Do they? Or is Section 31 operating as the SS of Starfleet just another retcon, like atmospheric forcefields and everything else?
Of course everything specifically depicted in DSC is a retcon of one sort or another, it being a
prequel. But that's neither here nor there. Section 31's
"covering their tracks" comes directly from DS9 itself. We already knew
that to be their
modus operandi from our first introduction to them!
Let's pretend DSC doesn't exist for a moment. (Insert unending stream of 'clever' witticisms here.) Just based on what had been depicted of them before in DS9 and ENT, who could possibly say what antics they might have got up to in between, and how deep their rabbit hole (or wormhole) might
really go?
"Inquisition" (DS9):
KIRA: We went over Julian's quarters, but we couldn't find any residual transporter signatures, so either they got him off the station some other way, or they have transporter technology that we can't detect.
BASHIR: Captain, is there any word from Starfleet about Sloan, or Section 31?
SISKO: There's no record of a Deputy Director Sloan anywhere in Starfleet. And as for Section 31, that's a little more complicated. Starfleet Command doesn't acknowledge its existence, but they don't deny it either. They simply said they'd look into it and get back to me.
BASHIR: When?
SISKO: They didn't say.
KIRA: That sounds like a cover-up to me.
BASHIR: I can't believe the Federation condones this kind of activity.
ODO: Personally, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't. Every other great power has a unit like Section 31. The Romulans have the Tal Shiar. The Cardassians had the Obsidian Order.
BASHIR: But what does that say about us? When push comes to shove, are we willing to sacrifice our principles in order to survive?
SISKO: I wish I had an answer for you, Doctor.
KIRA: Maybe we should do some checking, try to track down this Sloan ourselves.
ODO: That won't be easy. If he's right, and Section 31 has existed since the birth of the Federation, they've learned to cover their tracks very well.
"Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (DS9):
BASHIR: Odo's checked all the security logs. There's no indication of how Sloan got aboard, or where he went.
SISKO: I can't say I'm surprised. From what we've seen of them, Section 31 is very meticulous in covering its tracks. [...] Officially, Starfleet Command has said that they are appalled at the very notion that an organization like Section 31 might exist, and that they plan to get to the bottom of this entire business.
BASHIR: And unofficially?
SISKO: They have quietly pushed the investigation aside, which means either they don't take Section 31 seriously, or someone at Starfleet Command is protecting them.
[...]
BASHIR: And how long have you worked for Section 31?
ROSS: I don't.
BASHIR: Oh? Just a temporary alliance, is it?
ROSS: Something like that.
BASHIR: You don't see anything wrong with what happened, do you?
ROSS: I don't like it. But I've spent the last year-and-a-half of my life ordering young men and young women to die. I like that even less.
BASHIR: That's a glib answer, and a cheap way to avoid the fact that you've trampled on the very thing that those young men and women are out there dying to protect! Does that not mean anything to you?
ROSS: Inter arma enim silent leges.
BASHIR: "In time of war, the law falls silent." Cicero. So is that what we have become? A Twenty-Fourth-Century Rome, driven by nothing other than the certainty that Caesar can do no wrong?
ROSS: This conversation never happened. You're dismissed.
"Extreme Measures" (DS9):
BASHIR: Section 31...I kept thinking just how many people had to have been involved in the conspiracy to infect him with the disease. Computer experts, doctors, security officers, admirals, clerks...in the end, I came up with at least seventy-three people.
O'BRIEN: For a minute there, I thought you were going to say seventy thousand.
BASHIR: This organization, this thing that's slithered its way into the heart of the Federation, has to be destroyed.
"Divergence" (ENT):
ARCHER: Phlox was kidnapped. Starfleet would never authorize that.
HARRIS: Reread the Charter, Article 14, Section 31. There are a few lines that make allowances for bending the rules during times of extraordinary threat.
ARCHER: What threat?
HARRIS: Take your pick. Earth's got a lot of enemies.
To be clear, I view it as perfectly valid for anyone to
dislike the take on it DSC offers up. But to decry its portrayal on the basis of alleged 'inconsistency' with characterizations so broad and vague and murky, so full of unresolved questions and implications? Not so much.
This basically says there's been no big technological change in Trek for over 100 years...
Basically? In terms of the overall "broad strokes" of
Trekian fundamentals? (And for better or worse, time travel and cloaking devices and holograms and such qualify here just as much as do wormholes and force fields, to my mind.)
Perhaps. And if so, why not? It would hardly be
so far out of line with the conceptions of preceding production teams as some might suggest...
As the
Writers/Directors' Guide for TNG stated,
"the last century or so" leading up to its timeframe was originally envisioned as having
"seen a form of technological progress which 24th Century poets call 'Technology Unchained' -- which means that technical improvement has gone beyond developing things which are smaller, or faster, or more powerful, and is very much centered on improving the quality of life" (emphasis in original), and the bridge of the
Enterprise-D as a place where
"much the same kinds of things happen" as did on Kirk's, merely with
"less emphasis on the mechanics..."
As recounted in an "in conversation" featurette on the Blu-ray release of ENT's first season, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga's sardonic response to their higher-ups' suggestion that instead of making a show about the birth of
"the first starship" they should
"do the opposite" and
"go, like, to the 26th Century or something" was:
"So the spandex is a little tighter? The ships will go Warp 14? The phasers are smaller?"
(Before anyone jumps on me for such an appeal, allow me to stipulate that I
entirely agree this comment demonstrated only the limitations of their own imagination as to the potential possibilities on that front. I think even
they clearly recognized this of themselves, and hence persisted in pursuing their initial
"key" inspiration of exploring
"what happened between that muddy world where everybody was living in First Contact
...and the world of Kirk and Spock, which was just a couple hundred years later"—and all the more reason to appreciate that they
didn't go in the other direction.)
As relayed by Michael Okuda in various sources, including the
Star Trek Chronology,
Encyclopedia, and the production
Technical Guide distributed to writers and directors of VGR along with its series bible, so far as Gene Roddenberry was concerned, the
real reason Our Heroes™ (whom Section 31 have never been depicted as, not yet anyway) don't use cloaking devices (except when they do) wasn't down to power consumption or the Treaty of Algeron or whatever other 'fig leaf' of in-universe minutiae has variously applied, but simply because they
"are explorers and scientists" (except when they aren't) who
"don't sneak around" (except when they do). Here again, as in the respective cases of many time travel escapades, stories like "The Pegasus" (TNG), "The Search" (DS9), and
Insurrection emphasize themselves as exceptions which illustrate the principle by its very contravention:
"Although Starfleet has a reasonably good understanding of the technology involved, Federation policy prohibited the use of these devices..."
Much the same might be held true of any number of other elements that would seem to appear and disappear (hell yes that pun was intended) at the needs/whims/oversights of a given production or plot, as might (in concert or contrast, as case may be) the according Okudaic rationale for
"the question of how accurately sensors can detect a cloaked ship" having
"different answers at different times":
"The reason is that cloaking devices, like present-day stealth aircraft, represent a continually evolving technology whose designers always try to to stay one step ahead of Federation sensor designers. Like any arms race, technical advances on both sides are frequent, but advantages are brief."
They want to have their reboot cake (showing off all their cool new CG and makeup effects to the max) and eat it too (be part of the established 50 years of continuity)
That is hardly new or unique to DSC, though. ENT and ST'09 each took much the same approach, more or less—as did all the other shows and films, when you really get down to it. Call that a
tu quoque if you like, but I just see it as
continuity, Trek
-style.
Nobody's tried to explain why we don't have non-time-travel versions of the Iron Angel suit in use anywhere else in the Trek timeline.
Without the
"key component" of the time crystal, isn't it essentially just a rather overly glorified thruster suit? If you're asking why we haven't seen more robust 'combat model' EV suits in
Trek, it's a fair question. Yet, it seems to me one that would stand irrespective of anything in DSC.
Or even space suit helmets that do the Stargate movie Ja'fa helmet foldaway thing.
You mean like the one that in its very first onscreen appearance nearly
killed Pike by its malfunction? Given that such surely can't be a wholly unique occurrence, it's not so surprising that they might return to
"good old-fashioned" traditional helmets in time. As Scotty says in STIII:
"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
Besides, we might as well ask why we don't see those nifty compact life support belts from TAS—which evidently generate and maintain not only their force field shell, but moreover the atmosphere contained within—anywhere else in
Trek. There are numerous other oddities of which we could ask the same, too. (And in many cases, including specifically those of holocoms and tabletop holoprojectors, we'd be left to ask it of TNG and DS9 even if DSC had never come along.) Assuming that 'we didn't see or hear of them, therefore they
must not have had them' is a fallacy, particularly when compounded by additional overreach of tacking on the corollary: 'And therefore, they
never could have had them at
any point in their preceding history.'
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio...
(Heck, the presumption that there even
is such a thing as 'preceding history' in this context might
itself be fallacious, for that matter! We might
all be out ahead of our skis on that one, here. Perhaps, as the Prophets would tell us:
"It is not linear." We'll see what more we may learn in a few hours...)
IRL, they have the tech to depict it so they do, and pretend it was always like that...
Or, as in the case of the above, the inverse: TAS introduced its lifebelts owing to a
lack of resources sufficient to have spacesuits drawn on its characters, and subsequent productions were quite content to simply pretend it never happened.
The more things change...
Again, that's fair enough,
if one also applies the same to the rest of
Trek. It is what it is. (And of course, as ever, it goes without saying that they care rather less about whether you "buy it" than they do that
you're buying it!
)
What I mainly object to is singling out DSC as somehow fundamentally 'beyond the pale' compared to the sense of 'continuity' (technical or otherwise) exercised by its predecessors, or exhibiting some sort of 'disrespect' for them. I just view it as an extension—and not one entirely without defensible logic and precedent—of the same "creative license" to which they would each in turn lay claim, and all legitimately.
I have little doubt that if, counterfactually speaking, an idea like the Daedalus suit had been pitched to/by previous production teams, and the resources to pull it off had been available to them, there would remain those among their ranks who might have staunchly turned up their noses and held themselves 'above' such a concept on the grounds of 'believability.' (And they might well have had some quite salient points to make as to its potential wider ramifications.) But equally doubtless, there would be yet others who would have felt no such compunction, and perhaps even some who would have thought it a great bit of fun!
As in the present, the same would have been true of viewers, too. YMMV, indeed.
-
MMoM
