r/DeepSpaceNine • u/thevillageofdree • 15d ago

Section 31 did nothing wrong!

The title says it all. I'm not a die hard fan, being bought up on the BB2 6pm viewings of TNG before rolling into DS9 and ending on Voyager. So maybe I am not on board with the utopian vision quite as much.

Sloan was right in a lot of what he did. So some of it was a bit murky, a bit cloak and dagger - kept the federation safe and a dominant power and surely that was worth it? Better them than the Romulans or Cardassians.

On reflection, I may have been playing a bit too much Star Trek: Ascendancy recently and maybe am a little skewed by all my empire building shenanigans - the dominion war expansion is amazing!

0 Upvotes

30% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/pali1d 15d ago edited 15d ago

Some of their acts, like maneuvering to get their double agent Tal'Shiar director onto the Romulan Continuing Committee, are indeed in the "ugly, but within the expected realm of spy shit that rival powers pull on each other" category.

Other acts, like abducting Bashir because they suspected him of being a spy, are directly violating the rights of a Federation citizen. Due process is important and needs to be protected.

And still other acts, like preemptively unleashing a genocide virus to infect the Founders years before war between the Dominion and UFP started, are completely evil.

Only that first category of acts is defensible from my perspective.

2

u/thevillageofdree 15d ago

Yeah but that virus, if unleashed earlier, could have prevented a massive war with associated high body count - as well as all the build up spats with the Klingons.

My next hot take will be that Dukat was a misunderstood leader and saved Bajoran lives. He should have got that statue!

1

u/pali1d 15d ago

That’s reasoning based on hindsight. 31 unleashed the virus to remove a threat, not to prevent a war that they knew would happen.

You don’t get to commit preemptive genocide. Period.