The Sona were supposed to be making Ketracel White. Yes, THAT Ketracel White. The Enterprise crew seem strangely, even laughably ignorant of this when Riker mentions it. On DS9, Sisko would have ended the Sona in 2 hours upon hearing such a thing..
No longer deep space, renaming DS9
- Thread starter NewHeavensNewEarth
- Start date
The Sona were supposed to be making Ketracel White. Yes, THAT Ketracel White. The Enterprise crew seem strangely, even laughably ignorant of this when Riker mentions it. On DS9, Sisko would have ended the Sona in 2 hours upon hearing such a thing..
He would have punched the yelling guy and ended with half of his parchment face glued to his fist.
Ok.
I wasn't just offering it in the abstract, I was countering one obviously loaded example with another. The point was always as a comparison to the Baku, just like the original example, so we can obviously say that the aliens are not there to protect us from our ignorance but just to grab some resource they want (but don't actually need) that happens to be there.
I always assumed that the Son'a had no technological advantage back then - it was just one group of colonists fighting another group with whatever weapons were available in the colony. When the Baku won, the Son'a would've been loaded onto whatever small ships they might have kept in reserve and launched away, possibly even with the controls locked out (at least long enough to guarantee they couldn't just turn around and come back). The Son'a would've had to build their fleet and their empire afterwards. Which still probably doesn't work really given the short timespan, but better than the alternative.
FWIW, I was never the one arguing definitively that the planet doesn't belong to the Baku. However, I think as it isn't their planet of origin that there is room to debate how much right they have to the planet, and how much of the surrounding space they're entitled to as a consequence, and especially whether "amount of time on said planet" is really an appropriate criterion. Where do you draw the line? 10 years? 25 years? 50 years? A century? Are we going to say that if colonists are on a planet 9 years than the planet doesn't belong to them, but after an additional year it does? That seems quite arbitrary; almost as arbitrary as saying how many people have to be on a planet before they can call the planet their own.
In any event, as I've said before, I would hope the Baku would be solicitous enough of other races that they would be willing to share the benefits of the rings they were lucky enough to find before anyone else in some shape or form, but I don't believe there's anything in the screenplay that indicates they're willing to take the first step toward sharing what they were, again, lucky enough to find first with anyone else.
So we're back at me not having a great deal of sympathy for people who are comfortable sitting on the 24th century equivalent of the Cure for Cancer. And sure, maybe there wasn't enough testing done to confirm that that would work, but isn't that just an argument for allowing more testing to be conducted rather than summarily dropping the matter?
To backtrack to my original example, I do hope that if aliens colonized Mars because it was the only way they could stay alive, that humans might be kind enough to allow them to do so, or to work out some option other than "Mars is ours; buzz off!"
In any event, as I've said before, I would hope the Baku would be solicitous enough of other races that they would be willing to share the benefits of the rings they were lucky enough to find before anyone else in some shape or form, but I don't believe there's anything in the screenplay that indicates they're willing to take the first step toward sharing what they were, again, lucky enough to find first with anyone else.
So we're back at me not having a great deal of sympathy for people who are comfortable sitting on the 24th century equivalent of the Cure for Cancer. And sure, maybe there wasn't enough testing done to confirm that that would work, but isn't that just an argument for allowing more testing to be conducted rather than summarily dropping the matter?
To backtrack to my original example, I do hope that if aliens colonized Mars because it was the only way they could stay alive, that humans might be kind enough to allow them to do so, or to work out some option other than "Mars is ours; buzz off!"
The Baku aren't really taking a position here. Picard is. He feels it's wrong make the planet uninhabitable and remove the populous against their will, and without their knowledge. Is Picard wrong? Of course not.
Picard also asked for more time and offered to study the planet. It is the Sona who want to move forward with their plan immediately, and only because their leader needs the resources personally to extend his life. While the Baku have made no active decisions in the story
Picard also asked for more time and offered to study the planet. It is the Sona who want to move forward with their plan immediately, and only because their leader needs the resources personally to extend his life. While the Baku have made no active decisions in the story
Picard is wrong here because he adopted the exact opposite position about the Native Americans in that episode where Wesley stopped time or whatever, you know the one. The situation was practically the same and he tried to do to them what the Admiral here tried to do to the Baku, IE take them by force off the planet. Except Wesley thwarted his plans there as Picard thwarted the Admiral's plan here. The difference is that Wesley didn't do that because he hoped to b*ne one of the natives.
Actually, Picard immediately and strongly objected to the removal of the Indians. Then he attempted to negotiate with the Indians. When they were not agreeable to relocating, he pleaded with the admiral to try to reopen negotiations on who gets the planet. After that all failed, he attempted to transport them, which failed because of Wesley. Then he had to defend the Indians from Cardassians. Ultimately he helped negotiate a solution where they could stay. It was Picard who worked to allow them to stay
How is removing the Baku in their sleep with no warning, no communication, on a holodeck ship to decieve them, and drop them off on another world hoping they won't figure it out the same situation? In the episode, the relocation is the result of a 3 year negotiation of a peace treaty between the Federation and another power they were at war with. The Federation couldn't keep that planet. It was the price of peace.
Also, the Indians had just recently settled the planet 20 years earlier, fully aware and warned that the world was hotly contested by the Cardassians, and that a situation like the one in the episode, if not much worse, could be inevitable.
Picard objected to the removal of the Baku(just like he did with the Indians) before he had even met the love interest. And he decided to defy the admiral and protect the Baku before the love interest became a love interest.
Again, it's not a cure for cancer at all. It's not that much more amazing than what the Federation can already do, anyway.
And the (other) problem with this whole argument is obviously that nobody ever tried talking to them first. For all we know if the Federation had just opened negotiations from the start, the Baku would have happily allowed an entire Federation medical colony/research center on the planet and maybe even helped them look for a way to collect some particles without destroying an entire planet (and the source of the particles).
You really can't demand from people who've literally chosen not to live as a spacefaring race as a matter of principle that they just go back to their old spacefaring ways anyway to spread the good news about their magic home. And you really can't condemn people for 'not wanting to share' their magic home when literally no one ever bothered to ask if they would be willing to share, but instead antagonized them from the very beginning with underhanded plots to kidnap them and destroy their home.
I don't think we're given enough data about what the rings can and cannot do to make any strong claims as to how effective they would be. At minimum, it seemed they were capable of curing the Son'a...or at least, the Son'a seemed to believe that the case. As I said in my post, this seems to be an argument for conducting more research, not an argument for giving up on them altogether.
That nobody ever approached the Baku is so mind-boggling to me that I find it hard to take it as anything other than a weakness of the screenplay.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to hope that a small group of people who have something with the (potential) capacity to benefit millions will be willing to share that benefit rather than keep it to themselves. Yes, the way the situation was approached was wrong-headed, but that doesn't change the bottom line, and there was a window between the time the observation post was discovered and the time the Son'a started abducting the Baku that negotiation might have been an option.
Ironically as much as people are willing to poke fun of TNG for "We have a crisis; let's meet in the observation lounge to talk about it!" this was exactly the kind of scenario in which people should have been meeting in the observation lounge to talk about the situation and work out an agreement.
That nobody ever approached the Baku is so mind-boggling to me that I find it hard to take it as anything other than a weakness of the screenplay.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to hope that a small group of people who have something with the (potential) capacity to benefit millions will be willing to share that benefit rather than keep it to themselves. Yes, the way the situation was approached was wrong-headed, but that doesn't change the bottom line, and there was a window between the time the observation post was discovered and the time the Son'a started abducting the Baku that negotiation might have been an option.
Ironically as much as people are willing to poke fun of TNG for "We have a crisis; let's meet in the observation lounge to talk about it!" this was exactly the kind of scenario in which people should have been meeting in the observation lounge to talk about the situation and work out an agreement.
So if a property owner only occupies one bedroom in a ten bedroom house does that mean squatters can move in and claim the rest of the house due to non use?
Well its no more ridiculous than fratboy Kirk becoming Captain overnight with zero experience in ST09, a bunch of former cadets (excluding Scotty) promoted as Heads of departments in the Kelvinverse, (maybe every single experienced Starfleet officer died at Vulcan), Kirk wanting to apply to be Commodore Paris boss in STB, transwarp beaming from Earth to Kronos as if its next door, and a Starfleet vessel not noticing that a planet is missing from a planetary system (TWOK), etc, etc.
Its Star Trek, risky screenplays written by drunken or doped up writers are our business
The Son'a were dying of old age, so the particles being effective for them just means that the particles are an anti-aging/fountain of youth tool just as we've been discussing.
And for the record, I don't believe anyone has argued for giving up on the particles altogether, but rather simply that the particles aren't all-important and don't automatically justify destroying the Baku's home without any attempt at a dialogue.
It absolutely is a weakness of the screenplay. Unfortunately, that's the screenplay we got so it's the only set of facts we have to work with.
I don't think there's anything wrong with hoping they'd be willing to share and even judging them morally if they were utterly unwilling. I do have to reiterate, though, that you really can't expect them to go flying all over the galaxy to share it. They have a right to their own lives and they chose to live in isolation for a reason that was important to them. The important question is what do they do when confronted with people who would be helped by their world. And that's of course the question the movie never answered.
Having said the above, I agree it all comes down to a just badly written script. It's ridiculous that they made so little effort to make the particles relevant and kind of pathetic that the writers actually thought the *Federation* would be so in need of a simple fountain of youth that that by itself would be a believable justification for such behavior. And the idea that it would be widely considered totally fine to just kidnap them in their sleep because we want this is just character assassination of the entire Federation. And that's without even getting into the terrible setup and payoff of the Baku/Son'a relationship or why the Federation is even dealing with the Son'a in the first place. You're absolutely right that this movie should have had the classic tng crisis meeting, but unfortunately that could obviously never happen because the whole story is so poorly held together that anyone acting with half an ounce of sense would completely ruin the plot.
Well, I'm glad we've found some points of agreement. 
The only thing I can say that might make any of what happened make any sense is that it almost kinda-sorta works if you believe Ru'afo was so driven to prolong his own life, or so revenge-driven depending on what you make of his motives, that he really did manage to find a receptive ear in the Federation Council and convince them that he knew of this Fountain of Life planet where the only inhabitants were Medieval-tech primitives who wouldn't even notice if they were relocated, and that the Council was so terrified of how the DW was progressing or that there really are so many medical issues in the Federation that they were willing to overlook the Son'a...indiscretions...and just didn't bother to conduct a reasonable amount of due diligence before ever setting foot on the planet (the duck blind was at least a form of such diligence, but things seem like they never should have even gone that far).
Well. That may be the longest sentence I've ever written.
Somewhat in the writers' defense, it is sort of a twist on something we already saw work in "Homeward".
The only thing I can say that might make any of what happened make any sense is that it almost kinda-sorta works if you believe Ru'afo was so driven to prolong his own life, or so revenge-driven depending on what you make of his motives, that he really did manage to find a receptive ear in the Federation Council and convince them that he knew of this Fountain of Life planet where the only inhabitants were Medieval-tech primitives who wouldn't even notice if they were relocated, and that the Council was so terrified of how the DW was progressing or that there really are so many medical issues in the Federation that they were willing to overlook the Son'a...indiscretions...and just didn't bother to conduct a reasonable amount of due diligence before ever setting foot on the planet (the duck blind was at least a form of such diligence, but things seem like they never should have even gone that far).
Well. That may be the longest sentence I've ever written.
Somewhat in the writers' defense, it is sort of a twist on something we already saw work in "Homeward".
It seems bizarre that they assumed that the people were native to the planet when they occupied only a small part of it and were only a few hundreds. Even early in humanity's pre-history while we weren't even completely sapiens we already had conquered a large part of the planet and later each new type of hominids spread out over several continents. The very beginning of the movie is already stupid. The Baku had a technology level situated between medieval times and the beginning of the industrial revolution, they should have been part of a group of millions!!! That the federation didn't suspect that something wasn't right shows a level of stupidity that is simply not credible.
Similar threads
