It is jarring for long-time fans to watch the movie and see the Enterprise crew acting out-of-character, but it makes sense in retrospect; they're being affected by the planet's magic radiation, which is making them emotionally younger.
No wonder Picard sided with the Bak'u: he was thinking like a teenager, i.e. with his other head.
I'm struggling to see how it's out-of-character for these people to not be in support of their superiors kidnapping six hundred innocent people to steal territory and resources from them.
It's out of character because they had done the same thing in the past, and for less justification.
...When? I can recall them rescuing people from a planet that was about to become uninhabitable, or attempting to evict human colonists from a planet that had become Cardassian territory (and arguably had been to begin with), but never the kind of invasion/mass-kidnapping we see here.
In The Ensigns of Command, you had the inverse situation. A Lost Colony of humans living on a planet with harmful radiation that their ancestors figured out a way to survive need to be forcibly relocated or else the legal owners of the planet are going to wipe them out. The crew's only concern is convincing the colonists that there is no choice to stay.
And yet, that is not the same situation here. The Ba'ku homeworld is in Federation territory and the So'na tricked the Federation council on signing off on the metaphasic harvesting plan by withholding the fact that they are expelling the Ba'ku from this planet out of revenge.
The idea that this planet is in Federation territory does lend itself to Fridge Horror however as we have to ask ourselves one question: why is this planet in Federation territory? The Federation aren't meant to be the Klingons, Romulans or Cardassians; they do not conquer, they offer membership under a democratic vote. At some point the Federation looked at this planet or the Briar Patch as a whole and essentially planted their flag in it against the will of the people living there and then proceeded to try and remove them. And no, it isn't stated in the film that the Ba'ku arrived after the planet was annexed, only that at some point the Ba'Ku arrived on this planet from somewhere else. These are two very different things.
Much ado has been made of Picard in the shuttle only hitting two buttons to bring up the table of contents for H.M.S. Pinafore; considering how many of the operations in Star Trek involve hitting several buttons, it would seem that something requiring only two button hits would have to be pretty high priority. But... what if it ispretty high priority for Picard?
It could also be less Picard is a big fan of HMS Pinafore in particular and just that it was the most recent musical he'd been looking at as he and Data had been working on it just before Data left for the planet which was only a week ago and Picard had been busy preparing for several missions (meeting the ambassador and a research dig that was to be next) and probably wouldn't have had time to get back to it or any other play. So he basically just hit the "Bring up the Musical Library" button and then hit "confirm" for the one at the top of the list which would have been HMS Pinafore the last one he'd accessed.
It was easy for Picard and Worf to create a holographic replica of the Son'a bridge to fool Ru'afo. They have seen Worf's brother, Nikolai, do it in the TNG episode "Homeward".
Detractors of the film make a big deal about it seemingly forgetting that "The Needs of the Many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." But consider: From what we see of the radiation's effects, if the Federation were to leave the planet intact and set up their own colonies, they have the potential to save billions of terminally ill people over an indefinite period of time. Instead, Dougherty opts for a plan that will leave them with a finite supply of the particles, which, even it does manage to save a few billion war-wounded, still isn't likely to turn the tide of the war (leaving tens or hundreds of billions to die in destroyed spaceships and on captured planets). So essentially Dougherty ruled out a plan that could have saved many over a period of hundreds of years, because he feels the need to save a few hundred Son'a (if even that many) right now.
"In the event of a water landing, I have been designed to serve as a flotation device." A funny line, maybe, but also a subtle Call-Back to the time Data tried to go swimming and sank like a rock. No doubt he decided that the ability to float might come in handy. Also, considering how long it took to get all the water out of his circuits, he probably got himself properly waterproofed.
The poorly-considered decision to try to make the Son'a seem more evil by noting that they are allies of the Dominion only serves to justify Admiral Doughherty's actions. If the Federation does not help them, then what is stopping them from going to the Dominion for help in exploiting the planet's resources? Not only would the Federation be losing the benefits of the radiation, but the Dominion would be gaining them. Which, during wartime, would be something to keep any sane officer awake at night.
It's also a sound military idea, if the Son'a battlecruisers are truly capable of going toe-to-toe with a Sovereign class ship (at the least, they did with the isolytic weaponry). Because if the Federation helps them here, perhaps they can also sway the Son'a to their side instead of the Dominion, which removes a powerful fleet from the enemy AND the resources of the ketracel white, which keeps the Jem'Hadar under control.
As pointed out by Graham Kennedy of DITL, Picard telling Anij that his first time seeing Earth from space was one of the most powerful moments of his life hearkens back to three previous times he's shown others their homeworlds from space — Rivan in "Justice", Nuria in "Who Watches the Watchers?", and Lily in Star Trek: First Contact. He clearly wants others to experience the same sensation that he did.
Dougherty justified his plan with a highly questionable reinterpretation of the Prime Directive, which seems to imply that it's entirely at the Federation's discretion whether non-Federation races are permitted to maintain colonies within Federation space, regardless of whether the Federation has even encountered said race or visited said planet before. If Dougherty's plan had gone ahead and been condoned by the Federation as he claimed it was, it would have set a horrifying precedent regarding how Starfleet can and can't interact with colony planets in their territory.
Possibly. The problem with the Prime Directive is that it is very much Depending on the Writer how and when it is applied, who it applies to, and the exact details as to what it entails. It doesn't seem that unlikely however that there would be some provision to get rid of unwanted colonies from within their own territorial borders.
The revelation that the Son'a are a Baku faction means that the Prime Directive should apply for the same reason it applied in the Klingon civil war. This conflict is an internal matter and Starfleet is not supposed to take sides. Which is probably why the Admiral tries to back out the second he learns that little tidbit.
The only reference to the Son'a being Dominion allies is Riker briefly saying that they've produced massive quantities of ketracel white, the narcotic the Founders use to control the Jem'Hadar. DS9 would later try to pull an Author's Saving Throw with a line definitively establishing the Son'a as being allied with the Dominion in one of its final episodes, but given the time gap involved and the vagueness of this film's establishing their backstory, it instead carries an entirely different implication — that the Enterprise crew's actions ended up causing the Son'a, who at the time of the film were a neutral power who were willing to deal with either the Federation or Dominion, to fully ally themselves with the latter in retaliation for the Federation's going back on their deal. One imagines that the only reason it didn't backfire on the Federation big-time is because the Son'a had taken such major losses here that their contribution to the Dominion's forces probably paled into insignificance next to what the Breen were able to bring to the table at around the same time.
, Picard telling Anij that his first time seeing Earth from space was one of the most powerful moments of his life hearkens back to three previous times he's shown others their homeworlds from space — Rivan in "Justice", Nuria in "Who Watches the Watchers?", and Lily in Star Trek: First Contact. He clearly wants others to experience the same sensation that he did.