Deep Space Nine understood the fantasy and reality of spies

In just under a week, the next Star Trek Project access form of Article 31a streaming film starring Michelle Yeoh as she delves into the famous black ops organization — and one that focuses, at least in all the footage we’ve seen so far, on the glamor and glamor of secret agent work. There is movement, and there is dazzling fashionAnd, perhaps most surprising in the context of all of this, is the direct oversight from the union, like a co-worker with a stick up his ass who’s here to stop you from having fun.

It is no wonder, then, that some Star Trek Fans are concerned about what Article 31 She really believes she’s her namesake – and a few of her co-stars are probably worried about that. “I’m terrified of how it will be received, because that’s not how the message will be received a trip People want. the a trip That people want, and a trip What we all want is just 1,000 more episodes TNG,” Rob Kaczynski, who plays cybernetically enhanced Zeph in the film, said recently SFX Magazine. “Everyone is always angry because they don’t get more TNGAnd at the same time, when TNG It came out, everyone hated it. So this will come and it won’t feel like anything a trip that they had ever seen.

But when it comes to… Star Trek What people want – especially A Star Trek You may be wrestling with the idea of ​​Section 31 as the primary focus The next generation It should not be the example we turn to. To get a real perspective Role of Article 31 in Star Trekand its paradoxical existence as a “necessary evil.” Destroys utopiaWe just need to look at the offer he gave us in the first place: Deep Space Nine. Crucially, in preparation before that introduction, DS9 We took Dr. Julian Bashir, the character whose events began in Part 31, is on another journey in “Our Man Bashir.” that it A James Bond Pastish This puts Bashir at the center of a glamorous, glamorous, corny love letter to classic spy movies.

In Our Man Bashir, the sport of espionage is exciting, stylish and action-packed. Bashir has to be the unabashed hero of his overall show – there are cool old fashions, casinos, magic and clear-cut villains with comically dastardly plots to take over the world. Even with Garak – an actual ex-spy, whose secrets Bashir has always been obsessed with uncovering – being tagged into Bashir’s adventure to playfully remind him how different actual espionage is, it’s an episode that celebrates cinematic espionage as we know it. Love it. Even with the dramatic predicaments it plays into (it’s a classic game a trip trope, a false holodeck scenario with a “death in the game, death in real life” element to boot), it’s an episode that almost justifies Bashir’s romantic dream of what being a spy is all about, even when he has to save the actual day by losing in his fantasy.

After two seasons, DS9 Section 31 was introduced in its sixth season in “Inquisition”, when the organization targeted Bashir as a potential recruit at the climax of its story, throwing the galaxy into chaos with the outbreak of… Dominion War. At this point, the show had already done a lot to break through the harsh reality of what Captain Sisko had It was described once early in DS9It Was Easy to Be a Saint in Heaven examines how Starfleet and the Federation in general respond when faced with an interstellar conflict on an unprecedented scale. If “Our Man Bashir” treated Garak’s criticisms about the reality of espionage as a joke that Bashir should ignore, “Inquisition” makes them the center of his text: from the beginning, Section 31 is presented as the antithesis of everything Bashir and the rest DS9The staff is dear to us.

The work that Agent Sloan does, even to the point of just trying to recruit Bashir, is aggressive and unattractive. Sloan himself, the embodiment of Section 31 as we know it, is burdened by a sense of paranoia that runs counter to anything we’d expect from a Starfleet official, black ops or otherwise. Bashir isn’t thrilled to discover Section 31’s existence, but he’s downright terrified—and his immediate response, as with the rest of the crew, is to try to destroy it entirely, either by shining a light on it or, as Sisko eventually suggests. At the end of the episode, he has to work on undermining it from within. Over the course of Section 31’s remaining appearances via DS9– The direct follow-up to the “Inquisition”, the “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges”, which infuriates Bashir and the series in general in Section 31 even more, and the more complex “Extreme Measures” – the argument Sloan makes for the organization being necessary is not seen as Evil is never considered a viable outcome by the show or our heroes. If anything, Section 31 becomes as much an adversary in its guise as it is with sovereignty itself, an existential threat to the very fabric of morality. Star Trek.

This is no more telling, perhaps not in the following episodes of Part 31, but in the episode that aired immediately after its introduction: Iconic “In the Pale Moonlight”creating a lethal punch. If “Inquisition” introduced the idea of ​​an official spy apparatus within the Federation, “In the Pale Moonlight” is about the act of espionage itself—the acts of espionage, conspiracy, and subterfuge rooted in its dystopia. Again, this is not the same as romance DS9 As happened with this kind of “Our Man Bashir,” the road to hell that Captain Sisko descends with Garak in “In the Pale Moonlight” is an act that always appears to us as repugnant, not only because of the actions committed to him, but also because of the morality . The decay that affects the action on Sisko and on Star Trek itself. The ultimate horror of In the Pale Moonlight is not that Sisko is complicit in an assassination that brings the Romulans into the war against the Dominion, ensuring the deaths of millions more while continuing to fight in the name of saving billions more from the Dominion. Possible defeat of the Union. He, he says grimly to the camera as he records the personal record he knows he’s about to delete, can live with the cost to his soul. The episode ends with the Romulans officially declaring war on the Dominion, which is what Sisko wanted, but he never sees this as a victory within the narrative: there is no good ending to the actual reality of espionage outside of the program’s holographic fantasy. .

Deep Space Nine She may have dropped the bomb in the first place by giving us the existence of Section 31, but she recognized the danger of using such a weapon in the first place – because she had already made clear to her audience and her characters alike that the fantasy of a top-secret spy organization in Star TrekOur world was nothing more than that, and its reality was something far more distant and uglier than we could understand. if Article 31 The film wants to avoid this fear of being seen as what it is not a trip That people want, then he has to understand this too. Otherwise, unlike Sisko, she can’t learn to live with presenting an idle fantasy, and nothing more.

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