Well, not really - all they can do is make your muscles do their bidding, and apparently only at visual ranges at that.
So just beam down with a comm channel open and make it clear that if they try to be funny, death will rain down on their little palaces. Or get inoculated with their telekinesis dust before the beam-down.
Now that dust is the bigger problem. If it also works outside that planet, trafficking in it should probably be the one death penalty in the books.
Dramatic logic aside, what else could Starfleet have done about Talos? The planet had to be declared off limits
without revealing why. Even Starfleet's own flag officers like Commodore Mendez didn't know the actual reason. Surely that would pique the curiosity of people both honest and dishonest. How to discourage them?
Only two ways to go about it, really. One, create a cover story. Two, create a deterrent. Pain of death would probably be
very effective in a Federation that otherwise doesn't go for harsh punishment at all. Today, it would not have the same impact, so the equivalent deterrent would probably have to be something like "death of entire bloodline (except for mother-in-law) by months-long torture"...
But personally, I would have tried the cover story approach instead.
Timo Saloniemi
