Headscratchers / Star Trek: The Next Generation S1E21 "Symbiosis"

• The Brekkians not remembering how to repair their own freighters doesn't withstand much scrutiny. The excuse they give that is that their entire society is devoted to the single industry of selling felicium, but they still must have many types of jobs to keep that industry running. Do they not have accountants to manage the money they earn? Managers to direct their efforts? Factories to create the equipment they need? Teachers to instruct the new generations on their jobs? Doctors to handle their sick? Therapists? Judges? Politicians? They must not have forgotten how to do any of these jobs. Why would they forget how to maintain the ships transporting their one valuable resource for sale? The Aldeans didn't know how their technology works, but that was because it was so advanced that it did all their work for them. The Brekkians still need to work and produce, so forgetting how to maintain their own technology (particularly that used to sell their one commodity) doesn't make any sense.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic applies here, because right now (2021) Russia no longer has the capability of making new aircraft carriers, and has been struggling to replace other naval ships too. Their capabilities degraded over the course of the eighties and early oughts due to the fall of communism, and they are struggling to recover that. It is sadly easy to imagine these societies losing capabilities. One has things so easy it doesn't need to worry about it, and the other so desperate and struggling to function that it simply cannot afford to do so no matter how much it wants it.
    • That's a completely different issue. Plenty of countries crumble when their economies fail. The Brekkians' economy hasn't failed (yet), and their lack of spaceship maintenance isn't because they can't afford it. They explain why: no one on their planet knows how to do anything else but make and sell felicium, so there are no spaceship mechanics. My point is that that picture isn't really plausible if you think about it. Who presided over those Brekkian salespeoples' births if there are no doctors? Who sold them their clothes if there are no stores or merchants? Who balances their books if there are no accountants? Who taught them to do their jobs if there are no teachers? Who built their houses? Who enforces their laws? A culture entirely dependent on a single commodity would still need a wide range of professions to support itself as a society every single day. Just like an oil company needs an accounting department, legal, HR, IT, office janitors, security guards, etc.
  • This argument misses the key detail that it wasn’t the Brekkians who didn’t know how to repair their own freighters (as the Brekkians did not have any freighters). The Ornarans were more advanced than the Brekkians. The Brekkians had never been capable of space travel. After years of drug addition, the Ornarans lost their ability to repair their freighters while the Brekkians were not advanced enough to do so. So it's not that they lost the ability due to only focusing on felicium production, it's just that they never had it.

• Similar to the first headscratcher: if the Brekkians have no other industry, how could they possibly get enough "payment" — which must include clothing, food, electronics, booze if they like it, home building materials, etc etc— in the few clunky freighters they have? This doesn't seem plausible at all.
  • Both of these problems are inherent to the One-Product Planet trope. There's not really any good way to make it realistic for an entire planetary society — barring Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and the like, somebody has to be delivering the babies, growing the food, making the clothes, etc. Even if the Ornarans produce all the useful stuff that the Brekkians use, someone on Brekka has to be overseeing its distribution.

• The interpretation of the Prime Directive put forward in this episode is nonsensical. The Brekkians and Ornarans are separate species on separate planets, so there's no way their interactions can be deemed an internal affair that the Federation is forbidden to interfere in.