First Contact is more of a disaster than it lets on

[Gary7]

It's in this respect that Picard in "First Contact" fails, as the development of Malcoria takes a whole new turn. But the failure is not particularly great, because observations show that in the long term Malcoria is unwilling to leap to interstellar space. That there's technological advance and then resistance to it is just a continuation of a pattern, as per Durken's own views on his society. The change is much smaller than, say, the damage done by Gill or Merrick - it's just a minor adjustment of a timetable.

Bingo. I think you hit the proverbial nail on the head. If that minister of security is representative of a significant portion of the population, then they were going to be resistant to the leap of interstellar space flight to begin with. There wasn't enough shown of the rest of the population to gauge anything more.

Does the Federation make mistakes? Sure it does. Riker faltered and got himself seriously hurt. Stuff happens. But to say it's a disaster is very presumptuous. There's too much of the back story that wasn't exposed for there to be that kind of judgment. Actually, given the breach of protocol and undesired exposure, I think it all went rather well. Riker was safely returned. The Malcorian general public was never the wiser. Status quo was maintained. Maybe their entry into space flight was delayed a few decades... but that's a drop in the bucket relative to the lifespan of the species.

Btw, I thought it was a terrific episode.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Thanks.