Deep Space Nine Understands Spy Fiction—And Its Reality

In less than a week, the next one Star Trek the project will arrive in form of Section 31promotional film Michelle Yeoh walks in a black ops unit-one that, at least in all the pictures we’ve seen so far, emphasizes the glitz and glam of the secret service. There are events, there are beautiful clothesthere is even, perhaps the most surprising of all events, the direct supervision of the Federation, as an employee with a stick up their ass who is here to prevent you from having fun.

It is not surprising that some Star Trek What are the fans worried about? Section 31 he’s really thinking about his name—and maybe even a few of his stars are worried about that. “I’m afraid of how it will be received, because it’s not A journey people want. The A journey what people want, is A journey what we all want, is 1,000 more episodes TNG“Rob Kazinsky, who plays Zeph cybernetically in the film, recently said SFX magazine. “Everyone is always angry that they are not getting more TNGwhen at the same time, when TNG came out, everyone hated it. So this will come and it won’t feel like anything A journey that he had ever seen.”

But when it comes to Star Trek what people want—especially a Star Trek fight against the idea of ​​Section 31 as its main purpose—perhaps The Next Generation it should not be the model we turn to. To get a real look Operation of Section 31 in Star Trekand its mysterious existence as that “necessary evil.” destroying his utopialet’s look back at the show that gave us the first one: Deep Space Nine. Most importantly, in the implementation before the speech, DS9 is he had pushed us and Dr. Julian Bashir, the man who follows episode 31, on another tour in “Our Man Bashir.” I am a James Bond pastiche which put Bashir at the center of a glossy, colorful, and romantic letter to former spies.

In “Our Man Bashir”, the spies are sexy, cute, and full of action. Bashir gets to be the unabashed hero of his holosuite program—there are cute retro costumes, casinos and cute, well-rounded criminals with sinister plans to take over the world. Even with Garak, the former spy, who Bashir has been most concerned about keeping his secrets – punctuating Bashir’s journey to remind him of the opposite of real espionage, it’s part of celebrating film espionage as we know it. like. Even with the difficulties it plays with (it’s well known A journey trope, a holodeck-gone-wrong show with “die in game, die in real life” to boot), it’s an episode that confirms Bashir’s romantic dream that being a spy is all but over, even when he’s forced to rescue. the real day by throwing away his fantasy.

After two years, DS9 is set up Episode 31 in its sixth season in “Inquisition,” with Bashir being evaluated by the organization as a potential recruit at the center of its story that has thrown the galaxy into chaos and the spread of Dominion War. At this point, the show had already done a lot to delve into the painful reality that Captain Sisko had it was explained earlier in DS9 isIt’s easy to be “pure in paradise,” and examines how both Starfleet and the Federation responded to unprecedented interstellar conflict. If “Our Man Bashir” played Garak’s role in espionage as a joke for Bashir to ignore, “Inquisition” makes them a major part of his story: from the beginning, Section 31 is presented as a contradiction of the theory. whatever Bashir and the rest DS9 is‘s crew, take care.

The work that Agent Sloane does, even to the extent of what she goes through trying to recruit Bashir, is difficult and unpleasant. Sloane herself, who is part of Episode 31 as we know it, is burdened with a mysterious mind that defies everything we might expect from a Starfleet commander, black ops or otherwise. Bashir is not happy to learn that Section 31 exists, but he is very scared – and his answer, like everyone else’s, is to try to destroy it completely, either by bringing light or, as Sisko says. he at the end of this section, to work on reducing it from the inside. In the course of Section 31 the remaining form DS9 is-a direct follow-up to “Inquisition,” “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges,” which angers Bashir with a big show on Episode 31 and beyond, and the trippier “More Extras” -Sloane’s argument shows the organization as important. The negative is no longer considered as final by the show or our critics. If anything, Section 31 is as counterintuitive in its appearance as the Authority itself is, a threat to the highest moral standards. Star Trek.

This is not mentioned either in the subsequent sections of Section 31, but in the section that appeared after the introduction: picture of “In the Pale Moonlight”creating a killer one-two punch. If “Inquisition” introduced the concept of espionage within the Federation, “In Pale Moonlight” is just espionage-soaked, scheming, deceitful that matches its grim reality. Again, this is not like love DS9 is had a version of “Our Man Bashir”, the road to hell Captain Sisko goes down with Garak in “Light of the Gray Moon” is shown to us as disgusting, not only because of the actions taken, but also morally. the damage that the job does on Sisko and beyond Star Trek only. The main horror of “In the Pale Moonlight” is that Sisko is the agent of the massacre that brings the Romulans to war against the Dominion, ensuring the death of millions more while continuing to save billions from war. Failure of the Federation. It’s that, as he says proudly that the camera is filming a log that he knows he’s going to remove, he can live with the price it has on his life. The story ends with a formal announcement of the Romulans’ war on the Dominion, which Sisko wanted, but he does not see this as a victory within the story: there is no good ending to the reality of espionage outside of the fantasy of the holoprogram. .

Deep Space Nine could have dropped a bomb by giving us Episode 31, but it understood the dangers of using such a weapon in the first place – because it was already communicated to its audience and to the characters that the legend of the top-secret spy agency in Star TrekNature was nothing more than that, and that its reality was something far away, too ugly to be understood. If it is Section 31 the film wants to avoid this fear of being seen as not him A journey what people want, then they must understand this. Otherwise, unlike Sisko, it cannot learn to live with idle fantasy, and nothing else.

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