“Who Watches The Watchers” (3×04)
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When a Federation “duck blind” suffers a catastrophic power failure, an egregious violation of the Prime Directive occurs, and the primitive locals begin to worship Picard as a God.
It’s not an especially innovative concept; Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, dates back to 1968 after all.
But TNG episodes have a tendency toward perfect outcomes, where through a bit of cleverness or skill the Enterprise crew is able to resolve the problem of the episode with an ideal outcome for all involved.
This episode, by contrast, deals with the fallout in a completely FUBARed situation where all of the precautions to uphold the Prime Directive have failed. The mission of the episode is not to find an ideal outcome, but rather the least bad outcome.
The head of the anthropology team urges Picard to minimize the damage by role playing as the deity they already think he is and handing down a framework that will allow them to develop more or less on the same path as they would have before the contamination occurred. But as Picard rightly points out, they had left superstition behind a long time ago and it would be wrong for him to deprive them of that achievement.
So he takes the opposite approach, and pulls back the curtain to reveal everything. By sharing his knowledge, he is able to ensure that they continue upon a rational path. There is no question that what the villagers have seen and what they now know will have consequences that ripple down through the generations. They are likely to advance far faster than they otherwise would have, now that they have a concrete understanding of what will someday be possible for them.
But given the choice between that head start and burdening them with a false theology that would take them centuries or even millennia to outgrow, I think he made the right call.
I appreciate that he actively took action to insulate his subordinates from getting caught up in the consequences of his choice, to the extend that he relieves the transporter chief so that it is he himself who brings the pre-warp civilian on board.
Some great guest stars this episode, too: “Dark Shadows” actress Kathryn Leigh Scott as Nuria, the village leader; the always brilliant Ray Wise as the villager whose experience aboard the Enterprise-D causes all of the problems that fuel this episode; and a pre-marriage Pamela Adlon as the daughter of Wise’s villager.
And it’s always fun to see the Vasquez Rocks on a Star Trek show, too.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
The idea of a “duck blind” within which the Federation can study pre-warp civilizations without violating the Prime Directive gets revisited again in the feature film Star Trek: Insurrection. Things don’t go well then, either.
I also appreciated the callback to “Pen Pals”, when Dr. Pulaski was able to erase the recent memories of Data’s friend. They diligently inserted a bit of technobabble into this episode to explain why that technique was unlikely to work with this species.
And this episode explains where Picard got the tapestry in his quarters, and why it is so meaningful to him.
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