MovieChat Forums > Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) Discussion > So Son'a are Ba'ku.

So Son'a are Ba'ku.

posted 10 years ago by michaelward15
17 replies | jump to latest

This revelation basically killed any chance this movie had of working for me.

At first it seems like the Son'a are aliens looking to forcibly steal the Ba'ku's home world. But since the Son'a are in fact Ba'ku, I'm not even sure who's bad guys here.

Basically, the Baku kicked the Son'a off the planet for not embracing their ultra-luddite philosophy, and now that the Son'a need to come home to avoid dying of old age, the Baku won't hear of it even though there seems to be enough room on the planet for everyone.

Given that they were going to be able to move the Ba'ku to another world with one spaceship that was small enough to fit in a lake, the Ba'ku seem like religious zealots who want to force everyone else in their race to adopt the same lifestyle they do, and the worst land Barons in history claiming ownership over all the land on an entire planet when their cannot be over a few hundred of them.

[–] tobyrclark 10 years ago

Basically, the Baku kicked the Son'a off the planet for not embracing their ultra-luddite philosophy, and now that the Son'a need to come home to avoid dying of old age, the Baku won't hear of it even though there seems to be enough room on the planet for everyone.

No, they kicked the Son'a out of the village for instigating a violent coup. The Son'a chose not to settle elsewhere on the planet, instead going out into the galaxy where they proceeded to make enemies of the Federation by attacking and subjugating pre-warp civilisations and collaborating with the Dominion. Hence why they couldn't simply return to the planet without making a deal with Dougherty first.

The Angels Have the Phone Box

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] tobyrclark 10 years ago

Exactly what do you think was stopping the Son'a from resettling elsewhere on the planet?

The Angels Have the Phone Box

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] tobyrclark 10 years ago

You just really don't care whether or not your argument makes sense, do you?

Again, what are you suggesting happened? That the Ba'ku forced them on to their only remaining spaceship and set it on a pre-programmed flight too far away for them to ever return? The fact that they were able to spend the last century attacking and subjugating pre-warp civilisations, making shady deals for more starships and illegal weaponry and collaborating with the Dominion really doesn't help your case.

You're taking a career criminal at his word when his side of the story is incomprehensible.

The Angels Have the Phone Box

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] michaelward15 10 years ago

It's hilarious that the writers were desperately trying to make the audience hate the Sona, but ultimately just came up with a good reason to despise the Baku.

In the end I think the audience knows to hate the Sona because they are ugly. It's a Hollywood movie so ugly means bad and pretty means good.

[–] michaelward15 10 years ago

Notice that Sojef doesn't deny Ruafo's statement. He knows he's right. Whatever the Baku did to stop them from taking over the village (its never specified how they did) they clearly used to kick them off the planet.

This is how it seems to me.

The Baku are the biggest land barons in the Galaxy. A few hundred people monopolizing a whole planet just so that they can...why exactly did they need the whole planet again? Where they just jerks?

[–] tobyrclark 10 years ago

Once again, there is nothing in the movie to indicate that the Ba'ku wanted to stop other people from colonising elsewhere on the planet, or that they even had the capacity to.

The Angels Have the Phone Box

[–] michaelward15 10 years ago

The movie simply doesn't make any sense otherwise. Why bother moving the Baku? But I think part of the problem is that the movie is just sloppy and not well thought out by the people who made it.

[–] tobyrclark 10 years ago

Quite possibly, but spinning that into a complaint against the Ba'ku and an excuse to ignore the abuses of power committed against them while ignoring all onscreen evidence against your position is hardly fair or rational.

The Angels Have the Phone Box

[–] Doc80 8 years ago

Yeah, the reason no one want to live there is because of where it is, the briarpatch. It's a completely isolated portion of space. They can't communicate with anyone else in the galaxy. I think most people wouldn't want to live under conditions like that.

[–] shoobe01-1 7 years ago

Discussed in the film, tangentially. Picard says why not let people come visit? The So'na thing is to destroy the planet so they can bottle it up, because they don't have time, etc. and "because who wants to live in the briar patch." Which is weak, but I guess mostly because they are all jerks.

Clearly, lots of people would be fine visiting large sanatoriums spread over the planet. Or however long it takes. Geordi got his eyes back in a day or two? So I'd think most ailments could be solved with a long weekend. They'd need more spaceports than they would anything else.

[–] NewDivide1701 10 years ago

It's extremely clear the Son'a are the bad guys here.

The Son'a wanted to follow the ways of the offlanders and tried to take over the colony. When they failed in their takeover, they were exiled. Meaning punished NOT because they didn't want to follow the simple life, but because they committed a coup d'etat.

To dumb it down for you, what General Zod tried to do with the Kryptonian Council on Man Of Steel.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Doc80 8 years ago

The Son'a would have been perfectly fine with leaving the Ba'ku on the planet. The Federation insisted though because extracting the radiation from the rings, a process that only the Son'a had and understood, made the planet uninhabitable.

[–] tobyrclark 7 years ago

It's the other way round. Dougherty's stated reason for harvesting the planet was that some of the Son'a won't survive long enough to recover just by living there.

The Angels Have the Phone Box