Considering you weren't able to name any facts to counter me - it's safe to assume I'm right.
They only started to commit the genocide on Cardassia after they thought they would all die due to the morphogenic virus.
Drop the S31 show for a Captain Pike show?
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They only started to commit the genocide on Cardassia after they thought they would all die due to the morphogenic virus.
It has been a while, but I'm not certain that is right.
I'm not entirely sure about the time before that - like, when exactly the Founders became aware of the virus, was it before or after the Dominion war started? At last before the second arc (Treachery, Faith and the Great River). Probably not before, so I don't exactly know if this virus started the Dominion war as a whole.
But at least during the final arc, in their sacking of Cardassia, they were definitely driven by their emotional reaction of the sight of their own extinction.
Is Georgiou in command? And, even if that is so, due the rank and file members of S31 know about Georgiou's past? And, under what law should they try to prosecute Georgiou under?
Also, Starfleet seems perfectly capable of wielding genocide and cultural destruction when it serves their purposes. They are not innocent in any of this.
So, no, I will not agree with such a blanket statement regarding this organization. Think of it what you will (evil, corrupt, malicious, and genocidal) but Nazis or cannibals I cannot agree with. Sorry.
Just because you can't prosecute her (potentially), doesn't mean you jump in bed with her.
Absolutely correct.
The Founders were slave engineering, genocidal and hugely destructive and immensely racist long before they ever heard of the Federation.
The healthy degree of skepticism in TOS didn’t mean an entire point of view where even healthy progress (as opposed to artificial paradise) was supposedly being enabled by an amoral shadow organization going back to before the founding of the Federation, now with a former Terran Emperor. That’s taking things too far in the other direction. Section 31 isn’t a core, ongoing element of Star Trek, only one of the many ways the premise has been questioned over time, and we don’t even know how much of what they say is true; DS9 liked to keep Sloane ambiguous.
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I had the exact same thought seeing it tonight! Thank you for bringing that up!Just got back from the DS9 documentary. It was amusing to hear fans from the 1990s complaining that DS9 was too dark, that it "corrupted" Roddenberry's pristine universe, that the characters were unlikeable, etc.
The more things change . . .
So you see my concerns as uninformed generalization rooted in fandom history (I have in fact seen all of Star Trek aside from a few late-VGR episodes I’m going through right now), and believe the new team is competent enough to execute the show in a unique, entirely unexpected manner that will serve to enhance Star Trek in the long run, rather than live a season or two off the cynical notion that progress wouldn’t occur without antiheroes working behind-the-scenes? In that case we can probably wind this thread down and see what happens.
The idea that only pure whitehat boyscouts in the Federation are equipped to stop bad things from happening is pretty laughable. And it doesn't matter if its a 'core element' or not. The Franchise already will have Discovery and the Picard show running concurrently. The idea that only bright shiny Trek should be allowed when there are several shows running at the same time is also pretty laughable. Its the culture of sameness and refusal to look at Trek from more than just one angle was a factor in what doomed Trek the last time around. The narrowest path is the one that leads to extinction.
I don't think that's what DSC has done, and I don't think that the story is done enough to believe that S31 somehow enables all of the Federation, no matter how self-important they puff themselves up to be.
I'm a little surprised someone who's pushing Ron Moore so hard is so against the use of Section 31. I think Ron Moore would totally use Section 31 in whatever reboot he'd do of Star Trek.
Not to spoil anything, but after just watching "What We Left Behind", I'm more convinced he'd use it than ever.
Not to spoil anything, but after just watching "What We Left Behind", I'm more convinced he'd use it than ever.
If anyone would do the whole dystopian fall of the Federation it would Moore. Team him up with Whedon and we can have that plotline and the next iteration of Firefly all wrapped in to one.
I don’t think RDM would give them their own series.
Ron Moore was a clever man. He did use Section 31. But never as "heros".
They are essentially what the "NID" is in "Stargate". A bunch of over-eager assholes wanting to insert themselves into ever situation with maximum brute force, but which end up essentially being a threat themselves as much as the threats they think they have to protect us against.
And that's a wholy realistically picture. Remember the attempts to kill FIdel Castro with an explodig cigar? All it did was legitimize him. All those elected, South American gouvernments the CIA forcefully coup'd away because they thougt they were "too leftwing"? Well, they lost the entire fucking South continent to actual socalist regimes as a direct counter reaction.
People - and thus organizations - like that truly exist. And are a real threat to humans. As such, inserting them to the Star Trek universe is IMO not the problem. Pretending they are the good guys is. The truth is - such people will always exist, but usually create WAY more harm than they ever do good. They are a menace, that need to be stopped. Not "heroes" to be cheered for.
They are essentially what the "NID" is in "Stargate". A bunch of over-eager assholes wanting to insert themselves into ever situation with maximum brute force, but which end up essentially being a threat themselves as much as the threats they think they have to protect us against.
And that's a wholy realistically picture. Remember the attempts to kill FIdel Castro with an explodig cigar? All it did was legitimize him. All those elected, South American gouvernments the CIA forcefully coup'd away because they thougt they were "too leftwing"? Well, they lost the entire fucking South continent to actual socalist regimes as a direct counter reaction.
People - and thus organizations - like that truly exist. And are a real threat to humans. As such, inserting them to the Star Trek universe is IMO not the problem. Pretending they are the good guys is. The truth is - such people will always exist, but usually create WAY more harm than they ever do good. They are a menace, that need to be stopped. Not "heroes" to be cheered for.
The Founders committing genocide on Cardassia had nothing to do with the virus. First they completely razed Lakarian City in response to Damar's rebellion. Then, in response to the destruction of Lakarian City, the Cardassian fleet then began attacking Dominion ships, thus turning the tide in the favor of the Federation, Klingons and Romulans. In response to this betrayal, the Female Founder ordered the genocide of the Cardassian people.
Well, no. The NID actually is a legitimate organization which tries to do good and use proportional responses. The problem is they have a piss-poor screening process and an overwhelmingly majority of their personnel are "rogue agents." Many of the heavy handed responses we see the NID are a result of the actions of these rogue agents. A problem the Stargate writers eventually realized when they branched off the rogue elements of the NID into their own organization, the Trust, which is more appropriately a Section 31 analogue.
Though, I guess you can argue the IOA also fall into the category of over-eager assholes wanting to respond with maximum force and having it backfire, after the fiasco in which they intentionally unleashed Replicators against the Ori, a move which nearly screwed the mission to recover the Ark of Truth.
TOS basically adopted a hopeful stance about our civilization somewhat along the lines of: if we lean into values like respect for truth, scientific investigation, acceptance and fair treatment for everyone as individuals and are willing to try to understand people we're in conflict with rather than default to our guns, then our future may be better than our past. We may even find that there's enough of everything to go around, after all.
Most of that was hardly radical at the time (sadly, the notion of universal equality is the one that probably would have seemed most so in America).
There was a genuine attempt in TOS to do something like adult TV drama, rather than to "do Star Trek" …which meant that individual characters suffered and often were in conflict. The simplistic utopianism of "Gene's Vision" that dominated modern Trek and that fans rebel against only became an issue with TNG.
Most of that was hardly radical at the time (sadly, the notion of universal equality is the one that probably would have seemed most so in America).
There was a genuine attempt in TOS to do something like adult TV drama, rather than to "do Star Trek" …which meant that individual characters suffered and often were in conflict. The simplistic utopianism of "Gene's Vision" that dominated modern Trek and that fans rebel against only became an issue with TNG.
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