Now in the beginning of the show it becomes apparent that the planet and all life on it is going to be erased in the very near future. So why all this fuss about potentially polluting the culture? I agree totally with brother Nicholai here in that there is no honour in their attitude. Some customs, it has been stated, may be said to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and such is the case with this particular interpretation of the Prime Directive.
While I'm in the mood for quoting, the laddie who keeps the village records asks Picard of what value is their culture when everything that made them who they are has been destroyed. One might have expected well-known scholar Jean-Luc, a man who can bandy Shakespeare with Q no less, to have replied, "The mind is its own place, and in itself may make a Hell of Heaven, or a Heaven of Hell." It isn't our Will, mind, it's Milton from Paradise Lost, but it seems appropriate and I would have expected Picard to know it. Ah well . . .
One last thing. After the, um, reluctant tourists have been beamed to their new planet, Picard airily remarks that "our plan" for them had worked rather well. Our plan? Excuse me but, did we say here, our plan? This was all Nicholai's idea; no-one else's. A very patchy and uneven show, lightened by some convincing acting from, er, the bloke who seems to have topped himself. I thought it was a bit mean of him to have hung on to the history of the village though.
Descent Part Two Liaisons Interface Gambit Part One Gambit Part Two Phantasms Dark Page Attached Force of Nature Inheritance Parallels The Pegasus Homeward Sub Rosa Lower Decks Thine Own Self Masks Eye of the Beholder Genesis Journey's End Firstborn Bloodlines Emergence Preemptive Strike All Good Things Part One All Good Things Part Two