“Inquisition”
Written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle
Directed by Michael Dorn
Season 6, Episode 18
Production episode 40510-542
Original air date: April 8, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Bashir is running around getting himself together before heading out in the morning to present a paper at a medical conference, pausing to heal O’Brien’s latest kayak-induced dislocated shoulder.
The computer wakes Bashir at 0700, though Bashir doesn’t feel as if he’s been asleep that long, and his trip is postponed by a summons to Ops. Starfleet Internal Affairs has shown up, in the person of Deputy Director Luther Sloan, who announces that IA believes there’s a leak on DS9: someone among the senior staff is passing intelligence to the Dominion. The senior staff has all been relieved of duty, and they’re to be confined to quarters until Sloan can interview them. Sloan informs Bashir that Starfleet Medical has already been informed that Bashir won’t be going to Casperia Prime.
Bashir paces his quarters impatiently, frustrated that even his replicator has been turned off. Chandler, one of Sloan’s aides, escorts Bashir to the wardroom to be interviewed by Sloan. The first thing Sloan does is apologize for taking him away from the medical conference, which allows him to segue nicely into the last time he went to a medical conference: he was kidnapped by the Dominion and replaced with a changeling, spending five weeks in a prison camp in the Gamma Quadrant. He then mentions Bashir’s work with “the Jack pack,” talks about how he himself considered becoming a doctor, and then dismisses him—taking a breakfast order from Bashir, since the replicators were taken offline deliberately until the investigation is complete.
Chandler escorts Bashir back to his quarters, and his other aide, Kagan, brings breakfast—except Kagan screwed up and brought Bashir Worf’s meal of gagh.
Bashir starts getting suspicious when he notices that his padds have been put away, and Kukalaka has been knocked onto his side. Then he’s contacted by O’Brien, who breaks protocol to let Bashir know that O’Brien’s own interrogation was entirely about Bashir—Sloan grilled him for two hours about the doctor. Chandler and Kagan then escort Bashir back to the wardroom. Where before Sloan was friendly, had removed his uniform jacket, and was smiling a lot, now he’s in full uniform, nasty, and serious. This time Kagan and Chandler stay in the room, also. Sloan asks about Bashir’s being placed in solitary confinement while imprisoned by the Dominion, wondering if he spoke to any Vorta or Founders. He also questions the convenience of the runabout being right there for him and the other prisoners to escape to, and thinks that the Dominion left it there, along with everything they needed to escape, so that Bashir could work for them as a spy.
Bashir’s denial that he’s a spy is met with a bizarre hypothesis: that Bashir has a complex enough mind that he can compartmentalize contradictory information, what’s called engrammatic dissociation. Sloan claims that the Dominion broke Bashir during his solitary confinement and conditioned his genetically enhanced brain to be a kind of sleeper agent, acting as a spy without Bashir himself knowing it. When Bashir insists that Sloan charge him so he can respond with the benefit of counsel, Sloan gets snottily accusatory, saying Bashir thinks he’s smarter than the millions of brave men and women who’ve died fighting for the Federation, and that he’s going to get answers and lock away whatever’s left of him. Chandler and Kagan then escort Bashir in irons through the Promenade (over the angry objection of Sisko) to a holding cell. Sloan’s people are now in charge of security, with Odo confined to quarters. Chandler and Kagan take shots at Bashir, mentioning friends who died at Tyra, and when Bashir says he lost friends too, Chandler snidely says that all his friends that he lost were Jem’Hadar.
Sisko forces his way into the holding area over Chandler’s objections, requesting ten minutes alone with his officer. The captain tells Bashir that Odo has learned that Sloan’s son was killed by a Jem’Hadar attack, and that maybe Sloan believes Bashir supplied the Dominion with the intelligence necessary to carry that attack out. Sloan himself shows up to verify that that is what he thinks. Sisko points out that there’s a conflict of interest, which Sloan fobs off; Sisko then asks if Sloan has been instructed to relieve Sisko of command. When Sloan admits that he hasn’t, then Sisko makes it clear that he’ll talk to his chief medical officer whenever he damn well pleases and that he’ll sit in on any subsequent interrogations.
In their next interrogation session, Sloan dings Bashir for trying to cure the Jem’Hadar on Bopak III of their dependence of ketracel-white, and again for his giving “the Jack pack” information about the war and for their recommendation that the Federation surrender. Sisko’s objection that Bopak III happened before his allegedly being turned falls on deaf ears, but he also has to admit that he rejected the Jack pack’s recommendations, too. Sloan sees a pattern of behavior that’s impossible to ignore, not to mention the lies he told to conceal his genetic enhancements. Bashir is also forced to admit that he doesn’t know if he’d ever have revealed the truth about being genetically enhanced to Sisko if he hadn’t been found out. Sloan’s badgering has gotten so intense that even Sisko is starting to show doubts.
The next morning, Sloan gives Bashir a choice: sign a confession to being a Dominion spy or be escorted to a maximum security prison for the rest of the war. Bashir makes it abundantly clear that he won’t be picking door #1, so Sloan orders Chandler and Kagan to take him to the shuttle—at which point Bashir is beamed to a Dominion ship, where Weyoun welcomes him home. To Bashir’s shock and disgust, Weyoun is treating him like he really is the Dominion spy Sloan said he was. Now Bashir thinks that Sloan’s the true spy, and he and Weyoun are working together to frame Bashir—
—but he can’t pursue that line of questioning, as Weyoun’s ship is under attack by the Defiant. A Cardassian escorts Bashir to his cell, but then Worf and Kira beam in and shoot the Cardassian, then all three beam to the Defiant. But once he’s on the bridge, everyone is convinced that Bashir’s a traitor. Bashir pleads with everyone that he’s innocent—including O’Brien, who shrugs off Bashir’s friendly hand on his shoulder. Except that shoulder was dislocated—“playing springball,” Bashir says, and O’Brien just replies that it’s better now.
At this point, Bashir realizes that the whole thing is bullshit. At which point the Defiant bridge and crew fade away, replaced by a holodeck occupied by Sloan, who is the only part of the simulation that was real. Sloan has Bashir remove the neural implant that’s been recording his neuroelectric patterns himself. Sloan reads its telemetry, and is satisfied to see that the results are in Bashir’s favor: his loyalty to the Federation is not in doubt. They beamed him out of his quarters only an hour after he went to sleep so he’d been tired and out of sorts, and more susceptible to stress.
Sloan explains that he works for a “low-profile” branch of Starfleet Intelligence called “Section 31.” They seek out and identify threats to the Federation and deal with them quietly. Bashir is appalled, especially when Sloan reveals that they are autonomous with no oversight from anyone. He’s even more appalled to learn that Sloan is trying to recruit Bashir. Sloan thinks he’s a natural, even citing his secret-agent program as proof that he’s intrigued by covert operations. Sloan’s direct response to Bashir’s saying that the ends don’t justify the means is to ask if the patients he’s saved over his career care whether or not Bashir lied to become a doctor.
When Bashir refuses to accept recruitment, Sloan expresses confidence that Bashir will change his mind. He’s also completely unconcerned about Bashir trying to expose S31—which he says right before an aide slams a hypo into Bashir’s neck, and he falls unconscious.
Bashir wakes up on DS9 and immediately fills Sisko, Kira, and Odo in on what happened. Sisko inquired to Starfleet Command, to find that there’s no Luther Sloan in the organization, and, to his consternation, Starfleet neither confirmed nor denied the existence of S31, just said they’d look into it and get back to him. “Sounds like a coverup to me,” Kira says knowingly.
Sisko’s response to all this is to tell Bashir that the next time Sloan asks Bashir to join S31, he needs to say yes. It’s the only way to expose them.
The Sisko is of Bajor: The image of Sisko is actually pretty convincing right up until the scene on the Defiant bridge when he turns against Bashir. But he makes an excellent advocate in the holding cell and in the wardroom.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira is impressed with how well Sloan covered his tracks, as they couldn’t find any trace of a transporter in Bashir’s quarters.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo queries Bashir as to why medical conferences are always held in tropical paradises. He also points out that the other major powers have similar organizations to S31: the Tal Shiar for the Romulans, the Obsidian Order for the Cardassians. (He doesn’t mention the Klingons, though there have been references to their intelligence organization here and there. The tie-in novels have generally referred to it as Imperial Intelligence, as coined by John M. Ford in The Final Reflection.)
Victory is life: Sloan proposes the hilarious notion that Bashir was brainwashed by the Dominion, then provides a convincing facsimile of Weyoun to help support it.
What happens on the holosuite, stays on the holosuite: Virtually the entire episode takes place on a ship’s holodeck (they used the set for Voyager’s holodeck for the final scene between Bashir and Sloan), its verisimilitude aided by Bashir’s stress levels and sleep deprivation (and food deprivation by turning off the replicators and bringing him Worf’s gagh).
Keep your ears open: “So far, your case is based on circumstantial evidence and speculation.”
“What other kind of case can I make against a man who covers his tracks so well?”
“That’s a circular argument and you know it!”
The image of Sisko arguing with Sloan—who programmed the image of Sisko, so he’s basically arguing with himself. And losing.
Welcome aboard: The big guest is, of course, the magnificent William Sadler as Sloan, a role he’ll return to in “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” and “Extreme Measures.” Jeffrey Combs is also back as the image of Weyoun, while Samantha Mudd and Benjamin Brown are painfully wooden as Sloan’s holographic aides.
Trivial matters: This episode introduces the shadowy Section 31 organization, which has been a controversial addition to the Star Trek universe. S31 will recur throughout the remainder of DS9, and also play a role in Enterprise, primarily through Reed and his handler Harris, and Star Trek Into Darkness.
S31 has been used in numerous bits of tie-in fiction, most notably the Section 31 miniseries in 2001, which covered the original series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager. The original series novel Cloak by S.D. Perry established that S31 was behind the mission in “The Enterprise Incident,” and also that Admiral Cartwright (who was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI) was part of the organization. The DS9 novel Abyss by David Weddle & Jeffrey Lang established that S31 was behind Admiral Daugherty’s mission in Star Trek Insurrection. The TNG novel Rogue had S31 trying to recruit Hawk, the Enterprise conn officer from First Contact. The Voyager novel Shadow by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch establishes that the unnamed crewmember who died on the bridge of Voyager in the episode “Scientific Method” was in fact an S31 mole, originally placed on the ship by Sloan to gather intelligence on the Maquis.
S31 has appeared in many other tie-in works, among them the Enterprise novels The Good that Men Do and Kobayashi Maru by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, the current run of IDW Star Trek comics, your humble rewatcher’s Articles of the Federation, the miniseries A Time to… and The Fall, and the brand-new release Section 31: Disavowed by David Mack.
The medical conference Bashir was going to is on Casperia Prime—the same location Dax suggested for her and Worf’s honeymoon in “Change of Heart.”
O’Brien’s propensity for dislocating his shoulder while kayaking was first seen in TNG’s “Transfigurations,” and has been referenced many times since on DS9.
Bashir’s being kidnapped while en route to a medical conference and imprisoned by the Dominion was established in “In Purgatory’s Shadow.” He was revealed to be genetically enhanced in “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” and worked with other genetically enhanced folk in “Statistical Probabilities.” He and the others escaped imprisonment to the conveniently-left-behind runabout in “By Inferno’s Light”—and Sloan’s disparagement of that convenience was an amusing lampshading of that particular plot point, which many fans had derided as implausible in much the same way Sloan does.
The battle at Tyra, where the Federation suffered considerable losses, occurred in “A Time to Stand.” Bashir tried to cure the Jem’Hadar of their dependence on ketracel-white in “Hippocratic Oath.” Bashir’s interest in playing spy on the holosuite was established in “Our Man Bashir.”
Walk with the Prophets: “The ends don’t always justify the means.” Am I the only one who sees the title to this episode and immediately has the song about the Spanish Inquisition from the Mel Brooks movie History of the World, Part 1 going through his head? (“Let’s face it—you can’t Torquemada anything!”) Just me? Okay, moving on…
I have a hard time figuring out how I feel about this episode, partly because I think the introduction of Section 31 was one of the great missteps of DS9. One of Ira Steven Behr’s oft-stated goals on DS9 was to challenge the Federation’s utopia, but this failed to work because it didn’t challenge the utopia, it just provided a too-handy scapegoat for non-utopian actions by the Federation. Indeed, S31 has far too often become a writer’s crutch, a way to work around the ideal society of the Federation for the ease of storytelling.
Also, I seriously have an issue with all-powerful shadow organizations that have virtual super-powers in order to keep their existence a secret because they frankly strain credulity. People are too fallible for such perfectly competent individuals to exist without ever screwing up once. S31’s infallibility frankly irritates the crap out of me—seen here in their having taken Bashir without leaving a single scrap of evidence behind. Supposedly they always get it right and always get what they want, but what if they’re wrong? What if they get bad intel? What if they work off false information?
Anyhow, most of that is stuff that happens after this episode, which is—all by itself—quite a well-put-together little story. I remember watching it the first time and not having any idea that the whole thing was a holodeck simulation; watching it now, you can see some subtle hints that it’s not real, mostly starting with the simply dreadful performances by Chandler and Kagan, who—it becomes clear at the end—aren’t real people, and aren’t based on real ones, either. The non-Bashir roles are all small enough so that you don’t really notice how off they are—except Sisko, who becomes less convincing as time goes on, as the programmed character acts more like someone trying to help gaslight Bashir.
Best of all is that Sloan actually makes some good arguments. Bashir’s behavior can be viewed as suspect, especially when taken in toto. I especially like the fact that they copped to the absurdity of the runabout just sitting there in orbit in “By Inferno’s Light” and used it to help make the plot work better.
Credit to scripters Bradley Thompson and David Weddle (whose body of work on DS9 could charitably be called uneven), director Michael Dorn, and Alexander Siddig and William Sadler, providing what is mostly a two-person play between Sloan and Bashir, and the two actors in particular knock it out of the park. Sadler especially deserves credit for all the different modes he shows Sloan in, from bland bureaucrat to friendly questioner to nasty interrogator to true believer.
Like “The Assignment,” another Thompson/Weddle script, this one loses points for establishing something that brings the whole series down, but it’s also nowhere as dumb as that episode was.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido is really really tired after a long, but successful New York Comic-Con.
I think it all boils down to maintaining the perfect image for outsiders. If the Federation is supposed to be advertised as a paradise, then Section 31 has to take extra steps to keep themselves as covert as they can possibly be, otherwise it would spoil the whole magic.
I don’t think they’re necessarily infallible, let alone presented as such (as Sloan would prove in Extreme Measures, by being stupid enough to actually go to DS9), but they have to sell that idea to people like Bashir. If you believe a threat is this perfect to the point of it being beyond conquering, you lose any faith and hope in hoping to overcome it.
You gotta hand it to Ira Behr though. He knows how to pick the best actors for these roles. William Sadler is a godsend.
If there was a misstep in using Section 31, it was in Star Trek into Darkness. Admiral Marcus was enough of a hardheaded nationalist that it really wasn’t necessary to shove S31 into the mix.
One of Ira Steven Behr’s oft-stated goals on DS9 was to challenge the Federation’s utopia, but this failed to work because it didn’t challenge the utopia, it just provided a too-handy scapegoat for non-utopian actions by the Federation.
You can only challenge the utopia so far. Rick Berman was still protecting a lot of Roddenberry’s notions at the time. It took a lot of convincing to even include a cloaking device on the Defiant. Section 31 was always going to be an uphill battle.
I think the real problem is there were only 30-odd episodes remaining. Not nearly enough time to cover Section 31 and really turn the Federation upside-down in any shape or form. This should have been done as early as season 4. Ira took thaa chance too late in the show’s run to really deal with possible ramifications to Gene’s universe (obviously, Voyager wasn’t even going to touch the issue).
“Am I the only one who sees the title to this episode and immediately has the song about the Spanish Inquisition from the Mel Brooks movie History of the Word, Part 1 going through his head?”
No. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Only knowing S31 through DS9, I rather liked it’s inclusion. This particular episode is very well done, and my memories of the other eps is generally fair. But I agree that it was introduced too late and it became one of the hanging threads when the show ended. The time to introduce them was probably during Admiral Leyton’s attempted coup. At least hint at them there and do a little more over the intervening period.
I’d lend some credit, too, to Michael Dorn – this is only his second time in a director’s chair, following the outstanding season 5 episode “In the Cards.”
Let’s all pretend I saw the credit given to Dorn in the penultimate paragraph, okay? :)
Not a fan of Section 31 in general but Sloan in black leather was kinda hot. ;)
I kind of like the notion that there’s a semi-rogue branch of Starfleet Intelligence that doesn’t answer to anyone external … and that generally has good intentions (but believes the ends justify the means).
I’m not such a fan, though, of their hyper-competency (as demonstrated by the fact that their very existence is a well-kept secret). Nor the way they basically take over ALL of Starfleet Intelligence once they’re introduced — shouldn’t the non-rogue portion of Intelligence still do things sometimes? And finally, it would be nice if S31 occasionally did good things too, becoming more morally gray rather than antagonistically amoral. (Maybe they do this in the tie-in fiction. But on-screen, S31 are always effectively the “bad guys.” Which is boring, although perhaps realistic for such a clandestine branch.)
As for Star Trek: Into Darkness … I just figured S31 is a lot less secretive and tricky in the Abramsverse, more of a straight-up terrorist organization, and chalked it up to one of the innumerable stupid differences that disqualify the Abramsverse from counting as Trek.
The only thing that bothered me in the this episode (setting aisde how overused S31 became later on) was there was on obvious defense to Bashir trying to help the Jem’Hadar soldiers in “Hippocratic Oath”. Namely, that the leader of the Jem’Hadar he was working with was doubting his loyalty to the Founders and the Dominion, and he was hoping that working with them would lead to undermining the Dominion’s strength, pehaps even a civil war or Jem’Hadar led rebellion.
Also, I seriously have an issue with all-powerful shadow organizations that have virtual super-powers in order to keep their existence a secret because they frankly strain credulity.
Unless you live near Ft. Meade…
@7 says “And finally, it would be nice if S31 occasionally did good things too,becoming more morally gray rather than antagonistically amoral.”
This. That’s what is missing from the S31 element in the various stories. If we were shown (or told about) S31 having taken actions that only it could do, but were the RIGHT thing to do, actions where the ends inarguably justified the means, it would have allowed the writers to better expore the tensions between freedom and security. I also think it would have been better had they portrayed S31 as understanding that evil actions, even when justified and necessary, are still evil. More of a “we do this not because we want to do it, but because someone has to take the burden and sacrifice” than the “we know what’s best for the masses” true believer. I’m not sure they could have pulled it off, but it would have been nice to see them try.
I’m with you, Keith — I hate the fact that Section 31 was added to the Trek universe. All my life, the optimism of Trek’s vision of the future has been a source of solace and reassurance for me, and seeing Starfleet polluted by a criminal organization in its midst just offends me — especially in later episodes that start to hint that maybe S31 actually deserves to exist or is a necessary evil.
Let’s get this out there up front: The argument that sometimes dirty tricks are necessary for the greater good is just an excuse for committing dirty tricks. History shows that it doesn’t really work that way. When the CIA helped the Ba’ath party stage a successful coup in Iraq in 1963, overthrowing the pro-Soviet government there, it led to the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, who became an enemy of the US. When the CIA later overthrew a democratically elected reformist president in Iran and restored the brutal, dictatorial Shah to power because he was anti-communist, it prompted a backlash that led to the Iranian Revolution and put a vehemently anti-American government in power. And when the CIA backed Muslim insurgents in Afghanistan against the Soviets, they provided training and support to a fellow named Osama bin Laden and basically laid the foundations for al Qaeda. Making deals with devils and embracing unethical tactics in the name of national security does more to hurt national security in the long run than to help it.
And at least the CIA is a legitimate government arm that’s answerable to the people’s representatives. Section 31 doesn’t have even that much accountability. That’s the problem with Odo’s analogy to the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar, both of which are official government agencies. S31 is a rogue group answerable to no one, and with no checks on its ethics, there’s nothing to stop it from doing things that the people of the Federation would never tolerate being done in their defense. A group like that would eventually become more concerned with preserving its own secrecy and justifying its own existence and tactics than it would be with keeping the peace. The members of S31 aren’t patriots, they’re organized criminals operating within Starfleet and corrupting its activities. I wish they’d never been introduced to the franchise, and I wish they hadn’t become so popular with fans.
At least the books have treated them as the criminal organization that they are, not romanticizing them as some kind of necessary thing. Still, Keith is right: It makes no sense that any conspiracy could be both so large and so successfully secretive. You can’t keep secrets in government unless everyone agrees they should be kept, because there are too many political rivalries, too many new officeholders wanting to make their name by cleaning up the corruption of their predecessors — and, in a free society, too many journalists eager for a career-making story. Maybe it’s a little easier in the military, where things are more regulated, but Starfleet has historically been a pretty loose and open military with relaxed discipline and chains of command.
Of course, in my Rise of the Federation novels I’m writing about the 22nd-century version of Section 31 as a legacy I inherited from the previous writers in the Enterprise novel series, but I wish that S31 hadn’t been established as a group that had existed for over two centuries, because it makes no damn sense. No conspiracy could be kept secret for that long. This is one of the most implausible bits that Weddle & Thompson introduced. If S31 had been a newly formed conspiracy that was just Sloan and a few others, a response to the Dominion threat, then it would’ve made sense. But making it this X-Filesy shadow cabal that had been around since the dawn of Starfleet was just a bad idea. To me, the only way S31 makes sense is if it’s rarely active — if it spends most of its time dormant and only emerges during times of great crisis. Or if it’s actually a succession of separate conspiracies generations apart, using the same name.
As for the episode itself, I find it forgettable. It gives us all this tense drama about Sloan having a personal vendetta against Bashir due to his losses in the war, and then reveals that none of it actually happened, rendering it all completely pointless and hollow. It’s basically a waste of an hour. Sadler is good, but he deserved a better storyline to be a part of.
I’ve got a variety of contradictary thoughts on this, most of which echo what others have already said.
1. I loved S31 when I first watched it, then started reading John LeCarre novels (which completely ruined 99% off all spy dramas for me). I know it was a product of its time, but I can’t help but think S31 was too much X-Files, and not enough George Smiley. (some of the later stories work out better, but I’ll save the commentary for later).
2. The hardest thing about any spy drama is that by its very nature, it depends on revealing as little as possible – but if you hide too much, the result often feels like a Deus Ex Macchina (everything was a part of the secret plot from the beginning, and it all fell into place perfectly!).
3. The combination of #1 and #2 above is that the whole organization just feels a little too sterile and omnipotent. I get that it’s supposed to be a real-world shadow of the Federation’s sparkly idealism – and greatly prefer that to the completely overdone mirror universe – but it still feels shallow instead of terrifying.
4. There is a wider phenomenon issue in speculative fiction, but I feel that authors often overlook the real implications of espionage and security in a universe where shapeshifting, possession, brainwashing, cloning, etc. not only happen, but seem to happen all the friggin’ time. Instead of thinking, “Wow, they’re paranoid”, I inevitably end up with at least some level of sympathy for the supposedly paranoid and fascist inquisitors. It’s like watching regular beat cops deal with a supervillain – they’re bound to crack a little bit.
5. For that matter, after 200 years of dealing with this kind of crap, why doesn’t the Federation have police code for things like “Entire bridge staff being is possessed by alien entity”, or “Commanding officer replaced by evil duplicate”. There ought to be protocols for these things by now. In one of the Dresden Files books, there’s a moment where Harry says something along the lines of “Sorry, I’m having a really bad shapeshifter day”, and the other person just nods sympathetically. I couldn’t stop laughing when I read that.
6. If you’re going to have a S31, you have to sustain the paranoia instead of just bringing them back every so many episodes. Every cast member should be agonizing over questions of infiltration or manipulation, as well as constant worries that S31 might actually be right. Like others have said, to be truly ambiguous (rather than a supervillain league), not only should S31 actually do some good on occasion, but Starfleet has to on occasion be shown to be weak, politicized, or incompetent enough to justify their actions.
7. Several later episodes really involved things that should have at least mentioned S31 – particularly In the Pale Moonlight.
8. As much as I loved the overarching Dominion War arc, I can’t help but wonder how it would have turned out if it was instead written as a cold war fought through proxies and deception rather than total warfare. That probably would have been impossible to write given their constraints, though – they were already pushing the envelope for serialization at the time.
totally misunderstood this when I watched it – I thought only the part from them beaming him to the “dominion ship” took place in a holodeck. hm…guess this way it makes more sense.
I don’t mind Sector 31 perhaps as much as KRAD and CLB, because to me it makes the Federation a little more gritty and “real.” I like the fact that our main characters are (for different reasons) opposed to S31, which I think speaks well for the Star Trek future- the fact that there isn’t anyone besides those who are in S31 who really support them. That and it’s somewhat impressive that in the 1990’s, Star Trek writers created a shadowy intelligence culture ahead of both Post-9/11 events and the pop culture trend (yes, I know that shadowy intelligence had already appeared in shows like the X-Files earlier, but that was ahead of the curve too).
I agree with CLB that there is no way S31 is a continuous organization. Rather I figure it is sort of a “secret society” that probably regularly exists in the mainstream fleet and intelligence and is brought into play during crisis situations. When it isn’t a crisis situation, S31 is played off as a urban legend- kind of like “Skull and Bones” and during a crisis, desperation masks their activities. And then every once in a while, they go off the reservation and muck things up, like the CIA has been known to do. If you figure that 90% of what the CIA factors in as a legitimate intelligence operation (the way Starfleet Intelligence is) then the other 10% is the more disgusting and debatable stuff.
Which leads me to a random question: Was the Gorkon assasination in Star Trek VI a Sector 31 operation when they were going off the reservation?
Back to the episode- I don’t think as poorly on this as our reviewer does (Sorry KRAD) because I think it fits in with the general question of the series “Is the Federation the paradise we think it is?” and the answer is no. However, we see our main characters, Picard, Riker, Sisko, Worf, etc all seem to refute the darker, seedier sides of the Federation, which suggests to me that while the Federation isn’t paradise, it *is* a work in progress that is moving in the right direction.
Not double posting but @12… I see some parallels between the Dominion War and fear that anyone might be a shapeshifter and modern day terrorism fears. If you catch a terrorist, it only fuels the fear that their are more terrorists lurking about. Then again, if you don’t catch a terrorist, it can fuel the fears that there is a terrorist about to do something and you have to look harder. Enter a group like Sector 31 (or the current intelligence apparatus) which says that they can take care of the threat and you can go back to your regular lives with your holodeck fantasies (we’re 2 episodes away from Vic Fontaine) and not worry about things like paranoia and is Sector 31. Even our DS9 hero’s don’t want to think about that all the time (besides, it would be a very very dark series for the viewer if they did). How much of them existing in the shadows is Sector 31 being powerful and secretive, and how much of it is that people don’t want to know what keeps the monsters at bay?
I just like the fact that a absolutely completely top secret covert organisation has a sinister uniform. As Calvin says (iirc) ‘You can always tell a great spy by his cool logo.’
I’ll give DS9 this: at least they made a larger effort to depict humanity with different perspectives. The Maquis and Section 31 weren’t that all that great for Star Trek’s optimistic image, and maybe that’s the point. One of the failings, I think, of Roddenberry’s future is that while humans have largely shed their old bad habits it also makes them look like one big bland group of utopian robots. Even cult like. And the DS9 writers’ attempt to spice things up with Section 31 seems like a natural reaction to that.
Maybe if Gene hadn’t let his “vision” go to his head and polluted the first season of his rebooted TV franchise back in ’87 with a lot of evolved human posturing, then maybe Section 31 would’ve never happened. We’ll never know.
I don’t think it was so much the writers protecting the Federation’s utopia as it was the Federation protecting it. I found their “neither confirm nor deny” answer to Sisko as confirmation that S31 was legit. And remember, in the next episode they are in, they are ordering an admiral around, which tells me that their orders are from higher up the food chain. The Federation just doesn’t want it getting out because they are supposed to be above this sort of thing.
@14: The novels have established that Admiral Cartwright was affiliated with S31, as was Admiral Dougherty from Insurrection. Personally, though, I resist the tendency to retcon S31 as being responsible for every single morally questionable act in Starfleet history, because it worsens the problematical conceit of the vast, all-encompassing conspiracy that somehow manages to go completely undetected.
@15: As I said, though, I reject the premise that “keeping the monsters at bay” is something that genuinely does require unethical acts that people don’t want to have to know about. As I said, history shows that when a government engages in unethical acts like backing criminals and strongmen and helping to overthrow democratically elected leaders, it makes things worse in ways that come back to bite that government and endanger its security rather than protecting it. In short, if you keep the monsters at bay by unleashing more effective monsters, then ultimately those monsters will turn on you, and you’ll have made things worse rather than better. The means inform the end. You can’t do good by doing evil, because that evil doesn’t just go away when it’s served its purpose. That’s not blind idealism, it’s the lesson of history.
@16 – I think Archer put it best (paraPHRASING!):
I don’t think the utopia itself was the problem, and I do think that attempts to crack the utopia tended not to come off very well, because they were trying to solve a problem that didn’t really exist. The Maquis wasn’t great. Section 31 wasn’t great.
To my mind, the Federation as utopia is an irreplaceable part of the future that Star Trek gives us.
The problem with the Utopia isn’t that it’s too perfect, really. It’s that it’s ethnocentric. It’s not a representation of a perfect Earth. It’s a representation of a big, beautiful America. That big, beautiful America should be a part of the Federation, but it shouldn’t BE the Federation.
Cracking the utopia, in some ways, cracks Star Trek. Which is why I think these storylines fall.
@19
More importantly, it cheapens the sins that characters like Cartwright and Dougherty have committed. This is particularly true of Cartwright, who truly believed Klingons to be alien trash worthy of being brought to their knees (and he voiced that opinion on an open council). Retconning him with Section 31 removes a lot of that conviction and character development.
#21
Yes, not the utopia itself but rather how it was depicted. All that early TNG stuff with Picard and others going on about how backward we were in the 20th century and how much more evolved they were in the 24th. Their hearts were in the right place, but it came off as smug and elitist.
And by the time DS9 came around the pendulum was swinging the other way. Section 31 was an overcompensation, trying too hard to make DS9 differ from its predecessor. But it’s understandable. Much like this exaggerated nonsense of Walt Disney being the most horrible person who ever lived that keeps popping up. It’s a natural reaction to the super clean image the Disney corporation enforces with an iron hand.
How is that supposed to work, exactly? What use is an intelligence agency that doesn’t pass it’s intelligence on to anyone – and how can it operate without resources given to it by it’s parent government?
To give a real world parallel, during WW2 Britain’s Special Operations Executive was secret to the point that many allied governments dealt with it for years without ever knowing it existed. (It had used a bunch of assumed names.) Nevertheless, the British Government certainly knew it existed, that it was funding it, that it reported to the Joint Intelligence Committee, what policies it was required to implement, that it was training it’s American opposite numbers, and so on. It was just as much an arm of the state as the RAF or the Navy.
BTW – Why is Sisko so horrified by the idea of people running covert operations without oversight? Isn’t that what he did himself during In the Pale Moonlight? And in Apocalypse Rising? If it is OK for the DS9 bridge crew to do this sort of thing, what is wrong with Section 31 doing it?
Other than the fact that the bridge crew are central characters and S31 is not, of course.
@24: But that’s just it. That’s why Odo’s (and many fans’) analogy with the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar is wrong. Section 31 may be a group within Starfleet Intelligence, but it isn’t an intelligence agency — it’s a criminal conspiracy. It’s a small cabal of people who abuse their power and resources to take matters of security into their own hands and carry out illegal rogue activities.
As for “Apocalypse Rising,” Sisko’s infiltration team went in under Starfleet orders, so no, he wasn’t acting without oversight. And “In the Pale Moonlight” hasn’t happened yet; it’s the next episode after this (which is really bad timing, because it just underlines how much clunkier this episode was in its attempt to explore similar themes).
@25: Is it a criminal conspiracy if it is in fact authorized by a duly ratified secret section of the original Federation charter?
This review makes me sadder that we’re not going forward through Voyager here; in particular there are some structural parallels with the Conspracy theory episode of that series reminded me of things that I wish were going to get talked about here eventually…
@26: I dispute “in fact.” As Harris said in ENT: “Divergence,” “Reread the Charter, Article 14, Section 31. There are a few lines that make allowances for bending the rules during times of extraordinary threat.” That’s not a secret section, just one that’s phrased loosely and ambiguously enough to give the group an excuse for running a rogue agency answerable to no one. Saying that the rules can be bent is not the same as officially endorsing the creation of an entire organization whose entire purpose is to break the rules. It’s just a loophole that S31 has exploited to justify its existence.
And who says they aren’t doing Voyager?
If you create a group that can bend the rules during times of emergency, they will quickly see to it that you never live in anything except an emergency. Some people in the group will do it for the thrill of power, because some people just love being able to spit in someone elses facce, and others will do it just for the job security. Section 31 would be no different from our current alphabet agencies, engineering a constant emergency. Although, S31 probably has it a bit more difficult with a lot more public resistance to their existance than our current public.
What makes them different from Sisko? Sisko didn’t intentionally set out to covertly kill people and actually did act like it had been a difficult choice with consequences that did leave him wracked with guilt, even if he did drink it away. That is very different from the people who recite “desperate times…” or “hard choice to make” or other perfunctory phrases just as a pro-forma to wreaking havoc and death and not having it ever seem like it touches them (or even enjoying it). Sisko knows he failed the Federation, even if he might have contributed to saving it.
Excellently put. It would be one thing to have Starfleet or SI make rare, occasional exceptions in dire emergencies, but if there’s an actual organization created with that goal, then of course they’d need to contrive reasons to justify their continued existence. Especially if they have no checks on their power and no one to answer to but themselves.
@27: They said so when the Tribble Week Flashback review appeared.
At any rate, these have to be different section 31s being referred to, since ENT is entirely before the formation of the Federation; while that era’s S31 is more likely to be a criminal conspiracy the ‘modern’ one may have a much stronger claim to legality
@27, Continued: although the idea of basing S31 on a clause like that is amusing. Has anyone written fiction about an elite, off-the-books Canadian intelligence organization that calls itself “Notwithstanding”?
@30: No, they just said that Keith wasn’t planning to do the VGR Rewatch. Tor.com will probably just hire someone else to do that and ENT.
And I see S31’s evolution in entirely the opposite way from what you propose. I believe that S31 started out with the benevolent intention of protecting the Federation, as implied in the Charter. But where there is power without oversight or answerability, corruption is inevitable. As Random22 said, an organization whose sole purpose is to break the rules will start making up excuses to break more rules in order to justify its continued existence. Eventually its priorities would shift from protecting the Federation at all costs to protecting its own existence and secrecy at all costs.
So it’s only at the beginning that S31 could plausibly be seen as an ethically defensible, well-intentioned organization. The longer it’s allowed to exist, the more entrenched its corruption would become.
Not to mention the fundamental contradiction in saying that a group with the specific purpose of acting extralegally has a claim to legality. Breaking the rules is its only rule, by definition. There’s no way an institution like that could possibly become more ethical over time.
I nominate Christopher L Bennett!
I was really hoping to see Keith’s take on Voyager…
— Michael A. Burstein
I was looking forward to the commentary on this one and it didn’t dissapoint :) This was one of the episodes my husband (when we were dating) showed me years ago…I think along with In the Pale Moonlight, because I had to two conflated in my head. I was sure S31 was involved in the death of the Romulan.
Anyway…on the surface, yeah, shadowy secret organization working for the greater good sounds like it’s cool. And you kind of WANT to root for them and that they really will be good and protect us. But as others have pointed out, that’s not how history, human nature, etc work.
Am I the only one that thought it odd that this ultra-secret shadow cabal had no problem whatsoever with Bashir just running back to DS9 and telling whoever he wanted about them? Which, of course, is exactly what he did. Nonsense, I say. Reeks of sharks.
I never considered Sisko to be easily susceptible to doubting the loyalty of one of his officers. What a rube.
JohnC @@@@@ 37 – As pointed out by Keith in the recap, nothing that happened before the coda was real. Sisko wasn’t doubting the loyalty of his officer. The holographic Sisko that Sloane concocted for this ruse was doubting him. Not the same thing.
JohnC: Yes, JamesP is correct, that wasn’t actually Sisko.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So I’m the rube. I hate it when that happens. :(
The one thing that never made sense in this episode is the timing of the brainwashed Bashir accusation.
The logic of the Dominion spy plan doesn’t work. Bashir being released from the prison lead to the direct realistion of the DS9 Bashir being a changeling, and the failure of the plan to destroy the Bajoran sun which would’ve also destroyed the Klingon, Romulan, and Federation ships around DS9, DS9 itself, and the whole Bajor system, possibly including the Wormhole.
Worst of all from the perspective of the Dominion, if they had actually released Bashir as part of a spying plan, it directly lead to the death of a Founder.
I have an insatiable craving for hot buttered scones, jam, and tea – pretty much all the time, but especially now.
I love the idea of Section 31. How does an institution like the Federation survive without someone doing the dirty work? They like to pretend it doesn’t exist so they don’t have to dwell on what it takes to keep the Federation as a shiny, gleaming example of enlightenment.
@43/David Sim: I presented my refutation of that idea way back in comment #11.
I don’t know ChristopherLBennett. I kinda like the idea that Section 31 has been doing the Federation’s dirty work since the very beginning, rather than just something that grew out of Starfleet’s desperation during a time of war.
@45/David Sim: And I’m profoundly disgusted by that idea, since it’s a slap in the face of everything that Star Trek stands for and that has made it meaningful to me for 45 years. It’s also making the common mistake of confusing Section 31, a criminal conspiracy, with Starfleet Intelligence, an actual intelligence agency. You might as well say you like the idea of the United States having been protected since its founding by the mob, or by the Rittenhouse conspiracy that’s the villain on NBC’s Timeless.
DS9 is the dark horse of the Star Trek stable. If you’re a purist, you will probably hate this show. But if you’re mind is open to exploring its dark corners and alleys, you will find much to admire here.
@47/David Sim: That’s very poetic, but also rather nebulous, especially compared to the very specific point comment #46 makes. IMO the message that every “shiny, gleaming example of enlightenment” has to have a dark secret shows not so much an open mind as lack of imagination.
I liked the first seasons of DS9 a lot, but I stopped watching after “Homefront” failed to distinguish between a head of state and a democratic government, the US, Earth, and the Federation, and the US Army and Starfleet security. It felt implausible and sloppy. So I’ve never met “Section 31”, but it sounds even worse. I mean, a century-old conspiracy? Seriously?
@47/David Sim: If you’d read my comments throughout this rewatch series, you’d know that I find plenty to admire in DS9 as a whole. But I find David Weddle & Bradley Thompson’s two main contributions to the mythos, Section 31 and the Pah-wraiths, to be among DS9’s weakest and most frustrating aspects. DS9 was successful at exploring the “darker” side of the Trek universe, yes. It did that with the Maquis, with the Dominion War, with Leyton’s coup attempt, with “In the Pale Moonlight.” But Section 31 took it a step too far.
Although at least the show itself had the sense to portray S31 as basically wrong, a corruption of the Federation’s principles. They may have come off as a necessary evil in “Inter Arma…,” but the closing arc of the series made it clear that they were genocidal villains who had to be stopped, and it was stopping them, saving the Founders from S31’s evil, that ended the war. So the overall story arc was basically true to Star Trek‘s values. That’s why I find it bewildering and horrific when some fans actually talk as if they admire Section 31, as if they’ve misread the show so badly as to see S31 as the heroes. That’s just trampling all over Star Trek‘s positive message in order to impose their own petty cynicism.
Lockdown rewatch. I have to say I am surprised that people didn’t guess this wasn’t real the first time around, as soon as Bashir wakes up and double checks the time alarm bells rang (no pun intended) that he hadn’t been asleep for a full night, also the lack of a Sisko Station log and no scenes without Bashir in them so after about 10 minutes in I guessed this was either some sort of Holodeck or Bashir was having his mind tampered with. I was expecting it to be some sort of Dominion plot so the Section 31 plot I didn’t see coming, I don’t have the problem with the existence of Section 31 that some have but no one should even think for a minute they are the good guys here, their behaviour is reprehensible from now until the end of the series.
I wish Chandler and (Joey, tee-hee!) Kagan had been real as well and were in that Holodeck scene with Sloan instead of the two anonymous heavies, because then we would have seen two other agents of Section 31 at work. And if we needed any further convincing that S31 is evil, all of its members dress in black.
@19 CLB:
In short, if you keep the monsters at bay by unleashing more effective monsters, then ultimately those monsters will turn on you, and you’ll have made things worse rather than better. The means inform the end. You can’t do good by doing evil, because that evil doesn’t just go away when it’s served its purpose.
I’m reminded of my time living on Oahu, when I learned that ships in the 19th century accidentally introduced rats to the island, and they wrecked the ecosystem. Snakes were brought in, and they eliminated the rats but became a nuisance themselves. Mongooses were introduced to deal with the snakes, and when I lived there in the 1990s there was a mongoose problem.
It was interesting to re-watch this episode in 2021, after the second season of Discovery and while we all await the impending Section 31 TV series. I think I pretty much agree with all the misgivings about Section 31 as a concept that CLB has expressed in this thread, and given that (and given what happened in Season 2 of Disco), I’m wondering how a whole series premised on Section 31 being the “good guys” could ever work.
Has there ever been a similar TV series in the past? Was the IMF from Mission: Impossible (the series, not the movies) at all like Section 31?
@35 Lisamarie:
I had to two conflated in my head. I was sure S31 was involved in the death of the Romulan.
But that memory was faaaaaake!
@52/terracinque: “Was the IMF from Mission: Impossible (the series, not the movies) at all like Section 31?”
Hmm, maybe superficially, but not really. Sure, the IMF was theoretically an unofficial, independent group that the government could deny knowledge of while they engaged in legally and ethically iffy missions in the name of national and global security. But the IMF was really working for “the Secretary” (I would assume Defense), assigned its missions by the government and just maintaining distance for the sake of deniability. And while the IMF often broke the law in other countries, committing elaborate heists and con games and the like, they were more respectful of US law and operated under clearly defined guidelines from their superiors. (The Voice on Tape established in the pilot that they weren’t allowed to commit assassinations, which was why they used more elaborate con games to eliminate enemy threats, even though that often entailed maneuvering them into situations where they would be killed by their own devices or executed by their own countrymen.) So they weren’t like Section 31, which uses Federation security as an excuse to ignore Federation law and authority.
Oh, and also: Section 31 operatives are within Starfleet. They’re Starfleet personnel choosing to violate Starfleet regulations and Federation law, a conspiracy within the system. In the series, IMF agents were civilians. The pilot gave the impression that Dan Briggs (the original lead) was a retired CIA agent brought unofficially back into the fold to organize a garage-band black-ops team of talented amateurs. Besides Briggs or Phelps, the other team members were professionals in their own fields — a master illusionist, a master engineer, a supermodel, a circus strongman, etc. — who agreed to take a break from their regular work to do their bit for national security (though once the series settled in on a single fixed team every week, they inevitably felt more like full-time agents). So they weren’t as subversive within their own government as Section 31 is.
Indeed, despite the original conceit of deniability, the IMF was often shown cooperating with police and government agencies in the US. Indeed, in the last two seasons, they shifted focus from international intrigue to fighting organized crime in the US, working so routinely and openly with law enforcement that there was no longer any reason to perpetuate the trope of the secret taped message drops in the opening, beyond tradition.
@53 – I laughed :)
@55 Lisamarie
I’m glad I can pay dividends on your seven years old investment in words!
I agree that introducing Sec. 31 was a bad idea, and now they’re maybe getting their own TV series, which must thrill CLB.
This bit of dialogue at the end of the episode:
BASHIR: When push comes to shove, are we willing to sacrifice our principles in order to survive?
SISKO: I wish I had an answer for you, Doctor.
is pretty much the best example of a TV series foreshadowing the next episode (intentionally or otherwise) in the history of ever. Be careful what you wish for, Benjamin.
I confess that I thought that Section 31 was a neat idea when this episode came out, but in my defence, I was ten years old and a fan of the X-Files. My opinion has since soured on them. Partially this because each subsequent appearance has depicted them ever less as a bunch of criminals and ever more as a bunch of cool black-ops superspies; but to a greater extent, it’s because the real-life context of such conspiracy theories has changed to the point that I can’t hear Section 31’s canonical backstory without it sounding like some Alex Jones InfoWars bullshit. How do you keep a conspiracy like thus running for two centuries without anyone letting on?
So, am I the only one who noticed the “glitch in the matrix” from early in the episode?
Bashir is summoned to be interviewed by Sloan for the first time. Just before Chandler arrives, he accidentally jostles his padd and knocks the pen on the floor so it rolls under a chair. As he’s kneeling on the floor and feeling around for it, the pen fades away, just as an artifact on the holodeck does when the program replaces or removes it. He doesn’t get to keep feeling for it because of Chandler’s arrival. When he comes back after and feels around again, this time the pen is there, but he doesn’t consider it any further because he noticed Kukalaka has been knocked over.
While I didn’t put two and two together about the suspiciously short time he was sleeping before being summoned at the start of the episode, this bit was what clued me in that something wasn’t right. It’s very subtle though, so I guess I’m not surprised no one else saw it.