This also is why thank god in DS9 S31 was able to not "break" the Federation, because people high in the Federation even if they knew the existence of such a faction, simply turned a blind eye too it, it didn't support it or acknowledge it as an official part of the Federation, S31 was a conspiracy of radical fanatics. In Disco having it be an official organisation is just extremely on the nose for the future Star Trek is supposed to represent, again, what makes the Federation then any different from any 20th century Super Power that engages in clandestine mass murder and brutal "nation building" like the USSR or United States? This has been a subtle problem in the politics of Discovery I've had since the beginning. It feels like it's being showrun/written by your typical War-hawkish Realpolitik Democrat, instead of being by people that actually understand Gene's radical vision for the future like Berman and Hurley did.
Radical
Revised Vision. The original vision in TOS was that we didn't destroy ourselves and that better times were ahead. Nothing more, nothing less. Kirk took matters into his own hands to influence the politics and military tactics of Eminar VII in "A Taste of Armageddon". He offers to upgrade the lifestyle of the Organians in "Errand of Mercy" before he realized what they were. In "A Private Little War", the Federation arms their side of Neural against the side the Klingons armed. Finally: "The Return of the Archons", "The Apple", "The Gamesters of Triskelion", "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", and "The Cloud Minders" all show examples of Kirk changing a world by freeing it from oppression or more specifically from a caste system in the case of "The Cloud Minders".
"Errand of Mercy" was a clear-cut example of Kirk offering nation-building in the beginning and "A Private Little War" is aiding a side of a planet to fight another side backed by the Klingons which the TNG Era Federation would've classified as an affair external to the Federation even if the Klingons were their chief rival. It's Starfleet Command that wanted Sisko to withdraw from DS9 during the Circle Trilogy when they thought a coup had overthrown the Bajoran Government that wanted a Federation presence on the station in the first place. The outlook in the TOS Era was simply different to that of the TNG Era. Period. When people talk about Gene's Vision, it always seem to me as if they take the TNG Interpretation and lump TOS in with it but treat TOS as though it should be seen and not heard.
Though TNG didn't exist yet, it was also the source of conflict between Gene Roddenberry and Harve Bennett when Gene Roddenberry exclaimed there was no violence in the 23rd Century but Harve Bennett had just got fresh off of watching 79 episodes of TOS before making TWOK where he saw a ton of violence. Harve Bennett said that Gene Roddenberry said in the '60s that
Star Trek was supposed to be Horatio Hornblower in space.
Direct quote from Harve Bennett in William Shatner's 1994 book Star Trek Movie Memories. Pages 109-110 (italicizing theirs not mine): "What I
couldn't understand was Gene's concept of
Star Trek. I was fresh from seeing seventy-nine episodes, and I thought I knew what
Star Trek was in its original form, but when Gene's memos started arriving, they criticized everything we were doing on a basis that was from outer space to me. "
Star Trek," in his own words from the sixties, "is Horatio Hornblower." That's a paramilitary show to me. The analogy between the United States Navy or any navy and
Star Trek is so preeminent that you can't possibly miss it. I mean, why then are we dealing with "admirals" and "captains," "commanders," "lieutenants" and so forth? The
Enterprise is simply a naval vessel at sea, in space.
"There was never," [Roddenberry] said, "violence and conflict in the twenty-third century." Well, how do you deal with that when you are fresh from seeing the episodes where there was a
great deal of violence? There were traditional roustabout fights; there was barroom brawls; there was nerve-pinching; there was exotic weaponry. There were always people doing bad things to people,
very bad things to people.
And suddenly I saw the seeds of what bored me in
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It seemed as though Gene, in his statesmanlike personal growth, had now begun confusing his own idealism -- which was wonderful -- about a peaceful future and man's ability to grow in the years ahead -- with
Star Trek. In my mind,
Star Trek's vision was very different and very specific. Things will change, parameters will change, technology will change, but human nature will most definitely remain the same. Why do I say that? Because recorded history tells us so.
Go back two hundred years to the seventeen hundreds, what has changed? What has changed since "let my people go" in Eygpt and before that, from recorded history of humankind? Will four hundred years of technology elevate that into bliss and karma? I think not, but somehow Gene had made that assumption in his later years. Or at least that was the basis of all his objections to things we were trying to do.
Now I could assume one of two things, that Gene had become devoutly sincere about all this and it altered his vision of what he himself had done on
Star Trek, or the other possibility was that perhaps unconsciously he resented
anyone, not just Harve Bennett, coming in, taking over and trying to replicate something he'd created. If that were the case, and he simply couldn't accept the situation, perhaps he was reaching for any ammunition he could find in resisting my efforts. Perhaps that's what prompted his philosophical stance against everything we were trying to do in re-creating the feeling of
his Star Trek."
End of quote.
My views are the same as Harve Bennett's. And Nick Meyer's. For that matter, they're also the same as Ron Moore's. That's my school of thought when it comes to Star Trek. That's why I will never see eye-to-eye with anyone who thinks the Rick Berman approach is the way to go. Is Rick Berman actually Gene Roddenberry's hand-picked successor or did he just inherit that since he was assigned to TNG as the Studio Guy and then it was a case of becoming more and taking over and developing the franchise when Gene Roddenberry was no longer able to do so? Who knows. But by some Rick Berman has been interpreted as Gene Roddenberry's hand-picked successor.
When you have a Star Trek that's produced by someone who's not Rick Berman, I think there are now those who are trying to "protect" Star Trek in the same way by criticizing
Discovery as gatekeepers and holding onto the philosophical stance as one of the means in doing so. That may work when trying to defend the 24th Century, even though DS9 itself went on to challenge TNG. But in the 23rd Century, during the TOS Era and slightly before that, if you want to depict Starfleet -- and Star Trek -- as how it was, then you have to look at how it operated during TOS before Gene Roddenberry's higher-minded latter-day idealism took hold. You shouldn't depict the Federation as it was in TNG. You should depict it the way it was in TOS, which is quite a bit different from how it was depicted in TNG when you look at what happens in the actual episodes.
