Wait... how many Son'a are there? (Minor Insurrec Spoilers)

posted on March 17th, 2018, 10:33 am

I noticed a few months back some aspects about the Son'a in Star Trek canon that piqued my interest, and I was curious if anyone else had discussed it?

The Son'a seem to have an at least minor power in the Alpha Quadrant, and as FO was planning them to be the third Dominion avatar (see bottom) it seems their destined for a part in their canon.

In Insurrection however, the Ba'ku village is said to number only 600. The way the Ba'ku speak of the outcast group that would become the Son'a (and the fact their takeover attempt failed) suggests it was quite a small group, likely a few dozen at best (80's at most?). It is said they were outcast only a century before Insurrection.

This suggested to me the Son'a 'species' is a tiny population; even if they spent their century in space focused on repopulating their numbers they would likely number only low hundreds at best. It is apparently mentioned in their canon that at some point that they became infertile, hindering things further.

I feel these don't damage the canon fortunately. Most of the crew in Insurrection seemed to be of the Tarlac and Alora they subjugated, and both races seemed at least content under Son'a leadership (they carried weapons, seemed loyal, and I couldn't see any way the Son'a were forcing them). Assuming both races had high populations that have come to be primarily loyal (perhaps the Son'a's technology has benefited them?), it could be the crews of Son'a ships actually have only a few Son'a on board with the crew mainly made up of Tarlac and Alora; some ships could even lack any Son'a at all if the subject races are loyal enough.

I was curious how this all might be incorporated into their appearance in games like Armada and FO. It offers potential reasons for their allying with the Dominion. The Founders' knowledge of genetics seems advanced and may offer solutions to the Son'a's issues, and Dominion cloning could be adapted into a method of reproduction for them; in return the Son'a happily supply Ketracel White by the bucket load (and use this to support a decent Jem'Hadar garrison for their colonies; always handy!). It does suggest though the Son'a fleet, while okay-sized and with high-end technology, could not field anything like the numbers the Breen or even Alpha Quadrant Dominion (which FO mentions being in Breen space) could.

Cheers for reading. I welcome everyone's thoughts; has this been discussed anywhere previously?

posted on March 17th, 2018, 5:59 pm

Unknown, how many Son'a there are but there could be a small number or a large number. But you are forgetting that even though we saw a certain number of Son'a on Ru'afu's ship there were two other Son'a ships in the Briar Patch, the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-E destroyed one of them and also heavily damaged the other one to the point that it sent a distress call to Ru'afu's ship about the time Captain Picard was aboard it. "The Enterprise destroyed one of my ships, the other is on fire and requesting assistance."

Here is a YouTube Video with the entire Battle Of The Briar Patch with the scenes going between it and Ba'ku as well.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/44952gWebas[/youtube]