Including the Mintakans? I prefer to believe Picard prefers the linear interpretation of the Prime Directive and as such wants to stay out of things. Thawing old humans more than bends the rules and, ideally, keeping them on ice until the Romulan threat was resolved - no pun intended, mostly - should have been Picard's move. But then there'd be no story. That and 80s Dude on the bridge did add to the plot when responding about the Romulans.
It's reasonable to assume that the programs were already "24c Washed" to make the programs more accessible to people playing them who weren't white, human, males.
The real question that needs answering here is.. How did Dr. Crusher revive them without Borg nanoprobes?
Picard is just cautious. His first reaction to Data creating a daughter is a face palm and getting up tight about it, same thing here with the unfreezing.
More like careless. "Doctah, get the big scary Klingon in here. I want his face to be the first thing they see. That'll show these barbarians!"
But it was the dead of someone who's heart stopped in a modern ER to a doctor in the 24th century. I doubt that bulk of 17th century Humanity (who mostly were not white) would see themselves as second-class citizen in comparison. Depend on where they were from, if it was a cosmopolitan shipping/trading center of the 17th century, with peoples from dozens of cultures coming and going, our culture (less the technology) would look normal to them. Can't say I would agree. Would you say that a modern day person, with the knowledge level (hypothetically) of a 17th century person would be - in your mind - primitive and "unfit?"
This is part of why I don't like these characters. They look down their noses at pretty much everything that isn't 24th-century Starfleet (or in Riker's case, some woman to flirt with or some weird food to shovel into his mouth). Archaeologists deal with physical objects, not people. Yes, studying stuff can lead to insights into the history and culture of the people being studied, but it really doesn't say much about how to interact with them if you should happen to meet one. If there had been any anthropologists on board, that's who Picard should have consulted. They're the ones who deal with people. I've wondered about Gillian Taylor. By the end of TVH she's got a ship to go to, presumably she gets to stay with the whales, and life will be peachy (and she never did give Kirk her "phone number"). But in reality, how hard would it have been for her to adjust? It couldn't possibly have been that easy. Or maybe 23rd century people weren't quite as stuck-up? And what if their entire worldview consisted of "this person is evil personified because he doesn't worship God/Jesus the same way I do, therefore the right thing to do would be to hang him/burn him at the stake, or <insert any other torture/execution method used during the time of the Tudors/Stuarts>"? You can tell someone from that time that women are equal now, racism is wrong, literacy is a good thing for everyone, children are mandated by law to attend school instead of slaving in factories or fields or mines all day, slavery is outlawed in most of the world, some domestic animals have limited legal rights in some jurisdictions, same-sex marriage is legal in some countries, it's okay not to believe in God, and many other things we take for granted... but the proof of how successful you'd be in explaining all this would be which way the person jumps when they have their first real gut-level encounter with a situation dealing with something very different from his own time. After all, there are 21st century North Americans who have trouble wrapping their minds around a lot of the things I just listed. Then consider the case of someone from an era in which women weren't even allowed to wear trousers and had no legal status as persons, no legal right to own property in their own names if they were married, and no legal right to say "no" to a man if he wanted sex with her, even if he were her husband (that's a recent development - the legal concept of marital rape). Hm. I'm 54, and I wake up on the average morning and wonder where the hell the last 30-40 years went sometimes. I don't tend to adopt new technology unless it's something I finally decide I need. I might continue to use it if I then find it useful or fun, but honestly, I wasn't remotely interested in computers until my old electric typewriter broke down and I couldn't find either replacement parts or a repairman willing to fix it. That was in 1990. I didn't go online for another 14 years after that. I don't own a smart phone. My phone is a touch-tone landline that's attached to the wall. It doesn't have caller ID, there's no answering machine, although it does have last number redial. There's no list of phone numbers that enable me to call someone with the push of a button. It doesn't have a camera, it doesn't have games, it doesn't access the internet. And yet I cope reasonably well in this century. At least I'll never wander into traffic because I'm wrapped up in some online game and not noticing where I'm walking. The answer to that is clearly "yes." If he were fair about it, he'd find out if they had anything to do with the events the documents reference before starting in on whatever pretentious speech he plans to deliver. Except for a few words here and there, the English of the 13th century would be like a completely different language. There's a reason why Latin used to be the lingua franca. Even 300 years later, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon had to use Latin at first as neither spoke the other's language well enough to carry on a nuanced conversation. By that time, however, Elizabethan-era English was close enough to ours that we don't have too much trouble understanding the poetry and plays of that time - at least as far as reading them. The pronunciation was quite different in some ways. It's a good thing Picard had the universal translator - otherwise, 24th century English could sound very different from the English we're used to. Women running around unchaperoned and wearing pants? The planned obsolescence of our modern economy? How about the lesser importance of religion in people's lives? Those wouldn't look normal.
The modern concept of racism would be totally lost on someone from the 16th century, or 12th, or so on. They simply wouldn't understand. There might be an angry French cobbler in 1602 Alsace constantly complaining about the German race...or something like that. We should be careful not to judge people from the past, as us humans have a tendency to see generalizations, and we create stereotypes for various eras of history to fit in neat little boxes compatible with our modern day sensibilities. These saddening realities are confirming of this: -The modern era(the last 100 years) have been more brutal, violent, and bloody than all other years of recorded history combined. War has been perpetual throughout this time, and the wars of the last 100 years have been the most gruesome yet known. -There are as many or more slaves in the world today than any other time in history, including in countries where slavery is illegal, like in Europe and the US. And this includes each of the main types of slavery, such as forced labor/agricultural/chattel slavery, sexual trafficking, child slavery, indentured servitude, and domestic servitude. -IIlliteracy is higher than ever, especially in the US where the rate of illiteracy has been steadily climbing for 100 years, and dramatically climbing for 50. -More people live in poverty today than all other people estimated to have lived in poverty throughout recorded history. When Star Trek uses the term "primitive," I've never gotten the impression that it means anything other than "they haven't yet made the technical achievements that we have." We are not more intelligent than our ancestors, and we are not beyond the same human proclivities, both evil and good, that all generations have had.
After they understand that they have been moved through time and are in a far away land, they might just shrug at the differences, and could find them interesting and perhaps consider the way we do things to be amusing. If the things you listed, is it that you think a person from the past would be somewhat surprised? Or be offended to the point of rage by some of the items? My position is that the person from the past, once they realized that they had moved in time (if they were able to comprehend that), would fully expect that the society surrounding them would be different. Just like if they were to find themselves in their own time, but in a far away land.
To answer the bolded part: Yes, and yes. Surprised and offended. It doesn't take someone from centuries ago to be surprised and offended about the modern world. One reason why I stopped interacting with most people from my mother's side of the family is because they couldn't wrap their minds around my decision not to marry or have kids. It's like I'm denying them something they think they're owed. So if the women of my mother's side are like this - going back just a few decades - can you imagine someone from centuries ago trying to acclimate to the fact that modern women in most parts of the world have the legal right to decide these things for ourselves, nobody has the right to force us into either marriage or childbearing, we now have the right to vote and own property in our own right, we don't need a father's or husband's permission to sign contracts or open our own bank accounts, and we can wear what we want, as long as we're in compliance with local laws and health regulations? There are some provinces in Canada, for instances, where it's legal for women to be topless in public. Somehow I have a suspicion that a time traveler would have a problem with this last point unless said time traveler were from a culture where women usually went topless or semi-topless. My point is that it's one thing to intellectually grasp that you're in a different time/place and be told that some things are very different from the time/place you're from. It another thing to really grasp it at the gut level. If you met a young woman wearing shorts and a halter top, would your first instinct be to engage her in conversation about some intellectual thing, or would your first thought be, "Go home and put on some clothes, your parents/husband should be ashamed of you for running around like that - even prostitutes are better dressed!" On the matter of the last example, btw... I saw a video a Muslim woman shot in which she was comparing attitudes about the niqab (the Muslim women's garment that covers the hair, face, and is either ankle or floor length). The woman filming the march these niqab-clad women were in was dressed in a perfectly respectable way - dress, shoes, hair uncovered - nothing at all wrong. But she was vilified by the niqab-wearing women and one of them told her, "Go home and put some clothes on." To them she might as well be naked in public. Please note that I do NOT intend this to turn into any kind of political bashing thread. These examples are either from my own life experiences or what I've seen in various videos or on the news. The main point is that you can bring people forward in time and explain things... but it will, in many cases, take them much longer to understand and accept them than you might think.
So if someone from the 17th century (let's say a sailor were to travel to 17th century Tahiti and see topless women, the sailor) would be rage filled offended? Some how I doubt it. When people from modern day Muslim countries come to America and are surrounded by our culture, offense is rare (but not absent). They might not choose to assimilate every aspect, which is their choice. A Muslim from a thousand years ago would be surprised by the niqab, my understanding is that it a fairly resent creation. So would that Muslim be rage filled by it's presence? Gays were accepted in the past in some places but not others, just as today. Women had had legal rights in the past, yes less places than today. But would our current system cause rage in the average person from the past once it was made clear that they were no longer in their previous society? I don't think it would be strictly speaking a case of people from previous centuries coming forward and then having problems with the things you mentioned. I mean it would not their being from the past aspect in of itself. Pull a farmer from central Africa three hundred years ago and dump them in modern Tokyo and they would bring all their cultural programming with them. But how can you say this person couldn't over time adapt, learn and grow?
Did I say he would? But if he were to bring said topless women back to Europe with him, society at large over there would consider them no better than prostitutes, even if they were considered among the elite women of their own society. And if that 17th-century sailor came forward in time to the 21st century, his attitudes toward topless women would be "pretty to look at, but not respectable." True enough. But the aspects of what they don't choose to assimilate can sometimes be polarizing. For example, the current Canadian government partially owes its victory to the fact that a Muslim woman refused to remove her niqab to take the Citizenship oath just prior to the federal election of 2015. Long story, but the ending was that parties gained or lost votes, depending on how the leaders reacted to this and what their constituents thought they should have said or done. I don't know. You'd need to ask a thousand-year-old Muslim. You can take the person out of the society, but taking the society out of the person is something that takes time and the willingness of the person to shed old customs, old thoughts, and embrace the new ones. My grandfather died 31 years ago. Resurrect him now, and he'd still be lecturing me on how it's wrong to express my own opinions because I should be married and expressing whatever my husband's opinions are. I'm talking about the gut reactions of people out of their time and place. Sometimes those gut reactions aren't so far out of how the new society sees things. Sometimes they're so far off the mark that it's a point on which the person is going to have a great deal of difficulty assimilating. I don't know how much plainer I can put this: There's a difference between theoretical or just explaining how such-and-such is different. Seeing and experiencing those differences in person, at a gut-level is the real test of how well the displaced person is likely to adapt to their new time and place. Of course they can learn and grow. But some things will always be a stumbling block to complete adaptation.
I hope his evolved sensibility means he is more evolved than the 21st century, which constantly demeans and sneers at the past rather than from appreciating its virtues and building on them.
Aren't there other threads for that? Picard is an amateur archaeologist. I don't think he demeans and sneers at the past civilizations he digs up as long as they're the remote past and are unlikely to turn up on his bridge and demand to speak to their banker. As for the 21st century sneering at its past... museums, archaeological digs, history classes, etc. disagree with you.
Perhaps Picard's occasional disdain for us is rooted in his childhood. Picard's brother is very much a traditionalist. He refuses to use replicators and other technology, and Picard resented him for being a bully when they were kids.
I am referring to the attitude that automatically dismisses the past as inferior to us -- that underestimates their achievements. For instance, many people persist in believing that medieval believed the world was flat until brave Columbus showed them otherwise. It is foolish to believe that we are any more "evolved" than we were a few centuries ago; moderns are just as superstitious and mean as medieval were. Our institutions have collected and passed on more knowledge, and our institutions themselves has improved through that maturing, but ordinary people are unchanged. Yesterday numerous people asked me if it was safe to go outside because they thought the eclipse was dangerous!
And history programs and channels on cable and the internet. People are immersed in the wonders and achievements of our ancestors. It's where we came from. Ahh, this is the part of your position that I previously failed to understand. Your saying that someone traveling to the future would need or be expected to change. Someone traveling to the future, or just to the other side of the planet, would need to learn how to operate within the new society, learn technology, and maybe a language yes. But I don't think it would be incumbent upon them to abandon their previous personal beliefs and cultural teachings. This would be a option on their part, and one that they would be free to decline. Recognizing that there isn't one "best" way of thinking would be a important first step (on their part, also on the part of their new society). Retain those aspects their original culture that they choose, and only "assimilating" as far they see fit. What a strange requirement. Was this for identification purposes, only momentarily revealing her face? Or as she being required to remove the entire garment to enforce cultural homogeneity?
And now Offenhouse has an even more important job: he's the Federation Secretary of Commerce. So even though Picard was clearly prejudiced against the 20th-century humans he met in "The Neutral Zone", arguably all three of those people now have more significant jobs than he does! Claire is a counselor with the DTI, Sonny Clemonds has a successful career with the USO (or whatever Starfleet calls it), and of course Offenhouse helps shape policy for the entire Federation. So I guess one could say, they all outrank him. (At the very least, Offenhouse does, which is poetic justice since he was the one Picard hated the most.)
My daughter was taught that in third grade. Apparently it's still taught in the 24th century, because Picard and Riker make fun over it.
Let me put it this way: If you take a high priest from a society that practices human sacrifice (ie. an Aztec), you'd better hope he assimilates enough so he's not going to run around looking for people to kill just so the rain comes on time. In that case, abandoning his previous calling would be a damn good idea, or he could end up in prison or being executed (depending on where he murders - or tries to murder - his sacrificial victim). There are several points of view to this. First of all, the niqab is not like a burka. The woman was not being asked to remove the part covering her hair. She wasn't asked to remove the part covering her clothes. She was asked to remove the part covering her face. She refused. She was offered the choice of an all-female citizenship court. She refused. Some concerns about this legitimately point out that it's harder to make out what a person is saying if their mouths are covered by cloth. The words aren't as clear and the sound is muffled. It's also a matter of body language and non-verbal cues. We rely on facial expressions and other non-verbal body language to judge if what a person says is congruent with their body language - if it is, we feel more relaxed around them and tend to believe they're more trustworthy. If not, we tend to be more cautious, even suspicious. Some people consider that if a person covers her face during such an important ceremony, she might not be as sincere about wanting to be Canadian as she claims. Whatever her motives, this whole thing was badly handled on both sides, cost a great deal of time, money, and trouble, and there needs to be a clearer set of rules drafted that balances religious rights with security.