Man if something has not aged well at all in the Star Trek universe it’s the whole “penal colony” thing, for real.
Like… yuck.
Like even if there’s like rehab and stuff built in and they’re not being exploited and abused. Even if it’s not like an American Prison Industrial Complex situation or a literal actual penal colony like 19th century Australia was
People don’t get better in a vaccuum with just doctors and other prisoners/patients around. Being isolated from the people you care about for an extended period of time (especially if they’re not an enabler) can seriously fuck with your head, and it’s one of the many reasons prisons don’t work.
There were a lot of things about A Quality of Mercy that I absolutely adored. But also things that seriously bugged me.
Particularly, that La’an said “nobody can talk to [Una]” because she’s in a penal colony. Like, wtf???
Like, how long do you go to a penal colony for falsifying your records to get into Starfleet? If in both timelines she got arrested right after they dropped off supplies to Outpost 4 she’s been in prison for like SEVEN YEARS?! That seems like a lot, especially if the goal is rehab and release. It’s not like she’s a war criminal or a violent offender, the only thing she did was lie to work around a speciest, messed up law.
Also, considering she’s an Illyrian why wouldn’t the Illyrian government be at least a little involved? Or at least invested in her somehow if she really is the first? Especially since clearly there’s a number of them that would like Illyria to be able to join the Federation but are being blocked by prejudice? Even if there’s legal stuff where she’s under Federation jurisdiction as a Starfleet officer, they’d probably have at least a statement to make!
I’ve got a lot of questions, and I really hope the next SNW season doesn’t just ignore them or worse, let the timeline stay as it is in that regard because the implications are… not a good look.