{"id":1089983,"date":"2026-01-24T17:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T17:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=505101"},"modified":"2026-01-24T17:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T17:37:18","slug":"star-trek-section-31-is-about-the-most-dangerous-idea-in-trek-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/star-trek-section-31-is-about-the-most-dangerous-idea-in-trek-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek: Section 31 is about the most dangerous idea in Trek canon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michelle
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Star Trek: Section 31<\/em>, Paramount Plus\u2019 first foray into feature-length Star Trek movies, has to do one, and only one, thing to succeed. The Michelle Yeoh-starring Star Trek: Discovery<\/em> spinoff follows Philippa Georgiou, former emperor from a morally inverse parallel universe<\/a>, in her work with Starfleet\u2019s infamous Section 31, a centuries-old space CIA that operates without the knowledge or consent of the Federation\u2019s leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the whole, I don\u2019t need a lot from Section 31<\/em>. I am a Star Trek fan who will always allow the series room to fail a little bit. It\u2019s healthy to give your faves leeway to be aggressively mid on occasion. <\/p>\n

But I must draw the line here, no further. Section 31<\/em> needs to explain how the very idea of Section 31 doesn\u2019t break the entire concept of Star Trek from top to bottom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The spy who walked away from Omelas<\/h2>\n

First introduced in the later seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/em> and revisited in prequel show Star Trek: Enterprise<\/em> and the early, prequel seasons of Star Trek: Discovery<\/em>, Section 31 purports to have been founded and sanctioned by the original Starfleet charter, a nice touch of space-Masonic paranoia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is Section 31? Simply, it\u2019s an off-the-books spy organization that may or may not have gone rogue in its mission to safeguard the existence of the Federation, while also keeping its activities totally secret from<\/em> the Federation. Whether or not Starfleet higher-ups are unaware of Section 31, or simply look the other way, is a matter of some mystery and also evolution over time. According to Section 31 operatives, however, without their secret assassinations, illegal scientific research, and other black-books operations, the Federation would have fallen centuries ago. (Although we\u2019re exclusively told this by Section 31 agents, a fertile facet of potential internal propaganda for Trek writers to exploit, should they choose.) <\/p>\n

The Federation, we understand, is a utopia. Egalitarian, diverse, cruelty-free, post-scarcity \u2014 all the buzzwords. But to paraphrase Captain Kirk in The Final Frontier<\/em>, what does utopia need with a starship<\/a> \u2014\u00a0I mean, an off-the-books CIA program?\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the existence of your utopia depends on a bunch of secret, no-consequences war crimes, then it\u2019s simply not a utopia. It\u2019s Omelas<\/a>. The debate over whether or not Section 31 betrays the fundamental ideals of Trek has raged since 1998, when the Deep Space Nine<\/em> episode \u201cInquisition\u201d established the concept, and it should!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Section 31 is not just philosophically bad for Star Trek, but emotionally destructive to the audience, implying that Pike, Kirk, Spock, Picard, Janeway, and the rest owe their triumphant moral and diplomatic victories in some part to an unaccountable group committing atrocities in their name. And in a setting that prides itself on internal consistency, it\u2019s a deceptive genre blend, with operatives often written by the rules of spy fantasy, not hard sci-fi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does Agent Sloane\u2019s ship have untraceable transporter systems he can use to kidnap Dr. Bashir and subject him to a mind-bending holodeck recruitment\/coerced confession experience? It doesn\u2019t need explaining; they\u2019re super space spies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not to say that you can\u2019t<\/em> depict spycraft and undercover operations within the context of Star Trek. The ironic thing about Deep Space Nine<\/em> introducing Section 31 to the canon is that the show also contains the most nuanced and devastating take on spycraft in Trek history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The irresistible romance of spies in space<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s never been a Trek series so in love with the romantic fantasy of spycraft as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/em>. But it was also equally in love with the dramatic potential of the reality of spycraft: immoral drudgery that destroys the psyches of its practitioners, and mostly creates more problems than it solves in an escalating cycle of state-to-state paranoia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among station doctor Julian Bashir\u2019s most prominent pastimes was pretending to be Non-Copyright-Infringing James Bond on the holodeck. DS9<\/em> produced a sweep of episodes in which Bashir\u2019s fascination with the glorified fictional spy is contrasted with his friend-crush (or more<\/a>?) on the local tailor, Elim Garak, a slippery former expert operative for the Cardassian Empire whose cheerful charisma is matched only by the grimness of his past. Eventually, this quirk of personality is raised as one reason Section 31 made contact with Bashir, and, after his refusal to join up, embroiled him in a number of plots and schemes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Deep Space Nine<\/em> also committed to showing the Federation at war, not d\u00e9tente with the shifty alien empire du jour, and so committed to grappling much more granularly and dramatically with what circumstances could require upstanding Federation officers to compromise their utopian principles. And the apex of DS9<\/em>\u2019s take on spycraft and the Federation occurs in an episode that has nothing to do with Section 31 at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018I will learn to live with it\u2019<\/h2>\n

\u201cIn the Pale Moonlight\u201d is so memorably associated with Avery Brooks\u2019 Captain Sisko that all you have to do to find its iconic ending is Google \u201ccaptain sisko speech.\u201d It takes the form of a personal log entry that sums up the events of the episode: Via forgery, bribery, murder, and the coverup of all three \u2014 that is, via spycraft<\/em> \u2014 Sisko has manipulated the Romulan Empire into joining the Dominion War against<\/em> the Dominion. For the cost of two lives and his conscience, he may have almost single-handedly saved the Federation from being bloodily conquered by a supremacist imperial state. <\/p>\n

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