SUMMARY: Forced to choose between adhering to the Prime Directive and allowing an Enterprise crewmember to be executed, Captain Picard decides to breach the Prime Directive.
After delivering a group of colonists to a planet in the Strnad system, the Enterprise-D discovers another Class-M planet in the neighbouring Rubicun system. The initial away team to Rubicun III reports that the planet is beautiful and its inhabitants, the Edo people, warm and friendly, and that its laws are simple. In order to confirm that the planet would be suitable for shore leave, Captain Picard orders a second away team and invites the young man Wesley Crusher to join it. While on the planet's surface, Wesley goes to play with the other teenagers but in the process inadvertently stumbles into a cloche, damaging the flowers in it. The area is marked off by white boundary markers that Wesley did not know about, and the Edo youths with him are shocked as they see Mediators approaching. It transpires that Wesley has encroached on one of the Edo's constantly shifting punishment zones. Designed to prevent anarchy from overtaking the society, the only punishment allotted for any crime committed in one of the zones, no matter how small, is execution - the effect is that no one commits a crime for no one wishes to risk death, and the law has been in effect for as long as the Edo can remember. The rest of the away team arrive and when one of the Mediators reaches for a syringe to administer the death penalty to Wesley the syringe is snatched out of his hand and the execution stopped by force as phasers are drawn and aimed.
The second Enterprise away team is greeted by the Edo individuals, Rivan and Liator, who take them, at a run as is the custom, to meet other Edo leaders. The protected flowers in cloches, marked off by white boundary markers. Wesley falls into a cloche. The landing party confront two Edo Mediators and knock down one as he is about to execute Wesley by lethal injection. [TNG: Justice]
Back on the Enterprise, a sensor "glitch" turns out to be a vessel, orbiting the planet, which exists interdimensionally, and the powerful beings aboard it contact the Enterprise by sending a probe to scan Data's brain. They render Data unconscious and exchange information with him. When Picard beams down to the planet to deal with Wesley's situation, the Edo identify the interdimensional ship as "God", and this is confirmed by the Edo woman named Rivan who returns to the Enterprise. "God" orders the Enterprise: "Return my child." and accordingly Picard, seeing the "God" vessel approaching menacingly, orders Rivan swiftly returned to the planet.
The Enterprise faces a mysterious interdimensional vessel which launches a probe that enters the starship and probes Data's mind to exchange information with him. Later, Rivan identifies the interdimensional vessel as "God", saying she knows because they have seen it before. [TNG: Justice]
A dilemma faces Picard - if he does nothing, Wesley will die, in accordance with Edo law; but if he saves Wesley he will violate Starfleet's Prime Directive and risk the wrath of the Edo's "God", but, having given a promise to Wesley's mother that he will not allow her son to be killed, he decides to take Wesley from his Edo captors by force. The Edo surrender him but taunt the Enterprise crew with their own law (the Prime Directive). However, "God" disables the transport so that Wesley and the away team is unable beam back to the ship. Picard argues that when laws are absolute there can be no real justice and, convinced, the "God" allows the transport to proceed and allows Enterprise to go on its way. Picard asks "God" for a sign as to whether the colonists settled in the Strnad system can stay or whether Picard should remove them. In silent answer, "God" disappears.
Rivan: "Do you execute criminals?"
Picard: "No, not any longer."
Rivan: "But you did once."
Picard: "Unfortunately yes, but since then-"
Rivan: "And when you did, was it believed necessary to do so?"
Picard: "Some people felt that it was necessary but we have learned to detect the seeds of criminal behaviour. Capital punishment, in our world, is no longer considered a justifiable deterrent."
Liator to Rivan: "So, we are not yet as 'advanced' as they are." To Picard, sarcastically: "And since you are advanced in other ways too I suggest you use your superior powers to rescue the Wesley boy. We will record him as a convicted criminal outside our reach, an 'advanced' person who luckily escaped the barbarism of this 'backward' little world."
Picard: "Unfortunately, we have a law known as the Prime Directive."
Rivan: "Riker has explained it to us."
Picard to Data: "If we were to violate the Prime Directive-"
Beverly Crusher, interrupting: "That's not a fair question!"
Picard to Data, finishing his question: "-how would they react?" By 'they' he means the beings aboard the Edo "God"'s vessel.
Data: "It would be a case of judging us by our own rules, sir. If we violate our own Prime Directive, they might consider us to be deceitful and untrustworthy. You do recall, they did caution us not to interfere with their Children below." As Beverly Crusher grows very distressed: "What has happened?"
Beverly Crusher: "The Edo want to execute my son! I will not allow that to happen, Jean-Luc!"
[TNG: Season 1: Justice]
Picard: "I cannot permit that boy or any member of this vessel to be sacrificed. The Prime Directive never intended that."
Data: "The problem, sir, is there." He indicates the "God" vessel. "Although they have learned of the Prime Directive, from my mind, how will they evaluate it? How do they reason? What are their values? Remember their warning to us, sir.
Picard: "Exactly. How do I explain refusing to obey their laws now, not permitting the Crusher boy to be executed? By so doing, do I endanger this vessel and more than a thousand other lives?"
Data: "Would you choose one life over one thousand, sir?"
Picard: "I refuse to let arithmetic decide questions like that."
[TNG: Season 1: Justice]
Picard: "And you should know that whatever the cost I will not allow them to execute your son."
Beverly Crusher: "Thank you, sir."
[TNG: Season 1: Justice]
The Edo "God" blocks the transport of the away team with Wesley back to the Enterprise.
Picard: "I don't know how to communicate this or even if it is possible, but the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late, and I say to any creature who may be listening there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."
Riker: "When has justice ever been as simple as a rulebook?"
The Edo "God" ceases to block the transport of the away team. The away team, with Wesley, transport safely up to the Enterprise.
Picard to Riker: "Seems the Edo "God" agrees with you, Number One."
A dilemma faces Picard - if he does nothing, Wesley will die, in accordance with Edo law; but if he saves Wesley he will violate Starfleet's Prime Directive and risk the wrath of the Edo's "God". It is indeed a dilemma, but it is less of a dilemma for Picard than it seems, because earlier Picard tells Data: "I cannot permit that boy or any member of this vessel to be sacrificed. The Prime Directive never intended that." and he gives a solemn promise to Wesley's mother: "And you should know that whatever the cost I will not allow them to execute your son." (my italics) In other words, Picard has already decided. His promise dilutes the tension of the later scene in which Picard, having beamed down to the planet, makes his decision. As regards tv drama, the drama of the dilemma and how Picard resolves it all occurs on the Enterprise. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does exclude the Edo people from understanding the processes of Picard's thoughts, leaving them with the barest summary when he beams back down to the planet with the intent of bringing back Wesley alive.
Picard breaches the Prime Directive in order to save Wesley's life. Picard could have employed the same life-saving ploy used in the earlier story [TNG: Code Of Honor], in which death takes place but the subject is later revived by the Enterprise doctor. This ploy appears, with variation, in [Voyager], in [#21 Initiations], when Chakotay plans to have himself killed by the Kazon-Ogla youth Kar then beamed to Voyager to be resuscitated, and he signals his intent with the words "Code White" indicating that it similar scenarios must occur sufficiently often for Starfleet to have codewords for it. In this story, apart from being repetition from the television drama point of view (and of a [TNG] story seen only a few episodes earlier than this one), Picard prefers to deal with the matter openly. Therefore, no Edo execution for Wesley and revival afterwards. Instead there is dialogue between the parties involved, so that the Edo "God" freely allows Wesley to live. Apart from breaching the Prime Directive in order to save Wesley, Picard also introduces to the Edo the concept that laws need not, or should not, be absolute, which may affect the natural course of their society. One suspects that the Edo would eventually find that out for themselves, internally.
Picard makes a good point when he argues that when laws are absolute there can be no real justice, which point could also be made about the Prime Directive. Throughout the story there is the implicit comparison of the absoluteness of the Edo's laws and the absoluteness of the Prime Directive.
NOTES:
When Tasha Yar, the Enterprise's security chief, returns from the first away mission to Rubicon III, she reports that she has reviewed the Edo's laws and customs, yet later she does not know that the Edo have only one punishment - death - for any crime. After Wesley is detained by the Edo, Yar says no punishment was listed, but it strains credulity that she should not have asked what penalty (or penalties) were in the Edo judiciary system, as it is logical for laws to be enforced somehow and they are usually enforced by the threat of punishment.
Blooper: Picard tells Riker: "Seems the Edo 'God' agrees with you, Number One." as they are in the process of beaming up with Wesley, having secured his reprieve from execution. It it part of the Star Trek canon, and established long before, in [TOS], that it is impossible to move or speak while held in a Federation transport beam, yet Picard does so here. There is a similar blooper in [TNG: Manhunt] wherein Troi's mother speaks while transporting, and in [#29 Prototype] Torres speaks as she is in the process of being beamed to the shuttlecraft.
All the Edo location scenes except for Wesley's stumble (which was filmed at Huntington Library, Pasadena) were filmed at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in north Los Angeles. The location is employed to represent Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Headquarters, in [TNG: The First Duty], in which Robert Duncan McNeill (plays Tom Paris) guest-starred as Cadet Nick Locarno (a picture from that episode, of Locarno, is used to represent a young Tom Paris in [#130 Pathfinder]), and in [#98 In The Flesh] when it represents Species 8472's re-creation of Starfleet Headquarters.
The story was written by Ralph Wills and Worley Thome. The former is a pen-name adopted by John D.F. Black, a frequent Star Trek story-writer.
It is possible that the planet's name "Rubicun" derives from the Italian river Rubicon, made famous as a saying "crossing the Rubicon" i.e. no going back by Julius Caesar from his crossing of that river in 49 BC into Italy. The River Rubicon formed the legal boundary of Italy, and his crossing it marked the point at which he automatically forfeited his powers (provincial governors did so on leaving their province; one of his assigned provinces happened to adjoin Italy). Thereafter he was in law a private citizen, but he retained the loyalty of his troops and led them into civil war against the Roman Republic. He was fighting for his life for he expected to be arrested and charged with capital crimes. With his troops he entered Rome and seized public office, the consulship of 48 BC, which thus extended him the legal protection he wanted. The Rubicon is also the name of a Starfleet runabout assigned to Deep Space 9, and seen/mentioned in [DS9], though the connection there is that of rivers, with other runabouts called, for instance, the Ganges.
The name "Edo" is not connected with the flourishing political and cultural Edo period under certain Shoguns in Japan's history.
One of the Bridge officers on the Enterprise, by rank an ensign and noted in the cast list as "conn", is played by Josh Clark who plays engineer (and for a short time acting chief engineer in 2371) Lieutenant Joe Carey in [Voyager] in several episodes e.g. [#11 State Of Flux]. It is possible, by a stretch of the imagination, for him to be a younger Joe Carey although why he is a conn officer rather than an engineer would have to be a matter of speculation. picture
