time.

Also, the federation violated the prime directive whenever it was convenient; including doing all the things that we’d criticize SG-1 for doing; like arming natives in an arms race.

Ra… tatatatata.

because even at this distance, the sun will burn your ass if you moon it for too long.

…effectively at 5 times this range

I always thought it fell into one of a few categories:

• fixing the timeline someone else screwed up
• minor changes won’t matter because the timeline corrects itself
• fixed points that just flat out can’t be changed

But unless it was a “fixed point” he basically would do what he wanted, and most of the time it was the tardis that sent home somewhere to stick his nose in things.