Comment on The Stars of Star Trek: Section 31 Know Why You're Nervous About the Movie
ThirdMoonOfPluto@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
I’m disappointed that they clearly don’t. The same tired justifications which amount to the ideals of Star Trek are a luxury made possible by hard men doing bad things in the dark.
toast@retrolemmy.com 5 weeks ago
Yeah. Reading the article, Section 31 seems great if you just want to just shit on everything else in the franchise. Nope, not for me.
mina@berlin.social 5 weeks ago
@toast
I mean, in DS9, section 31 were clearly villains, right?
@ThirdMoonOfPluto
astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 5 weeks ago
It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what Section 31 is supposed to be. Sloan wasn’t a good guy. 31 actively tried to commit genocide.
The idea behind them is that arguments of ends justifying the means and “getting dirty” to preserve higher ideals is morally, philosophically, and practically bankrupt. The Federation didn’t need 31 to win the war, and in fact, their methods would have made it much worse. Section 31 as a plot device exists to show us that there will always be those looking to use higher ideals to support terrible actions, and we must be constantly vigilant against them.
It truly pains me how that message has been twisted, and people think Section 31 are not only good guys but also cool.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
Do we know that for certain? The cure to the virus was actually pretty fundamental to the Female Changeling ordering the Jem’Hadar to stand down. She refused to surrender until Odo linked with her and cured her.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 5 weeks ago
What, then, is the message in the episode where Sisko “would do it all again” concerning assassinating a political rival and faking evidence to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion?
toast@retrolemmy.com 5 weeks ago
Villains or heroes isn’t the issue. It’s the argument that we need a group that doesn’t play by the rules that apply to the rest of society that I find problematic.
Shouldn’t we strive for a world in which the rules really do apply to all? Can’t we hope to conceive of a set of laws standards by which we should all be judged? Isn’t the world of Star Trek meant in some way to be aspirational, rather than just a reflection of what we have now?
MalikMuaddibSoong@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
We live in a world that has
wallsfederation worlds, and those federation worlds have to be guarded.Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Barclay?
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
They were definitely villains in the series…but I don’t think DS9 ever made a strong case that they weren’t necessary (nor do I think they were trying to).
Right up until the end, the morphogenic virus was critical to the end of the war.
mina@berlin.social 5 weeks ago
@ValueSubtracted
I wanted to watch the series again, anyway. It's been a time.
As I remember it, they left it rather ambiguous, which is the actual point.
If moral choices were easy, we wouldn't have to think about them too much.
Yes, the virus ended the war, but at what price?
Corgana@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
Villains who’s engineered virus forced the Dominion to the negotiating table… just saying.
“Good and evil isn’t as black and white as TNG portrayed it” is kinda DS9’s whole deal.
marlowe221@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Right, it’s Sisko’s “It’s easy to be an angel in paradise…” from season 1. That’s the main theme of the whole show - how do the Federation’s ideals hold up in significantly less than ideal conditions? What does it mean to be “the good guys” when all of the choices in front of you are varying degrees of bad?
People always mention the later season, understandably so, but it carries through the entire series. In some ways, it’s even more prominent in the early seasons when DS9 is portrayed as being pretty remote, Federation back up is far away, the main cast is own their own, and the e Cardassian fleet is always nearby.