Did Picard make the right decision with the Son'a/Baku

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Godless Raven, Apr 11, 2013.

  1. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    The Federtion has stood up for the little guy in the past, but this was Picard who personally took up the fight, he took his pips off so he was acting on his own.
     
  2. Edit_XYZ

    Edit_XYZ Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    One does not have to inhabit the planets to claim them - much as you don't have to be on your land to claim it as property.
    As to the notion that the klingons - or the romulans - won't claim VERY valuable real-estate such as M class worlds in their space as their own - :guffaw:.


    MacLeod

    Before the klingons, the briar patch belonged to the romulans. T'Girl went into detail about it - short version, same considerations as with the klingons apply.

    The baku remain tresspasers; they are very far from being able to invoke adverse possesion. BTW, you don't need to cloak a planet for your possession to be hidden; merely hide (not announcing your presence and, generally, trying to stay under the radar) on a small patch of the planet (as the baku were doing by their own admission).

    And, as said, tresspassers are evicted - no compensation required. BTW - tresspassers are also the ones entering your land - not only your house.
    Squatting is about occuping an abandoned piece of real-estate; and the briar patch is - and was - claimed as property by various polities.

    Must a court of law decide over eviction or eminent domanin? Of course.
    And considering the situation (billions vs. 600), guess what would the quite moral decision of any court of law be? The baku are relocated + given access to the immortality drug and the rings are harvested.
    But wait: The baku don't agree to hyposprays for immortality - it's against their luddite philosophy! They want it to come 'naturally', on the land they tresspass on. And they don't care that billions will suffer and die for this.
    As repeatedly said in this thread, the only reason the writers didn't went this route is because they didn't want to telegraph the entitlement complex of the baku. That doesn't stop you and other posters from using this smokescreen of an argument repeatedly, though - along with moving the goalposts vis-a-vis ~'federation law may be different', etc.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2013
  3. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    But wouldn't it make a certain amount of sense that another of the Federation's core principals would be to look after it's own people?

    Remember, the Baku didn't have to be moved to get at the particles, they were being move to protect them from the harvest process.

    And nothing says that the Baku would not have equal access to the medical properties of the particles after being move to another world.

    They just wouldn't have sole access anymore.

    :)
     
  4. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    Do you really believe that the Son'a would've shared the benefits of the process with the Federation or the Baku forthat matter? It was an illegal and immoral operation and they knew it oterhwise there'd be no reason to hide what they were doing.
     
  5. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    another sign of losing the argument-the other side is back to the "but the Son'a were going to betray them in the end!" tactic, for which there is ZERO EVIDENCE.

    Once again, the Son'a were very cooperative with the Federation UNTIL Picard began screwing up the whole operation.

    if we're not limited by what's on film and can just make stuff up,why not argue that the Baku "peaceful Luddite" thing was a ruse and that they were secretly a guild of assassins?:lol:
     
  6. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This would explain the plot hole of the Baku being able to exile the Sona and their technology.
     
  7. horatio83

    horatio83 Commodore Commodore

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    Yes. Engaging in kidnapping, theft and the various implications of these deeds is criminal while cooperating with an entirely unreliable ally who stabs you in the back at the first chance he gets is plain dumb and suicidal.
    INS features no dilemma, it is a simple morality play. So were all the other Picard vs. the evil Admiral stories from TNG. It works as such (of course any simply morality play is of limited appeal) and it naturally fails if you perceive it as something which it isn't.
     
  8. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I feel sorry for the Federation President who has to explain that they allowed millions of people to suffer pain because the alternative was moving 600 people from a planet that wasn't even their planet of origin.
     
  9. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It's not like there was any immediate need for new medical breakthroughs. Only a huge war going on.
     
  10. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The immediate need in this case could be construed as the possibility that if the Federation didn't work with the Son'a the Son'a would likely sneak in and do it on their own. Given there was a huge war going on Starfleet almost certainly wouldn't have the ships to spare to indefinitely protect a single planet, especially a non-Federation planet with, in objective terms, a very small population.
     
  11. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    I got the impression that the Son'a left on their own.
     
  12. horatio83

    horatio83 Commodore Commodore

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    SOJEF: A century ago, a group of our young people wanted to follow the ways of the offlanders. They tried to take over the colony and when they failed...
    RU'AFO: And when we failed, you exiled us to die slowly.

    Of course this doesn't make much sense once you think about it. A bunch of young people have technology (from where?) that enables them to leave the planet but they are unable to take power from their parents who live in a pre-industrial economy? The background is, as usual, not well-flashed out as, hardly a surprise either, the story is focused upon other stuff.
     
  13. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yeah, riveting stuff about Troi and Crusher's boobs being firm, Worf going through Klingon puberty and Data and Picard singing. Stuff way more crucial to a successful movie than minor details about your plot making sense! :p
     
  14. horatio83

    horatio83 Commodore Commodore

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    I agree that they should have thought it through better. Might have something to do with the first story draft being more along the lines of a Heart of Darkness like story and the resulting loss of time and energy for the actual script.
    But then again you have the same problem in most Trek stories with background stuff. WWII and the Eugenic Wars that serves as fictional historical background for so many Trek stories, from Kodos and Khan to the pilot of TNG, Bashir and the end of ENT, has always been pretty vague. But OK, in this case vague isn't a problem; there are no contradictions like in INS.
    Yet in ST09 the 24th century background story makes no sense, whether you include Countdown or not. Spock wanted to help the Rommies and then Nero blames him? Shouldn't he rather blame his own government instead of the Vulcans who helps and fails? Is it Romulan upbringing (don't question the leaders) plus racism plus the desire to find a scapegoat in a catastrophe? No idea, you have to guess to make sense out of it.
    But then again the movie hardly fails because of this, does it (who cares about motivations; Khan didn't really have a reason to be angry about Kirk in TWOK either, he did after all choose his exile)? And I would claim the same in the case of INS, it doesn't fail because the background about the Sona and Baku is unclear.
     
  15. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    nope, they were exiled when their attempt to take over failed.

    which means we have TWO questions:

    -how was their attempt to take over "thwarted" by Luddite pacifists

    -how do a bunch of Luddite pacifists exile an advanced techology-embracing group?


    seriously, NO ONE in the film production spotted this glaring flaw and said, "uh guys, this makes no sense and creates more problems than it solves?"
     
  16. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yes, that's exact what I believe, and this is why.

    The Sona must have been the ones to have approached the Federation Council, and not the other way around. The Federation considered the planet to be theirs. If the Sona simply moved the Baku and harvested the particle all by themselves, and the Federation found out about it, the Federation would be pissed about the theft of their natural resources and would have gone to the Sona for satisfaction. The Sona didn't want long range problems.

    In other words, the Sona were scared of Starfleet.

    Even with everything that happen in the movie, the Sona would have kept whatever they previously negotiated (one percent?), and the rest would have gone to the Federation. Given that the Holoship was of Federation design, and not Sona, when the dust settled the Federation would have had "custody" of the Baku. The Baku would have had the same access to the particles as the rest of the people in the Federation.

    Which is why I believe that after the "review," the Council was going to reaffirm their original decision to harvest the particles. And if they didn't, then the Council Persons promptly selected to replace them would. Imagine if the US Congress decided to withheld the cures for heart disease, cancer, and hiv/aid. How many minutes do you think they'd last in office?

    Inspite of family blood feuds, kidnapping plots, accusations of spying, and the murder of an Admiral, the particle continued to have the same ability to help billions upon billions of people in the Federation.

    Nothing that happen in the movie changed that.

    And from hundreds of light years away, the health properties of the particles were the only thing that counted in the "big picture" of the Council's decisions.

    There are approximately a trillion beings living on the planets of the Federation, and only 0.00000000001% of that number had to be moved.

    And don't forget a massive civilian population. We saw several episodes with the Enterprise rushing to get some unusual medication, or someone had a affliction that was previously unknown. Every time something was cured, another ailment sprang up. Apparently they never did figure out how to repair the birth defect affecting Geordi's eyes (or Beverly's and Deanna's sagging tits).

    So the argument that "they already have medical treatments" doesn't work.

    Captain Pike: "Where's Helmsman McKenna?"
    Lieutenant Sulu: "He has lungworm, sir."


    :)
     
  17. OneBuckFilms

    OneBuckFilms Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Unknown and untold. How does knowing the specifics affect the core story, or the morality tale presented to us?

    I believe Picard's decision was morally and ethically correct in these circumstances.
     
  18. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Knowing the specifics of that rift affects everything. Heck how is the Son'a's claim to that planet less valid then the Ba'ku, if the Son'a were part of the same community that settled that planet?

    You can easily make an argument that the Son'a have just as much claim to that planet as the Ba'ku have, so why is the Ba'ku's claim more valid then the Son'a's claim?

    It also makes the Ba'ku's claim that they are pacifists seem dubious if they managed to defeat the Son'a, it makes you wonder what else are they hiding.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2013
  19. OneBuckFilms

    OneBuckFilms Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Just because part of the population had to leave, does not give ANYONE the right to kick out the rest.

    It was an internal rift within the Baku that gave birth to the Son'a, true, one side lost the argument and left.

    We don't know how it went down beyond what was established in dialog, so lets base our judgement on that, rather than "what ifs", or "maybes" or anything else we cannot define.

    I would say they BOTH, in general, have a right to live on that world, however, everything in the film establishes that the Son'a started a fight, and were kicked out as punishment by that society.

    Starfleet clearly had no say in the internal affairs of either society by its own guidelines and traditions, and the Baku were being kicked out by the Son'a, rather than the Son'a fighting to take back their home.

    It evolved from a failed uprising, that may not have been as violent as the Son'a ended up being (we don't know either way, so cannot use that in our deliberations), into a forced eviction of the entire population.

    If it was just both sides fighting, without Starfleet's involvement, over wornership of the planet, then the Federation's role, if any, would be peacekeeping and diplomacy for both sides.

    That was not the case. It was a clear forced eviction, with no apparent attempt at diplomacy on the part of the Son'a, and no chance to gegotiate, or make amends for the Bak'u.
     
  20. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    So you are just going to ignore that fact that they seemingly had no interest in the planet and they did not do anything to use this supposedly valuable piece of real-estate or make sure someone else didn't use it behind their backs.

    I think he would be more worried about how the federation's allies would respond to that fact that according to Dougherty the federation was going to horde this medical advance for themselves.

    Yes, becuase de-aging people is so useful in a war with mass produced legions of shock troops that will kill the hell out of you within days of being born :rolleyes:

    Simple they probably didn't have guns, as just becuase you don't like living in a luddite community and want technology doesn't mean you actually have it in a luddite community. And no seeing as they set out to make a no tech community I doubt they had guns on the ship or the necessary stuff to make them.