DIS - Brother

[CharlesPhipps]

Yeah, I don't buy this interpretation of Section 31. For one, they're an organization so secret that only the top brass at Starfleet have even heard of them. Two, when they attempted to recruit Bashir, they deprived him of sleep, interrogated him at length, roll played a scenario on a holodeck to give him every reason to betray the Federation, even if he hadn't done so already. And then, when a mind probe they implanted in him detected no signs whatsoever ever disloyalty, they decided he was Section 31 material.

I do not buy for a moment that this organization would even consider femHitler for their super secret spy network. At best, they'd manipulate her into a suicide mission.

There's a lot wrong here and it runs into spoilers territory but for those who have seen the entire season.

SPOILERS:
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1. I'm not joking when I say Skynet is in control of Section 31. An evil AI that wishes to wipe out all life in the galaxy has taken over Section 31. It's killed the Admirals in charge of the organization and is impersonating them with holograms.

2. The entirety of Section 31 is implied to be murdered by Control with the only survivors being Empress Georgiou and Tyler.

3. Control is eventually overthrown at the end of the season and defeated by Empress Georgiou with Voq/Tyler put in charge of it instead due to his unbreakable loyalty ot the Federation. He promises he's going to clean it up.

4. Section 31 employs corrupt people all the time as we see with the Obsidian Order member who betrays Romulus to the Federation.

5. Georgiou is officially pardoned for her part in ending the Klingon/Federation war. She can't have any crimes she committed held against her. You may find that a terrible idea but that's the deal she made.

So it's easy to understand why Skynet/Control would recruit Georgiou and why the Federation would employ her afterward (she saved the entire galaxy by stopping him).

[Worffan101]

I'm baffled by the people who claim that STD season 2 felt like a coherent story. I could SEE the points at which they changed showrunners and when Kurtzman inserted his shitting proboscis into the storyline to ruin any good ideas that had been generated by the other writers. Season 2 was the worst, most blatantly failed-pandering, trend-chasing bullshit I've seen in a LONG time.

[Enterprising]

I'm baffled by the people who claim that STD season 2 felt like a coherent story. I could SEE the points at which they changed showrunners and when Kurtzman inserted his shitting proboscis into the storyline to ruin any good ideas that had been generated by the other writers. Season 2 was the worst, most blatantly failed-pandering, trend-chasing bullshit I've seen in a LONG time.

Not to mention the whole trying to be like The Avengers plot.

[RobbyB1982]

I do not buy for a moment that this organization would even consider femHitler for their super secret spy network. At best, they'd manipulate her into a suicide mission.

Discovery's section 31 predates DS9's section 31 by 110 years. Maybe in the time between they learned "secrecy and loyalty is better than do-anything psychopaths."

Or possibly the events of that season of Discovery that wiped out literally everyone in the organization at the time except for two or three people.

[Makeshift Python]

DISCO is flawed, but I can't rank it near or below previous dreck like the first season of TNG or the third season of TOS. Those are the bottom of the barrel as far as I'm concerned. Anything above ranges from fairly bad to mediocre, and I'd probably rank the first season as mediocre, with the second being about average.

It's brought up that S2 is an improvement partly because it takes the baggage of the first season and tries to turn it into an advantage. One aspect I'd point out is Michael being a foster sister to Spock is better justified in the second season. When the first season was airing, we had producers (who eventually left, of course) saying they would never feature Spock in the show at any point. So the whole idea of having her be his foster sister during most of the first season seemed superfluous. The only episode to try to justify that is "Lethe", but that was about it. S2 to me felt like the writers basically saying "okay, we've established she's Spock's foster sister, which was pointless in the first season, but let's try to make something out of that here". I think they've largely succeeded, as I've come to like this iteration of Spock and his relationship with Michael.

And now with the way the show is moving forward a thousand years later, I'd say we're pretty much done with brother/sister storyline. They gave it a real crack for the second season then decided to move on. No more Spock. No more Sarek. No more 23rd century. Just the DISCO characters now in an entirely different setting, forging its own path without having to badly fumble canon.

[CharlesPhipps]

Discovery's section 31 predates DS9's section 31 by 110 years. Maybe in the time between they learned "secrecy and loyalty is better than do-anything psychopaths." Or possibly the events of that season of Discovery that wiped out literally everyone in the organization at the time except for two or three people.

I think the irony is "Reality is Unrealistic." People are saying that they'd never make use of a Roman Emperor psychopath as an agent. The thing is that intelligence agencies have historically made use of dictators, war criminals, and terrible people of all stripes. Section 31 needs deniable assets to do things that people would never attribute to Starfleet because their whole purpose is that they are black ops. You know, things people WON'T trace to the Federation. The Empress is completely expendable and perfectly capable. She has no one to rely on in Federation society and is utterly dependent on them while perfectly ruthless/capable of being used.

[Deledrius]

show. However, I don't see substantially any difference between her and Gul Dukat. She's an evil person on the same side as the "heroes" (for the time being). That's what makes her an interesting character.

I think the key difference is we actually saw her nastiness on camera, in the present. Dukat's evils were in the past and we never really saw them personally, and he was a cog in the wheel, or claimed to be at least. He had a stint of presenting himself as decent before we saw his nastier side (when the writers realized they'd made him too likeable and had to reverse course). And anything Dukat did in the present was off camera.

If you actually tally up the atrocities and death counts they're both probably pretty close, but we also never saw Ducat eating the entrails of someone we'd seen a couple minutes earlier.

Dukat was a nasty person, but he presented an appealing face. He may have even believed the lies he told people about why he was actually a misunderstood hero. I can see why people would accept him, even though we shouldn't.

The Emperor is a nasty person who gleefully brags about how nasty she is and she'll "do it again in just a moment just you watch" constantly. She is unapologetically evil and selfish. That self-assuredness is so appealing to some people that she can admit to being a murderous psychopath and her fans will cheer her on because...

Not only is it inappropriate in context, but it's the lowest of low bars writing- and acting-wise. Yeoh's added some nuance to a role that has none, and I think that's gone a long way, but it's also infuriatingly contradictory to the character-as-written.


And yes, she may be realistic, but that's not a realism I care for in Star Trek.

[CharlesPhipps]

Dukat was a nasty person, but he presented an appealing face. He may have even believed the lies he told people about why he was actually a misunderstood hero. I can see why people would accept him, even though we shouldn't.

The Emperor is a nasty person who gleefully brags about how nasty she is and she'll "do it again in just a moment just you watch" constantly. She is unapologetically evil and selfish. That self-assuredness is so appealing to some people that she can admit to being a murderous psychopath and her fans will cheer her on because...

Not only is it inappropriate in context, but it's the lowest of low bars writing- and acting-wise. Yeoh's added some nuance to a role that has none, and I think that's gone a long way, but it's also infuriatingly contradictory to the character-as-written.

And yes, she may be realistic, but that's not a realism I care for in Star Trek.

The only person who likes her is Michael Burnham who has attachment issues that Anakin Skywalker would call excessive. Everyone else is repulsed by her but just being excessively polite because that's what you do in the Federation when not being condescending.

[Admiral X]

You also have to keep in mind the kind of people who like the evil emperor are the same kind of people who cheer at that guy getting killed in the first episode of the second season for not liking Michael and "mansplaining."

[Makeshift Python]

To be fair, that guy was also disobeying direct orders from Pike. He was basically an idiot that got himself killed because he was too proud.