Insurrection rewatch: So much potential

[DonIago]

Most people who saw the film seem to disagree, but then, YMMV. In any case, you didn't answer my question.

 

[suarezguy]

Well, IIRC, Dougherty does say that it would take ten years of normal exposure to the rings to heal the Son'a (presumably less long for less advanced ailments), and I can't exactly blame people for not wanting to sit around on the planet for a decade...

When the benefit can be so much more and the alternative is displacing people who lived there for 300 years having to take time to get the benefit seems the much better choice. Especially also considering that in the 24th century maybe not the Sona'a (maybe them too) but Federation species seem to already live a lot longer than us, what we might consider utopian-ish lengths.

I don't feel we as an audience should have to assume that the Baku offered to help in any way not shown onscreen, especially given everything else we learn about their evident desire for isolation. Such a gesture would be significant enough to merit depiction. Besides, if it happened, why wouldn't there then be a discussion with the Son'a noting that they had been offered that option, or between Picard and Dougherty about it?

The Picard comment to me suggested they had been offered it or it would be acceptable to them (Picard wouldn't offer it if it wasn't), plus I guess just me assuming that of course the Ba'ku wouldn't lay claim to the whole large planet and refuse to let people live elsewhere on it.

It's just like the Maquis who would rather have seen a war between the Federation and Cardassians that would likely have killed at least thousands than face the oh-so-terrible burden of abandoning their homes to move back to a land of virtually unlimited resources (thank you replicators).

There I did see the Maquis as being, though somewhat sympathetic, pretty unreasonable and yet I think there a lot of viewers think the territory absolutely is their home and they've got full right to stay and others no right to get them to leave after them living there just 10-20 years (and the narrative does encourage us to think that view is at least understandable or right in its way).

Then there's the fact that they kicked their kids off the planet, and when the kids come back upset about it, there's no discussion of how such an advanced race could have exiled the kids before but couldn't do so again, nor of the fact that maybe the adults have to some degree reaped what they've sown.

Yeah I guess that doesn't make sense, the weirdness of how that happened or why the Son'a couldn't have just stayed and lived elsewhere on the planet.

Edit: A possible, charitable to the Ba'ku interpretation is that they didn't really exile the young people, the young people just decided that, if they couldn't run the place, they wanted to leave the planet (their whole idea was to embrace more advanced technology and space travel and interactions with other species), and they later regretted it (as they aged slowly but declined in health) and reinterpreted it as exile.

 

[DonIago]

Unfortunately the charitable interpretation isn't supported by the film itself unless you want to read in a lot of subtext to what's actually said...

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.

Sadly, the how of the exile is left to the audience, along with the question of "If they did it once, why can't they just do it again?"