History Headscratchers / StarTrekInsurrection

I mean, the rings are in space, the village is on the ground. Why can't they just use some sort of fancy space bucket (assuming the transporters wouldn't work) to collect some of the ring material and fly it back to a Federation research station? The rest of the rings will still be there, and the Bak'u will never know the difference.

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[[folder: Yay for colonialism?]]
* Is it just me, or is the YMMV page and some of the headscratchers full of the sort of gung-ho manifest destiny that went out of style sometime in the nineteenth century? It kind of seems like all it takes for some people to suddenly be heavily in support of colonialism, forced population displacement, social upheaval, and environmental destruction in the name of resource harvesting is to make the victims of all of those things light-skinned. Could the movie perhaps have carried out its message better if it had cast black actors as the Ba'ku? I somehow can't see TVTropes being so heavily into "Wipe the stupid bastards out, take their planet, strip mine it for the good of the Federation!" if the Ba'ku culture more closely resembled Wakanda.
** As quoted in the book The Fifty Year Mission, Frakes regretted not having a more diverse cast for the Ba'ku (Burton pointed out the problem on-set). Since it's a bunch of white people with a middle class aura, the whole thing has the vibe of a country club or a gated community. Even setting that aside, the moral issue that the film wants to debate doesn't really land because the plot doesn't make sense (as amply illustrated above). So I don't think you're wrong, but I don't think the film does a lot to mitigate that reflex. The writers might've been well served by sitting down and saying, "Why should the audience care about these people again?" at some point.
** The real problem is not that the Ba'ku are AcceptableTargets, it's that the plot doesn't really work.
*** The first problem is scale: For the plot to work the Ba'ku had to be a very small community - one that could reasonably fit in one holo ship, that the ''Enterprise'' bridge crew could relocate, etc. But planets are big places, with plenty of room to spare, and the regenerating radiation seems to work for anyone anywhere on the planet. It doesn't appear that it would inconvenience the Ba'ku at all if the Federation set up a "health spa" on a continent on the other side of the planet. As written it appears that the Ba'ku have an abundant resource that could benefit billions of suffering sentients that they refuse to share for purely ideological reasons. And then we find out that the Ba'ku aren't native to this planet either, further weakening their right to control that resource to just having been the ones to have discovered it first.
*** Second point: The Ba'ku denying their offspring ''immortality'' because they wouldn't conform to their views on technology is problematic no matter what color they are. The bottom line is that the Ba'ku exile non-conformists, and exile from immortality is effectively a death sentence.
*** The Third problem is that the ''Enterprise'' crew don't seem to see the first two problems. They are presented as unabashedly on the side of the Ba'ku without any real debate. This is even though they have supported relocating small non-native technologically advanced populations in the past for the greater good, most notably in the episodes "Journey's End" and "Ensigns of Command". The film could have had a serious debate about what was the correct moral choice, but just made the villains physically repulsive and had action sequences instead.
** The Ba'ku rub a lot of people the wrong way because they are extremely self-righteous about the perfection of their way of life. But the fact is that their health, longevity and easy way of life are a function of ''where'' they live, not ''how'' they live. Ironically, the plot itself emphasizes this. If the Ba'ku are removed to anyplace else then ''everything'' about their way of life will fail. Instead of feeling invigorated after a day of manual labor, they will be exhausted. Without using advanced medicine they will suffer illness. Worst of all, they will age just like most humanoid species. This makes them come across as very entitled. That they themselves have exiled ''their own children'' from all of these benefits just because they didn't agree to the terms of this CultColony only cements the image of the Ba'ku as SpaceAmish [[TheFundamentalist fundamentalists]]. Again, the irony being that the Son'a are just trying to do to the Ba'ku what the Ba'ku already did to ''them''. Picard pontificating on their behalf only made it worse considering the whole Maquis thing. The implication is that the Ba'ku must be protected ''because'' they are so white and seemingly perfect.
*** And to echo the above, neither the film nor the characters seem to realize that any of this is problematic -- we are simply meant to accept that the Ba'ku are unequivocally good. It really plays like the writers just hadn't thought the thing through.
** There is also the issue that the writers seem to have forgotten that, setting aside the Dominion trying to conquer the galaxy, the Federation is also already a {{Utopia}}. The Ba'ku talk down to them because they have not abandoned advanced technology like the Ba'ku have. But the Ba'ku have only really been able to do so and still maintain a Utopia because of the radiation that keeps them young and healthy. Other worlds attempting to adopt the Ba'ku lifestyle would suffer great hardship. Combined with the absurdity of just 600 people being allowed to claim ownership of an ''entire planet'', the writers fail to make the Ba'ku sympathetic.
** Picard chose to pass on just such a rural lifestyle, working the family vineyard in France in favor of a high-tech career in Starfleet which he has devoted most of his life to. This undermines his credibility as an advocate in this issue because he ''knows'' that high-tech and low-tech lifestyles ''can'' co-exist on the same planet because that is his own family background. But, as mentioned above, this is not discussed in the film and the absolute message of the film is that the Ba'ku are the only ones in the galaxy who got it "right", while everybody else is wrong if they do not wholly endorse the Ba'ku culture.

*** The first problem is scale: For the plot to work the Ba'ku had to be a very small community. But planets are big places, with plenty of room to spare, and the regenerating radiation seems to work for anyone anywhere on the planet. It doesn't appear that it would inconvenience the Ba'ku at all if the Federation set up a "health spa" on a continent on the other side of the planet. As written it appears that the Ba'ku have an abundant resource that could benefit billions of suffering sentients that they refuse to share for purely ideological reasons. And then we find out that the Ba'ku aren't native to this planet either, further weakening their right to control that resource to just having been the ones to have discovered it first.

*** The Third problem is that the ''Enterprise'' crew don't seem to see the first two problems. They are presented as unabashedly on the side of the Ba'ku without any real debate. This is even though they have supported relocating small non-native technologically advanced populations in the past for the greater good, most notably in the episode "Journey's End" and "Ensigns of Command". The film could have had a serious debate about what was the correct moral choice, but just made the villains physically repulsive and had action sequences instead.

** The Ba'ku rub a lot of people the wrong way because they are extremely self-righteous about the perfection of their way of life. But the fact is that their health, longevity and easy way of life are a function of ''where'' they live, not ''how'' they live. Ironically, the plot itself emphasizes this. If the Ba'ku are removed to anyplace else then ''everything'' about their way of life will fail. Instead of feeling invigorated after a day of manual labor, they will be exhausted. Without using advanced medicine they will suffer illness. Worst of all, they will age just like most humanoid species. This makes them come across as very entitled. That they themselves have exiled ''their own children'' from all of these benefits just because they didn't agree to the terms of this CultColony only cements the image of the Ba'ku as elitist snobs. Again, the irony being that the Son'a are just trying to do to the Ba'ku what the Ba'ku did to ''them''. Picard pontificating on their behalf only made it worse considering the whole Maquis thing. The implication is that the Ba'ku must be protected ''because'' they are so white and seemingly perfect.

*** The Third problem is that the ''Enterprise'' crew don't seem to see the first two problems. They are presented as unabashedly on the side of the Ba'ku without any real debate. This is even though they have supported relocating small non-native technologically advanced populations in the past for the greater good, most notably in the episode "Journey's End". The film could have had a serious debate about what was the correct moral choice, but just made the villains physically repulsive and had action sequences instead.

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*** Except the Son'a are not victims of a natural disaster, they're the victims of a deliberate and active attempt at genocide being perpetrated by vengeful warmongers using "the greater good" as their excuse, as most evil people often do.