I despise this episode. Restricting the reasons to board-appropriate criticisms, the entire plot not only relies on a ludicrous level of coincidence (that the Starfleet officer witnessed mid-transport by a native just happens to have the same name as a mostly-forgotten local deity is patently absurd), but also on an incredible level of gullibility and stupidity on the part of the natives.

The woman who saw The Picard had no hard evidence - he didn't leave any evidence behind, they didn't find the ruined observation base, there were no mysterious healing or deaths by strange means. Nothing more than one woman rushing into town saying "guess what I saw!". This same woman is also unwilling to accept that Picard is not a god after being taken aboard the Enterprise and given a "we're not gods, just people that have really, really good technology" tour. This is enough to significantly revive the forgotten beliefs not just in this one village but threatens to become a major cultural phenomenon. This is a culture that is said by Vulcans to be impressively logical, after a major disaster that push everyone to an enormous level of stress.

The equivalent on Earth would be if a single UFO sighting instantly created a UFO craze far larger than the one we had after thousands.



There's a workable core to the story - "Thou Shalt Not Impersonate A Deity" is a perfectly valid component of the Prime Directive, and the Enterprise crew being revolted by the possibility of doing so even accidentally is also perfectly valid. They just didn't put it in a framework that actually makes logical sense.