Headscratchers / Star Trek: Lower Decks S4E10 "Old Friends, New Planets"

• If Locarno was relying on lower deck mutinies to gather his fleet and was explicitly doing it among non-Federation races, where did he get the Starfleet Steamrunner-class ship Mariner steals back from him from?
  • Maybe it was surplus that was purchased or stolen. This seems likely as they treated it as an older, poorly maintained vessel.
    • Not the first time that a ship was stolen from the Starfleet boneyards. They just sort of park 'em in the middle of space and don't really check on them.
  • Could have been mothballed since the Dominion War and Locarno stole it (he nearly graduated from the Academy, so he's familiar with Starfleet). He would have needed a starship before he obtained the Nova One and the Passaro probably served as his original vessel before he acquired allies and got a newer ship.

• If Locarno had any latinum for the paywall, who would collect it?
  • Perhaps an earlier owner would hold onto some manner of access code to be provided on depositing the latinum.
  • Maybe a complete version of the device would have included some kind of collection drone and Locarno just didn't bother caring if he had it since he didn't see the point of it until the device actually demanded payment? There has to be a Rule of Acquisition saying that the best time to extort money from somebody is when they have a big bomb about to detonate in their face.

• The Federation decides to use the newly-formed Planet Locarno as a haven for refugees. Okay, except that the original Genesis Planet self-destructed after only a few weeks. What makes anyone think that this planet will survive longer?
  • They've had nearly a century to study it since then, and the Federation, Starfleet, the Vulcan Science Academy loves sciencing the hell out of stuff. The original Genesis Planet might have been unstable, but by all appearances the smaller scale Genesis Cave was stable. So they've also got something to build off in terms of stabilising it. It isn't unsurprising that that, even if the Ferengi Genesis Device wasn't that great, that they might have worked out a way to stabilise any unstable results by the turn of the 25thC.

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