^ I don't know the particulars, but I believe the fan series Hidden Frontier was set (at least for part of its run) in the "Briar Patch." I don't know of they revisited the Son'a or the Bak'u.
Son'a Solidarity post ST: Insurrection
- Thread starter Herbert1
- Start date
The Son'a didn't want to live in the hippie commune known as Ba'ku where life is dull, dull, and dull. Remember they first rebelled and then they left because the Ba'ku rejected technology. Is it better to be alive if you find your life to be boring and unfulfilled?
If we accept that they all returned home, we still have to consider the Tarlac and the Ellora. I doubt that they would be taken to Ba'ku too. Are they piloting the So'na ships or making use of So'na technology terrorizing their neighbors? Or I guess they could have become Federation protectorates or absorbed into the Federation somehow.
The idea that the Son'a could not reproduce came from the Star Trek: Insurrection script, but I don't recall the idea making it to the finished film. There could be young Son'a too and they aren't a dying race.
Last edited:
It was revealed in the DS9R book Abyss, that he was working with or for Section 31. Well, they say that the Holoship was theirs so I'm assuming he was involved with them.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Hidden_Evil
Star Trek: Hidden Evil is a third-person adventure game based in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. The player acts as Ensign Sovak, who helps Captain Picard and Lieutenant Commander Data in an adventure involving Romulans, the Son'a and the Ba'ku.
Also,
Rogue members of the Son'a would continue to attempt to forcibly take over the homeworld of the Ba'ku but these would be repelled by Starfleet. On one occasion, the defense of the planet was commanded by Commander Worf. (TNG video game: Armada).
Star Trek: Hidden Evil is a third-person adventure game based in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. The player acts as Ensign Sovak, who helps Captain Picard and Lieutenant Commander Data in an adventure involving Romulans, the Son'a and the Ba'ku.
Also,
Rogue members of the Son'a would continue to attempt to forcibly take over the homeworld of the Ba'ku but these would be repelled by Starfleet. On one occasion, the defense of the planet was commanded by Commander Worf. (TNG video game: Armada).
I agree that the Son'a had some really cool looking ships. I wish at least a few of them had been featured in some of the battle scenes in DS9. Though its not 100%, I always thought the Son'a had allied with the Dominion late in the war, and I wish that had been made clearer and we could've gotten to see some of those ships in action. Didn't care as much for the Tarlac makeup but I did like the Ellora. I also agree that there could be some interesting stuff left to explore with the Son'a. I'm surprised they aren't in the Typhon Pact.
^ I'm aware of all of that. The Son'a just didn't do it for me, is all.
I'm with you. I thik INS was the absolute worst Trek film. Even more than NEM, which was bad in an interesting way.
But then, they've made good VOY novels, so why not this?
Probably because any deeper exploration of the Bak'u would reveal them for what they are, 600 colonists who have claimed the land surface of an entire planet because they don't understand property law, and neither does the Federation.^ I'm aware of all of that. The Son'a just didn't do it for me, is all.
I'm with you. I thik INS was the absolute worst Trek film. Even more than NEM, which was bad in an interesting way.
But then, they've made good VOY novels, so why not this?
Property law had nothing to do with it. The reason Dougherty was trying to force the Baku to relocate was because the Son'a needed to do their incendiary thing with the planet's rings to make the de-aging radiation work for them, and that would've rendered the entire surface of the planet uninhabitable. So sharing the planet wasn't an option. It was an all-or-nothing situation -- either the Son'a didn't get to ignite the rings or the Baku didn't get to keep living on the planet (one way or the other).
And of course the philosophical point was that the size doesn't matter -- that you shouldn't rationalize a forced relocation of an entire culture just because you consider it small by your parameters, because where do you draw the line? The Choctaw Nation was small compared to the US population, but does that make the Trail of Tears any less of an atrocity?
And honestly, there's a reason it was being done as a "shadow" operation. I can't see the Federation public supporting removing an alien populace from their own world just to benefit the Federation.
Which begs the question - why in the hell was Data even there in the first place?
Which begs the question - why in the hell was Data even there in the first place?
^I thought that the intention was that the United Federation of Planets would premit the Son'a to enter Federation territory, since the Briar Patch was in UFP territory, to collect the metaphasic radiation in return for Son'a assistance in the Dominion War on the side of the Klingon/Romulan/UFP alliance. It was an official UFP operation and not the operation of rogue Star Fleet officers, even though it is being done covertly.
The UFP also bent its ethics by assisting in the forced relocation of the Baku and Dougherty kept having to rationalize the forced relocation and reframe it so that it sounded less morally offensive. In Picard's view it was wrong and morally offensive to him, however it was proposed or rationalized to him.
It makes sense that the Son'a Solidarity would then formally ally themselves with the Dominion with the intention of harvesting the metaphasic radiation when the Federation was defeated. Maybe the Jem'Hadar forcibly relocated them or wiped them out and the Son'a harvested the metaphasic radiation?
The UFP also bent its ethics by assisting in the forced relocation of the Baku and Dougherty kept having to rationalize the forced relocation and reframe it so that it sounded less morally offensive. In Picard's view it was wrong and morally offensive to him, however it was proposed or rationalized to him.
It makes sense that the Son'a Solidarity would then formally ally themselves with the Dominion with the intention of harvesting the metaphasic radiation when the Federation was defeated. Maybe the Jem'Hadar forcibly relocated them or wiped them out and the Son'a harvested the metaphasic radiation?
Last edited:
Dougherty misrepresented what the mission entailed.
Takings law is property law.
Although this presupposes the Son'a are the legitimate government, which the Federation would be free to recognize as such in their civil war. It really raises the question--where is the Son'a/Bak'u homeworld? It's not Bak'u, and the Son'a exiles appear to have made their own way, so where is the original government and what do they have to say about their (ex?) subjects?Relocating 600 people is something governments do all the time, for example when they need to build a road. Indeed, if the self-determination of peoples comes into it at all, we should be looking at the denied self-determination of the Son'a. They were the ones who were relocated first and denied their basic human(oid) rights.
Yes, if those people are members of the same country and have consented to accept that government's authority over them. Forcibly relocating members of another civilization is a totally different matter, an act of aggression and conquest.
For that matter, even when governments do force their own citizens to relocate by eminent domain, there are plenty of people who resist it as an unethical action. It's not something that can be dismissed so casually.
I've always been under the impression that he was simply there obseving the Ba'ku, and had no idea what Dougherty and the Son'a were really up to. I'm starting to wonder if I was misunderstanding the whole movie, because I had thought that they were pretending all they were doing was observing the Ba'ku while the whole relocating/radition collection thing was secretly going on behind the scenes.
Wasn't that why the Son'a started attacking him, because he'd found the holoship and would have exposed their plans to the other Starfleet officers in the observation post? At least as I understood it, Dougherty and the Son'a were the only ones who really knew the true purpose, and the other Starfleet officers were kept in the dark.
But it's not like the observation posts were something separate that just happened to be going on at the same time; they were Dougherty's cover, his excuse for being there in the first place. He needed something that would look like a legitimate reason for bringing Starfleet resources to a seemingly primitive planet. So he passed his operation off as a covert anthropological observation mission. He therefore needed to have Starfleet science personnel on hand to do the observation work so it would seem legitimate.
And Data being present was probably just bad luck --it's Data. He probably takes on extra assignments when he's on vacation; rather than going to Risa, he went to participate in an anthropological survey of a technologically-repressive society.
If Data had normal hobbies, Dougherty would've gotten away scott-free.
If Data had normal hobbies, Dougherty would've gotten away scott-free.