• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

How many people before it becomes wrong?, Star Trek Insurrection

How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong?


  • Total voters
    33
The Son'a have apparently been away for 200-300 years, the surgical procedures they've kept themselves alive with and genetic damage would take a lot longer to repair, then de-age them.

Geordi only had nerve degeneration to portions of the optic centers and nerves of the brain, for a couple of decades, with constant medical care less invasive and grotesque than the Son'a practised. And they weren't "fixed" as the radiation seems to have only repaired the cells slightly faster than they failed again. Removing him from the field meant they just degenerated again.

Had he stayed a couple of years, his sight might have permanently returned.
 
It still doesn't make sense. The effect is near instant. If there were Son'a that were so close to death that staying on the planet couldn't help them, how the heck did they not just drop dead a few minutes later regardless of where they were?

Nuking a town filled with, shall we say, 600 people, or nuking a deserted town after evacuating those 600 people?
I wasn't trying to make a moral point, just using it as an example to answer Tenacity's specific question.
 
All this makes me want to *gag* pull out the Insurrection bluray and watch the movie again. Whether it was right or wrong to want to move the Baku away, I think it was beneath the ideals of the Federation to try to do in such an underhanded way.

In an odd way, the Son'Na are more like American colonists, as they are an expelled faction after a failed civil war (like Puritans).
On a totally unrelated note, this gives me an idea for another area for genealogical research, based on some vague old lore about my family having to leave England for the new world because of being on the wrong side in a war there.

Kor
 
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

This is probably a simplified version of the same problem
 
All this makes me want to *gag* pull out the Insurrection bluray and watch the movie again. Whether it was right or wrong to want to move the Baku away, I think it was beneath the ideals of the Federation to try to do in such an underhanded way.


On a totally unrelated note, this gives me an idea for another area for genealogical research, based on some vague old lore about my family having to leave England for the new world because of being on the wrong side in a war there.

Kor

There's only the one war in England at the time...though working out who won it when is fiddly. Records are good though, so you might find stuff.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kor
Regarding the Ba'ku allowing the Federation to set up "hospitals" elsewhere on the planet for people to recover in: I don't think they'd object to that, otherwise the Ba'ku would never have allowed the crew to stay on the planet in the first place (remember that the Enterprise crew were very well treated even after Data's attack).

That wasn't the Enterprise crew, that was a mix of Starfleet and S'ona officers after Data destroyed the duck blind. They likely refused to tell the Ba'ku who/where they were from.
 
^ Still, it seemed clear that the Ba'ku were friendly to visitors, and would probably have no objections to the Federation setting up hospitals. Why would they? It wouldn't get in their way.
 
As I noted above, the problem is that the Ba'ku are utterly passive in the story. One line from any of them about "Well, what about allowing a hospital on the opposite side of the planet?" would have made a world of difference even if it was summarily discarded by the Son'a (or Dougherty).

Instead they seem perfectly content to let everyone hash it out amongst themselves and come off as unsympathetic in the process.
 
I voted for 1,000,000
My vote would have been (if offered) it would be wrong if it hurt more people than it helped.

^ Still, it seemed clear that the Ba'ku were friendly to visitors.
The prisoners were well treated, but they were rounded up and taken prisoner, and then not allowed to quietly depart after being taken prisoner. The Baku could have merely insisted that they leave.
 
Last edited:
^ Still, it seemed clear that the Ba'ku were friendly to visitors, and would probably have no objections to the Federation setting up hospitals. Why would they? It wouldn't get in their way.

Then why chase the S'ona off world? They could have simply banished them from the area the village was in.
 
Why? The Ba'ku weren't native, so they got there in FTL ships. Banishing their upstart kids for trying to force the entire colony to live in a way they had abandoned was their prerogative, they had the technology to make it stick, and the kids (the Son'a) knew it. Making the upstarts get on a ship and leave, because that was for the most part what they wanted anyway, was passive, perhaps, but it solved the problem in the simplest and most direct manner.

The Son'a coming back 100-200 years later and attempting essentially to destroy their parents' paradisiacal lifestyle for an unproven limited solution to galactic medical limitations seems more a bid for revenge than anything meant to be beneficial to anyone.
 
Last edited:
Was that in response to me?

When we see the Ba'ku, AFAIK they don't even have one existing ship. Now maybe they dismantled their ships right before INS, but as we see, the Son'a have at least several ships (and let's assume we didn't see the entirety of their race in INS). Ships with presumably not only the "illegal" weapons they used against the E, but also conventional weapons.

Consequently, it seems like if the Son'a wanted to retake the planet, they could do so anytime they felt like it...unless the Bak'u had other means of dealing with them that weren't made clear.

It would be like if the Borg had once been humans who we exiled into space. Sure we got rid of them, but how do we keep them from coming back?
 
The Son'a left quite a long while ago. Perhaps in whatever ships the Baku had. The Son'a settled someplace, rebuilt and took over two local primitive species to use as labor. Then built up a force of ships and subspace weaponry to compete locally. We don't think the are that wide spread, but do have some technological advances due to not signing treaties and later selling drugs to the Dominion (well the "white" anyway).
 
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

This is probably a simplified version of the same problem
The thing is its not exactly the Trolley problem, The things the planet's rings would provide are "nice to haves" not necessities. I know some theoretical Federation subjects may suffer without help from the rings but the Federation in TNG's time has allowed entire "inferior" species to die out because that was "nature's way" so as not to break the Prime Directive. The 10s of thousands or whatever how many who could be saved by the planet ring's are chicken-feed numbers compared to the billions Starfleet even Picard himself could have saved during his captaincy.
Really the Federation doesn't "need" the rings and nobody was talking about killing the Baku except maybe returning them to their normal lifespan.

To me the main problem in the movie was that the Baku were so unlikeable. Couldn't have Frakes done something to make them less up-themselves hippy know-it-alls, If I could have liked them a bit I could have joined Picard and co in their justified outrage of forcing the Baku to mover from their planet. And then I could have forgiven the Baku for inflicting the horrors on their errant children (deserved or not).
I actually think its wrong of the Federation to move the Baku even though it might be legal to do so. The Federation aren't bandits. Member planets might begin to wonder if they have to hide resources on their own planets lest it be destroyed for the good of the Federation.
I'm also thinking destroying the planet is the wrong way to go.In the long run more people would probably be saved by hospitals on the planet.
 
Banishing their upstart kids for trying to force the entire colony to live in a way they had abandoned was their prerogative
But it's okay for the elders to force the young adults to live a cerain way?
. Making the upstarts get on a ship and leave
How'd they do that?

Not only forced them off the planet, the elders were able to beat the young adults in the rebellion.
 
On a totally unrelated note, this gives me an idea for another area for genealogical research, based on some vague old lore about my family having to leave England for the new world because of being on the wrong side in a war there.

Kor

If they were Puritans their side eventually won. (A bunch of party poopers, they banned Christmas)
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top