Also, there was just something about it that felt like a re-hash of an actual TNG episode, but I can’t pin down which one.

"Homeward," the episode where Worf's adoptive brother evacuates a pre-warp species to a new planet because theirs is dying using the Enterprise's transporters and holodeck to make them think they're just traveling over land to a new place. It's almost exactly the plan for moving the Ba'ku.