When I was a kid, I was a big fan of The X-Files. It was the ’90s, politics were a thing for the Royal Canadian Air Farce (basically, Canada’s SNL) to make fun of, and vague yet sinister conspiracies perpetrated by shadowy bureaucracies of black-clad spooks were all the rage. And so, when the producers of Deep Space Nine opted to uncork a little of that X-Files magic in the Star Trek universe in the sixth season episode “Inquisition,” I was over the moon about it.
Section 31! What a concept! A rogue government agency so secret that even the well-informed Constable Odo had never heard of it, so ancient that it had been working behind the scenes in Starfleet since the beginning, and so utterly ruthless that it would engineer a plague against the Changelings to keep the Federation safe! Its very name was redolent of the “Area 51” of UFO lore, its agents sporting sexy black leather jackets that fastened on one side. Its main representative—the mysterious figure known as “Sloan” (ably played by William Sadler)—was the very model of the enigmatic G-man, raspy of voice and chiselled of feature. Its motivations were best described by the boilerplate on a limited series of tie-in novels released after Deep Space Nine ended:
They are the self-appointed protectors of the Federation. Amoral, shrouded in secrecy, answerable to no one, Section 31 is the mysterious covert operations division of Starfleet, a rogue shadow group committed to safeguarding the Federation at any cost.
No Law.
No Conscience.
No Stopping Them.
Now I ask you: doesn’t that all just sound so…cool?
Of course, in my adolescent exuberance, there were a few questions that I neglected to ask at the time. Questions like: How do you keep a massive conspiracy like this running for more than two centuries—in a Federation that includes several telepathic races, no less—without anyone letting on about it? Or: If they’re supposed to be so secret, how come they go around in extremely conspicuous black leather jackets that might as well have the word “VILLAIN” emblazoned across their backs in beadwork? Or the big one: Doesn’t the existence of a genocidal black ops group that has operated at the heart of the Federation all along kind of negate the entire utopian premise of the franchise?
That last question was, of course, the whole point of Section 31. One of showrunner Ira Steven Behr’s mission statements for Deep Space Nine as a series was to “dig deeper and find out what, indeed, life is like in the twenty-fourth century. Is it this paradise, or are there, as Harold Pinter said, ‘Weasels under the coffee table’?”
For the most part, I would say that Deep Space Nine did a good job of showing off the Federation’s “weasels”: the situation in “The Maquis,” for example, only arises because it turns out that the Federation’s metropole—Earth—is seemingly indifferent to the concerns of its colonists; “Hard Time” and “The Siege of AR-558” reveal that, under prolonged stress and deprivation, even our “more evolved” Starfleet heroes can regress to the level of murderous barbarians; and the “root beer” conversation between Quark and Garak in “The Way of the Warrior” is still one of my all-time favourite Star Trek moments. I must admit, however, that Section 31 is a rather miserable specimen of the weasel species.
In all of the other cases that I have named above—and, indeed, in a few other cases that I could name—Deep Space Nine was effectively engaging in deconstruction. Now, this is a word that is thrown around a lot in fandom circles, oft times inappropriately, but I am using it here in the specific, critical sense of foregrounding the implicit contradictions in a work of fiction—in this case, the rest of the Star Trek franchise, especially The Next Generation. What does it mean, for example, that our utopian, humanistic, post-scarcity society is so heavily grounded in imperialist American “frontier” mythology and largely set on board what amount to Royal Navy research vessels at the height of Pax Britannica? This is the type of question that Deep Space Nine did a good job of unpacking. But there is a very important difference between finding a weasel under someone’s table and releasing one in their living room, and Section 31 is, in my opinion, very much an example of the latter. There’s no precedent for it in the franchise; nothing that its backstory is needed to unpack or explain. Indeed, it makes the whole thing more inexplicable: societies with unchecked, unaccountable black ops and secret police forces do not, typically, resemble paradises even on a surface level—something that DS9 itself readily understood when it came to worldbuilding for the Cardassians. Section 31, then, is just there, seemingly so that you can point to it and say “Ha! You call this a utopia? It has weasels in it!”
But one can, perhaps, forgive DS9 this particular indulgence; it came in the midst of a larger arc about what happens when you throw Gene Roddenberry’s humanist utopia into a major war, and it can be read in the context of that story: To what extent is the Federation willing to sacrifice its morals to ensure its own survival? One can even write-off the claim that Section 31 has always existed: Sloan is hardly a reliable source, and there’s no corroborating evidence. Most importantly, though, is the fact that DS9 never presents Section 31 as anything other than a criminal conspiracy; we’re not meant to accept Sloan’s ends-justify-the-means ideology, and in fact the war ends with its repudiation: Bashir steals the cure to the Changeling plague from Sloan’s brain and Odo delivers it to the Changelings, saving billions of other people’s lives in the process.
And yet I do wish that DS9 had put its weasels away once it was done with them! Instead, they were allowed to escape into the basement of the franchise and breed down there.
The first evidence of a genuine weasel infestation was seen six years after DS9 ended, during the final season of Enterprise. Section 31 doesn’t actually do very much here, honestly: They get mixed up in the whole Klingon Forehead Controversy (mostly on the side of screwing up and making things worse) and later give the Enterprise crew some critical intelligence that helps them defeat the terrorist group Terra Prime (which they probably could have gotten just as easily somewhere else). There’s the usual back and forth about whether the ends justify the means (with our heroes very much on the “no” side), but it feels weirdly perfunctory. What it does accomplish, however, is to prove that Sloan was not lying back on DS9—
there really has been a criminal conspiracy at the heart of Starfleet since the very beginning.
With this fact cheerfully established, the gates were opened for a veritable flood of weasels into contemporary Star Trek. The film Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) introduces Section 31 to the Kelvin Timeline as the architects of a plot to militarize Starfleet for war with the Klingons. Much though I may personally dislike this movie, it is to its credit that it never depicts the organization as anything other than a bunch of villains who need to be defeated; and, furthering Enterprise’s characterization, it also makes them out to be bungling buffoons releasing forces beyond their control—in this case, Khan Noonien Singh (Benedict Cumberbatch) on a head-squishing kick.
It’s only in the second season of Discovery that we start to blur the line between criminality and legitimacy for Section 31. Here again, the organization presents its now-standard mix of bloody-minded villainy and complete incompetence, but there’s a difference: This time, Section 31, rather than being a dirty secret, is retconned into a legitimate intelligence agency; indeed, their representative, Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif), gets to throw his weight around on Discovery’s bridge almost in the manner of a political officer. They even have their own ships—they’re sleek, and black, and cool-looking. Captain Pike is still very much opposed to their methods, but he’s shot down by Admiral Cornwell. At the end of the season, after Section 31 very nearly gets every living thing in the galaxy killed through sheer stupidity, a faceless Starfleet bureaucrat (Thom Marriott) concedes that the organization needs “a radical overhaul—and perhaps more transparency.” Yes, perhaps!
Which brings us, inexorably, to Picard season three. Here, Section 31—although mostly offscreen—is as evil as it’s ever been depicted: We learn that not only did they engineer a bioweapon for use against the Changelings back during the Dominion War, but they also performed torturous medical experiments on Changeling prisoners of war. The revelations presented are truly heinous—even difficult to watch—and the entire season-long arc largely results from blowback against Section 31’s crimes against sentient life. And yet… the story pairs these revelations not only with complete legitimation of 31 as an organization, but complete acceptance of its crimes on the parts of our ostensible heroes. Worf—you know, the honourable guy? Whose friend, Odo, was deliberately infected with a plague by Section 31 with the intent of using him to wipe out his entire race? That Worf?—even calls them a “critical division of Starfleet Intelligence.” There’s one glorious moment where Picard actually looks sick upon hearing the extent of Section 31’s crimes; but then—arguably in the face of thirty-five years of consistent characterization—he and Dr. Crusher opt to compound them by executing a prisoner of war. This is never mentioned again. Just another day at the office, I suppose. We have, as an official, critical division of our humanist utopia of Starfleet, an organization that openly commits war crimes… and it’s just become part of the setting. It’s not even presented as a reason for Jack not to join Starfleet. One wonders if it was mentioned in the recruitment materials they gave out to the kids on Prodigy.
Buy the Book
Dead Country
There is, of course, a darker side to this merry jaunt through the last quarter century of Star Trek canon; namely, that it directly parallels the real-life growth of the national security state (that alphabet soup of government organizations charged with “ensuring public safety”), particularly in the decades following 9/11.
Looking at some of these bodies, it is remarkable how recently they were established: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Transportation Security Agency all date to after the turn of millennium. Like our fictional Section 31, these organizations are regularly accused of lawlessness, indifference to civil rights, and horrifying human rights abuses; like Section 31, they have become part of the wallpaper of daily existence: normal; natural; a part of the setting, as it were. Indeed, even in imaginary, far-future utopias where people can travel at thousands of times the speed of light and synthesize any material good out of raw atoms, the idea of living without such organizations is now apparently too radical to seriously entertain—even when they are canonically heinous, ridiculously incompetent, and prone to making life worse for everyone.
As the reader may have discerned from the general tenor of this essay, I am… less than enthusiastic about Paramount+’s long-promised and now-apparently-underway Michelle Yeoh-led Star Trek: Section 31 project. However, hope—particularly in the Star Trek universe—springs eternal, so I would like to conclude this essay by describing what I would like to see in this film. When we last saw Yeoh’s Emperor Georgiou in Discovery’s “Terra Firma, Part 2,” she had turned a new leaf; a quick trip back to her native Mirror Universe had convinced her that the selfish and martial virtues with which she had grown up in the Terran Empire were actually kinda terrible, and she’d vowed to take this lesson with her as she leapt through the Guardian of Forever, returning to an unspecified date back in time. What I would like is for her to make good on this epiphany and to have a proper redemption arc. Emerging in the era immediately after Picard season three, I would like to see her go on a one-woman crusade to systematically demolish Section 31 once and for all.
After all: even if you have weasels under your coffee table, you can always call-up animal control.
Jaime Babb is a writer and PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies currently living in Toronto. She can be followed on Tumblr at quasi-normalcy.tumblr.com.
Brava, Jaime, brava!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What on Earth (or anywhere else in the Galaxy) do people find so exciting about those boringly colourless Section 31 outfits? (I’m tempted to ask “Why do people take any interest in that boringly colourless Section 31 outfit?” but in all fairness having The Men in Black* show up, only to be revealed as callous, manipulative xenophobes almost completely without legitimacy is very STAR TREK).
Anyway, by this point we really need a good, long look at a Federation security/law enforcement agency that isn’t Starfleet just to make it clear that Section 31 isn’t a well-intentioned conspiracy trying to fill a gap in the Federation’s defences: it’s a criminal conspiracy seeking to escape prosecution for ignoring due process, subverting the rule of law and violating Federation principles because they have no abiding faith in any of the above.
*Calling Section 31 ‘G-Men’ is an insult to Elliott Ness and might even be an insult to the FBI (even with all its faults and at times questionable record).
Still, what is it about Basic Black people find so enticing?
Morally dubious spy sh*t is only entertaining when it remembers that it’s morally dubious. /twocents
I totally agree that the Section 31 movie needs to end with the organization’s destruction. Preferably with Georgiou being able to gloat at them as they’re hauled away by Starfleet security.
Yeah, pretty much this.
There is LEGITIMATE need for a Starfleet Intelligence unit.
Section 31, as written, is NOT it.
I think there is a case to be made that a Section 31 type of unit is inevitable within a Star Trek universe….that some beings decide that the rules of civilization need to be bent to get things done. But it can’t be a formal part of Star Fleet, nor can it be in any way acceptable.
I almost think I’d rather have Section 31 be a series of informal, unorganized cells that crop up spontaneously as mavericks do.
I do not have high hopes that the Section 31 film will be about its destruction, if only because Georgiou was apparently going back to her own time in the 23rd century, and we know from Picard that the organization existed at least into the beginning of the 25th century. However, I assume it also won’t happen because the people making Star Trek seem enamoured with the concept of it.
But hey, maybe someone at Secret Hideout will read this article and have an epiphany. Georgiou could end up in the 25th century and decide to take the organization down once and for all.
Just forgive me for not holding my breath.
@6 Slightly more likely is that Georgiou changes the course of Section 31 to be more benign, but I don’t have high hopes for that…
Star Trek is such a dead end currently in terms of imagining our future. And a big part of is has to do with the people making these shows failing to deal with current political and ecological/climate issues we have to contend with. I’m so tired of ANOTHER conspiracy driving a one of these shows. We have so many brilliant science fiction literature out there that can be used as inspiration for more stories.
Thanks for putting your article on Section 31 out there, because it needed to be said.
The trope that mankind needs to abandon morality and ethics to get things done is not only wrong, it is corrosive. The real world is full of examples of how amorality doesn’t work, and is not more efficient, yet our fiction is full of secret agencies and societies that are presented as admirable because they don’t let rules stand in their way. The very idea of Section 31 is antithetical to the ideals of Star Trek.
The only good Section 31 is a dead one!
While this is certainly an excellent essay, I often think that the tendency of the modern shows to treat Section 31 as a legitimate intelligence agency is simply the result of the same confusion I’ve often noticed among fans to mistake them for Starfleet Intelligence. It’s just the human tendency to blur similar things together in our minds, combined with the fact that “Section 31” is a pithy, catchy name.
As for the phrase “critical division of Starfleet Intelligence,” that apparently originated on Discovery before being echoed by Worf in Picard, and I suspect it arises from a misuse of the word “critical.” I think maybe they’re using it to mean a division that exists to deal with critical situations, i.e. with crises. That at least resembles the original idea, that it was the group that took extralegal action in crises extreme enough to have no other solution.
In the novels, David Mack and I both posited that Section 31 had only survived so long by going dormant when it wasn’t needed, since realistically no conspiracy can stay active too long without being exposed. In effect, there were several separate groups that revived the idea at different points in Starfleet history, explaining how it stayed secret. But then DSC came along and depicted S31 as a widely known entity in the 23rd century, contradicting DS9 while they were at it.
But yes, it’s definitely an overused idea and I want it to die. I wish it had never been introduced in the first place.
Yeah, Section 31 was underbaked in DS9, The thematic and worldbuilding incongruities have grown even worse, as less skilled writers have thoughtlessly used it a cheap way fold in some Homeland/Madam Secretary/or Bond vibes.
Really like your suggestion for the Section 31 movie.
A minor quibble–I believe, if the law is roughly similar in the 25th century, Crusher is guilty of discussing cold blooded premediated murder, rather discussing if she is committing the war crime of executing a prisoner. She doesn’t seem to be an active member of any service–she’s just a private citizen. Anyway, Vadic doesn’t appear to have actually surrendered, they’ve just temporarily (and ineffectively) penned into a forcefield so we can see some dialogue. For that matter, Vadic may be guilty of many crimes, but one could argue that they are innocent of the charge of perfidy, as they never pretended to surrender at this point.
Not that cold blooded first degree murder is a great look. Nor is Worf’s slaughter of the sliced and diced changelings, even if we have no reason to believe they are surrendering rather than trying to slither away to continue their fight.
One hundred percent agree! Section 31, as treated since DSC, is a blot on the franchise. A series that displays any sympathy for it, any on-the-one-hand-on-the-other malarkey, or any dangerous nonsense about an organization like that being necessary, just extends the damage. And what a waste of Michelle Yeoh if that is indeed the story!
S
@6/David Pirtle: “if only because Georgiou was apparently going back to her own time in the 23rd century”
There was no proof of that. They were ambiguous about exactly where or when she would end up; she simply had to be sent close enough to her original time that her molecules would stabilize. That allows enough wiggle room for her to land in the early 25th century, say.
@9/Alan Brown: “The very idea of Section 31 is antithetical to the ideals of Star Trek.”
To be fair, I think that Trek has consistently acknowledged that. 31’s actions always seem to do more harm than good, and the day is saved by our nobler Starfleet heroes rejecting 31’s methods and choosing a better path. In the case of PIC season 3, that latter part wasn’t there — the heroes just threw the Section 31-created bad guy out an airlock and then completely forgot she’d existed, because who needs object permanence — but it was clear that it was 31’s actions that created the problem.
Although I feel I should point out that I’m pretty sure PIC never explicitly said Section 31 was behind Vadic’s torture and mutation; she just attributed it to Starfleet. The only explicit mention of Section 31 was Worf’s in connection with the Daystrom Station archives. But the concept has become so ingrained that it no longer has to be stated outright; we just take it for granted that if there are dirty tricks perpetrated by Starfleet, then they’ve been brought to you by the number 31.
@10 / CLB:
But yes, it’s definitely an overused idea and I want it to die. I wish it had never been introduced in the first place.
Yeah,I enjoyed the concept at the time in the context of DS9 and its deconstruction of the UFP.
But after 25 years, it’s been run into the ground and I’m just as sick of it as you and Keith are.
Well put, Jaime!
Besides all the reasons you listed, I’ll add one more: they’re boring! Ideally, Star Trek should be about, you know, trekking to new and exciting places full of color and wonder. Why the hell should I care about a bunch of evil human radicals in black sweatshirts? Indeed, the worst thing about evil mustache twirlers is that it doesn’t take long to predict what they’re going to do — something evil? It’s going to be something evil and radical and lacking nuance, isn’t it? Zzzzzz…
Nothing against Michelle Yeoh, but I’m pretty sure that even an asskicker such as her punching the last Section 31 agent in the throat and knocking him into prison could get me to watch. I already know they’re radical. I already know they’re evil. I already know they’re all wrong for Star Trek. It’s been covered. So, I know it would probably be a boring movie for me. Trek on to something else, please.
@1/ krad – Thank you! I thought you might enjoy this one.
@6/ David Pirtle – has it been confirmed to take place in the 23rd century? I know that that was the implication when it was first announced, but I recall Kurtzman being a bit cagey about when the Guardian actually sent her after Terra Firma.
@8/ Adamus – There’s a whole other essay to be written about how climate change represents a fundamental challenge to Star Trek, and to the 19th-20th-century SF view of the future that it’s rooted in, where you imagine that the future will be faster, more advanced, offer higher degrees of production, etc. So far Star Trek has mostly just tried to handwave this through mention of solar panels or magic, climate-fixing bacteria. I think that it might be ill equipped to deal with it just because it also needs to contend with its own canon. That said, I think that the pilot episode of SNW honestly did the best job of making the utopia feel relevant to the present day, which is ironic, because it was basically just repeating canonical backstory from the 60s and 90s.
@9/ AlanBrown – I think that there is a common myth that unaccountable power can ever serve the interests of the public. I think that virtually the whole of human history shows that unaccountable power ultimately just serves its own interests. I think that, in terms of on screen speculative fiction, something like the Dai Li from Avatar the Last Airbender, which ultimately just betrays the city and emperor that it’s sworn to protect, is a vastly more accurate representation of a secret police force than is Section 31.
I absolutely agree. In most respects Deep Space Nine took a nuanced approach, deconstructing Roddenberry’s utopia only to build it back up again. Eddington suggests that the Federation might be a homogenising force, and Quark agrees in his “root beer” speech- only for him to ultimately conclude that it’s a force for good. Nog mocks the Federation’s renunciation of money, and we see some of the difficulties which it brings Jake- but episodes such as Past Tense invite us to consider what an achievement the eradication of poverty really was. The Federation’s values are pushed to their absolute limits in the Dominion War, and we see the extreme measures that its members (Sisko included) are willing to take in the face of an implacable, monstrous foe- but their values ultimately do prevail, and it is diplomacy and Bashir’s compassion which ultimately win the day.
But as much as I love DS9, there were instances where its desire to be edgy, and its inferiority complex towards TNG, lead it to pass way over the moral event horizon, and then never bother to rebuild the utopia which Star Trek is predicated on. In For the Uniform Sisko outright orders biogenic weapons to be used on former Federation citizens, none of his subordinates question this order or refuse to carry it out, and Sisko never faces any consequences from Starfleet for this action, which would probably be considered illegal TODAY, let alone in a post-scarcity utopia. Nobody was killed, true; but imagine if just some of those colonists had been too stubborn to leave! It would have been awfully awkward for Sisko to explain why he let men, women, and children with no part in the Marquis’ actions choke to death. It comes across as especially gratuitous and callous when the Federation has been shown to have the ability to harmlessly mass-stun civilians since TOS (see A Piece of the Action). This can’t just be dismissed as the actions of a rogue Admiral which were swiftly punished, Starfleet absolutely condones Sisko’s actions here, which seem more typical of Assad than Kirk or Spock.
I would say that Section 31 was another instance of these universe-breaking outbursts of edginess. The apparently omnipotent Section 31 hatches a flawless plot to exterminate the Founders, managing what the combined forces of the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order couldn’t. True, Section 31 is strongly implied to be a rogue, criminal agency, and the Federation Council never clears this action. But when Bashir obtains the cure, they refuse to distribute it, and you can’t help but get the impression that the Federation is essentially happy to look the other way and tolerate Section 31 commiting genocide on their enemies if it suits them. More to the point, as much as our main characters and the narrative of the show seemingly disagree with Section 31, it actually does a pretty poor job of repudiating them. The morphogenic virus undoubtedly DOES bring the war to an end sooner, although it doesn’t singlehandedly end it as some claim. The Federation never faces any blowback from the intergalactic community for having a secret rogue black ops department which is above the law, or for having tried to exterminate an entire race because they crossed them (one wonders whether the Federation will mention the existence Section 31 to future Federation applicants). No negative consequences of Section 31’s existence are ever shown for Federation citizens, as unlike real-life intelligence agencies it seems perfectly content to leave its own people alone, apart from mildly inconveniencing Dr. Bashir for one episode. Ultimately, Section 31 is never dismantled, and presumably remains the dark sentinel of the Federation long after the end of DS9, and our Federation “utopia” continues to wilfully ignore their existence. It is plagued by none of the problems of massive problems
It is really any surprise that plenty of fans unironically agreed with Sloan, and saw Bashir as a soft-hearted wimp who was unwilling to do what was necessary? In the context of the narrative, Sloan’s actions absolutely seem to help save the Federation, and he looks cool doing it. Having a totally unaccountable black ops organisation with zero democratic oversight and the ability to ignore civil liberties is, it seems, actually extremely cool and only hurts your enemies! Join the CIA today kids, and be super badass black-suit wearing superspy like Sloan, who doesn’t play by the rules and does what those wimpy hippy bureaucrats won’t! I understand that this wasn’t DS9’s intent, but the way that Section 31 was written made it inevitable that future shows would ignore all the nuance it tried to introduce to the situation, and transform Section 31 from a rogue criminal operation abusing the Federation Charter for their own ends, into an integral (and super badass) part of Starfleet security. As of Discovery and Picard, the Federation simply has an official Genocide and War Crimes Department, and black sites where it tortures its enemies. Starfleet is irrevocably transformed from an organisation primarily dedicated to peaceful exploration and diplomacy, into the US military in space, tainting it forever and making Picard look like a credulous useful idiot for extolling its virtues in TNG. It is rotten to the core, it was always rotten to the core, and the only way to effectively safeguard paradise is through extralegal secret police operations which treat the lives of enemy civilians as disposable.
I honestly doubt that there is any hope that the Federation utopia might be salvaged at this point. Star Trek was a product of 60s hippy utopianism, and as flawed as some of Gene Roddenberry’s ideas of what this meant were, TOS/TNG both embody this unique vision. I’ll even claim that DS9 managed to honour it, for the most part. Modern writers were not born into this generation, however. They have so thoroughly bought into suffocating Neoliberal hegemony that they cannot even conceive of a future in which we do not have social stratification, lunch debt, “nation building” operations, authoritarian intelligence agencies, and xenophobia. The modern fascination with Section 31 represents the total deficit of imagination which characterises the post-9/11 psyche. And if we can no longer even imagine a better world, what chance do we have of building it?
@15 Boring and lazy. Section 31 (it would be an interesting storytelling artefact if they are never directly blamed on screen) in Picard is just a projection of our sins onto Starfleet. They’re an evil intelligence organization, so of course they’re going to torture prisoners. As presented in DS9, Section 31 did what they believed was necessary, not what was convenient or easy. Once the Great Link had been infected, there was no point in further experimentation on changelings. (The impression I got was the experimentation on Vadic was separate from the bioweapon but maybe not).
But it’s just one more thing Picard S3 throws on the garbage heap in service of nostalgia.
I’m right there with KRAD’s #1…this is an excellent and wise commentary.
And I hope that this is, in fact, one of the reasons that the upcoming movie is now a movie rather than a series. The obvious reason the Section 31 project has been in development for so long is, of course, that Michelle Yeoh has been really busy with other work…but it occurs to me that there may have been another factor in the delay. I rather think that once the writing team sat down to try and plot a 31-centric series, they ran into the fundamental problem with the premise.
To start with, Section 31 is too well established as categorically evil to easily retcon out of the gate, such that if your series is genuinely about Section 31, it’s necessarily about the villains. The trouble with this is that if your central characters are villains, your audience won’t want to root for them. Your audience for a 31 series is going to want to root for characters who are working against Section 31 (i.e.Emperor Georgiou on her ongoing redemption arc). And the thing is, the moment you shift your focus to that redemption arc, your series stops being a Section 31 series and becomes a series about taking down Section 31. Which is a perfectly good storytelling arc for a movie project…
…but not for a series-length project. The problem with a Section 31 series is that it’s dramatically unsustainable. The longer you stretch out the conflict between your protagonist(s) and Section 31, the more battles the villains are going to win in the process – and by extension, the more battles your heroes are going to lose. And watching your heroes lose for weeks and seasons at a time is no fun, especially in a Star Trek universe, and especially considering the kind of stakes for which Section 31 plays. Also, Michelle Yeoh may have been less than eager to come back for a series in which her highly competent and none-too-patient character would find herself complaining week after week about how her enemies had slipped through her fingers again.
All of which is why I am inclined to take the it’s-now-a-movie announcement as a good – or at least hopeful – sign. As the stars are aligned nowadays, a decision to tie off Section 31’s story arc is uniquely sensible on both a business level and an artistic one, and I think there’s a good chance that Secret Hideout and Paramount may have just made exactly that call.
I love Star Trek and Tor.com and have seen and participated in many interesting conversations here over the years, but this may be my favorite.
@19/JohnCBunnell – I live in hope. But of course the other advantage of doing it as a movie is that if it takes a pro-Section 31 stance, at least it’s only 2 hours long.
@18/noblehunter: “(The impression I got was the experimentation on Vadic was separate from the bioweapon but maybe not).”
I’m pretty sure the infection of Odo with the virus happened before the start of the war, and Vadic was captured during the war. So the experiments on her wouldn’t have been connected to the virus, no.
@19/John C. Bunnell: “The trouble with this is that if your central characters are villains, your audience won’t want to root for them.”
Then why are there so many successful movies and series whose protagonists are gangsters and assassins? Why are Hannibal Lecter and Walter White and John Wick so popular? People love rooting for villains, it seems — not rooting for their actions, but identifying with them as people and getting invested in their emotional journeys.
That said, I’m not a fan of that kind of storytelling as a rule, and I never liked Discovery telling me I should root for Emperor Georgiou, who I think is an awful character and the worst possible way they could’ve brought back Michelle Yeoh. There’s room for dark stories about antiheroes, but I’d rather it not be in Star Trek.
#22.
It is odd, though, not linking the torture and experimentation of Vadic and her comrades with the creation of the virus. I mean, if Picard was going for a theme about legacy, then wouldn’t the sins of the Federation’s past work for that specific story? Just seems to me the extra layer of Section 31 wanting to create super spies or whatever from Changelings didn’t need to be there.
@2 ED: “Still, what is it about Basic Black people find so enticing?”
Even Kirk thought his Gestapo uniform was more “attractive” than Spock’s drab Wehrmacht duds.
When Picard and Disco used Section 31 I felt like they really didn’t understand or communicate why something like Section 31 is evil. They were evil on the level of a villain-of-the-week. They were bad people who did bad things for badness outside of any other context. There’s cartoon evil and real evil. It’s totally on brand to tell stories in Trek about real evil but as a creator I think you need to be able to distinguish them. And I’m not feeling that at all when Section 31’s been dropped in.
As far as the upcoming film, my hope is that it’s more of a Michelle Yeoh vehicle than a Section 31 film. Discovery has sailed the ship on Georgiou being a member of the organization but that aspect of the character doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll define the show. It’s not something I would put money on, but it’s remotely possible.
I think Beckett & Company, or the Prodigy crew, or SNW Pike, would play it by the classic Trek rules and see Section 31 as presented in Disco and Picard as abhorrent. Of the shows, the one I felt most egregiously and consistently missed the point was Picard. Now that’s done I’m hopeful that newer shows will be a little more thoughtful about mining the older shows for material, or just be comfortable telling their own stories.
AlanBrown@9 and OM@17: What you said, in spades. Thanks!
I wanted to say that I’ve been trying, in vain, to encapsulate my hatred / fatigue of Section 31 for months now and this is everything I felt but couldn’t put voice to. Thank you.
So … how to deal with Section 31 without contradicting what has been shown on screen.
First, it should be made clear that the proto Section 31 in Enterprise, the legitimate one in “Discovery”, the illegal one in “Deep Space Nine” and the one Worf refers to in “Picard” are separate organizations. Worf does not refer to the people who tried to kill Odo and his whole species as “a critical part of Starfleet Intelligence”.
How to do that: First, “Section 31” shows Tyler trying to reform S31 and Georgiu joining the effort. But at least Georgiu comes to the conclusion that it is fruitless and they have to destroy it. In the end, S31 is disbanded and officially doesn’t exist anymore.
Then we go to “Lower Decks”. We already know that S31 will play a role here, so use the comedy show to completely deconstruct it, figuratively and literally. Maybe have the head of Daystrom Station arrested for housing a criminal organization. And then show some Admiral going “Hey, maybe if we create a legitimate S31 as part of Starfleet, this won’t happen again!”
If we want to, we can show in something set after “Picard” that, no, it does happen again and disband this S31, too.
What about the TNG episode The Pegasus? I don’t recall if there was a direct mention of Sec. 31, but there was clearly a big conspiracy to cover up an illegal technology that would have involved thousands of Federation personnel to build, deploy, and command a ship with a cloak despite Treaty obligations. The episode hinted at a broader darkness to the Federation.
@29/ Josh – Admittedly, “The Pegasus” doesn’t cast Starfleet in a very favourable light, but the idea that the Federation would proceed to develop a major military technology in secret despite having signed a treaty with an otherwise openly hostile enemy power isn’t something that needs an ancient conspiracy to explain. Also, there seems a very major difference between developing stealth technology against treaty and committing genocide or conducting medical experiments of prisoners of war.
What I found depressing about Picard season 3 is that the same Jean-Luc Picard who was unwilling to stand for the former 30 years ago now seems decidedly blasé about the latter.
#29.
They couldn’t mention Section 31 in “The Pegasus” because it wasn’t introduced until years later on DS9.
But the way that episode went about a conspiracy was far better handled, and far more realistic in my opinion, than anything involving Section 31. For starters, the titular ship wasn’t Section 31’s own ship. It was a Starfleet ship whose captain had a bad idea and whose crew mutinied against it. Which is good. That’s a Star Trek kind of story. Black badges and black leather need not apply.
Sco-Fi Recommendations Wanted
I understand the appeal of dystopian science fiction and the utility of the fatalistic, inevitability-of-evil vision that Trek now represents. But, I wish there was some sci-fi that would pickup and run with the Roddenberry ball now that Trek has dropped it.
Can anyone recommend a story about space-faring humans in a fundamentally “good”, stable society? By “good” I mean that they’ve gotten past the moral problems humans faced in the 21st century (bigotry, injustice, tribalism, inequality, etc.) and are wrestling with new problems.
@24. jmat: I’ve seen far too much of what James T. Kirk wears on shore leave to trust his opinion when it comes to fashion.
@33. hackerb9: I feel that you may be overreacting just a bit, but wish you well in your search nonetheless.
Uh… Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t a “mirror” section 31 actually be moral, in contrast to the rest of Terran society? So, she’d be founding, not demolishing, it.
While unlikely, there’s another story I’d prefer to see. The movie could make it clear that section 31 was, like Lorka, from the mirror universe all along, thus redeeming the entire Federation.
…And while we’re dreaming, maybe the movie will reveal that everyone in Picard season 3 had been replaced with androids with defective Moral Compass Stabilization Units.
@35/hackerb9: “Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t a “mirror” section 31 actually be moral, in contrast to the rest of Terran society?”
It’s a common mistake to see the Mirror Universe as “Opposite World.” Rather, it’s a dystopian world, the world the Prime Universe could’ve been if humanity had succumbed to its worst impulses instead of embracing its best. We’ve seen consistently that other species are much the same in both universes, differing only in how the Terran Empire affected them vs. how the Federation did (for instance, in the MU, the Empire conquered Bajor first and the Cardassians liberated it, instead of the reverse).
The title of the original story, “Mirror, Mirror,” is not a reference to inversion, but to Snow White’s magic mirror that always revealed the truth. The point was that the MU was a reminder of the darkness within ourselves, not so opposite at all.
So the Empire wouldn’t need a Section 31, since their any-means-necessary tactics are the default for the Imperial Starfleet.
@33 / hackerb9: Would the Wayfarers books by Becky Chambers fit the bill? I thought they really embodied ideals of believing the best of others and seeking to understand them.
@ALL: Great article and comments, I really enjoyed reading them!
@33 / hackerb9 – One example that I can think of would L.X. Beckett’s Bounceback series, which is described as “Star Trek meets Neuromancer”. I’m afraid I can’t give it a proper recommendation, though, as I have not gotten around to reading it, but the premise sounds promising.
TBH, all these Section 31 plots remind me of such episodes as Conspiracy, Pegasus, Star Trek: Insurrection, Paradise Lost, and so on. All that has really changed is that the Bad Evil Admiral of the Week has been replaced by the Bad Evil Section 31. Otherwise, what is the difference?
And it is not obvious to me that Section 31 created the Changeling Plague is worse than the actions of Sisko and Friends during In the Pale Moonlight. If inspiration had struck the DS9 writers in a slightly different order, we might be denouncing Section 31 for suckering the Romulans into a war they needed no part in, while talking about the classic episode in which Sisko confronted the Hard But Necessary Decision to use a bioweapon against the Founders rather than keep gunning down their drug-addicted brainwashed slaves.
Morality is a lot more arbitrary than people like to think.
@39/ ad – None of the examples that you name came even close to committing a genocide. There is a very real difference between having a few bad actors in your “utopia” and having a War Crimes, Skulduggery & Genocide division as a “critical” organ of state.
@miaulements yes, I thought the Wayfarers series embodied Star Trek ideals, and seemed specifically tailored in many ways to Star Trek fans. I’m a particular fan of the third book, which I think is very Star Trek in showing a society of humans who have given upon on capitalist ideals and warmongering, even though it is not a utopia.
As for Section 31, DS9 is my favourite Trek and I think they’re a great addition to it. But DS9 is complex enough that Section 31 doesn’t actually discredit Federation ideals in the way it seems to in later series (I haven’t actually seen many of these). What it does suggest (and ONLY suggest) is that it is difficult to win a war justly, especially if your oponents aren’t playing by the rules. Essentially, “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”. It doesn’t legitimise Section 31, and in fact we see the heroes doing everything they can to stop them. But we are also left with the uncomfortable fact that the way the war was won was by attempted genocide. Starfleet never condone this, but do opportunistically take advantage of it.
I am horrified by the idea that Picard and Crusher would murder a POW under any context, though as I say I haven’t seen the show. This shows how far moral standards have shifted. Remember when Dukat was taken as a POW, and was treated for his psychosis before being tried for his crimes? When Sisko aided and abetted murder, it was considered one of the most morally challenging episodes of Star Trek, and this was SISKO, the man who has already been shown to be flexible where Federation ideals are concerned. Picard and Crusher of course also lived through the Dominion War, but Picard is a moral absolutist, and this is essential to his character. He is the character that stands between right and wrong and tells us that “the line must be drawn here – this far and no further!”. To undo this isn’t “challenging” or “morally grey” writing, it’s just cheap and done for shock value. As you say, though I am not American, the security state is becoming increasingly normalised in our lives and we should push back against this at all costs. “The ends justify the means” is a one-way ticket to fascism.
On a more positive note I love SNW for its optimism. I love to see Pike stand up and sincerely make a speech defending Federation values. That’s what makes it feel like Star Trek to me when most of the recent spinoffs haven’t.
Thank you for the wonderful article
@40 This is what I meant about morality being more arbitrary than you think. You can declare that genocide is the greatest of sins, and that this, and this alone, puts Section 31 beyond the pale in a way that no one else in Star Trek is.
If you apply this to other franchises, you could similarly condemn Conan the Barbarian for killing one man, Thulsa Doom, last of his kind, Dr Who for killing the last of quite a few unpleasant species and John Connor for killing Skynet, which was the only one of its kind.
OTOH, someone with a more utilitarian system of morals could think that killing off the Founders would have a much bigger strategic impact than killing a similar number of Vorta or Jem’Hadar, and it would be evil NOT to kill them.
Or with a system based on justice, they might conclude that the Founders are mass-murdering tyrants who chose to engage in an aggressive war of conquest and justice requires they be executed.
There is no objective way of proving these systems wrong, and yourself correct. Or vice versa.
This is a problem for any series that wants to depict a utopian society that always does the One Right Thing. Because there is no objective way to demonstrate that anything is the One Right Thing.
(OTOH, we can demonstrate that the Federations acts in Pegasus and In The Pale Moonlight show it to be untrustworthy, and that creating the Changling Plague only demonstrates that if you attack it, it will fight back as hard as possible. I know which reputation I would rather have. But that is a practical conclusion, not a moral one.)
@43/ad: Even in a utilitarian view, one can argue that a basic standard of morality is not using any more force than absolutely required. If there’s a way to end a conflict with less destruction, then choosing to use a more destructive method is immoral. Section 31 stories have usually shown the characters finding a less destructive alternative to 31’s methods, proving that 31’s methods were not necessary and were therefore wrong. Or else they’ve shown that 31’s methods did more harm than good — for instance, they exacerbated the Klingon Augment crisis in “Affliction”/”Divergence” and almost exterminated all life in DSC season 2. Even a utilitarian viewpoint would have to acknowledge that a strategy that backfires and proves harmful is the wrong strategy.
That’s the problem with choosing destructive methods — they’re too permanent. If they turn out to be wrong — say, if the person you executed for a murder turns out to have been innocent, or if a plant species you drove extinct could’ve cured a deadly disease — then there’s no way to reverse it. So even by utilitarian standards, it can be argued that destructive methods are undesirable, that they should be a last resort when all else fails. The most utilitarian thing is to give yourself the maximum possible amount of options, and destruction takes away options.
The problem with Section 31 is that its entire reason for existing is to break the rules, so it has to make up excuses to do the wrong thing in order to justify its existence. Which means it will inevitably do the wrong thing when it doesn’t need to, purely for self-serving reasons. So from a utilitarian standpoint, Section 31 is likely to create more problems than it solves, and is thus a bad idea.
@43 / ad – The Doctor gets called out for his genocidal habits all of the time. And, if you’re talking about the RTD-era Doctor, who, to my recollection, did most of the ‘genociding’ (at least in the new series), then the narrative expressly frames him as a borderline Nietzchean classic Hero figure who makes his own morality, and this constantly puts him into conflict with his human companions. From what I’ve read of Conan, meanwhile, his adventures seem rather orthogonal to the entire question of morality.
Can I say that not committing genocide is “objectively the right thing?” No, but I can say that it follows necessarily from the particular, humanist set of values upon which the Federation is supposedly based.
Can I say that it would be bad to uncritically valourize genocide in a work of popular fiction at a time when states in the real world are frequently committing acts that can be described as “genocidal”, often with “national security” as their explicit justification? Yes, I rather think I can. Ditto executing prisoners if war, by the way.
@45/jaimebabb: “The Doctor gets called out for his genocidal habits all of the time.”
Better to say “their” than “his,” since the most recent example was what Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor did to the combined Dalek, Cyberman, and Sontaran fleets at the climax of the Doctor Who: Flux season.
This article touches neatly on one of my biggest issues with Secret Hideout Trek — and one that I don’t think gets talked about much. Secret Hideout Trek isn’t interested in Star Trek as an argument for a better future.
The focus on and acceptance of Section 31 is a good example, but is far from the only example. Between main characters resolving issues via war crimes (planting bombs amid the corpses of Klingons in DISC episode 2) and presenting the Federation as a society that is immediately willing to accept both slavery and genocide inflicted on other sentients (Picard season 1), I feel that we’re getting a version of Star Trek that is deliberately less utopian and hopeful than previous versions, and isn’t interested in telling stories about it actually getting better.
And I get that Secret HIdeout wants to push the idea that the Federation isn’t all that great (Picard season 1 has some great examples of that — even just replicator food tasting bad (rather than just imperfect) suggests that the Federation isn’t what it intends to be), but making Section 31 legit effectively forces the idea that the Federation is willing to commit terrible crimes in order to defend itself. And I dislike the fact that the first thing they get are their own fancy black uniforms and fancy black ships, designed to look as cool as possible; it feels a lot like coding them as fascists, which is fine if they’re villains and far less fine if they’re not.
@46/CLB – You’re absolutely right; I’m afraid my brain just defaulted to “his” because, when someone mentions “the Doctor” and “genocide” in the same sentence, David Tennant is who immediately leaps to mind.
@47/Rob: “presenting the Federation as a society that is immediately willing to accept both slavery and genocide inflicted on other sentients”
Except the synths were not sentient. PIC season 1 depicted android sentience as a problem the Federation had not yet cracked. The novel The Last Best Hope made it more explicit that synths were not sentient. While the novel was not canonical, it was obliged to stay consistent with canon.
And I think you’re wrong to generalize to all Secret Hideout shows. Discovery has been pretty firm about reasserting the Federation’s benevolent values as something worth fighting to restore when they lapse, and Strange New Worlds has been pretty optimistic in its portrayal of the Federation as well. So has Prodigy, to the extent that we’ve seen the UFP in action there. Ditto Lower Decks, whose third-season premiere was all about showing Mariner that she was wrong to lack faith in Starfleet’s system, because that system is basically good.
While Secret Hideout, the production company of Alex Kurtzman & Heather Kadin, is in overall charge of all Trek shows, they’re too busy to micromanage every one at once, which is why each show has its own showrunner. Thus, different shows reflect different styles and sensibilities, and it would be erroneous to presume there’s only one vision guiding them all. That’s like assuming that an admiral is responsible for every decision made by the ships under their command, rather than giving credit to the individual captains.
@47/Rob
This article touches neatly on one of my biggest issues with Secret Hideout Trek — and one that I don’t think gets talked about much. Secret Hideout Trek isn’t interested in Star Trek as an argument for a better future.
That’s a fair point. Secret Hideout is more about using Star Trek as a parallel to our own society. Which is, on the one hand, what Star Trek has done since TOS (shining a light on issues such as racism) but those earlier shows had the Federation as a counterpoint to the alien worlds that had those various issues.
Now, it seems like the Federation, itself, it experiencing the issues that we as a society are facing.
I would say that there’s a clear, if largely unplanned, arc of the Federation’s moral decline across the 24th-century series. In TNG, it’s close to being a pure utopia, with at worst some disregard for the rights of synthetic lifeforms and the occasional ‘badmiral’ (who, on TNG, were mostly just stupid, rather than outright evil). Then, Starfleet meets the Borg and, a few years later, gets curbstomped at Wolf 359, and you see it gradually lose its way, becoming more militaristic. By the end of TNG, you have the Federation Council making bad calls, like the treaty with the Cardassians, as Earth becomes more insular. On DS9, the situation is compounded by conflict with the Dominion, until it eventually reaches the point where Starfleet is dominated by military concerns, Section 31 has risen to prominence, and the Federation Council is willing to look the other way on genocide (and jump into bed with creeps like the Son’a in Insurrection). Lower Decks presents a somewhat more rreconstructionist take on the Federation; things like Division 14 and Freeman’s trial in “Grounded” tease the idea that things have taken a turn for the corrupt, but pull the rug out from under that impression. But at the same time, most of our view of Starfleet is the from the perspective of a support craft; when we see more of a “hero” ship, like the Titan, it’s basically a warship, with Riker explicitly lamenting that he doesn’t really get to have the sort of “pure exploration” adventures that he’d had on the Enterprise-D anymore; and Les Buenamigo is probably the single baddest badmiral that Star Trek has ever had, willing to lobotomize officers and destroy entire ships in order to cover his own ass, which just raises the question “How does someone like this rise to such a high rank in Starfleet Command?” In Prodigy the Federation looks good in comparison to the lawlessness outside its borders, but we see very little of it–and what little we do see includes a disaster on the scale of Wolf 359, or the worst battles of the Dominion War. The following year in continuity, Mars is destroyed by rogue Synths, with mass death right on Earth’s doorstep, and the Federation turns in on itself and becomes reactionary, xenophobic, and militaristic, as seen on Picard.
What I would very much like is a series about putting the Federation back on track; shutting down Section 31 and cleaning house in Starfleet. I had hoped that that would be the arc across three seasons of Picard, perhaps with him becoming UFP President; but unfortunately, they just threw in one line of dialogue about the Synth Ban being lifted in the last five minutes of season 1, decided that that was good enough, and proceeded to show the Federation as being as bad as it has ever been in Season 3, without even any if the hero characters opposing it. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the present writers are interested in the sort of sociological focus and political thoughtfulness that would be needed to fix things.
@43 If you are going to agree that the Doctor has tried to wipe out the odd species now and again, I think you are in a bad position to assert that Section 31 trying to do a similar thing for similar reasons proves it to be infinitely more evil than Star Treks historic Evil Admirals of The Week. At most, you have shown it to be as evil as the Doctor. Who is the hero of a childrens TV show.
I’d say the real problem with Star Trek is that if the main cast must always be united on The Cause of Righteousness, the antagonists must always be determined on The Cause of Unrighteousness. So if the antagonist is someone else within Starfleet, then someone within Starfleet has to be fighting for Unrighteousness. This naturally makes it look a lot less Utopian.
Realism requires the characters to make trade-offs, and that doesn’t fit with Utopia.
@53/ad: Even though you referred back to your own post, I’m going to assume you’re referring to my response to it. I’m not defending Doctor Who‘s moral choices, and it’s specious to compare the two franchises, since DW is a fantasy show in a rather exaggerated reality, while ST has ideally aspired to a more grounded naturalism.
But if we must compare the two, I refer back to my point that the ethical use of force entails never using more force than strictly necessary. In Doctor Who, the general pattern (or overused cliche) is that the Doctor tries to find a peaceful solution, fails, and is left with no other recourse than to destroy the enemy. As I pointed out, Section 31’s destructive strategies fail the “no other choice” test, because the Starfleet protagonists are able to find a less violent solution. So by that standard, they are not morally equivalent. (Although I would say that Trek’s writers play more fair by permitting the heroes to find a better option, while DW’s writers usually stack the deck in order to mandate destruction.)
“Realism requires the characters to make trade-offs, and that doesn’t fit with Utopia.”
The Federation is not supposed to be “Utopia,” merely a better civilization than our own. People keep misusing the word “Utopia,” forgetting that it literally means “No place.” The whole point of utopian fiction is that an ideal society cannot exist, that any society that appears perfect has a hidden dark underbelly. (See, for instance, TOS: “This Side of Paradise” or SNW: “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach.”) Star Trek‘s depiction of the Federation is not utopian, but plausibly optimistic. It is an improved society, having overcome war and bigotry and economic injustice, but it is still an imperfect society with room for further improvement, and as Picard pointed out in “The Drumhead,” it takes eternal vigilance and hard work to ensure that society doesn’t backslide into injustice.
TBH, I meant to refer to @45, which was someone elses response to my post…
IIRC Sisko describes Earth as “paradise” at one point. Certainly, we have Picards famous quote: “You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century…The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
Entire books have been written describing the Federation as a scarcity-free communist paradise. And this does seem to fit with Picards claim that the major everyday motivations of humanity have changed. That sounds fairly utopian.
OTOH, no society can be scarcity-free if it still requires people to get things done – and people are still required to get things done in Starfleet – and Picard himself inherits a vineyard, which suggests private property exists even though it can no longer be bought and sold. The Federation we see is not quite the Federation as described to us.
But to return to my original point: Long before Section 31 was invented in the DS9 writers room, we already had stories in which Our Heroes fight against someone within Starfleet committing a crime up to, and including, a military coup to overthrow the Federation government itself. (And planet-wide ethnic cleansing, in Star Trek: Insurrection).
I am not enthusiastic about these stories, but I can’t see why I am supposed to think it so much worse to ascribe a bunch of them to the same conspiracy, instead of different ones.
Suppose the Changeling Plague had been created by Admiral Somebody, instead of Section 31. It would still have fitted into a tradition of some Starfleet Admiral or other doing something dastardly Our Heroes disapprove of. What’s the difference?
@55 / ad – The difference is that an organ of state, especially one that has supposedly been there since the beginning, passively tolerated for centuries, says vastly more about the values of that state than does the existence of one bad actor oor even a number of bad actors. The existence of Section 31 effectively turns the entire idea of the Federation into a sham, a facade for deluded children who still believe that a better world based on peace and human thriving is possible.
#55.
The difference is that Admiral Somebody is an individual going against the system; the other is an organization that strongly suggests to the audience that it’s necessary within the system and for a very long time.
@55/ad: “IIRC Sisko describes Earth as “paradise” at one point.”
As a metaphor in “The Maquis,” an episode whose entire purpose was to show that Federation society was not simplistically perfect, that even 24th-century humans could go down a dark path under the right circumstances. The point of Trek has always been that the Federation’s better future had to be worked hard for and earned, and that it could be lost if people weren’t careful.
And as I already pointed out, “utopian fiction” does not mean fiction depicting a perfect society, but fiction critiquing the idea of a perfect society by exposing its inevitable dark underbelly. “Utopia” literally means a nonexistent place.
“Entire books have been written describing the Federation as a scarcity-free communist paradise.”
The Federation has never been depicted as “communist.” It’s ridiculous to think that an American TV producer in the 1960s, let alone the Reagan-era ’80s, could have gotten away with depicting humanity’s future as communist on commercial television. It was a given in the media that commies were the bad guys, the anathema of everything America stood for. (1970s TV was a bit more forgiving and open to the idea of international cooperation, but only to a point.)
And it’s absurd to think that just because a system isn’t capitalist, it automatically must be communist, as if those are the only two economic theories capable of existing. Communism is just as much a scarcity-based economic theory as capitalism; they both assume that resources are finite and goods are created by labor, differing only in how the means of production are owned and how their wealth is distributed. Neither economic model would work in a post-scarcity society; new ones would have to be invented.
“OTOH, no society can be scarcity-free if it still requires people to get things done”
Who says it requires them? People don’t only work because they need to; they work because they enjoy it, or because they want to make a difference for others. Surveys have shown that if people got a universal basic income, they’d still choose to work. People like to do things, and to feel productive.
“I am not enthusiastic about these stories, but I can’t see why I am supposed to think it so much worse to ascribe a bunch of them to the same conspiracy, instead of different ones.”
That question’s already been answered: because that conspiracy is asserted to be built into Starfleet at the foundational level, even to be a “critical” part of it. There is a profound difference between depicting something as an occasional aberration to the way the system works and depicting it as a fundamental element of the way the system works.
Here’s an idea for an obvious fan service storyline for Section 31: Georgiou returns about the time of the events of Picard S3. She infiltrates Sec31 in her classic Terran style with the intention of taking it down from the top. After a season or two of shenanigans, it is revealed in a season finale that Admiral Janeway, War Hero(criminal), is now the head of Sec31…
This would make for a great story to tell about morals, psychology, and the drive for power. Take Catherine Janeway, and make her a villain that mirrors a Terran… Explore Janeway’s moral decline after collaborating with the Borg to wipe out a species. Of course they’d have to throw Captain Seven in there as someone conflicted between loyalty and logic. I can even see in my mind an emotional scene where Janeway, trying to justify her actions, invokes the words of Spock, saying “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, in a dark turn of Nemoy’s classic line.
This is the Star Trek we need today. An anti-hero taking on a fallen saint.
P.S. Paramount, if you need writers, I’m available.
@59/Moose: “P.S. Paramount, if you need writers, I’m available.”
That is not a joke you want to make on the second day of a writers’ strike.
@58 If Starfleet doesn’t need people to get things done, then none of the ships that fought in the Dominion War needed a single crewman aboard them. So why were their crews there? Adventure tourism? If those people weren’t needed to do things in battle, there was no point sending them into battle. If they were needed to do things in battle, Starfleet still needs people in order to get some things done.
By the same argument, if people aren’t needed to get things done, there can no need to ever send an away team into danger.
The whole point of a scarcity-free society is that everyone can have everything they want at no cost to others. That is what scarcity-free means. Consequently, you can’t make a difference to others, because they can have everything they want whether you do anything for them or not. You can be generous only if you have something scarce to be generous with.
That scarce thing might some skill or activity, not a physical object, but if other people can get the benefit of it without cost to yourself, you are no longer able to make a difference to someone by giving them the benefit of that act. A truly post-scarcity society would also be a post-generosity society. There would be nothing left to be generous with. You can’t be generous with anything, if everything is free.
Conversely, if some goods or services remain scarce within the Federation (dilithium crystals, medical skills, the cure-everything particles in Star Trek: Insurrection etc), the one thing we know about their economy is that they do not engage in trade. This is why many people call it communist.
But if you want to say the Federation is neither communist nor capitalist, and that people still need each other, I have no objection. But I will ask how the economy works. Because if someone says that the New World Economy is neither communist nor capitalist but better than either, and they can’t describe how it works, that system does sound pretty utopian.
If you want to say that no one in the Federation ever does anything for anyone except out of the goodness of their hearts, and they are profoundly different people from us, that does sound utopian. But the Federation certainly isn’t scarcity-free, because if it were no one would ever need any help from anyone else.
@61/ad: “If Starfleet doesn’t need people to get things done, then none of the ships that fought in the Dominion War needed a single crewman aboard them. So why were their crews there?”
What are you talking about? The topic was the workings of a scarcity-free economy. You’ve totally changed the subject.
“The whole point of a scarcity-free society is that everyone can have everything they want at no cost to others. That is what scarcity-free means. Consequently, you can’t make a difference to others, because they can have everything they want whether you do anything for them or not.”
Who says the only thing people want or need is material wealth? People want and need other people. Not all work is about material goods; a lot of work is about doing things for other people, to improve their qualities of life. Teachers, doctors, social workers, volunteers for the elderly, artists, entertainers, writers, landscapers, restaurateurs, athletic trainers, you name it. What really matters isn’t stuff, it’s quality of life, and a large part of that comes from people sharing with each other and doing things for each other.
“But the Federation certainly isn’t scarcity-free, because if it were no one would ever need any help from anyone else.”
What dictionary are you using? That’s not what “scarcity” means. It means shortage of resources. A post-scarcity society is one where resources never run out. And other people’s time and creativity and support and kindness are vital resources. You’re talking about existence as if it were a zero-sum game where one person can only gain by taking from another. That’s an incredibly cynical view that’s anathema to Star Trek‘s worldview.