Now, a faction of the alien's government wishes to overthrow Planet Orwell's totalitarian societies and construct less miserable ones in their place. You have been hired by this faction as an outside consultant; however you feel about this agenda, your job is to submit a proposal on how to accomplish this.
Details inside!
Planet Orwell
Peopled by bumpy-headed humanoids, planet Orwell is mired in the early atomic age and divided between a trio of totalitarian superpowers perpetually at war. This stalemated war is maintained by the dictates' of the nations' leaders, who wish to maintain a climate of fear and poverty that allows them to maintain their positions.While one may rightly argue that Orwell's society is unrealistic and/or unsustainable, this RAR assumes that the aliens - called "Lim-Lims" have been quietly observing the world for the past eighty earth years, during which it has largely maintained the current status quo. So far its societies have given no indication that they will fizzle out, collapse, reform themselves, self-destruct, or otherwise change without outside intervention.
Assume that the society of Planet Orwell is a near carbon copy of that described in Nineteen Eighty Four, except the people are all zebra-striped humanoids with bumpy foreheads. For those without a copy of the book, its Wikipedia page provides extensive information on Orwellian society.
The governing parties of this planet have been in power long enough that some of the long-term planes alluded to by its villain have been carried out. Citizens in each of the three powers each speak Newspeak-like constructed languages, their old tongues forgotten. To keep their population sexually frustrated, they receive annual mandatory injections which make it impossible for them to have orgasms. Breeding is their enforced patriotic duty, carried out at the demand of their masters.
The various Inner Parties are mostly content with their planet's current state of political and technological stagnation, and so they haven't bothered developing it much. However, none of the fancy-superweapons the three governments were theoretically developing have come to fruition; the planet is mostly limited to 1960s military technology. Domestic industrial and agricultural technology has regressed to a point under the Parties' administration, but gradually leveled out to a comfortable state of inefficiency. Their soldiers might have assault-rifles and giant battleships, but the fields are plowed by donkeys. Well... okay... space donkeys.
The supernations of Planet Orwell - let us call them Gob, Rupe, and Nalt, all have medium range ICBMs stockpiled. They can launch satellites and have filled their orbital space with downward-pointing spy satellites. Because all three nations want to keep their population under as much surveillance as possible, they all quietly allow their rivals to keep satellites in orbit. They seem to have no interest in manned space flight, sending probes to other planets in their system, or studying anything beyond their own world.
Planet Orwell has a population of about 3 billion; ten percent of which are slaves and refugees residing in the disputed territories which the three nations fight over. The remainder are divided roughly evenly between the three super-nations.
Each super nation has around a dozen cities which hold the administrative apparatus for the nation; each of these "capitals" bears a quartet of 300-meter high pyramidal ministries that direct and control the surrounding area. Each "capital" appears to be roughly equal in importance and may represent a redundant command node for the super nation; it is unsure exactly where the Inner Parties of each country meet.
Your Clients
Both the crew of the scoutship who discovered this planet and your clients belong to the Lim-Lim Federation (LLF), an interstellar democratic polity with technology roughly on-par with that of the mid 24th-century Federation.You have been hired by the Orwellian Hellhole Study and Reform Group (OH SARG), a sort of think-tank/research council/political movement interested in improving conditions on Planet Orwell for its natives. Specifically they would like to:
<> abolish the state of perpetual war
<> disrupt the hegemony of the ruling parties
<> improve standards of livings for the mass of the planet's citizens
<> halt the perpetual censorship and re-writing of history
<> allow the locals to scream in ecstasy while bonking each other again
<> ...and other generic do-gooder stuff like that.
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It
This is a tall order, and Oh Sarg is unsure how to procede. So, they've hired you to make a proposal on how to best accomplish these goals, within the resources of the Federation. This proposal will be put on Oh Sarg's website, advocated by their spokespeople, and submitted (repeatedly) to the LLF Senate. Because disrupting another planet's society is not something the Senate will undertake lightly, Oh Sarg is asking its consultants for one or two types of proposals.
You may submit an ideal proposal - what you think the absolute best way to proceed is given the capabilities of the LLF. You may use whatever method you desire, be it infiltrating their governments, establishing a proxy state, bribing the leaders toward better behavior or flattening the planet and then rebuilding it. Keep in mind that the general goal is to make life less craptastic for the planet's citizens.
Or you may submit a practical proposal - one you think the LLF's political leadership is likely to approve. Keep in mind that the general public may prove less than willing to expend a huge slice of its GDP rehabilitating a primitive world, or absorb large casualties in a planetary invasion. If your plan is self-funding, with no loss of life, so much the better. Also, many in the LLF Senate may have moral objections to plans which kill many Orwellians; anything morally repulsive to a 21st century Canadian is probably equally repulsive to a Lim-Lim.
If you feel the ideal proposal is a practical one, you may note that in your response. Also, feel free to submit a proposal you might not personally think is optimal for purposes of discussion. It would be fun to have different types of proposals to read and talk about.
Your Clients' Empire
The Lim-Lim Federation has about two dozen major planets with populations over a billion. Their homeworld of Quoitseldwerp is a hundred light years rimward of the Ocampa homeworld, so Voyager never passed it by. It takes one month at cruising speed to move from the core of the LLF to Planet Orwell.Assume that the Lim-Lims look like Warcraft trolls with flexible, feather-like antennae. With extensive (albiet reversible) surgery, one might be able to pass for an Orwellian. Their average lifespan is about 300 years, which makes themselves and their leaders much more inclined to think in the extreme long-term. A few other species have joined the LLF, but it is much less diverse than the UFP.
The LLF has a fleet of 500 military starships, along with 4000 private civilian ships larger than a runabout. Most of these ships are busy doing other things at any one time. Their fleet ships are built for speed and structurally resemble the TOS Enterprise - an example of wonky convergent evolution. For fun, their ships are painted with bright pastel colors, in wavy patterns.
Lim-Lim ground troops are equal in per-capita firepower to those of an early 21st century army. Sizable garrisons protect their major planets, but because of a scarcity of ships the LLF could move at most 100,000 troops at once. Without chartering lots of civilian ships, they could move 20,000 just with their troop ships.
The LLF's only known existential threats are the solitary Borg Cubes that sometimes try to assimilate them; their fleet is more than adequate to handle the Kazon raiders, Viidian organ-snatchers and Talaxian sponge merchants that pester them. Planet Orwell is not near any other spacefaring power, so no one really cares what the LLF does with it.
The LLF has tractor beams, replicators, transporters, and holodecks, but no cloaking devices.
Their anthropologists make use of "Duck-blinds" (like in TNG: Who Watches the Watchers?) but they don't have holographic invisibility suits (like in Star Trek: Insurrection).
For those with ethical objections to transporter use, assume that Lim-Lim transporters do not take people apart and built copies, but rather teleport their payload via... er... sparkly unicorn magic. The 300-meter high pyramidal fortresses that house Orwellian ministries can be penetrated by transporter beam.
A sort of prime directive is usually followed by the Lim-Lims; they generally leave pre-warp planets alone unless given a good reason to muck with them. Over the past eighty earth years, they have observed Planet Orwell extensively from orbit, and have sent surgically-altered undercover anthropologists to the surface for brief surveillance missions. They know at least as much about Planet Orwell in general as a reader of Nineteen Eighty-Four knows about Oceania, but also know much more about the mundane details of the local cultures.
As far as anyone knows, the Orwellians and their leaders are unaware that they are being observed from afar.
Keep in mind that many of the open questions Orwell's book left about Oceanian society will be unanswered by Lim-Lim anthropologists - for example, it is possible that all three super-nations are in fact under the control of the same entity.
Likewise, as the planet reached its current state decades before the Lim-Lims discovered it, details about its past history are almost totally obscure. Lim-Lim anthropologists predictably debate over how much of Planet Orwell's unusual society is due to the native's biology and how much is due to social conditioning, but so far the "social conditioning" faction has been winning the debate.
Let the Games Begin
This concludes your extensive briefing; your clients await your recommendations. Should you have further questions on the nature of this mission or the resources available to you, I shall do my best to answer them. And, of course, discussion of your fellow consultants' plans is more than welcome.
