Star Trek Arcs XII: Section 31

One of Deep Space Nine’s shorter and yet most impactful arcs involved the introduction of Section 31, a secretive intelligence organization within Starfleet that played by its own rules and was alone convinced of the good it did.

In the sixth season episode “Inquisition,” Luther Sloan attempts to recruit Julian Bashir, who despite a long friendship with the former Cardassian spy Garak can’t bring himself to condone Section 31’s existence, which to this point had been largely unknown outside of its own circles.

In the seventh season episode “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” (in times of war the law falls silent) Bashir again runs into Sloan, realizing that Starfleet, in its increasing desperation during the Dominion War, has knowingly embraced Section 31’s questionable tactics. Fans as eagerly embraced this second spotlight as they had the first, both serving as pinnacle demonstrations of the morally gray areas so often associated with the series.

Late that season, Bashir confronts Sloan directly in “Extreme Measures” when he realizes Section 31 was responsible for a genocidal plague inflicted on the Founders that has inadvertently (?) also infected Odo.

Section 31 shows up in the fourth season of Enterprise, with the revelation that Malcolm Reed once worked for Section 31. Captain Archer takes a dim view on the revelation when Reed struggles to come clean in “Affliction”/“Divergence,” in which we meet his former handler Harris.

The idea is reprised on a far grander stage in Star Trek Into Darkness, in which we learn Admiral Marcus is also a part of Section 31, and thinks of nothing to use it in an attempt to launch all-out war with the Klingons.

Section 31 factors heavily into the serialized storytelling in the second season of Discovery, which features Agent Leland and new recruits Mirror Georgiou and Ash Tyler. There remains in development a full Section 31 spin-off which at one time was speculated to feature Georgiou and Tyler, although developments since that and the third season have perhaps complicated things.

With the movie appearance and heavy presence in and potential spin-off from Discovery, Section 31 has turned into as significant a development of modern Star Trek as anything else you could name. A certain step away from the original hopeful vision of the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned, Section 31 instead of a contradiction often serves to distinguish the enduring morals of the main characters. When Bashir or Kirk reject its tactics, we cheer them as heroes. When Mirror Georgiou embraces Section 31, we’re not surprised. When Tyler finds a temporary refuge in his crazy life, we can even begin to see it in a different light. In modern Star Trek, too, is the ability to see the good even in the bad (a legacy dating all the way back to “Balance of Terror”).

Star Trek Arcs II: Khan

The second Star Trek arc is probably the most famous arc of the whole franchise: Khan Noonien Singh. 

Khan comes from our own lifetime, a genetic superman who rose to power in the 1990s as part of the Eugenics Wars, which other than this biographical detail have never been explored except in books. (Slightly more examined but still sketchy: WWIII.) Anyway, Khan loses power, is exiled into space in a sleeper ship called the Botany Bay, there to linger for hundreds of years until stumbled upon by Kirk and company near the end of the first season of the original series in “Space Seed” (which, for those keeping score, is of course before Chekov joins the cast).

And Khan immediately attempts his old shenanigans again, and once more finds himself in exile for his efforts, this time on a planet called Ceti Alpha V.

And then, in the second film of the franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he returns once more. Fans still claim this particular adventure is the high water mark of at least the films, and were none too pleased when Star Trek Into Darkness revisited it. Like the other Kelvin films it essentially exists in its own timeline, so it doesn’t technically connect with the rest of the arc, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story.

Enterprise provides that. Remember how Data’s creator was named Noonian Soong? Well, we meet his ancestor, Arik, whose work begins with other “augments” from Khan’s heyday, similarly revived for additional mayhem, in the trilogy of episodes “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments,” before he decides to switch to robotics (the evolution of which itself carries into the first season of Picard).

That’s still not the end of the story!

The augments, during the course of their misbegotten adventures, crossed paths with the Klingons, and in “Affliction” and “Divergence” we learn the canonical explanation for the lack of ridges in the original series: they attempted an experiment to create augments of their own, and mostly the results were cosmetic (mostly so they didn’t accidentally annihilate themselves!).

A side note: Deep Space Nine revisits the idea of genetic engineering in “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?,” in which we learn that Bashir, naturally enough, is controversially entangled in it, thanks to his parents, and that the Federation still finds it otherwise as much a taboo as the Genesis Planet Khan helped create.

He Was a Particularly Troubled Romulan: Star Trek Post-9/11

"He was a particularly troubled Romulan."

That's what Spock says of Nero in Star Trek (2009).  The line always stuck out for me, but I never quite understood why until recently.  Spock, of course, is Vulcan, and Nero is Romulan, an offshoot of the Vulcans.  Further characterizing the Romulans was always a little difficult.  In the original TV series, they were presented as another Cold War analogy, like the Klingons, who had fought the Federation in the past but had retreated into reclusiveness.  In fact, the fact that Romulans descended from Vulcans wasn't even generally known until they emerged again, and they went back into isolation until The Next Generation, where they became a recurring threat, until the events of Star Trek Nemesis, in which a clone of Picard named Shinzon attempted another full-scale war against the Federation, but ended up suffering the loss of their home planet in the backstory of Star Trek. 

Characterizing Nero as "particularly troubled" is a telling detail.  Nero's response to the destruction of Romulus is to blame Spock, the older one still alive in Picard's day, and all of the Federation, and to once again declare open war.  He sets about a plan to what is in his mind equitable retaliatory action, affecting the destruction of the Vulcan home world and then the rest of the leading Federation worlds, starting with Earth.

And it made me wonder what exactly Nero represented.  Longtime fans tend to look down on the new films, claiming they lack the spirit of the franchise by putting too much focus on flashy special effects.  But that's simply not the case.

Since 9/11, Star Trek has had terrorism on the brain.  Star Trek: Enterprise famously launched within weeks of 9/11.  By the end of its second season, Enterprise launched a major story arc in direct response, an act of terrorism against Earth that led to a preventive mission against the aliens responsible. 

As you read above, the franchise was responsive to its times from the very beginning.  The Klingons and the Romulans were both reflective of the Soviet Union, an idea that culminated in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country with its breakup.  The Next Generation continued the tradition; the Troubles in Ireland were often reflected in its storytelling.  Deep Space Nine echoed the collapse of the imperial age with the end of the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor, reflecting back to the days of WWII but often evoking present times, if not the Troubles then the ongoing conflict in Israel.

Which brings us back to Star Trek.  What if Nero was a Palestinian analogy?  Or Islamic terrorists such as those who struck on 9/11?  I find it likely.  And then Star Trek Into Darkness doubled down on the idea. 
                                                                                                                                                                          

 

You'll recall the above promotional poster, meant to evoke Khan's early terrorism in the movie.  Khan himself might as well have depicted the perception that America's response to 9/11 ended up being excessive or misguided, to put it mildly.

 

Things worth considering.



Star Trek Into Darkness

Ever since the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, was released, fans have been negatively comparing every single one even tenuously similar to it.  The entry was a hallmark, saved the franchise after an underwhelming reception to The Motion Picture a few years earlier, filled with action and resonating character work.  It was the first time the adventures of Kirk demanded a sequel, which it got with The Search for Spock, which spent much of its time reflecting on Khan's key moments.

Star Trek Into Darkness is the first time we get a movie that not only deliberately echoes Khan but arguably improves on it.  The big mystery every fan has been attempting to solve since the presence of Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch's villain was announced turns out to be exactly what they long suspected but the filmmakers struggled to deny (much like The Dark Knight Rises last year with Marion Cotillard's Talia disguised as Miranda Tate).  Cumberbatch indeed plays a character named John Harrison, but Harrison is secretly Khan, the genetic superman created sometime in Kirk's past three hundred years earlier (previously but now only roughly our own time), awoken to create havoc once more.

That I'm writing about this directly is because I want to write about what truly energizes Into Darkness.  Many observers said the 2009 reboot Star Trek lacked the social relevance that had previously been one of the defining elements of the franchise.  If that was indeed true, then this new film does everything possible to reverse that.  The 1966-1969 original series famously did everything it could to get around network restrictions concerning the topic of the Vietnam War, and now we're getting the 21st century equivalent.  Make no mistake: Into Darkness is about the Iraq War.

The story is all about trying to decide if the right thing to do really is always the right thing to do.  It begins with Kirk's (Chris Pine) efforts to rescue Spock (Zachary Quinto) from the maw of a volcano, breaking the Star Trek rule known as the prime directive about exposing primitive species to technology years ahead of their development and thus altering the course of their future in the process.  He becomes demoted as a result, subject to serving under Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) all over again.  Pike has always been Kirk's biggest supporter, but even he sees the basic flaw in his character, in that he never stops to question whether he's right.  It's always been assumed that Kirk always is.  Into Darkness is one of those times where we all stop to question whether that is really the case.  Famously in Star Trek: First Contact, we ask the same question of Captain Picard.

Actually, Into Darkness is a lot like First Contact, which itself was a lot like Wrath of Khan.  Picard in this instance, however, might find a better parallel in Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), the war-hungry instigator who draws the parallels to Iraq.  In Star Trek terms, Iraq is the Klingons, the alien species who are just as identifiable to the franchise as Spock's Vulcans.  Marcus uses Khan for the same reasons it might be said that both generations of President Bush wanted to deal with Saddam Hussein, because that was a problem the United States created in the first place, and they felt it was necessary to finally deal with it.  The second Bush, the argument further goes, really went to Iraq to finish what his father started.  Some of that can be found in Oliver Stone's W., if you'd like another cinematic exploration.

Do you really have to worry about any of that?  Do you have to think about all those nasty politics that have been so divisive in our culture for at least the last decade?  Not if you don't want to.  Star Trek previously explored this territory, the post-9/11 landscape (Khan is also a terrorist who attacks London early in the film), in the Star Trek: Enterprise Xindi arc, and the nature of war in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Dominion arc.  Yet Klingons have been a reliable menace for decades.  Admiral Marcus calls them a foe Starfleet is destined to clash with, and indeed fans know that to be true.  The sixth movie, The Undiscovered Country, is all about finally confronting that reality, an assassination thriller about the heavy cost of peace.

There's plenty of action, plenty of humor, and if you want to see this Khan ham it up, there's even a scene for that impulse.  Yet some of the best moments echo the best moments of Wrath of Khan, and that may be what the most devoted fans take away from Into Darkness.  The fan backlash to Superman Returns six years ago accused it of being too derivative of the Christopher Reeve movies that preceded it.  There's a small risk of a similar feeling falling on Into Darkness, but it's alleviated by all those moving parts around it, keeping events lively and engaging.  It's relevant to viewers on just about every level.  This is no one-trick pony.  There's little risk that any one element will be the one that defines it.

The bottom line is, like the best movies, there will be a different interpretation to engage every viewer.  Filmmakers love to try and please all the demographics of age and sex, but Star Trek Into Darkness is the rare movie that will cross over any one version of its events, a common experience that speaks to the very heart of the spirit its franchise has always represented.  Someone else said that it boldly goes where other Star Treks have gone before.  That is an incredibly positive interpretation, and perhaps the best thing that could be said about it.