History Headscratchers / StarTrekInsurrection

** I think it's likely that the Federation claims control of vast swathes of space, but the planets (and their systems) are independent but under 'Federation Protection' until they achieve warp flight. And considering the Federation tries to avoid First Contact until after the natives achieve warp capabilities they probably generally stay out of the system save for the odd probe/monitoring ship/undercover anthropological team to minimise the chances of first contact prior to that. As such, the natural resources are also placed off limits and declared the property of the natives. (Obviously when there are no natives, they plant a flag, declare 'this is ours' and start colonisation). As for why the Ba'ku planet wasn't fully studied before the Son'a came along, maybe it's a combination of the Briar Patch being too hazardous to bother with most of the time and the Feds having studied it, but not being able to do anything with it without the Son'a's help?

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** They do seem to distrust himself initially. Maybe they thought that if they fixed him as soon as possible, they could send him on his way.

[[folder:Two Entire Slave Races Not Enough Help to Beat Our Enemies]]

** Ru'afo simply wanted to get vengeance upon the Ba'ku, that's all there was to it. First he went with the "relocate them all without them noticing" plan because it would be deliciously ironic, the Ba'ku suddenly finding out within a decade that their magical radiation no longer works and they proceed to slowly languish away just like the Son'a did without any means to get themselves off the planet because they rejected technology, all the while the Son'a laugh themselves sick enjoying the benefits of eternal youth once again AND being technologically advanced race at the same time, and when that fails simply launching the Injector and killing them all. This is all under the assumption that Ru'afo's claim that the Injector actually WORKED to get those particles is true and wasn't just a load of B.S. the Son'a said to the Federation in order to use their doomsday weapon to kill off the Ba'ku and prevent the Federation from ever getting their hands on the particles ever as a last laugh to their enemies. Ultimately everything the Son'a that don't go against Ru'afo do throughout the movie is about getting this revenge.

** Data is not a machine created to replace a person's workload, he's a machine created to be a person. The Ba'ku are advanced enough to recognise that and progressive enough to realise that a different form of life is still a form of life.

*** The effect may have something to do with re-generation, having Geordi's eyes re-generated from whatever original problem cause his blindness is possible, but boldness is not cause by that, there are many causes but I'm pretty sure none of them get cure by re-generating organs or tissue. Also IIRC the effect not only make you younger, also healthier and, again, boldness is not a health issue.

*** Heck, they needn't even use Main/WeaponOfMassDestruction if the races they enslaved were primitive enough; those drones they sicced on the Ba'ku certainly worked well against a weaponless population, even when the ''Enterprise'' crew had warned them in advance. No reason they couldn't have loaded those things with lethal ammo instead of transport-tracers and overwhelmed a few pre-industrial planets without a single Son'a even leaving orbit.

*** Heck, they needn't even use WMDs if the races they enslaved were primitive enough; those drones they sicced on the Ba'ku certainly worked well against a weaponless population, even when the ''Enterprise'' crew had warned them in advance. No reason they couldn't have loaded those things with lethal ammo instead of transport-tracers and overwhelmed a few pre-industrial planets without a single Son'a even leaving orbit.

* Does nobody find the fact that they refused to relocate (not kill mind you) these people in exchange for double lifespans and perfect health jarring?
** All the criticisms about the "needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few" are based on the idea that the rings around the planet are the ONLY possible source of this beneficial radiation. The crew starts to feel the effects of the radiation as soon as they enter the Briar Patch. Like Picard says, there is radiation ALL over the Briar Patch, and the former plot point implies there's another way to harness the radiation without destroying the Ba'ku planet or it's rings. Dougherty just didn't want to take the time to find it.
*** Doughtery specifically says the concentration in the rings is what makes it work, and that they were unable to replicate it otherwise.
** Maybe because the settlement was a couple hundred and it was an entire planet in question? People should have been asking much earlier, "Why can't you just do what you will on the other side?"
*** What? Could you make your point clearer?
*** The Space Amish are one town of a few hundred, maybe a few thousand. On a planet all to themselves. Why did nobody in the Federation say to the face melts, "Why can't you just settle in the other hemisphere and leave them alone?" This is a widely recognized plot hole (I've seen it on the internet in two independent places).
*** Uh, you may want to check your facts with the source material instead of "two independent places on the Internet." The Internet isn't always right, and this is not a widely recognized plot hole. It is, in fact, not a plot hole at all: ''in the movie's dialog,'' Picard brings up this idea with the Admiral, and the Admiral tells him that the Son'a are too far gone, and some of them would die before the planet's natural effects begin to heal them if they just made a separate colony on the other side of the planet. The {{Phlebotinum}} is said, again, in plain dialog, to be an all-or-nothing deal. It will irrevocably destroy the planet as part of its working process, no matter what. And, you know, Ru'afo ''hates'' the Ba'ku and ''wants'' to kill them all.
*** [[DontExplainTheJoke Yes, two independent places are not the same as a mandate.]] Also, who's discussing Ru'afo's motives? We're talking about the Federation response.
*** Ru'afo's motives are why the whole thing happens in the first place. Not even getting into how likely it is he would share; by the Son'a's own (quick) admission, they don't actually know how to actualize the radiation as a medical application, they have to hope they can figure it out after killing the planet.
*** I was asking why they can't settle on another planet...
*** Because they don't have the right. Whether it's an acceptable thing to do by current standards is debatable. By 24th century Federation standards, it's ''abominable.'' The Prime Directive is supposed to be the Federation's guiding principle. Failing to live up to it is one thing: they're human, they're fallible, they don't always live up to their ideals. But actively subverting it, perverting and twisting it to suit your own desires, is evil.
*** Here's one idea: The Federation is interested in researching the briar patch, trying to find a way to safely harness the metaphasic radiation in a way that does not deprive the Ba'ku, so that everybody wins in the end. However, Admiral Daugherty took matters into his own hands, defied the federation's order of research only and jumped the gun.
*** You're assuming the Prime Directive is a good thing in the first place. This troper isn't so sure. If Captain Picard came upon two advanced but non-warp capable cultures and one side was attempting to ethnically cleanse the other, the "Prime Directive" would have him sit in orbit and watch as innocent men, women, and children are slaughtered. He would sit in his quarters reading Shakespeare while genocide is committed before his eyes, even though he has the power to stop it literally at his beck and call. Is that really any less evil?
*** Actually, this was brought up in the movie as well. The Admiral Dougherty lays it out. "The Son'a are /really/ bad off and some'll die if they settle on the planet and wait for this to happen old-school. And even if they weren't, the Briar Patch is way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by all that crap, the only way in or out is via sub-light speeds and even then it's a crapshoot as to whether or not your engine gets scrapped, and who in their right mind wants to live here? (whereupon Picard goes 'The Ba'ku, you moron.' ... ok, I'm paraphrasing that, but that's the tone and the look on his face.) Basically, the planet makes for a crappy home base for a people who are active spacefarers.
*** The Prime Directive doesn't apply anyway. The Prime Directive only applies to pre-warp species, not post-warp species that have decided to give it up.
*** The Prime Directive DOES apply, as a matter of fact. The Federation is forbidden from meddling in the affairs of ANY civilization, warp-capable or not. Of course this rule is rarely followed, but it IS the rule.
*** There are many things covered under the Prime Directive. Not interfering in pre-warp worlds is but one section. There's also not interfering with internal matters unless deliberately brought into the conflict by those involved. That applies here-the Son'a brought the Federation into the matter so the Prime Directive no longer applied.
*** Well, no, since Dougherty had every opportunity to not let himself be brought into what he believed was a matter between two non-Federation races.
*** Did anyone ever stop to think that this is apparently a Federation planet and these people apparently aren't Federation citizens? And they're pretty much hogging what is said to be one of the greatest medical advances ever? Seems to me like they should just have said "You can stay on your planet if you like but we're going to take OUR radiation you radiation hogging planet squatting hippies".
*** But where the hell does the Federation get off even saying this is "their planet" in the first place? They've ''never even been there before!'' They set some arbitrary boundary based on how far their starships could [[strike:intrude]] explore before they kept getting shot at too much to go on, and they say everything in that boundary is "Federation space", and that's it: it's ''theirs'', regardless of what any insignificant people who already happen to be living on the planet may think about the whole deal -- after all, since being within Federation space doesn't automatically confer Federation membership, those insignificant people are not Federation citizens, and they are therefore at the mercy of whichever captain or admiral has the least interest in keeping up the Prime Directive. "Might makes right" is certainly a philosophy in its own right, but it's pretty fundamentally at odds with everything the Federation ''claims'' it's supposed to be about.
*** Not that ''Insurrection'' doesn't have one badly overwritten, tangled-up mess of an Aesop, but the people living on the planet were colonists and, if I remember right, they'd only been on that planet for a hundred years or so. Maybe the Federation had already charted and claimed it back in the early days, and they just didn't make a fuss about the Space Amish who came along in the meantime until the planet became important. Maybe they'd been quietly debating what to do about that situation for years, and using the research teams to keep tabs on things in the meantime, until the magic radiation discovery turned it into a pressing issue.
*** They had been there for 300 years (not that it would matter: "How many does it take before it becomes wrong?"), which would predate the Federation.
*** The Federation had no idea that the Ba'ku used to have advanced technology, but gave it up. They thought they hadn't developed it yet. So, as far as they were concerned, the Ba'ku were simply an indigenous pre-warp culture, hence the whole holoship charade.
*** No, the Federation is well aware that the Ba'ku are colonists:
--->'''Admiral Dougherty''': The Prime Directive doesn't apply. These people are not indigenous to this planet. They were never meant to be immortal. We'll simply be restoring them to their natural evolution.
*** And there's the "e-word" [[HollywoodEvolution being misused]] yet again. A naturally-formed planet that naturally produces radiation that constantly heals organic beings ''is'' part of "natural evolution".
*** Despite how it is commonly used, there is nothing 'natural' about evolution that means that it has a guided path or being in the presence of a certain kind of radiation is natural. Looking at it in evolutionary terms there isn't anything inherently right or wrong with the plan.
*** See EvolutionaryLevels and AppealToNature on ThisVeryWiki.

* It seems like the Bak'u are [[PlanetOfHats a race of]] [[BitchInSheepsClothing bitches in sheep's clothing]]. They want to maintain their hold over the planet and its planet of youth powers, but don't want to dirty their own hands defending it. So they manipulate Picard to stand against Starfleet and the Son'a. And the fact that they forced the Son'a to leave simply because '''they wanted to explore the galaxy''' again makes it more infuriating.
** The extended universe tries to fix this: the Ba'ku don't care at all if anyone else settles the planet (the Son'a end up building their own, non-genocidal colony far away from the Bak'u settlement) or if Starfleet builds a presence in the system (a starbase in orbit)-they object to their way of life being disrupted. They don't care if anyone makes use of the magic radiation, they just want to be left alone. The Son'a were unwelcome because they didn't just advocate wanderlust, they advocated industrialization. In the movie, the Son'a and Admiral Dougherty adamantly refuse any option that allows the Bak'u to continue existing as they do, and the only (possible) way of using the radiation that doesn't involve moving to the planet would render it desolate. The fact that the Bak'u are completely unwilling to defend themselves when pushed against the wall, though, is pretty silly.
*** I consider it silly as well, but it's at least a little better than another example of TechnicalPacifist. They seem to have not even particularly wanted Picard and the rest to fight back on their behalf, but simply accepted that it was going to happen at some point.
** You kind of forgot the part where the Son'a did the whole ''violent coup'' thing. So, no, they weren't just kicked out because they wanted to explore the galaxy.

* In "Homeward", Picard had accused Worf's adoptive brother of saving an alien civilization by using a holodeck recreation of their planet only because he was married to one of them. In this film, he stands up for the Ba'ku against the Federation and Son'a, who are incidentally using the same tactic, [[{{Hypocrite}} primarily because he's enamored with Anij.]]
** Where is the hypocrisy? He believes secretly abducting people and putting them on a holodeck for the purposes of relocation is bad. He was against this tactic in both instances even though one saved lives and the other was a forced relocation because the Federation wanted their planet.

* Why are people so absolutely insistent on casting the Ba'ku as the villains of this movie? Is it just because they're trying to shoehorn a metaphor for universal healthcare onto the movie or something? Repeatedly on the wiki I've seen people go off on huge long rants about how the Ba'ku are greedy heartless bastards selfishly keeping the planet to themselves who kicked the poor So'na out just because they didn't want to live in squalor. When you point out dialog from the movie that contradicts this (the Ba'ku say they're perfectly happy to let other people visit as long as their own way of life isn't disrupted, and the So'na attempted a violent coup against the colony and that's why they were kicked out), those get edited away and the original complaint stays. Or then you've got the people who try to use "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" as an excuse for doing it anyway, ignoring that in this case doing so goes against everything Star Trek has ever advocated because in this case it's actually saying "We think we need your stuff more, so give it to us or we'll take it." People seem really determined to ignore the actual facts laid out in this movie so they can stay angry at it, and that bothers me.
** Yeah, I feel like the "The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few" excuse is just something people say to avoid looking for alternatives. Just because a few people have things that many need, does not excuse forcibly taking it if either alternatives are possible, or at the very least, the people making the claim are shady at best (seriously, if you're so concerned about the Dominion War, maybe you shouldn't take things at face value when dealing with known allies of the Dominion). Also, I honestly feel that this particular medicine isn't the game changer it's made out to be, since it can't restore people who have been vaporized in an orbital bombardment. I'm pretty sure those 900 billion that are estimated to die are primarily going to be from brutal suppression of uprisings and blowing up cities, the kind of thing life-saving treatments are going to be denied by the oppressive overlords.
** For me, because it's almost the exact opposite morality from the one that the various series present us with the Maquis. In each case, you have a bunch of colonists who are forcibly relocated off the planet that they settled in order to serve the Greater Good. Yes, in the case of the Maquis we also have the fact that they've decided to react by becoming terrorists, but even before that, their relocation is still presented as a regrettable but necessary act and the right thing to do. But here, Picard says that some of history's greatest crimes were the forced relocations of people, while ignoring the fact that he himself has willingly participated in forced relocations before! Granted, he came up with an acceptable compromise in that situation, but if the settlers in Journey's End hadn't agreed to that, I have little doubt that Picard would have carried out the relocation anyways. It's the underlying inconsistency that forced relocation can be some horrendous evil in the movie, and an unfortunate but necessary act in another that's the issue.
*** This isn't a fair comparison. There's a difference between the Federation relocating a colony of (at first) their own citizens from what has become hostile territory, and the Federation reinterpreting its own laws to grant itself power over a planet that has been inhabited by a non-aligned people since long before the Federation even existed. And this (along with the above arguments about the questionable usefulness of the medicine) is what keeps me on side with Picard and the Ba'ku, because the Federation are setting a ''horrible'' precedent here, essentially giving them the right to take control of any populated planet in their territory so long as it's merely a colony and nothing else.
*** Except for the part where Ba'ku aren't natives to the planet and were not there before the Federation. The Federation claimed the planet first. The Ba'ku came later, the Federation didn't care since it was a backwater place. Only after their war against the Dominion was going badly and they found out about the radiation did the Federation start acting. Also, I need to remind you, the Federation was losing the war. Considering the colony was AFAIK barely a thousand people, relocating them somewhere else and using the planet to have something to support the war effort seems better. Needs of the many outweigh the desires of the few. Because this was a desire by the Ba'ku. The Ba'ku could live elsewhere, but they wouldn't enjoy insanely long lifespans. Sucks, perhaps, but considering that a few billion people were in danger if Federation were to lose...
*** First of all, your timeline is completely inaccurate. The Ba'ku landed on the planet circa 2066, according to Sojef, nearly 100 years before the Federation existed in any form. While the planet does fall within Federation space, it's clear they knew nothing about it until the Son'a brought it to their attention. Secondly, as pointed out above, people in and out of universe seem to be overestimating the benefits of the radiation, especially with regard to the war effort. Leaving the planet intact and setting up colonies of the elderly, the terminally ill, etc, is a far more reliable plan for saving billions.
*** That would require moving seriously ill and injured patients from all across the Federation to this one planet. A planet located in an inherently dangerous region of space. One medical ship getting destroyed by a NegativeSpaceWedgie in the Briar Patch could result in deaths outnumbering the entire Ba'ku population.
*** You can make a similar argument about all the ships that would be required to distribute the particles across the Federation, especially those heading into war zones. And Starfleet is entirely capable of getting to and from the planet safely - the only ships lost during the movie belonged to the Son'a, and only because of the battle. I'm not saying this wouldn't require a lot of time, effort and resources, but it's still a more practical, long-term solution than destroying an inexhaustible natural resource, and a more moral solution (and far more in line with ''Star Trek'''s morality) than resorting to invasion, mass-kidnapping and destruction of property against defenseless people.
*** Generally-speaking, the Ba'ku come across as entitled jerks because there are only 600 of them and yet they apparently had enough sense of elitism to dictate terms to the galaxy at large! It doesn't help that they are ''very'' condescending (to the extent that they make the cast in the early seasons of ''TNG'' look positively humble by comparison). This is functionally equivalent to if the original Pilgrims had fired off a missive to the British Parliament declaring that all of North America belonged to them! One ''village'' claiming an entire ''planet''! It looks even more ridiculous since, if they do not have or use advanced technology, then they do not have the vehicles necessary to even travel around the entire planet! Plus, their population is so small that it does not meet the threshold required for sufficient genetic diversity to make their race naturally self-sustaining without succumbing to the effects of inbreeding. The ''only'' reason they survive as a race is because the magic radiation makes their mortality rate negligible. Death probably only happens in rare accidents where the injuries are massive enough to overcome the healing factor. But if they actually had to engage in normal population replacement they would have long since fallen prey to the problem of their small gene pool. Thus there are a lot of reasons they come across as unsympathetic.
*** Except that at no point in the actual movie are the Ba'ku presented as being unwilling to share the planet. They ''don't'' have a problem with the Federation starting its own colony - it's Dougherty who shoots down that option to ensure the survival of the Son'a (despite them being Dominion collaborators) - they have a problem with the Federation kidnapping them, destroying their homes and basically telling them that not only do they not have the right to colonize remote uninhabited planets within Federation space, they ''never did'', even three hundred years ago before there was a Federation.
*** That's the IdiotPlot problem with the movie. The Ba'ku supposedly evicted the Son'a from the planet. Exactly ''how'' they managed to accomplish this is ''never'' explained! Since the Son'a had advanced technology and the Ba'ku seemingly did not, it was implausible that they could have done this. Especially since the Son'a are depicted as militant and the Ba'ku as absolute pacifists. This leaves the implication that there was something missing from the movie, that the Ba'ku ''did'' have some secret weapons or other hidden technology that had made it possible for them to force the Son'a to leave, at least at the time. By the same token, the plot to relocate the Ba'ku without them even realizing it was happening was so convoluted that it again implied that both the Son'a and Starfleet believed that simply beaming them off the planet was not possible for some reason. All of that, plus the Ba'ku's general snobbishness, makes them unlikeable victims. Bad writing created the problem and made the story look like a "tragedy" about a forced evacuation of the Hamptons.
*** I get that ''Insurrection'' has more than its fair share of problems. What I don't get is why people spin those problems into reasons to side against the Ba'ku. It doesn't matter how smug and arrogant you think they are (which, incidentally, I'm really not seeing myself), it's not enough to excuse the Federation becoming aggressors comparable to the [[Recap/StarTrekS2E4MirrorMirror Terran Empire]]. And I especially don't get how people can contend that the Federation committing blatant war crimes to get what they want and covering them up with incredibly spurious loopholes in their own laws is in any way admirable.
*** To call that an exaggeration would be an understatement. If the Federation actually ''were'' behaving like the Terran Empire then they would have simply fired ''one'' photon torpedo at the Ba'ku village and that would have been the end of the Ba'ku problem! The Terran Empire most certainly would ''not'' have hatched such a convoluted scheme to relocate the Ba'ku without them even realizing that they had been moved! Indeed, that is a large part of the plot problem. Whether or not relocating the Ba'ku was ethical, the Federation was going to extreme lengths to do it in a manner worthy of handling an endangered species. When compared to other historical forced relocation actions (or those on the show), this seemed rather benign. Compounded by the fact that we were never given any real reason to perceive the Ba'ku as particularly admirable, or even as victims, it causes the reaction of the ''Enterprise'' crew to come across as rather ridiculous. Especially as compared to the Maquis storyline in the franchise.
*** Okay, maybe not the best choice of words, but invasion is still by rights an act of war, and mass-kidnapping is still a crime even if you don't recognize the Ba'ku's claim on the planet after the 300 years they've called it home - which, as I've pointed out, has horrifying implications for any other non-Federation colony in Federation space, no matter how long it's been there. Bottom line, no matter how benign the Federation's actions are here, it's still a blatant abuse of power and infringement of another race's rights, to the point of denying that they even ''had'' such rights 300 years earlier, before the Federation existed.
*** Well then, if it is an "act of war", who will ''fight'' that war considering that the Ba'ku are ActualPacifist SpaceAmish? Note that sometimes necessity overrules morality. For example, in [[Recap/StarTrekS1E26ErrandOfMercy TOS: "Errand of Mercy"]], the Federation was fully-prepared to drag the seemingly pre-industrial Organians into their conflict with the Klingon Empire. ''Kirk'' actively tried to get the Organians to engage in a potentially-suicidal insurrection against the Klingon occupation, and he is considered the single biggest hero of the entire franchise! At the end of the day, this story parallels the whole storyline of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', which is that when faced with the potential death or enslavement of ''billions'' of people, allowing the needs of a minuscule minority to override everything else can be just as evil.
** In fairness, I think this is all really on the creative team for ultimately structuring the movie the way they did. Sure a lot of conflicts in real life do stem from lack of communication, but (complete) realism doesn't always make for good storytelling. In this case, it's really because the writers were stupidly hoping that the audience wouldn't question "Why doesn't the Federation simply approach the Ba'ku on using their spring to help millions?". Afterall, to actually take that approach in the movie means to have the Ba'ku recognizing that other have a need for their resource beyond reasons of convenience and luxury, thus ending the story much sooner. Otherwise the only choice besides that is to have the Ba'ku rejecting them and hoarding the water for themselves just to keep the movie going.

* They discover a planet with the mysterious power to provide eternal youth and immortality. Its inhabitants have for centuries lived an idyllic, pastoral existence. Everyone there wants to maintain their peaceful way of life. The captain of the Federation's flagship is adamant that their wishes should be respected. The planet is surrounded by a immense cloud of lethal energy storms, even the most heavily-armoured starships risk destruction should they try to penetrate it.

*** The Space Amish are one town of a few hundred, maybe a few thousand. On a planet all to themselves. Why did nobody in the Federation say to the facemelts, "Why can't you just settle in the other hemisphere and leave them alone?" This is a widely recognized plot hole (I've seen it on the internet in two independent places).

*** Not that ''Insurrection'' doesn't have one badly overwritted, tangled-up mess of an aesop, but the people living on the planet were colonists and, if I remember right, they'd only been on that planet for a hundred years or so. Maybe the Federation had already charted and claimed it back in the early days, and they just didn't make a fuss about the Space Amish who came along in the meantime until the planet became important. Maybe they'd been quietly debating what to do about that situation for years, and using the research teams to keep tabs on things in the meantime, until the magic radiation discovery turned it into a pressing issue.

** If you had a choice between absolutely saving your captain, one of the greatest men you'd ever known and someone you loved like family, and risking his life so that you could also save the man trying to not only kill him but commit small-scale genocide, would you seriously take the risk of your captain dying just so you could feel better about yourself on having adhered to principle? It's stated several times that the beamout had an extremely thin margin of error, period, so it's as likely as not that whoever was working the transporter realized they could only get one beamout, so of course they took Picard.

* The Son'a exile doesn't make any sense. So the Bak'u children want to industrialise and reclaim their lost technology. Okay. So why didn't they just set up their own colony, ON THE SAME PLANET? Planets are -- how should I put this? -- ''fucking massive''. And the Bak'u number ''six hundred''. Why didn't they just say, "yep, we're exiled now, kthnx bye!" and set up a few hundred kilometres away? More to the point, how the ''fuck'' did the Bak'u manage to exile them? They refuse to pick up weapons! What are we supposed to think, a) the Son'a went into exile because of strongly-worded letters of disapproval, or b) the perfect SpaceElves armed themselves and threatened to kill their children if they didn't run away and accept a slow death? Jesus ''Christ'', the Bak'u are assholes. Picard should've just invoked the Prime Directive (remember, they're the same species, and the Prime Directive prevents him from interfering with internal matters of other races), and then lived it up thanks to the de-aging technology.

*** But that doesn't really hold up as Geordi was born blind, so if the radiation couldn't regrow hair, it shouldn't be able to fix whatever genetic defect made Gordi blind. Not to mention (unless I misremember the film/misinterpret what is stated) it caused him to regrow his eyeballs which is surely more extreme than hair growth (and on that note, shouldn't Picard have re grown his heart if this is the case?)

*** You can make a similar argument about all the ships that would be required to distribute the particles across the Federation, especially those heading into war zones. And Starfleet is entirely capable of getting to and from the planet safely - the only ships lost during the movie belonged to the Son'a, and only because of the battle. I'm not saying this wouldn't require a lot of time, effort and resources, but it's still a more practical, long-term solution than destroying an inexhaustible natural resource, and a more moral solution (and far more in line with ''Star Trek'''s morality) than resorting to invasion, mass-kidnapping and destruction of property against defenceless people.

*** Except that at no point in the actual movie are the Ba'ku presented as being unwilling to share the planet. They ''don't'' have a problem with the Federation starting its own colony - it's Dougherty who shoots down that option to ensure the survival of the Son'a (despite them being Dominion collaborators) - they have a problem with the Federation kidnapping them, destroying their homes and basically telling them that not only do they not have the right to colonise remote uninhabited planets within Federation space, they ''never did'', even three hundred years ago before there was a Federation.

*** Okay, maybe not the best choice of words, but invasion is still by rights an act of war, and mass-kidnapping is still a crime even if you don't recognise the Ba'ku's claim on the planet after the 300 years they've called it home - which, as I've pointed out, has horrifying implications for any other non-Federation colony in Federation space, no matter how long it's been there. Bottom line, no matter how benign the Federation's actions are here, it's still a blatant abuse of power and infringement of another race's rights, to the point of denying that they even ''had'' such rights 300 years earlier, before the Federation existed.
*** Well then, if it is an "act of war", who will ''fight'' that war considering that the Ba'ku are ActualPacifist SpaceAmish? Note that sometimes necessity overrules morality. For example, in [[Recap/StarTrekS1E26ErrandOfMercy TOS: "Errand of Mercy"]], the Federation was fully-prepared to drag the seemingly pre-industrial Organians into their conflict with the Klingon Empire. ''Kirk'' actively tried to get the Organians to engage in a potentially-suicidal insurrection against the Klingon occupation, and he is considered the single biggest hero of the entire franchise! At the end of the day, this story parallels the whole storyline of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', which is that when faced with the potential death or enslavement of ''billions'' of people, allowing the needs of a miniscule minority to override everything else can be just as evil.

** Ru'afo simply wanted to get vengence upon the Ba'ku, that's all there was to it. First he went with the "relocate them all without them noticing" plan because it would be deliciously ironic, the Ba'ku suddenly finding out within a decade that their magical radiation no longer works and they proceed to slowly languish away just like the Son'a did without any means to get themselves off the planet because they rejected technology, all the while the Son'a laugh themselves sick enjoying the benefits of eternal youth once again AND being technologically advanced race at the same time, and when that fails simply launching the Injector and killing them all. This is all under the assumption that Ru'afo's claim that the Injector actually WORKED to get those particles is true and wasn't just a load of B.S. the Son'a said to the Federation in order to use their doomsday weapon to kill off the Ba'ku and prevent the Federation from ever getting their hands on the particles ever as a last laugh to their enemies. Ultimately everything the Son'a that don't go against Ru'afo do throughout the movie is about getting this revenge.

*** The effect may have something to do with re-generation, having Georgi's eyes re-generated from whatever original problem cause his blindness is possible, but boldness is not cause by that, there are many causes but I'm pretty sure none of them get cure by re-generating organs or tissue. Also IIRC the effect not only make you younger, also healthier and, again, boldness is not a health issue.

*** Even more, the Founders may fear that some of the subject species see the increased life-span tempting and want to rebel, JemHadar live like nine years IIRC.