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this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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She wasn't too bad in First Contact. The movie implied that she was simply an avatar for the Collective, not too different from Locutus. Later writers didn't get that and VOY turned her into an individual within the Collective who controlled all of it, somehow. Then her depiction just kept getting further and further from her depiction in First Contact, mostly keeping superficial things.
Section 31 went through a very similar shift, where DS9 implies that Sloan and S31 are rogue agents and Sloan is talking out of his ass in regards to any real authority and taking an, at best, extremely liberal interpretation of the Starfleet Charter, then later works making them an official part of Starfleet.
Section 31. I’m one of those few people who actually wants more S31 stuff, but only if it’s done correctly.
Way too many followups treat it like Starfleet’s CIA (Starfleet Intelligence already exists…) instead of a conspiracy that consists of individuals acting out of various degrees of ideological resolve, and to varying amounts. I imagine most people who are “in” S31 are more like Bashir. They are called upon to look the other way, or do something without being told much about it. Otherwise they have day jobs. I’m sure various Starfleet command level officers are in on some aspect of S31, but that doesn’t make their ships full time S31 ships. Only a very few people further the S31 cause full time, and they are totally off the books. S31 is supposed to be a shady group that parasitically uses Starfleet assets.
I idea of Section 31 black badges is so preposterously mind blowing.
She says that. And then she dies and the Borg are defeated.
On the other hand, on VOY, she says the same, and then proceeds to create a Fascist organization clearly against the goals of the drones. But at least when she dies, the Collective creates a new queen.
About Section 31, my understanding is that it was once official. And then it was disbanded with prejudice, but the high powers don't really want it gone, so S31 has authority even on DS9 and LWD times.
Been a while since I watched First Contact, but I thought they did more than just kill the Queen. Could be wrong, though.
On Section 31, that's the current story, but DS9 had their existence so secret that it's implausible in combination with how open they are in DSC. It'd be like the US disbanding the marine corps and then trying to pretend they never had one. ENT's bit where they quoted the charter also has them pretty clearly deliberately misinterpreting what Article 14, Section 31 actually says.
That sounds like it's intended to be meant to cover the wacky reality destroying shenanigans that Starfleet crews tend to get mixed up in. Breaking time travel laws to retrieve whales from the past so that Earth doesn't get wiped off the map, for instance would be covered under art. XIV, §31. Or interfering with the internal politics of the Q Continuum because they're blowing up random stars. Or landing a strike team on a pre-warp planet because they're messing around with Omega Particles. Messing with Romulan internal politics because they hate us doesn't qualify because the Romulans aren't about to wipe anyone out. Romulans are an ordinary threat, not an extraordinary one. That's just Tuesday in the Federation. Harris' quote also doesn't imply that the charter actually calls for the creation of an entire branch of Starfleet to handle such threats.
Before DSC gave them badges, the logical conclusion was that S31 in the prime timeline was an illegal conspiracy among Starfleet officers, not an official organization in any way. Even Into Darkness' portrayal could potentially be interpreted as a S31 conspirator in that timeline getting high enough ranked to move lots of resources on the sly, though I'll admit that's stretching things.
Oh, it has been a while since I watched it too. I could easily be wrong.
On S31, there is more than a century between those. It's like the US disbanding some intelligence agency by the time of their civil war, and people today not knowing about it. It's not the worst case of document loses on those series.
I thought she was supposed to be like 10Base2 terminator, unplug her and the network crashes.