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29 Days of Star Trek Meme: Day 21, 22, 23
Feb. 28th, 2012 11:28 pmCrap, been busy. Quick, catch up, catch up!
21 - Which Star Trek food would you want to try at least once?
None of the major Trek species seem to have particularly interesting cuisine, really. There’s Klingon (Real warriors eat nothing but raw meat, apparently), Vulcan (Logical apparently equals bland), Ferengi (Apparently the same live bugs eaten by the “Conspiracy” aliens… hmm…)
22 - Which Star Trek world would you want to visit at least once?
Well, no surprise, my choice is Romulus. Admittedly, that’s as much because we don’t ever see much of it on the show, but also because it seems like a nice enough place to visit, assuming you can avoid running afoul of the authorities. Vulcan is dry and hot, Andor very cold, the Klingon and Cardassian homeworlds seem perpetually overcast, and their architecture seems to lean towards totalitarian brutality anyway. Romulus seems a lot more temperate, and the cities aren’t quite as overbearing.
23 - Is there anything you'd want to change about Star Trek? Why?
Ignoring trivial changes to specific episodes, if I were to change one storyline it would be... the Section 31 storyline in DS9.
Now, one of the things DS9 did quite well was to challenge the setting assumptions that underlined TOS and TNG; the exchange between Bashir and Kira in “Emissary” about ‘the frontier’ is a great scene, and in general, DS9 did quite well at underlining some of the unstated flaws in the Federation culture that had been previously established. That’s great, that’s good stuff. Section 31 seemed to spring from the same impulse, but it…
Well, the problem was that depicting the Federation and Starfleet as vaguely, unthinkingly colonialist or imperialistic in its dealings with alien worlds is something that’s perfectly in line with what was shown before. Depicting the Federation as being secretly maintained by black-ops puppet masters who do all the dirty work needed to maintain security… was not.
Now, to be fair, “Inquisition” is a fun conspiracy theory episode. The problem is, like most conspiracy theories, Section 31 doesn’t really stand up to much analysis. How does a secret organization like that get the resourced needed to not just deal with threats but then cover up all trace of their own existence? How does Section 31 even benefit from being so utterly secretive in the first place? The Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order might not operate openly, but they don’t try to cover up the fact that they exist in the first place.
For that matter, the idea that Federation citizens are so fragile they need to be shielded from the dirty work being done in their name… well, that’s getting dangerously close to the “Hard men making the hard choices that weak-willed liberals won’t” trope so beloved by reactionaries. Never mind that it doesn’t hold up even as part of the setting as established. From “The Enterprise Incident” to “Chain of Command”, Kirk and Picard never shied away from covert operations against the Federation’s enemies. For Section 31 to work, it needs to pretend that it’s even vaguely plausible that these unelected, secretive men in black are the sole force working to protect the Federation – never mind that the very next episode demonstrated that regular Starfleet officers are just as capable of making those hard choices in the name of security – and dealt with the dilemma in a far more interesting and realistic fashion than secret agents in black leather uniforms.
What’s worse about Section 31 is that it infects the rest of the series. Now, it seems, every other novel can’t go five minutes without cutting away to the secret puppet-masters, making sure our hero’s foolish sentimentality and morality won’t doom the galaxy. A prime example; the TNG ‘A Time To…” series, which concludes with Section 31 secretly assassinating the Federation president and his staff, the implication being that that was the only way to prevent a galactic war, and, fundamentally, the only real option. Because when you think of TNG, that’s the sort of scenario that immediately comes to mind, right?
Section 31 didn’t need to exist. We’ve seen plenty of corrupt admirals and mad captains in the show; “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” would have worked fine with Admiral Ross alone as the agent behind the scheme, while the Changeling virus storyline in the final arc… well, honestly, that was a mess that seemed to have been thrown in at the last minute, and might as well have been excised entirely. The concept of Section 31 is fundamentally at odds with the rest of Star Trek, and rather than challenging its premises, all it does is ignore them in favour of a third-rate conspiracy thriller.
21 - Which Star Trek food would you want to try at least once?
None of the major Trek species seem to have particularly interesting cuisine, really. There’s Klingon (Real warriors eat nothing but raw meat, apparently), Vulcan (Logical apparently equals bland), Ferengi (Apparently the same live bugs eaten by the “Conspiracy” aliens… hmm…)
22 - Which Star Trek world would you want to visit at least once?
Well, no surprise, my choice is Romulus. Admittedly, that’s as much because we don’t ever see much of it on the show, but also because it seems like a nice enough place to visit, assuming you can avoid running afoul of the authorities. Vulcan is dry and hot, Andor very cold, the Klingon and Cardassian homeworlds seem perpetually overcast, and their architecture seems to lean towards totalitarian brutality anyway. Romulus seems a lot more temperate, and the cities aren’t quite as overbearing.
23 - Is there anything you'd want to change about Star Trek? Why?
Ignoring trivial changes to specific episodes, if I were to change one storyline it would be... the Section 31 storyline in DS9.
Now, one of the things DS9 did quite well was to challenge the setting assumptions that underlined TOS and TNG; the exchange between Bashir and Kira in “Emissary” about ‘the frontier’ is a great scene, and in general, DS9 did quite well at underlining some of the unstated flaws in the Federation culture that had been previously established. That’s great, that’s good stuff. Section 31 seemed to spring from the same impulse, but it…
Well, the problem was that depicting the Federation and Starfleet as vaguely, unthinkingly colonialist or imperialistic in its dealings with alien worlds is something that’s perfectly in line with what was shown before. Depicting the Federation as being secretly maintained by black-ops puppet masters who do all the dirty work needed to maintain security… was not.
Now, to be fair, “Inquisition” is a fun conspiracy theory episode. The problem is, like most conspiracy theories, Section 31 doesn’t really stand up to much analysis. How does a secret organization like that get the resourced needed to not just deal with threats but then cover up all trace of their own existence? How does Section 31 even benefit from being so utterly secretive in the first place? The Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order might not operate openly, but they don’t try to cover up the fact that they exist in the first place.
For that matter, the idea that Federation citizens are so fragile they need to be shielded from the dirty work being done in their name… well, that’s getting dangerously close to the “Hard men making the hard choices that weak-willed liberals won’t” trope so beloved by reactionaries. Never mind that it doesn’t hold up even as part of the setting as established. From “The Enterprise Incident” to “Chain of Command”, Kirk and Picard never shied away from covert operations against the Federation’s enemies. For Section 31 to work, it needs to pretend that it’s even vaguely plausible that these unelected, secretive men in black are the sole force working to protect the Federation – never mind that the very next episode demonstrated that regular Starfleet officers are just as capable of making those hard choices in the name of security – and dealt with the dilemma in a far more interesting and realistic fashion than secret agents in black leather uniforms.
What’s worse about Section 31 is that it infects the rest of the series. Now, it seems, every other novel can’t go five minutes without cutting away to the secret puppet-masters, making sure our hero’s foolish sentimentality and morality won’t doom the galaxy. A prime example; the TNG ‘A Time To…” series, which concludes with Section 31 secretly assassinating the Federation president and his staff, the implication being that that was the only way to prevent a galactic war, and, fundamentally, the only real option. Because when you think of TNG, that’s the sort of scenario that immediately comes to mind, right?
Section 31 didn’t need to exist. We’ve seen plenty of corrupt admirals and mad captains in the show; “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” would have worked fine with Admiral Ross alone as the agent behind the scheme, while the Changeling virus storyline in the final arc… well, honestly, that was a mess that seemed to have been thrown in at the last minute, and might as well have been excised entirely. The concept of Section 31 is fundamentally at odds with the rest of Star Trek, and rather than challenging its premises, all it does is ignore them in favour of a third-rate conspiracy thriller.