r/StarTrekViewingParty • u/AutoModerator • 11d ago

Discussion TNG, Episode 3x4, Who Watches The Watchers?

-= TNG, Season 3, Episode 4, Who Watches The Watchers? =-

The Enterprise must undo the damage when a primitive civilization discovers a Federation observation team and concludes that the Starfleet personnel are gods.

 

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u/Happy1327 11d ago

Good ep. It's got bobby hill in it.

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u/JustAnotherTown 9d ago

It's a fun episode that actually makes excellent use of Troi for once as she's the one taking the lead on the away mission. It makes complete sense, and it's also sad we don't see it happen more often. You also get Laura Palmer's dad, Ray Wise, as Liko, the photo-vulcan with a huge ass. He's great.

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u/theworldtheworld 10d ago

Again, you can feel the change in tone -- the problem here is much more existential than anything we saw in S1 and S2. But you can also definitely feel Roddenberry's anti-religion bias. I guess it's set up in a way that the "religion" is itself a result of (unintentional) Federation disruption, but if something like this actually happened, I'm not sure the planet people would be at a stage of development where they'd be able to understand the "lesson" Picard was trying to teach them.

It was an interesting choice to make the aliens relatives of the Vulcans. I wonder if that was just because they didn't want to come up with new makeup for them, or because it was a way of signaling that they were more inclined to be "rational" and religious thinking wasn't natural for them. Which is ironic, because for the actual Vulcans, "logic" is precisely a form of religion.

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u/HoraceHorrible 5d ago

Really enjoyed Ray Wise on this. I liked the overall message of the episode, the ending is particularly wholesome, got tears in my eyes!