The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Insurrection
10. Admiral Idiocy
Admiral Dougherty isn’t so much a character as a plot device. He’s a paper tiger for Picard to punch through. A well-written antagonist would force Picard and the audience to confront the elephant in the room: Is it ethical to leave 600 people blissfully as they are at the cost of helping millions or billions? Do “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” or not? But Dougherty is written so blandly as to be a nothing burger, and Picard just speechifies his way past it.
The admiral's also a nitwit. Otherwise, why is he — and presumably the Federation Council he represents — so keen on allowing the Son’a thugs to strip-mine this planet’s rings right now? Those rings are the source of the apparently unique metaphasic radiation effects, right? So wouldn’t he want to make absolutely certain the Son’a don't make a finite resource out of a potentially renewable one? And there’s a missed opportunity here to illustrate how the desire of short-term gain has long-term consequences. That would have meshed beautifully with the film's under-explored themes.
Finally, what does Dougherty mean when he says the planet will be uninhabitable for generations following the Son'a plan? Uninhabitable suggests more than just the Ba'ku can't live there. Does all the plant and animal life on the planet not matter? Is the Federation Council okay with exterminating it? Do only the Ba’ku’s lives matter here?
Dougherty be dumb.