What is your personal head canon?

[Sci]

One would imagine that Starfleet Intelligence could do what Section 31 does. Section 31 lacks the moral compass and is far more pragmatic in it's approach.

I agree with you 100% that the legitimate foreign intelligence needs of the Federation can be served by Starfleet Intelligence rather than Section 31. I have a bit of a quibble though -- I don't actually think Section 31 is all that pragmatic. When you look at their operational history, almost every single operation we see them undertake actually results in massive blowback, often at the cost of thousands of Federation lives. Founder virus? Prompts the Female Shapeshifter to order the extermination of the Cardassian species and to order the Jem'Hadar to give a Pyrrhic victory to the Allies in Cardassia orbit, only averted when Odo shares the cure. Installation of Section 31 mole as chair of the Tal Shiar? The Tal Shiar under him fails to stop the rise of Shinzon, who subsequently kills Data and scores of Starfleet officers aboard the Enterprise in his attempt to genocide Earth. Recovery of Khan and his Augments in the Kelvin Timeline to provoke a war with the Klingons to install the head of Section 31 as military dictator of the Federation? Leads to the crash-landing of the USS Vengeance in the middle of downtown San Francisco, killing thousands of Federation citizens. The development of Control in the 2250s? Nearly leads to the extermination of all life in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Section 31 is the reverse Midas of the Federation. Everything they touch turns to shit.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't actually think Section 31 is all that pragmatic

I think they are motivated by a pragmatic attitude. I don't think they're all that great, and often times overreach in their ambitions. They are struck by hubris more often than not.

 

[Sci]

I think they are motivated by a pragmatic attitude. I don't think they're all that great, and often times overreach in their ambitions. They are struck by hubris more often than not.

I suppose this boils down to whether or not you think the connotations of the word "pragmatic" preclude them from also being incompetent.

 

[fireproof78]

I suppose this boils down to whether or not you think the connotations of the word "pragmatic" preclude them from also being incompetent.

I do not necessarily think it does in this case. Again, their values are based in pragmatism; their efforts not so much.

 

[Farscape One]

I don't think Section 31 is totally incompetent.

Their plan in "INTER ARMA ENIM SILENT LEGES" worked flawlessly.

And if Bashir was not genetically enhanced and remembered exactly a medical scan from years prior and went through with the plan to trap Sloan, the Founders would all be dead.

 

[Sci]

I don't think Section 31 is totally incompetent.

Their plan in "INTER ARMA ENIM SILENT LEGES" worked flawlessly.

Their plan in "Inter Arma" directly led to the rise of Shinzon and his attempted act of genocide against Earth, since their mole running the Tal Shiar was too incompetent to take Shinzon out before he overthrew the Romulan government.

And if Bashir was not genetically enhanced and remembered exactly a medical scan from years prior and went through with the plan to trap Sloan, the Founders would all be dead.

The Founders would all be dead, and so would the Cardassian species. And the order to fight to the last soldier would never have been rescinded, so thousands upon thousands more Federation, Klingon, and Romulan troops would have been killed trying to defeat the Dominion fleet.

And God knows what the surviving Dominion army would be doing to their subject worlds in the Gamma Quadrant without the Founders to control them.

 

[Farscape One]

And the Founders were not negotiating at all, and would have wiped out the Cardassians and who knows who else anyway. The only reason the Founders surrendered was because Odo was going to cure them.

So in a roundabout way, Section 31 did stop the war because if the Founders were never sick, they would have no need of the cure in Odo.

(By the way, I don't condone genocide... but it's kind of like the situation with the Borg and Necheyev ordering Picard to use a similar weapon in the future. You are fighting against an enemy with absolutely no hope of a negotiation or peace, and they are dead set on killing you. What option do you really have left?)

 

[fireproof78]

I often go back to a quote from Red vs. Blue which highlights this need:
I don't give a damn about your committee and its opinions of my work! Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species. I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say a fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable.

 

[Sci]

And the Founders were not negotiating at all, and would have wiped out the Cardassians and who knows who else anyway. The only reason the Founders surrendered was because Odo was going to cure them.

Unlikely. The Federation had already militarily defeated the Dominion long before the Battle of Cardassia. Had the Female Shapeshifter been in her right mind, she would have done the pragmatic thing, because the Dominion is always self-interestedly pragmatic: negotiated an end to the war and a withdrawal of Dominion forces back to the Gamma Quadrant. The Federation might have found themselves cut off from Gamma Quadrant space, but more than likely the war would have ended much sooner and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Allied lives would have been saved.

(By the way, I don't condone genocide... but

You can stop right there. You're rationalizing genocide.

 

[cooleddie74]

That it's not a continuity error that Scotty believes Kirk has come to his rescue aboard the decomissioned Enterprise-A in "Relics(TNG)," but that Scotty's faulty memory is part of the infinitesimal signal degradation and loss in his transporter pattern stored aboard the Jenolen. Oh, and that an aged Demora Sulu is the Captain referred to in the VOY flashback where a teenaged Chakotay is talking about the Starfleet officer who sponsored his application to Starfleet Academy.

 

[Farscape One]

Unlikely. The Federation had already militarily defeated the Dominion long before the Battle of Cardassia. Had the Female Shapeshifter been in her right mind, she would have done the pragmatic thing, because the Dominion is always self-interestedly pragmatic: negotiated an end to the war and a withdrawal of Dominion forces back to the Gamma Quadrant. The Federation might have found themselves cut off from Gamma Quadrant space, but more than likely the war would have ended much sooner and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Allied lives would have been saved.



You can stop right there. You're rationalizing genocide.

Not necessarily, because the Dominion hadn't lost a conflict in thousands of years. That would not sit well with the Founders, and they would bide time to get forces ready to attack and destroy the Federation. Odo going to the Link was the only thing that stopped that outcome.


And I was rationalizing nothing... I was posing the question because when your very survival is at stake, you are not always going to stick to your ideals.

 

[Dukhat]

That it's not a continuity error that Scotty believes Kirk has come to his rescue aboard the decomissioned Enterprise-A in "Relics(TNG)," but that Scotty's faulty memory is part of the infinitesimal signal degradation and loss in his transporter pattern stored aboard the Jenolen. Oh, and that an aged Demora Sulu is the Captain referred to in the VOY flashback where a teenaged Chakotay is talking about the Starfleet officer who sponsored his application to Starfleet Academy.

‘Captain Sulu’ was referred to as ‘he’ in the episode.

 

[cooleddie74]

Forgot that. I suppose it could still be Demora's son.

 

[Sci]

Not necessarily, because the Dominion hadn't lost a conflict in thousands of years.

The Dominion is not a reliable source of information about its own history.

That would not sit well with the Founders, and they would bide time to get forces ready to attack and destroy the Federation.

And how were they going to do that? The Prophets had agreed to prevent Dominion transit over the Wormhole, and even if they hadn't, the Federation controlled Deep Space 9 and could have re-installed the minefield. There was no way to get Dominion ships into the Alpha Quadrant.

In the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation had out-produced the Dominion forces on starship construction, had cut them off from vital shipbuilding resources, had destroyed Dominion shipyards -- oh, and the Cardassians were always going to rebel irrelevant of whether or not the Founders got sick, which means the Dominion would have been cut off from Cardassian Guard ships. And, on top of that, the Breen energy-dampening weapon was effectively neutralized and the Breen were either unable or unwilling to provide enough ships to turn the war effort in the Dominion's favor.

The Dominion was already destined to lose by the time "Inter Arma" started. They had no capacity to military defeat the Allies. Had the virus not been a factor, the Female Shapeshifter almost certainly would have recognized reality and cut her losses. The Founders are pragmatists.

And I was rationalizing nothing...

Of course you were.

I was posing the question because when your very survival is at stake, you are not always going to stick to your ideals.

That's just a re-statement of your rationalization for genocide.

 

[cooleddie74]

Oh, and the NX-05 is the Atlantis and served with honor in the Earth-Romulan War on the frontlines. Mostly because I have fanfic involving that ship and its Captain that go back years.

 

[JesterFace]

Q was behind what happened in Time Squared, as originally intended by the writer.

I think Q could be behind many different things in STNG beginning in the pilot with the trial of humanity.

 

[SJGardner]

Let's see what I can remember off the top of my head:

• Julian Bashir and Sylvia Tilly are on the autism spectrum; they are also both either bi- or pansexual. This latter also applies to Dax and most other long-lived symbionts along with their hosts.
  
• Captain Killy was captured by the Klingons at Pahvo when the ISS Discovery switched places with its prime counterpart. She was imprisoned at Rura Penthe where she later escaped from, and became a high-ranking figure in organized crime on the frontier.
  
• Kirk and Tilly were roommates at the Academy and remained close friends right until her apparent death. Kirk vowed to become the youngest captain Starfleet has ever seen in her memory.
• Prime Lorca was left in his cell in the Mirror Universe and completely forgotten about. As he was imprisoned on the personal orders of Emperor Georgiou, no one but the Emperor had the authority to countermand the order, and not a single one of her successors, not even Spock, had the patience to review every single random order the previous ones made. However, when the Cardassians finally captured the prison station during the fall of the Empire, all they found was two redshirts guarding a completely empty cell on orders made decades before they were born, with no indication whatsoever as to how and when its occupant left.
  
• The bio-mimetic gel Garak asked for in In the Pale Moonlight was actually what he bombed Vreenak's shuttle with.
• Section 31 was aware of the circumstances of Vreenak's assassination and ordered Koval to have the Tal Shiar quietly tie up any loose ends.
• The Maquis knew about the Defiant's top secret Romulan cloak because Eddington tipped them off.
• Picard tossed the "priceless" Kurlan Naiskos to the ground when searching his wrecked ready room because it was a replica, the original having been donated to the Louvre.
• The translator at Kirk and McCoy's Klingon trial is in fact Klaa, having been demoted for his gross incompetence.

 

[Farscape One]

Some good ones there. I particularly like 31 having Koval tie things up, Garak and the gel, and Eddington tipping off the Maquis.

 

[Commander Troi]

Julian Bashir and Sylvia Tilly are on the autism spectrum

Yes, I totally agree.

 

[Paul755]

Section 31 was aware of the circumstances of Vreenak's assassination and ordered Koval to have the Tal Shiar quietly tie up any loose ends.

oh, this is a good one. I could totally see him overseeing the investigation personally to insure the proper outcome.