^ Conjecture without evidentiary support isn't worth anything... and this Section 31 stuff has no evidentiary support.
Or then he's the straight guy in the three-player act - the one that allows the other two to push all of Burnham's buttons by playing the cabbagehead who "needs" all these painful things "explained" to him... Timo Saloniemi
Well you got a ship that is fighting a war, that seems willing to overlook Federations rules and values to win the war so if you got a established group in the mythos that operates that way and we know has been around since the Beginning of Starfleet it makes sense that we might have a connection. Black badges and the 31 in the registery number might be possible links. Also we know Section 31 was named dropped in the Kelvin Universe and we also know that Lorca will quote the "Favor the Bold" line and one of the Klingon houses was from DS9 so we know that DS9 references and concepts might be used and not just dismissed. Jason
I think them talking to Burnham at the end of a long journey was just TV convenience, so they could skip over another scene transition. We can maybe assume that they arrived on the ship and slept intermittently for awhile first. Maybe this dark Starfleet sedates their prisoners during transport, and it took some time for that to wear off.
In what way? They're trying to build a new propulsion system which they say in dialogue in episode 3 was already being researched prior to the war. This isn't a bioweapon, Michael's initial 'conjecture' was wrong. Again, why would a secret clandestine service have a chest logo? Or denote its ships by registry number, for that matter. Or call them 'Discovery'? And the registry rumour has surely been put to bed by the fact the sister ship doing the same experiment has the registry 1030 suggesting a simple advancing numerical system? By the 24th century, Sisko and Bashir had never even heard of an outfit called section 31, and yet we are to believe they're running a sort of parallel Starfleet in the 23rd?
Wrong. Burnham thought that Discovery's mission was developing illegal weapons, but Lorca disabused her of that notion by showing her what was really going on. There's literally nothing connecting Discovery to Section 31 other than somebody's conjecture that they pulled out of their butt.
section 31 in the 23rd USS vengeance into darkness section 31 had many installations and ships, but Kirk did not know of its existence until Marcus told it
When I watched the scene in question, depicting the guard with the black badge, my immediate thought was Federation Marine or some other military type guarding something top-secret. Never got at 'Section 31' vibe. My two cents... Q2
Hey, they all wore black underneath their other colors in TOS - didn't you see the collars? Timo Saloniemi
Different timeline, in which the federation is explicitly more concerned with security and warfare, and Marcus has embraced the section 31 ethos, as well as the genetic engineering ethos of the eugenics wars. That's not in Sisko's past - this show is.
Lorca stated he was given every dispensation to win the war by any means necessary. Deliberately similar to a line from Sloan in DS9.
"To fight this war how I see fit" isn't quite the same thing as "by any means necessary". And he's referring to selecting personnel Starfleet may not be supportive of, not genocide (which is what Sloan was referring to with his 'ends justify the means' speech)
He strikes me as being entirely behind that kind of thinking so far. He murders someone and kidnaps others as his introduction for Christ sake. This man would obliterate Kronos if that's what it took. So long as he could lay the blame elsewhere.
Who did he murder? he didn't murder anyone. We don't know anyone was kidnapped. Rerouting prisoners secretly isn't the same as kidnapping, and everyone was set on their merry way, and even Michael was given a choice.
Actually, it was Article 14, Section 31 of the Earth Starfleet charter. Note that very specific phrase: Earth Starfleet. Not Federation Starfleet. Legally speaking, they're different organizations.
Could they have done the black badges to piss off everyone who thinks they have all the DSC badges from Qmx?