Spoilers Section 31 General Discussion Thread

[F. King Daniel]

Vanity Fair has a piece about Star Trek Universe and it seems Section 31 is still happening and that scripts are being written. Since the forum shake-up I thought it'd be cool to have one ongoing thread for S31 news.

Kurtzman: What we don't want is for you to watch one show and be like, well I don't really need to watch that other Star Trek show cause I've already watched Discovery or whatever. So to me Section 31 is sort of like the black ops CIA division of Star Trek and it was established in Deep Space 9. Full credit goes to Michelle Yeoh for coming to me and saying in season one, before we even launched, “I want to do a spin off of my character!” With Michelle Yeoh, it's very hard to say no.

This was like a year before Crazy Rich Asians came out and we had not launched Discovery yet. No one had seen it. So I was like, let's have one show that hopefully people like and we can talk about it. Once Discovery happened, I brought it to Julie and she immediately said, great, let's develop it. Erica [Lippoldt] and Bo Yeon [Kim], two writers on our Discovery staff, started writing a pilot and it's really different. It occupies an area of the Trek universe that's never really been explored geographically. It has a new mythology to it, which is very interesting. And it puts Michelle's character to the test in a lot of ways that Discovery can't. In some ways it will be her Unforgiven, I would say.​

I've set the poll so you can change your answers, it'll be fun to see how thoughts change once filming starts, pics appear and finally trailers materialize.

 

[Relayer1]

Looking forward to it.

Yeoh's great, it's a thread linking DS9 and it looks interesting...

 

[Cake]

Kurtzman: About three years ago when, when CBS asked me to consider doing another Star Trek, my first instinct was: it's got to be a woman and it's got to be a woman of color. I'm not interested in having another male captain.

I know what he wanted to say. That he didn't want to make another show where the main lead is a man. But he worded it badly here, because so far the Discovery only had male captains.

So to me Section 31 is sort of like the black ops CIA division of Star Trek and it was established in Deep Space 9.

Maybe he should watch DS9 again. Section 31 wasn't established as a black ops CIA division in it. Practically everyone around the world has heard of the CIA. It is not a super secret organization like Section 31 was in DS9. And while I am sure the CIA does a lot of shady and outright criminal things, those things are ordered by the US government. Section 31 was shown to be a rogue organization in DS9, not controlled or ordered by the Federation or Starfleet. They did what they wanted without any kind of oversight or rules applying to them.

He obviously wants to portray Section 31 differently. He already has done so in DIS. Then he simply should say so and don't speak nonsense about past series. He practically mixed Section 31 and Starfleet Intelligence into one now.

Personally I voted for "give us anything else instead". I really don't like this trend of making the Federation shadier and darker. In my opinion Star Trek should have an optimistic outlook for the future, but they go more and more in the opposite direction. Section 31 exemplifies this. A nasty organization which should never have been introduced in Star Trek in the first place, will be the focus of a whole series now.

 

[NCC-73515]

31 was hiding for hundreds of years in DS9, Archer and Sisko knew nothing about them, and Starfleet didn't acknowledge its existence. But in the 2250s, they showed off their special badges and special ships from their special base. Such a top secret hidden organization! XD
But seriously, they should not have star treks worst criminal as a lead character.

 

[Lord Garth]

I'm looking forward to it! Georgiou's my favorite character on Discovery and Michelle Yeoh is a fun actress with a lot of range.

I know what he wanted to say. That he didn't want to make another show where the main lead is a man. But he worded it badly here, because so far the Discovery only had male captains.

So far, yes, but I strongly suspect (speculation not spoiler) that by the end of the third season, Burnham will be the Captain.

31 was hiding for hundreds of years in DS9, Archer and Sisko knew nothing about them, and Starfleet didn't acknowledge its existence. But in the 2250s, they showed off their special badges and special ships from their special base. Such a top secret hidden organization!

Tell me how much you know about the 1890s. Particularly about its military underbelly. Without looking it up.

Unless they were history buffs who specialized in the weeds of the 2250s, I don't think most people in the 2370s would be that familiar with what happened back then. And if Section 31 went lower profile after 2257, then the average Starfleet Officer from 2375 probably would've never heard of them when they joined the Academy and might not have ever been taught about them. In school and in the Academy, they've have learned the safe, sanitized version of the 23rd Century. Just like we're taught the safe, sanitized version of real history.

But anyway, Georgiou's never done anything against the Federation in the Prime Timeline, she's going under the identity of Prime Georgiou (which was mutually agreed to), and has cooperated with the Federation, so regardless of whatever she did in the Mirror Universe we have to move passed that (and let's not forget you can't be tried for anything without evidence, especially considering there's also no context for it and Starfleet won't even acknowledge the Mirror Universe), or every discussion about the Section 31 Series will end up coming back to this and we'll never get out of this circle. I want to get out of this never-ending circle. I know a lot of other people do too. So we have to agree to disagree and move passed it.

The Section 31 Series won't be for everyone and it doesn't have to be. I'm looking forward to it. Other people can watch something else. It's not like there'll be a shortage of options. I don't demand that I have to like each and every Star Trek series. But that's just me. But if you do watch, just don't act surprised when Section 31 does Section 31 things. I think the show is going to be a lot lighter than the weighty holier-than-thou criticisms being leveled towards it.

I think a lot of what we see of Georgiou in the third season of Discovery will inform how she's written in Section 31.

 

[Cake]

I think the show is going to be a lot lighter than the weighty holier-than-thou criticisms being leveled towards it.

Thanks to interviews I am sure you are right about the light stuff which makes it worse to be honest.

https://trekmovie.com/2019/04/17/mi...-show-will-be-more-fun-with-a-nicer-georgiou/

Section 31 will be more fun—less intense and more fun-driven. Visiting more planets. Going around rescuing people in our own way.

For me that sounds like Georgiou will go around and do shady thinks while spooting sarcastic one liners. And they surely will write her in a way that viewers are supposed to root for her. They already started doing in DIS. So in short Section 31 won't be portrayed as the bad guys they are. What Section 31 is doing won't be shown as being wrong. They will be the heroes of the series and all the shady things they do will be portrayed as necessary and right.

 

[Tuskin38]

What Section 31 is doing won't be shown as being wrong.

I doubt that, because they didn't do that in Season 2.
Unless they're going to have Ash Tyler reform the agency, if it's set in the 23rd century that is.

If it's set in the future where Discovery is, then it would be a brand new agency built from scratch, so nothing is saying they'll act like the 23rd/24th century S31.

 

[Cake]

I doubt that, because they didn't do that in Season 2.
Unless they're going to have Ash Tyler reform the agency, if it's set in the 23rd century that is.

If it's set in the future where Discovery is, then it would be a brand new agency built from scratch, so nothing is saying they'll act like the 23rd/24th century S31.

I assume Georgiou goes back to the past, but if not, why the hell should they name a new organization after the old Section 31? What does it say about its members that they name themselves after a super nasty antique organization? Normally when you want to build something good and new you choose an unencumbered name without any bad connotations.

And in DIS Section 31 weren't the protagonists. There are hardly any series out there where the writers don't make people root for the protagonists. Look at Punisher for example. He did one criminal thing after another, but it was portrayed as justified as the people he tortured and killed were bad guys. He was clearly portrayed as a sympathetic figure. The same with Dexter despite him being a mass murderer. It will happen with Georgiou, too. She will do one shady thing after another and the show will portray them as the right course of action. In my opinion such a series shouldn't be made in the Star Trek franchise.

 

[Tuskin38]

What does it say about its members that they name themselves after a super nasty antique organization?

I mean, it's 700 years in the future and the federation has apparently collapsed, no one would know who S31 is.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ The general thrust of the gist seems to be that in the future, there actually still is a Federation, but with only a few member worlds.

I'm just going to hazard a guess that this is where the new logos (on the Season 3 uniforms) come from - i.e. it's from what's left of Starfleet in this future time.

 

[fireproof78]

In my opinion such a series shouldn't be made in the Star Trek franchise.

Why? Star Trek doesn't need to operate in the world of moral black and white. There is room for shades of gray, moral ambiguity and questionable behaviors would be expected.

 

[Lord Garth]

I don't think Cake needs to agree with us any more than we need to agree with him.

Besides, jazz is the "devil's music". Just like Section 31 is the devil's Star Trek.

 

[Cake]

Why? Star Trek doesn't need to operate in the world of moral black and white. There is room for shades of gray, moral ambiguity and questionable behaviors would be expected.

Section 31 goes way too far. If everything is either grey or black, there is no white and light anymore. The darkness snuffes it out.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Section 31 in DS9 was an illegal conspiracy of officers. The CIAish Section 31 made it's debut in Star Trek Into Darkness and continued in S2 of Disco, where they're a legitimate division of Starfleet.

I'm wondering if the S31 series will resemble Agents of SHIELD after Captain America: Winter Soldier decimated the organisation. No more fleets and no more badges. It'll become more like the DS9 version.

 

[NCC-73515]

it would actually be quite a wild concept to imagine something like the gestapo or the stasi (which were dissolved and obviously don't exist anymore since quite a while) secretly still existing completely in the shadows now with no official recognition, but silent support from the few who know.

 

[USS Firefly]

it would actually be quite a wild concept to imagine something like the gestapo or the stasi (which were dissolved and obviously don't exist anymore since quite a while) secretly still existing completely in the shadows now with no official recognition, but silent support from the few who know.

Maybe they do still exist....

 

[SolarisOne]

Provisionally, "yay", but only because of Yeoh.

 

[fireproof78]

Section 31 goes way too far. If everything is either grey or black, there is no white and light anymore. The darkness snuffes it out.

Agree to disagree.

In any case, there is plenty of room for variety in Star Trek and different story telling ideas. I mean, there was speculation about a Khan series. That's not exactly a heroic protagonist.

 

[rahullak]

If DC can do Suicide Squad, Arrow etc. I see no reason why Trek can't diversify into telling greyer or darker stories. They've already explored that a little with the mirror universe stuff in all the series.

You could have Section 31, Khan, etc. right along side the sunshine of Picard, Discovery, Lower Decks etc.

They're trying to move away from a single series appealing to a broad audience and into having multiple series with distinguishable but sometimes overlapping target audiences.

 

[Tuskin38]

There's enough room in the universe for both types of shows.