Tell that to the five appearances in the Roger Moore Bond movies from The Spy Who Loved Me to A View To A Kill and their last appearance in The Living Daylights.
Spoilers Bonus scene from Season One Finale
- Thread starter David cgc
- Start date
STOP ANALYZING MY WIDER AND COGENT POINT. 
STOP ANALYZING MY WIDER AND COGENT POINT.
I suppose it could serve as a counter balance to the ideas of exploration and diplomacy. It's whole narrative point is "this isn't how we do things".
But wasn't that what they just did in season one? A whole story about "this isn't how we do things" starting with Burnham's mutiny over the Vulcan Hello.
I'm shocked, shocked that DSC is telling us a story involving Section 31.
Yep. Variations on a theme. Something Trek does quite (too?) often.
I think it sticks out a little more when you are doing back-to-back multi-episode arcs dealing with the same themes.
Or when you binge watch.
Or when you binge watch.
I haven't binge-watched TOS in a long while. Probably something I'll do once I'm done with Babylon 5.
I was done with B5 in the 90's.
- Section 31. OK, it would have been strange if they hadn't joined the party. We know they are there, and they are supposed to be up to something. Their presumed presence is kind of eerie, like the black badges were. I'll like this scene more if they aren't mentioned again (directly), and aren't made central to the story. Keep their involvement shady.
- Phillipa Georgiou runs a bar on Kling, how cool is that? And now she no longer does, which is disappointing. (Or maybe she still does.)
- They revealed the truth about the black badges in a bonus scene on Twitter? Is this Star Trek or US politics?
- Fake Trill is actually fake? Crossing the fourth wall much? Come on, how can I whine that the Trill looks fake if he actually is?
...or, alternatively: Emony or Audrid Dax was actually a man, and judging gymnastic competitions was only a cover? If a Trill is part Founder, can she shapeshift?
- Phillipa Georgiou runs a bar on Kling, how cool is that? And now she no longer does, which is disappointing. (Or maybe she still does.)
- They revealed the truth about the black badges in a bonus scene on Twitter? Is this Star Trek or US politics?
- Fake Trill is actually fake? Crossing the fourth wall much? Come on, how can I whine that the Trill looks fake if he actually is?
...or, alternatively: Emony or Audrid Dax was actually a man, and judging gymnastic competitions was only a cover? If a Trill is part Founder, can she shapeshift?
ENT got it right. Harris operated in the background and sent messages over subspace, only appearing in the shadows and not bringing the entire Klingon Augment plot out into the open for the rest of Earth's government and Starfleet to see. No badges. No insignia. No operating in broad daylight and speaking about themselves in front of groups of people who have no business knowing about the existence of the organization the way Admiral Marcus did in STID.
It was starting with the second Kelvin timeline movie that Section 31 turned into an obnoxious plot point added for fanwank and edgy storytelling purposes. Before then I could swallow how they behaved. Now, eh...not so much.
I was done with B5 in the 90's.
Something I've just started watching. Really enjoying it.
Because they are a very tempting way to introduce 'edginess' and conspiracy storylines into the show while still appearing loyal to its core concepts. DS9 was very good at balancing the idea of a complicated reality (it's easy to be a saint in paradise) with the question of whether good people need bad people on the battlements to keep their naive ideas of peace and harmony safe. If Discovery manages a storyline like that, I'll be quite happy. But post DS9, Section 31 have been instead moustache twirling bad guys with the subtlty of a nuclear bomb, and there has also been a thread (which actually began in DS9 in a slightly more deniable way) of implication that s31 goes right to the top, and is not a small group of devious fanatics but the very framework of the federation. That, I have no interest in at all. I'm the first to point out where we oversell Gene's Vision™ but I don't want all the ideas of an optimistic future to be a facade for a silent government by terror and assassination.
I don't believe Discovery has outright went against this yet. The badges are weird when it comes to a clandestine organisations to begin with, but can be brushed off – or even explained, maybe the black badge is not a S31 one badge at all,* but a Starfleet one (like Jeffrey tube wiring guys or something), which they use for some reason. The way the recruitment of the Emperor happened may be acceptable, especially in the context of her useful location that they might want exploiting.
* It really is. But it could still be handled well.
Brave man.
I actually think it is a better show than Deep Space Nine. Not as polished because of the budget, but a deeper and more satisfying story so far.
I still can't vent my frustrations enough about Nu-Trek's thirty-one coming complete with evil secret underground lairs (mwahahaha!) like they really are SPECTRE.
