Star Trek Discovery season 2 megathread

[Makeshift Python]

To me it’s as simple as S31 at a certain point takes a lower profile and Starfleet classify records regarding that so that by the 24th century so that it’s more or less an open secret instead of being officially acknowledged.

[Makeshift Python]

@Makeshift Python That doesn't justify a direct and blatant continuity error that you're perfectly fine with. This from the guy who complained about Romulan ridges, yet was okay with what they did to the Klingons.

Yuka you’re just making a false equivalency there. I’m frankly disappointed in you because I know you’re capable of being much smarter than that.

[clearspira]

Star Wars, the original, wasn't even dark. So I don't know where your comparison comes from. Clarify a bit?

Actually, I think he should have. And yes, I know about the retcon where they'd blow up the winner's ship. But think about it. That Gorn and his whole vessel got away with mass murder of surrendering civilians, women and children. We said it was wrong when the Nazis had orders, we shouldn't say the same for them just because they felt "invaded."

We get a full shot of Luke's aunt and uncle as bloodied, burnt corpses. Leia is tortured using drugs with the implication of much worse to come. Millions of people are murdered on Alderan. Vader nearly chokes a man to death.
Its dark. Just not by today's standards.

The message behind Kirk sparing the Gorn is the idea that revenge is wrong, and in order to prove ourselves better than the worst scum we have to actually act better than them, not just say that we are better than them. You don't get to be the good guy by doing bad things - at least, not back then. Nowadays you get to be the good guy whilst hooking a man up to a car battery by his balls (only slight exaggeration).

[Simplicius]

To me it’s as simple as S31 at a certain point takes a lower profile and Starfleet classify records regarding that so that by the 24th century so that it’s more or less an open secret instead of being officially acknowledged.

It's not an open secret though. Julian Bashir did not know they existed. Neither did Benjamin Sisko or Miles O'Brien. They are all Starfleet veterans and O'Brien even shares Bashir's passion for history. Classifying records is far from the simplest explanation. In DIS, the rank and file of Starfleet are aware of Section 31 by reputation.

If you want to say that Starfleet Command can just sign a directive such that every single servicemen (and by extension any civilian they've talked to) would either forget they ever existed or just happily play pretend (not to mention foreign intelligence services, like the Tal Shiar, being unable to obtain information that would be in the memoirs of any odd or sod who happened to retire from Starfleet before this directive) ... then you're happy with the Federation being a totalitarian nightmare of the grandest scale or for the setting to just feel plastic or hollow (like no historians exist/care, no diplomats or politicians ever disagreed, and so on and so forth).

[Yukaphile]

@Makeshift Python Well... thank you. Tbh, that actually made me feel good. I know it was a backhanded compliment, but... I tend to think of myself as very stupid. Again, if it was a personal attack on you, I apologize. I didn't mean for it to come out that way. I just wanted to illustrate your points side by side is all. The wording was atrocious. I'm still working on that and honestly relatively new to debating. Only been at it since 2015, and I was way worse then.

@clearspira Okay, I can concede to that. Still, stuff like that happened in old sci-fi serials all the time. And sure, revenge is wrong. But because it's a one-off alien race of the week, we never see what kind of justice is meted out for the loss of innocent life, surrendering civilians and women and children. I can sympathize. The worst things have been done in the name of "I was entitled and you deserve it." But at the same time, if someone can do something truly evil and get away with it with no consequences, perhaps revenge is a good alternative. Only to someone who's directly responsible, though. Not someone who's guilty through association.

@Simplicius And yet, to play devil's advocate, they revealed themselves during the worst war in galactic history. Why? I see no benefit, even to recruit a promising agent. I'm sure S31 has some genetically engineered officers in their ranks, gotta, at least in DS9's era. So that was a horrible breach of security. So it's not without precedent. At the same time, you can take "open secrets" too far, and doing so a century beforehand still seems like a bad idea. I think everyone in the fandom is just sick of prequels. As I've said elsewhere, it's been prequels, prequels, prequels for 18 years, since 9/11, the length of time we've been at war in the Middle East. It's just unreal.

[Actarus]

The Discovery is linked to S31 since the beginning of the show. In the very first episode, when Burnham gets on the Discovery, a prisoner notices the black badges, wondering what they meant. We now know that they were S31 badges. Discovery being an experimental ship, that is not surprising, and its crew must know about S31. It seems to me that the common citizens and maybe ordinary officers, don't even know what S31 is. They describe S31 as an obscure division of Starfleet Intelligence. If S31 disappears by the end of the season and all records of it are erased from Starfleet data banks, then a hundred years later no one would even know that such an organisation ever existed.

[Yukaphile]

Nevertheless, the theory that we now have three continuities seems to be quite popular in the fandom. Blame ME or whoever else all you want, but it's a way for disaffected, angry fans to write off the blatant continuity discrepancies and the total disregard for adherence to the lore that hardcore nerds have. I'm personally calling anything prior to 2009 the Alpha Timeline. Anything past is the Prime/Kelvin Timeline. They might return to the 24th century, but it won't really be the 24th century, just you watch.

[Yukaphile]

In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if that becomes canon long after Trek has passed into the public domain.

[MixedDrops]

I find it odd you'd think that's what would happen. When things are in the public domain, the word "canon" sort of ceases to have any meaning, because it means anybody can write stories about it and recognize/ignore past works as they see fit.

[Yukaphile]

Maybe I worded that poorly, yet again. My point was, this theory is gonna persist for a long time, and might even be made canon by those who work on Star Trek at some point, given the general backlash against modern Trek. Btw, lemme add this. My disdain for STD... has been poorly worded as well. It's not STD so much as concern over the franchise's future and any potentially new series that shred the continuity to pieces, till the point the whole series is a joke. So STD is just the first of many series I'm gonna hate, and... if this was the only one, I could live with it. But that fear is real, and persistent, and I blame late-stage capitalism and HR and it's only gonna get worse as time passes...