A people kept alive by constant medical treatment who conspired with a faction of Starfleet to seize the rejuvenating rings of the Ba'ku homeworld.
The Son'a are a technologically advanced but physically decaying people who appear in the film Star Trek: Insurrection. Their bodies are failing, and they depend on repeated surgery, skin stretching and other medical treatments to postpone death, which gives them a drawn and mummified look. They hold the Tarlac and Ellora as subject peoples and are known to have produced ketracel-white for the Dominion.
In 2375 the Son'a, led by Ru'afo, form a secret partnership with Admiral Dougherty to relocate the Ba'ku from their planet in the Briar Patch so that the metaphasic radiation of its rings can be harvested. Data uncovers the scheme, and Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise-E defy orders to protect the villagers. It is revealed that the Son'a leaders are themselves Ba'ku, young rebels who were exiled a century earlier after trying to seize control of the colony.
The Son'a story turns on a moral question about whether the needs of the many can justify uprooting a small community. With Ru'afo's defeat, some of the exiles begin to reconcile with the families they left behind.