Star Trek: Section 31 is about the most dangerous idea in the Trek canon
Star Trek: Section 31Paramount Plus’ first foray into feature-length Star Trek films only needs to do one thing to succeed. Starring Michelle Yeoh Star Trek: Discovery spin-off follows Philippa Georgiou, former emperor of a morally inverted parallel universein her work with Starfleet’s infamous Section 31, a centuries-old space CIA that operates without the knowledge or consent of Federation leaders.
Overall, I don’t need much Section 31. I’m a Star Trek fan who will always find the series space a bit of a failure. It’s healthy to give your favorites the space to play aggressive middle every now and then.
But I have to draw the line here, no further. Section 31 has to explain how the idea of Section 31 doesn’t break the entire concept of Star Trek from top to bottom.
The spy who ran away from Omelas
First introduced in the later seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and revisited in the prequel show Star Trek: Enterprise and the early prequel seasons of Star Trek: DiscoverySection 31 claims to have been created and authorized by the original Starfleet Charter, a nice touch of Space Masonic paranoia.
What is Article 31? It is simply an off-the-book spy organization that may or may not have gone rogue in its mission to secure the Federation’s existence, while also keeping its activities completely secret. by the Federation. Whether or not Starfleet’s higher-ups are unaware of Section 31, or simply look the other way, is a matter of mystery as well as evolution over time. However, according to Section 31 agents, without their secret assassinations, illegal scientific research, and other black book operations, the Federation would have fallen centuries ago. (Though we’re told this exclusively by Section 31 agents, a fruitful facet of potential internal propaganda that Trek writers can exploit, if they so choose.)
We understand that the Federation is a utopia. Egalitarian, diverse, cruelty-free, post-scarcity – all buzzwords. But to paraphrase Captain Kirk: The final frontierwhat does utopia need with a spaceship – I mean, an off-the-books CIA program?
If the existence of your utopia depends on some secret war crimes with no consequences, then it is simply not a utopia. Are omelettes. The debate over whether or not Section 31 betrays Trek’s founding ideals has raged since 1998, when the Deep space nine episode “Inquisition” established the concept, and it should!
Section 31 is not only philosophically bad for Star Trek, but also emotionally destructive for the audience, implying that Pike, Kirk, Spock, Picard, Janeway and the rest owe their triumphant moral and diplomatic victories in part to an inexplicable group who commits atrocities in the US. their name. And in a setting that prides itself on internal consistency, it’s a deceptive genre mix, with agents often written according to the rules of spy fantasy, rather than hard science fiction.
How does Agent Sloane’s ship have untraceable transport systems that he can use to capture Dr. Kidnap Bashir and subject him to a mind-bending recruitment/forced confession on the holodeck? It needs no explanation; they are super space spies.
This doesn’t mean you can’t show espionage and undercover operations within the context of Star Trek. The irony about it Deep space nine Introducing Section 31 into the canon, the show also features the most nuanced and devastating take on espionage in Trek history.
The irresistible romance of spies in space
No Trek series has ever been as in love with the romantic fantasy of espionage as it is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But it was also equally enamored with the dramatic potential of the reality of espionage: immoral drudgery that destroys the psyche of its practitioners, usually creating more problems than it solves in an escalating cycle of paranoia from state to state.
One of station doctor Julian Bashir’s most prominent activities was posing as a non-copyright infringing James Bond on the holodeck. DS9 produced a series of episodes in which Bashir’s fascination with the glorified fictional spy is contrasted with his friend’s crush (or more?) on local tailor, Elim Garak, a slippery former expert agent for the Cardassian Empire whose cheerful charisma is matched only by the grimness of his past. Ultimately, this quirk of personality is brought up as one of the reasons why Section 31 contacted Bashir and, after his refusal to join, embroiled him in a number of plots and schemes.
But Deep space nine also determined to show that the Federation is at war, and not to relax with the devious alien empire du jour, and so determined to grapple in much more detail and dramatically with the circumstances that might require honest Federation officers to endangering their utopian principles. And the highlight of DS9‘s look at espionage and the Federation takes place in an episode completely unrelated to Section 31.
‘I’ll learn to live with it’
“In the Pale Moonlight” is so memorably associated with Avery Brooks’ Captain Sisko that all you have to do is Google the “captain sisko speech” to find its iconic ending. It takes the form of a personal log entry that summarizes the events of the episode: via forgery, bribery, murder, and covering up all three – i.e. via espionage — Sisko manipulated the Romulan Empire into participating in the Dominion War in return for the Lordship. At the cost of two lives and his conscience, he may have almost single-handedly saved the Federation from a bloody conquest by a supremacist imperial state.
What disgusts him is that he isn’t disgusted. The most terrible, the most infuriating, the most unnerving thing the war has yet done to Captain Sisko – and it is a long is far from over – is this erosion of his morality. At that moment, Sisko is a microcosm for the Federation.
The tricky thing about depicting an established utopian society at war, especially an existentially necessary war, is that it implies that war itself can be a utopian act. What makes “In the Pale Moonlight” one of the best Trek episodes ever is how deftly and emphatically it says the Dominion War is an existential threat to the Federation on two fronts: from the empire it seeks to dominate. and by the act of war itself.
The Federation is a system of principles, and if it abandons these principles it will cease to exist as surely as if Dominion rule abolished them. After a forgery, bribery, two murders and a cover-up, the Federation will survive, but before that it has destroyed itself, and that is not a victory.
Conceptually, this speech is the opposite mirror of Section 31, which says that extralegal, immoral acts are necessary for utopia to exist. Rather than undermine the diplomatic and moral victories of Trek’s great heroes, “In the Pale Moonlight” imbues them with a new urgency: this is why Starfleet’s vaunted, anticlimactic, and sometimes shortsighted commitment to diplomacy matters. Because when a utopia casts aside its principles, even in the face of a real and complete existential threat, it is no longer a utopia.
All Star Trek: Section 31 what we really need to do is clearly and emphatically establish Section 31 as contrary to the principles of the Federation. Perhaps the smartest thing would be to reveal what most Section 31 agents think about their organization – that it is sanctioned by unidentified senior Federation leaders, that it has been the secret key to the Federation’s survival for centuries , that it is creepy and untouchable. and you will never completely wipe it out – is a self-perpetuating internal propaganda.
Because either Section 31 is a betrayal of everything the Federation stands for, or because the Federation is not utopian, you simply cannot ignore it. If we are to view Star Trek as anything more than a hollow and gilded military fantasy, Starfleet’s victories cannot rest on a sanctioned and inexplicable Black Ops department.
If Star Trek: Section 31 just want to have his non-copyright-infringing James Bond fun with Michelle Yeoh, it’ll probably be a lot of fun! It’s Michelle Yeoh! But am I going to watch a Star Trek movie? I’m curious to find out.
Star Trek: Section 31 premieres on Paramount Plus on January 24.