And man, do I wish you had been correct on both counts.....
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- Thread starter Tuskin38
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And man, do I wish you had been correct on both counts.....
I didn't mind Lorca being from the MU as much as Section 31. They've been used too much for my taste.
If you do an episode count, Section 31 was in 9 out of 41 episode from the time(s) they were introduced in the respective shows (episode 142/176 of DS9 & episode 91/98 of ENT). If you count those 9 appearances vs a broader count of all Star Trek since that first DS9 episode, it's not that bad.
This of course doesn't count ST:ID or the novels. There are certainly worse concepts they could have used 9 times.
I actually should clarify my statement. Given the choice between Section 31 and Lorca being from the MU, I'll take the latter. The MU reveal took something away from Lorca and made him less interesting to me.
The amount of times Section 31 has appeared onscreen doesn't look that bad once I see the numbers. I'd prefer less but once you introduce a concept like that, some people will want it to be explored further and then there's people like me. I feel like it's become almost a deus ex concept.
Starfleet doing something questionable? Must be the "secret" evil organization. I'd prefer just differing views on how to handle things from within the ranks of the upper echelon.
I feel like, any organization, no matter how enlightened or evolved, probably has a Section 31 for the dirty work they don't want to have to wash their hands of.
Unlike the Romulans or Cardassians, Starfleet would of course never admit it and likely very few actually know about it.
I like it when they explore something like S31, but there's a point where they can overdo it and the mystery is gone.
I wouldn't call S31 "evil" at all, more like amoral. they'll do whatever is necessary without bias. Garak comes off the same way "And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain"
I personally prefer S31 over the Mirror Universe which is presented as pure evil.
I guess evil wasn't the right word to use.
This wasn't a critique of your post. I certainly agree that S31 can do evil things. I just don't see them as the moustache twirling bad guys always. More that they have a point but their means of accomplishing are by any means necessary type of attitude. So, it comes across as very amoral and evil depending on the nature of the operation.
For many, I think S31 is far more uncomfortable in a supposed utopian society of the Federation since such black ops should be considered beneath the Federation. However, we see our heroes do black ops work at times with no moral objections so I don't know where the line is...
This. S31 has become the 'cool' go to for any kind of suggestion that Starfleet or the Federation aren't squeaky clean. Before them, we just had shady admirals. After them, everyone's a secret agent.
In addition, I'm not a 'gene's vision' true believer, but if there is anything which fundamentally undermines the idea that we will get better as a species, it is the viewpoint that we can only pretend to be better, and under the surface, we need hard men doing hard things to keep those naive idiots safe in their beds. It's a nasty viewpoint and I'd personally rather it wasn't in Trek.
they've been used less than a handful of times since they were first shown.
I understand that. But it's too much for my taste.
This is how I feel as well. The anyone could be a secret agent is a tired trope to me.
At least it is, for the most part, undermined by our heroes. Usually...
True. I like stories like s7 DS9 where our heroes take a totally different approach to dealing with the Founders that is in line with Starfleet's values and it comes good.
Section 31 isn't any worse than General Order 24, or facing a firing squad for visiting Talos. This is the Starfleet that will arrest you for saying the word Genesis, that suspends habeus corpus and puts armed troopers on the streets of New Orleans.
Some fan theories bandied about over the years were that the Excelsior's transwarp drive used interphase from "The Tholian Web".
I'd say it's a lot worse, because it operates in secrecy and without oversight. The other examples are laws, or military actions, which are overt, challengeable, or at least able to be criticised or debated. We are talking about a Starfleet secret police, with carte blanche 'authority' (albeit likely self appointed) to assassinate, commit genocide, or do anything it feels is necessary to preserve the Federation. Definition of necessary to sit entirely with them.
the fact they've managed it for so long means that they found their balance and it works. it also means that the order that thinks rests on better angels of our nature is instead propped up on a few helpful demons, but that seems realistic enough for me. Don't need to know how the sausage is made, etc.
but i see your point, as well
I already pressed 'like' but it didn't feel it was sufficiently strong way to express my agreement. So yeah, well said, I absolutely agree.
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So Styles and his entire crew went insane and killed each other despite Starfleet engineering protestations they'd found a workaround, and the bridge was such a mess they swapped out the whole module rather than try to mop it.
I can dig it.
My issue here is that there are usually differences between the products of families with only-children, larger nuclear families, and non-standard family groups. (This is even referenced regarding Harry Kim in the Trek canon.)
Ideally, such differences wouldn't exist much in flawlessly logical Vulcan families, but of course that's not even a thing.
To be sure, we already knew Vulcan children could be asses to the half-Vulcan child Spock, as JJ-Trek and TAS both put on-screen based on Amanda's commentary in TOS. Star Trek V gave us a live-in older half-brother for a time, but we know very little about that situation. Its duration could've been minimal.
We can guess at some results… perhaps Sybok reinforced Spock's Vulcan choices by serving as a negative example, and Amanda may have played a final role in encouraging them both (which backfired). Perhaps there was a 'living in the shadow' effect given what a scholar Sybok was reputed to be.
However, generally speaking, there's not necessarily a great change required from previous "only child" outcast status.
However, adding a literal human being of similar age changes a lot of things. For one, Spock is no longer the lonely outcast, as there's a literal alien *right there* to serve as any number of things… protector of, bully to, blame target, competitor, et cetera. It's one thing to see his Vulcan father and human mother's dynamic and replicate that in his own soul, but to then have his own human to observe and play off of . . . one apparently as successful at being Vulcan as he was . . . is a game-changer.
To be sure, wargaming someone's resultant philosophy and life choices based on adding or subtracting major variables is by no means a simple mathematical equation, and there are as many hypothetical conjectures and as much room in the statistics as needed to disregard the point, but, for many, those would be gaps that the second season would need to do a damn good job filling in for the sake of believability.
And yes, we can attack other Trek at this point by referencing Sisko's largely-missing sister or other things, but the issue is that the STD writers, assuming they fail to adequately address the change they've wrought, are monkeying about with an iconic character. That's not something most of us would do lightly.
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