Insurrection
- Thread starter Phily B
- Start date
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
If I remember correctly, the crux of the problem was that the Federation science teams didn't entirely understand the unusual regenerative properties of the Briar Patch or the Ba'ku homeworld; the So'na did.
"You know what that makes us? Partners."
On top of this, the So'na knew what the real deal behind the Ba'ku was, and how advanced their society really was... but to the Federation observation teams, this was a pre-warp, pre-first contact world. Why would Starfleet violate the Prime Directive (or risk doing so) just to build a few medical stations?
"You know what that makes us? Partners."
On top of this, the So'na knew what the real deal behind the Ba'ku was, and how advanced their society really was... but to the Federation observation teams, this was a pre-warp, pre-first contact world. Why would Starfleet violate the Prime Directive (or risk doing so) just to build a few medical stations?
Furthermore, the Son'a no doubt extensively lied about those properties, making it look like the collector ship was the only way to exploit the fountain of youth. In reality, most of the Son'a could probably have been healed without the need to disrupt the planet, but a principal Son'a aim was to disrupt the planet...
At least Dougherty admitted to very well knowing that the Ba'ku society was post-warp and already perfectly aware of the interstellar community. Would the rest of the observation team have been kept in the dark about that? We don't even know whether Data was told: we only hear Data's side of things after Picard has contacted the Ba'ku and heard the truth from them.
It's difficult to tell who the duck blind was primarily intended to fool: the Ba'ku, or the UFP Council... There probably wouldn't have been a duck blind operation there unless some part of the UFP still mistakenly believed the Ba'ku were primitives. But it sounds utterly impossible that the Starfleeters operating the duck blind would have for a moment mistaken the Ba'ku for natives. A single village of a few hundred people on an entire planet? Must be an interstellar colony, no two ways about it!
Timo Saloniemi
That's a presumption, not a scientific conclusion.
A single stone age village might stand testimony to the presence of a native but rapidly dying species. A single advanced iron age (read: medieval or better) village just doesn't spring up in isolation, nor does it survive as the last remnant of a dying civilization. It would have been one hell of a job to sell the concept of "the Ba'ku are natives" to anybody without extensively lying about basically everything that was known about this planet.
Of course, the planet was nicely hidden from public view - so perhaps the duck blind mission was sold to whomever on the premise that the village was stone age (extensively falsified reports on it), or that the rest of the planet had comparable habitation and was much like medieval Earth (even more extensive a forgery, plus this same cover story couldn't be used for the cloak-holodeck-transport operation because that hinged on there only being 600 Ba'ku in total).
Alternately, UFP rules might say that any interstellar settlers who devolve into non-starfarers and forget about the interstellar community may and perhaps have to be treated as primitives. So everybody understands that the Ba'ku originally came from outer space - but everybody also is told that this happened centuries upon centuries ago, and since very few know that the Ba'ku live forever, very few realize that the settlement still remembers its interstellar origins perfectly well.
Now, we already know that different people were told different lies so that the sinister plot could proceed. We don't know exactly who was lied to about the native status of the Ba'ku and how and why - but we do know that Picard believed Data was conducting a duck blind mission on primitives. So Dougherty's posse (and probably his superiors, too) lied to at least some Starfleet personnel about this. And Picard didn't catch the lie until after reaching the Ba'ku village.
So that makes it a bit unlikely that Picard was told the "there are millions, and this is how there can be this medieval village there" lie, because his ship's sensors would quickly have revealed that there was just one village. Picard may have been told the "there are 600, but they are at an expected cultural level" lie, which the sensors might not have so readily exposed. Or he may have been told the "there are 600 descendants of ancient interstellar colonists there, with the sort of devolved tech one would expect" lie, which would be near-impossible to disprove - but Picard's reaction to the revelation doesn't seem to match this lie.
Timo Saloniemi
Of course, the planet was nicely hidden from public view - so perhaps the duck blind mission was sold to whomever on the premise that the village was stone age (extensively falsified reports on it), or that the rest of the planet had comparable habitation and was much like medieval Earth (even more extensive a forgery, plus this same cover story couldn't be used for the cloak-holodeck-transport operation because that hinged on there only being 600 Ba'ku in total).
Alternately, UFP rules might say that any interstellar settlers who devolve into non-starfarers and forget about the interstellar community may and perhaps have to be treated as primitives. So everybody understands that the Ba'ku originally came from outer space - but everybody also is told that this happened centuries upon centuries ago, and since very few know that the Ba'ku live forever, very few realize that the settlement still remembers its interstellar origins perfectly well.
Now, we already know that different people were told different lies so that the sinister plot could proceed. We don't know exactly who was lied to about the native status of the Ba'ku and how and why - but we do know that Picard believed Data was conducting a duck blind mission on primitives. So Dougherty's posse (and probably his superiors, too) lied to at least some Starfleet personnel about this. And Picard didn't catch the lie until after reaching the Ba'ku village.
So that makes it a bit unlikely that Picard was told the "there are millions, and this is how there can be this medieval village there" lie, because his ship's sensors would quickly have revealed that there was just one village. Picard may have been told the "there are 600, but they are at an expected cultural level" lie, which the sensors might not have so readily exposed. Or he may have been told the "there are 600 descendants of ancient interstellar colonists there, with the sort of devolved tech one would expect" lie, which would be near-impossible to disprove - but Picard's reaction to the revelation doesn't seem to match this lie.
Timo Saloniemi
Very well thought out, Timo.
It's a bit silly that Picard gets so upset about this idea of forcing the Ba'ku to leave - without ever asking the Ba'ku whether they'd agree to the procedure or not.
I mean, of course it's a non-issue in the end: the thing about the need to leave was a lie all along. But essentially Picard gets a bunch of Ba'ku kidnapped and probably a great many of them killed by setting up a foolish resistance movement, without asking for their consent - when the obvious venue to pursue would have been to directly challenge the Son'a. So what if they have superior firepower in orbit... They also have their precious youth-collector up there: Picard could have threatened to blow that up and would have had the Son'a crawling on their knees.
Really, the whole idea and sole merit of the surface resistance was to buy time for Starfleet to arrive. But Picard could have bought time in other ways, such as allowing the Ba'ku to be transported away into the safety of the holoship (safely crewed by his trusted colleagues), then using the E-E to destroy or confiscate the collector, then waiting it out. Or half a dozen other approaches that didn't involve gunfights, cave-ins and other such "needlessly asymmetric warfare".
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, of course it's a non-issue in the end: the thing about the need to leave was a lie all along. But essentially Picard gets a bunch of Ba'ku kidnapped and probably a great many of them killed by setting up a foolish resistance movement, without asking for their consent - when the obvious venue to pursue would have been to directly challenge the Son'a. So what if they have superior firepower in orbit... They also have their precious youth-collector up there: Picard could have threatened to blow that up and would have had the Son'a crawling on their knees.
Really, the whole idea and sole merit of the surface resistance was to buy time for Starfleet to arrive. But Picard could have bought time in other ways, such as allowing the Ba'ku to be transported away into the safety of the holoship (safely crewed by his trusted colleagues), then using the E-E to destroy or confiscate the collector, then waiting it out. Or half a dozen other approaches that didn't involve gunfights, cave-ins and other such "needlessly asymmetric warfare".
Timo Saloniemi
Dumbest Star Trek movie made... and that says something now that Star Trek 2009 is out.
That would have been an exciting movie.
Cos the Dominion War was DS9 and had no place in this movie.
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