‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Retro Recap – ‘Who Watches the Watchers’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

We live in quite the incredible time when you take a moment to think about it. After all, we can cure diseases and fend-off common ailments with a shot here and there. We can traverse the skies and be on the other side of the world in a matter of hours if we so choose and we’ve even made space travel a comfortable thing, since there is an active space station in orbit around our world. Plus, we can speak to any person on the planet in an instant by way of smartphones that also happen to have access to the compendium of human knowledge. But while this is all commonplace and normal to us, one has to wonder what our world would look like to a person from say… the 19th Century. Because it would be downright incredible to see someone who knows nothing of technology, try to understand the nature of an iPhone and that is where fiction comes into play.
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Because where else would such a wild idea come to fruition? And it just so happens that the next episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation took the time to explore this concept in a deep and meaningful manner and that makes ‘Who Watches the Watchers’ a surprisingly poignant tale, one that has incredible ties to our modern world. But before we dive too deeply into that, let’s talk about this outright genius plot. For in this particular tale, we see the crew of the Enterprise arrive at Mintaka III to aid an observation team that is studying a group of proto-Vulcans, and help is needed, because the team in question is in distress. Because their batteries are failing and they are about to be exposed to a species that doesn’t know a thing about warp travel and how the universe is assembled in the 24th Century and well, despite the crew’s best efforts to keep their existence a secret; they fail miserably and bring forth all kinds of trouble.

For it isn’t long before the people of this world begin to worship Captain Picard as an outright God after one of their citizens reports back about his experiences in the Enterprise’s sickbay and well, that brings about the wondrous exploration of all the elements we’ve discussed thus far. Because it turns out that someone who knows nothing of powerful technology and notions of societal advancement, would freak out when presented with all of it. For every single character from Mintaka has no idea how to process this knowledge at first, outside of viewing it as witchcraft or the will of some kind of powerful deity that hails from France. And it is simply incredible and fascinating to see people who are ‘out of time’ respond to the ‘modern world’ with confusion and fear and everything in between, and such a response outright makes sense; since we tend to accept the environment and timeframe we live within and nothing more.

But truly, it is the commentary in this tale that makes it utterly worth the audience’s while. Since this particular story is more or less an observation on the power of fear and how it can cause harm for any species, regardless of how well developed they are mentally and culturally. For the possibility that a ‘God’ may exist, prompts a handful of these good people to give into fear, the kind that motivates them to shed logic and instead believe they must please the Picard in order to find some semblance of happiness or prosperity in their lives, and they go to any length to achieve that goal. Even going so far as to cause harm to others and that feels painfully familiar. For time and time again in our modern world, we’ve seen similar fears, the kind that give into outlandish notions over facts and reality, cause great harm to a great many people and the only redeeming aspect of this particular exploration; is that it works to remind us to always take a moment and examine the facts before we draw any conclusions and that’s definitely relevant advice in 2020.

In the end however, this really is quite the magnificent episode. Because not only does it offer some wonderful commentary and some powerful moments, it is also a grand exploration of the Federation and Starfleet’s highest order, and how difficult it is to enforce the Prime Directive at times. For clearly just being a decent human being can lead to its violation and what really makes this part of the story so satisfying, is that it ends happily for a change. Because time and time again in the Star Trek Universe; violating the Prime Directive ends in disaster. But here, it actually motivates the Mintakans to become more and that is quite the lovely way to end this tale. In part because the crew dodges a proverbial bullet, but more so because this incident taught Picard to be a tad more vigilant and direct in matters such as this. Something that is reinforced by the fact that the Mintakan Tapestry that he is gifted in this tale, would be near him, often, for the rest of his career. Until next time.

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