They honestly seemed like different aliens there. They were just scientists observing some disease and how different aliens reacted to it. They would take over the bodies of different crewpeople, but would refuse to interfere.
It was nice to see some arguments against the Prime Directive for once, though. Especially after Doctor’s Day and their defense of cultural genocide.
They decided to masquerade as tribbles, so they could monitor and influence us surreptitiously.
However, they rather over-estimated how much they could achieve while being unable to speak, move, or manipulate objects, and with their only sense being touch.
Two Organians ‘inhabit’ the bodies of two of the bridge officers to observe how the Enterprise crew handles a deadly plague quickly spreading thru the ship. It was actually a pretty good Enterprise episode, though they did hit the reset button at the end by wiping the crew’s memories so it might as well have never happened.
The two of them along with Michael Ansara as Kang from *Day of the Dove *all reunited to appear togetherin the DS9 episode Blood Oath.
As far as the OP goes, being a big original Star Trek household growing up we had this debate a number of times. We came to two conclusions:
[ol]
[li]The Organians only cared about themselves and their part of space.[/li][li]The Organians also specifically said, “We find interfering with others affairs most disgusting, but you’ve left us no choice”.[/li][/ol]
So basically the Feds and the Klingons could fight all they wanted elsewhere, as long as they stayed away from Organian space. And number two explains why they never reappear to enforce peace across the universe.
Wow! I’m surprised to read on Wiki that Ansara lived to the ripe old age of 91! I knew he had been sick for a long time and thought he’d probably died well before 2013.
Fun fact: Kang’s wife Mara was played by Susan Howard, who went on to be one of the stars of Dallas in the '80s (as did Morgan Woodward, aka Capt. Ron Tracey in “Omega Glory”).
Interesting that for all their godlike powers, the Organians apparently gave no thought whatsoever to either the Federation or the Klingons until they showed up in their neck of the woods.
I picked, They decided to stand back and let the Feds and Klingons mature. And hey, it worked.
The Organians predicted that the Federation and the Klingons would someday be friends and allies, and hey, they were right, notwithstanding Kirk’s and Kor’s disgusted reactions. The Organians were really smart and could see the likely historical evolution of relations between the two powers, and after awhile, the Treaty was unnecessary (until it was again, when, oops, there was a brief war in the DS9 era - just a bump in the road, though, as it happened).
They went back in time and built a network of Chappa’ais.
It did give us some great DS9 episodes, but would the war have happened without the influence of the Founders?
I figure it was the same handwaving that made Klingon foreheads go smooth and then bumpy: the Organians either quit paying attention to anything outside their orbit (much like the Talosians) or they packed up and moved to a higher plane of existence where they wouldn’t interfere with story ideas.
Or Metrons.
I thought about that, but the Metrons had a bad habit of interfering with ships that weren’t even near their planet.
Now that I think about it, their episode was based on Fredric Brown’s short story “Arena.” Was that the first example of godlike aliens who have to mess with us lower life forms?
Au contraire, the Gorns led Kirk right past their solar system (unintentionally, I’m sure).
The Organians regard themselves as ‘adults’, and both the Federation and the Klingon Empire as children. Children who don’t get along well, and tend to fight, but have more in common than they realize. For the most part, when children fight, you ignore them - they’re children, so they probably can’t hurt each other too badly, and you have important stuff to do.
If they insist on fighting right in front of you, though, then they both a stern talking-to (“Jimmy, stop hitting your brother with the plastic giraffe. No, put it down!”), and are warned that ‘the grownups are watching you!’. Which they are, for a while. Until they get distracted. At which point, as long as the children mostly fight reasonably quietly and out of direct line of sight, they can get away with it.
Considering how it turns out, this attitude actually seems pretty reasonable - in only a hundred years or so (which is probably not that long by the standards of immortal aliens), the two governments, like many siblings, grow up to (mostly, usually) respect and work with one another, despite their disagreements.
Genesis comes to mind.
What happened is that the Klingon Empire changed . . . but how or why remains unclear . . .
First, the official story is that Gene Coon wrote the script independently, then found out about the Brown story, and gave Brown credit. The basic idea is the same, but hardly anything else. And the human hero of the Brown story is not as namby-pamby as Kirk. It’s possible he read the story and didn’t remember it, but used it unconsciously.
It wasn’t even the first instance of godlike aliens in TOS - see Charlie X. I think The Squire of Gothos was before, but I’d have to check. And ignoring the Bible, we have the Arisians and Eddorians from the Lensmen series, and I’d hardly swear that they were the first.
Well, again, the prequel series *Enterprise *dealt with the whole bumpy-smooth-then bumpy again Klingon foreheads during a three-episode arc. And, IMO, dealt with it pretty darn well (it was related to Khan and Earth’s augmented-humans Eugenics program…)
The (second) pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” even featured godlike humans. (Which Charlie X was too, come to think of it.)
…in the original story, the hero whacks himself with a rock to become briefly unconscious to pass through a barrier, to get at the alien and kill him with a pointy stick.
In the TOS version, Kirk BUILDS A FRICKIN’ CANNON and blows lizard guy out of his shoes… then SPARES him.
Plainly they have a rather odd version of namby-pamby where YOU come from.
And yeah, the idea of omnipotent aliens was old news long before TOS hit the airwaves… I was just momentarily curious how it got to be a SF trope to begin with.
Pointed stick. (I’m guessing he’d run out of fresh fruit.) 
Can you fashion some sort of rudimentary lathe, Captain?
*Shut up!
*
