Star Trek: What Is A Red Directive?

Considering how old and laden with lore the sci-fi franchise is, it can be borderline impossible to memorize all the specific rules everyone has to follow in the Star Trek universe. For instance, a casual fan might be familiar with Starfleet's Prime Directive – the famous rule against interfering with different planets' civilizations that protagonists like James T. Kirk (William Shatner) tend to bend and break whenever they feel like it. However, there are other extremely imperative directives that exist in the periphery of the stories, and because they're used more sparingly, it's easy for them to fly under the radar. One of them is the Red Directive, which might not be as well known as the Prime Directive, but is arguably even more meaningful.

Rather than being a specific order, a Red Directive is defined by its significance and secretive nature. Effectively, any Starfleet mission that falls under the Red Directive label is extremely important, urgent, and highly classified. Such missions are so sensitive that they're only discussed in a special location known as the Infinity Room. It's an endlessly white place that can only be reached with a special transporter procedure — a frightening idea in itself, considering the scary way Star Trek transporters work.

Considering the high-stakes nature of such missions, it may seem surprising that Red Directive-adjacent excitement is so obscure in the Star Trek universe. However, there's a perfectly good explanation for this. The concept of Red Directive missions is a fairly recent addition to the Starfleet playbook; they're first mentioned on "Star Trek: Discovery," after the show's huge time jump. 

As fans of the series know, the entire "Star Trek: Discovery" timeline begins a decade before "Star Trek: The Original Series," but the narrative eventually leaps several centuries ahead — and while the show's initial 23rd century setting doesn't feature the Red Directive, the 32rd century one does. The fact that "Discovery" is the only Star Trek show set so far in the future explains why Red Directive missions don't feature elsewhere in the franchise.

That being said, "Discovery" makes the most of the Red Directive. After the concept is introduced, The USS Discovery ends up on more than one Red Directive mission, and notable characters from Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) to the mysterious Dr. Kovich (David Cronenberg) cover the subject of such top secret missions quite extensively. While Red Directive might not be a thing on other Star Trek shows, "Discovery" gives fans their fill of this obscure, yet highly important Starfleet rule.