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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9565939" data-attributes="member: 78087">I thought DS9 originally pitched Section 31 very well - a mostly adversary group who see themselves as hard men making hard decisions for the greater good but who are mostly wrong about everything, and partly exist to pop Julian’s ridiculous 007-based ideas about espionage. That part is almost a tiny and prescient story about radicalisation - our protagonist is attracted to a certain ideology and so a covert radical group with those trappings tries to recruit him, and his response is basically “Hell no” because he’s a decent human being. On a broader scale, Section 31 pokes fun at media glorifying spies and secret police and says “those are terrible people and in real life they’ve generally done much more harm than good”.So no, I don’t think a series with Section 31 as protagonists is a good idea. Maybe the beginnings, if you pitch them as a SOE-like group who are trying to do the right thing but making up the rules as they go along and in doing so set up a legacy of stupid people doing stupid things.About cynicism and idealism in Star Trek in general - yes, it’s idealistic and utopian, that’s the whole point. The underlying myth of Star Trek is that we - humans, but also sapient beings in general - can in fact make peace, cooperate, tolerate and support each other, and build a stable society that is all those things and is as powerful and glorious as any empire without its foundation stones being mortared with the blood of the innocent and oppressed (which is the case with every human empire we know of). Any Omelas crap can GTFO of Star Trek as far as I’m concerned. It’s not edgy or clever, it’s foolish and out of genre.</blockquote>

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