Star Trek: Insurrection/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

 * 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;
 * No wonder Picard sided with the Bak'u: he was thinking like a teenager, i.e. with his other head.
 * Much ado has been made of Picard in the shuttle only hitting two buttons to bring up the table of contents for HMS 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 is pretty high priority for Picard?

Fridge Logic

 * So the Baku are immortal and have been living on the planet for three hundred years. We know that they are able to reproduce because we have seen their children; they are largely devoted to pursuing the greatest amount of pleasure in life and yet...somehow there are only six hundred of them?
 * Relatedly...why don't the Son'a just, you know, expand the population the usual way?
 * Couldn't the Ba'ku open a hospital or health spa someplace on the planet that they're not using?
 * No, because (blink-and-you'll-miss)
 * Sucks for the Son'a, ok. But for the Federation, it'd essentially be like opening up another Risa paradise planet with a nifty "Fountain of Youth" feature. They could even offer residency there in exchange for service in Star Fleet. 30 years serving on a ship gets you 10 years on Bak'u. That'd solve their manpower shortages in a hurry. It would be an immortality serum that they could maintain absolute control over because it's a friggin planet. And furthermore, they could do it entirely without the Bak'u even knowing it. Just keep all people and air traffic 100 miles away from their settlement and they'd never know a thing. A planet is a big place.
 * The radiation grows Geordi a new pair of eyes, firms up Troi's boobs and make Worf go through puberty again all within the span of what, a week? And the Son'a won't experience the restorative effects for years? Now maybe the Ba'ku/Son'a are just different enough from humans, Klingons and half-Betazoids that the radiation takes years instead of days to have an effect, but that seems like a rather large plot hole to me.
 * I don't know, if the So'na are really well over a hundred years old they could be kind of dead. Did you see the toxins that were extracted from Ruafo. The Enterprise crew were all perfectly healthy mature adults. And quite alive. The So'na? A little past the expiration date.
 * On a related note,
 * For a somewhat more classic flavor of Fridge Logic, though...
 * Much simpler solution, really. Everyone always forgets the shuttles. Just send one out to warp out for help, and problem solved.
 * The Fountain of Youth effect on the planet enables Geordi to see. But reducing the age of his eyes to before the point where they ceased to function wouldn't work, because he was born blind. In addition, Geordi never wanted to have 'normal' vision, because he found the features of the visor (and in First Contact, the contacts he replaced it with) to be far too useful.
 * Not really, as Admiral what's-his-face states that the medical applications for the unique radiation haven't even begun to be explored. Not so much Fountain of Youth as much as 'Fountain of make-everything-work-properly-and-at-what-is-considered-to-be-the-peak-for-insert-your-species-here'. Which is hard to say more than once in a conversation.
 * Geordi has mentioned wanting to have normal vision; in fact he said so in the third episode of the series, "The Naked Now", mentioning it to both Yar and Doctor Crusher. Granted he was under the influence of the Tsiolkovsky virus at the time, but he certainly seemed sincere. (The fact that he declined Riker's gift of normal vision when Riker had the powers of the Q was explained when Geordi said, "The price is a little too high for me, and... I don't like who I'd have to thank.")
 * When Son'a got kicked out, why didn't they just set up a new colony on the other side of the planet? It's not like the Bak'u had any way of enforcing the banishment.
 * Their main priority was revenge.
 * Can't have been that high a priority, since they spent decades attacking other planets.
 * It's like in Final Fantasy: they spent time going around leveling up before having a go at the dungeon.
 * The no-technology aspect. Irrigation is a form of technology. Even if you were willing to allow things like hammers and plows, irrigation systems are almost always referred to as a form of technology in textbooks, especially ones as well built as the Baku's.
 * And the dam. Dam's are always technology, even when built by beavers.
 * And, as Linkara pointed out, the clothes are surprising well made for not being manufactured. As someone's who's seen home woven cloth, I'm inclined to agree.
 * Linkara pointed out that some claim that the Ba'ku accept a certain level of technology, i.e. anything without a transistor circuit. However, they do not specify this in the movie, and after all, an irrigation system would take away a man's ability to carry buckets of water several miles.
 * The Ba'ku are Actual Pacifist to the point of refusing to act in their own defense when attacked and refuse to use technology more advanced than a certain arbitrary level; when the Son'a reclaimed the tech from their space-faring past and started their rebellion how did the Ba'ku beat them so solidly they actually fled the planet?
 * Likewise, how did they kick them off-world? Did they just keep the Starship they arrived in lying around? Why?! And didn't that ship have weapons? Why didn't the Son'a use them to shoot the Ba'ku? All these makes it look like the Ba'ku secretly have a big old warehouse of technology lying around that they drag out whenever their inane philosophy fails them.
 * Would explain how attempted to fix Data, despite none of their supposed tools being suitable for this task.
 * Can't have been that high a priority, since they spent decades attacking other planets.
 * It's like in Final Fantasy: they spent time going around leveling up before having a go at the dungeon.
 * The no-technology aspect. Irrigation is a form of technology. Even if you were willing to allow things like hammers and plows, irrigation systems are almost always referred to as a form of technology in textbooks, especially ones as well built as the Baku's.
 * And the dam. Dam's are always technology, even when built by beavers.
 * And, as Linkara pointed out, the clothes are surprising well made for not being manufactured. As someone's who's seen home woven cloth, I'm inclined to agree.
 * Linkara pointed out that some claim that the Ba'ku accept a certain level of technology, i.e. anything without a transistor circuit. However, they do not specify this in the movie, and after all, an irrigation system would take away a man's ability to carry buckets of water several miles.
 * The Ba'ku are Actual Pacifist to the point of refusing to act in their own defense when attacked and refuse to use technology more advanced than a certain arbitrary level; when the Son'a reclaimed the tech from their space-faring past and started their rebellion how did the Ba'ku beat them so solidly they actually fled the planet?
 * Likewise, how did they kick them off-world? Did they just keep the Starship they arrived in lying around? Why?! And didn't that ship have weapons? Why didn't the Son'a use them to shoot the Ba'ku? All these makes it look like the Ba'ku secretly have a big old warehouse of technology lying around that they drag out whenever their inane philosophy fails them.
 * Would explain how attempted to fix Data, despite none of their supposed tools being suitable for this task.