Which is why it was permissible to ignore the prime directive.
This episode pisses me off for so many reasons, but this is the biggest. They weren’t just pre-warp, they were pre-space travel. They shouldn’t have beamed down there in uniform and in sight. These are people that include a lady terrified of a computer because she thinks it’s a god.
It is just a complete Prime Directive violation. They should simply not have been contacted.
The show is actually fairly consistent that once contact has been made on a planetary scale, Starfleet no longer needs to hide from them. Back in TOS, Kirk was sent to negotiate with the Organians even though they were thought to be an outright preindustrial society. The Organians had contact and were trading with other space-faring civilizations, like the Klingons, so there simply isn’t a reason to stay away. The other parts of the Prime Directive that get applied to interstellar civilizations, like not messing with their government without invitation, still apply.
We don’t really get much about the Edo other than what’s immediately relevant to the plot (and the skimpy outfits), so there are many possibilities. The Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, or even Ferengi may have been the first to make contact, and the Edo God doesn’t seem to mind outsiders so long as they don’t try to settle permanently. The Edo also could have been space-faring in the past and decided to scale back. Or maybe they are warp-capable and very few care enough to leave the planet.
Which is why it was permissible to ignore the prime directive.
Meanwhile Picard waited until the last second to help this alien:
This episode pisses me off for so many reasons, but this is the biggest. They weren’t just pre-warp, they were pre-space travel. They shouldn’t have beamed down there in uniform and in sight. These are people that include a lady terrified of a computer because she thinks it’s a god.
It is just a complete Prime Directive violation. They should simply not have been contacted.
The show is actually fairly consistent that once contact has been made on a planetary scale, Starfleet no longer needs to hide from them. Back in TOS, Kirk was sent to negotiate with the Organians even though they were thought to be an outright preindustrial society. The Organians had contact and were trading with other space-faring civilizations, like the Klingons, so there simply isn’t a reason to stay away. The other parts of the Prime Directive that get applied to interstellar civilizations, like not messing with their government without invitation, still apply.
Maybe, but why would the people have made contact if the computer controlled their civilization and wanted to keep them down there?
We don’t really get much about the Edo other than what’s immediately relevant to the plot (and the skimpy outfits), so there are many possibilities. The Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, or even Ferengi may have been the first to make contact, and the Edo God doesn’t seem to mind outsiders so long as they don’t try to settle permanently. The Edo also could have been space-faring in the past and decided to scale back. Or maybe they are warp-capable and very few care enough to leave the planet.