Star Trek

There are generally signs when something goes sideways in production, it's hard to imagine the creative team saw season two and think "Yep, that's exactly what we were hoping to make." The story and motivations changing every 1.5 episodes along with useless divergences and then trying to wrap everything up as all according to the plan usually means Writing by the Seat of Your Pants.

Star Fleet Academy has been officially announced with a tentative release date sometime in 2026.

I've always been sceptical of the interest of a Starfleet Academy series, but I used also to be sceptical about the premises of Lower Decks and Prodigy and ended up loving these series, so maybe I could like this. I just hope it will take place in the early 25th century or at least in an era that has not been often visited so far (like early 24th century for instance - not too much later, otherwise the temptation to feature a young Picard and his classmates could become overwhelming).

Was it not supposed to be a 32nd century spinoff with Tilly? That article is short on details beyond "it's happening".

I wouldn't be surprised if if it was retooled.

Variety says they hired the co-creator of The Flight Attendant to work on the next theatrical film.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/star-trek-4-screenwriter-steve-yockey-1235953186/

Section 31 is most of what's wrong with the recent incarnations of Star Trek.

When the concept was introduced in DS 9, it could plausibly have been either a small group of renegades, a mere test of Bashir's loyalty to the Federation's ideals, or a special-ops group — and the last option was the worst of these, so of course they went with that.

Star Trek was supposed to be Utopian, and that's much of why people liked it — it offers hope that we can overcome many of our problems to people living in times where it seems society is going to tear itself apart. Declaring that the ethical and tolerant Federation can exist only if there's a group that violates all of its most basic principles... well, it's done by people who hate Star Trek but love the brand loyalty it has.

What we've basically ended up with though is that Section 31 was founded by pre-Federation Earth, got big in the 2280s and then gradually withered away until they popped up again in DS 9. Their only other appearance is in the Kelvin Timeline. I don't know if it's intentional, but it creates this narrative of being an Earth organization pseudo-parallel to Starfleet that nearly caused a huge disaster, lost most of their funding, and by the 24th century, they're nearly dead and they dissolve completely after that. Their Kelvin Timeline appearance is in Into Darkness which is garbage in general but if the Control disaster never happened, them being around and active would still work.

Picard mentions them once in the backstory of season 3 but the organization that shows up the most in Picard is the Daystrom Institute, which is also kinda iffy, but in less of a "why do you even have this" way. Hell, Section 31 never even appears in Lower Decks despite getting mentioned a lot, it's just the Daystrom Institute again.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 27th 2024 at 6:58:51 AM

Section 31 appears very briefly in Lower Deck's Crisis point ii. Recruiting William Boimler on a Defiant class ship.

Disco did basically call Section 31 a necessary evil but that's the same season they nearly destroy all sapient life every with their AI. So that's probably not the take away they want you to have ultimately. (Though its still a very stupid plot line in many respects)

Oh yeah, forgot about that.

But yeah, Section 31 basically becomes less and less important as time goes by in universe.

The premise they went for seems to be Section 31 wiped itself out after being formally the black ops division of Starfleet Intelligence (if not the entire Starfleet Intelligence) and then renvisioned itself as a non-existent deniable agency.

But I liked the Alternate Character Interpretation that Section 31 doesn't even work for Starfleet/The Federation and is a rogue group like Cerberus from Mass Effect.

Starfleet just uses them.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 27th 2024 at 4:55:45 AM

The one that's gotten more prominence as time has gone on (in universe) is the Daystrom Institute, but their vibe is closer to "legitimate organization that's drifted a bit".

I always preferred the DS9 / ENT interpretation of Section 31, being that they may only be a dozen or so official members but work through subterfuge and middle-men who have no idea what they are contributing to. Literally no one had heard of Section 31 in DS9 and it's explicit there is no headquarters filled with records of their actions, while ENT doesn't mention them by name. There the most devious thing they do is develop and pass along the Changeling virus with such skill nobody knows where it came from. That's what made the idea interesting to me, the idea that the only way Starfleet would tolerate Section 31 is because they kept that circle very small.

With Into Darkness and Discovery they had massive facilities, resources, manpower and even their own fleet of ships they might as well BE Starfleet Intelligence. Picard and Lower Decks also namedrop it like it's common knowledge now (and it might be because of Bashir but Discovery treated it as an Open Secret that somehow nobody remembered centuries later)

"Literally no one had heard of Section 31 in DS 9"

But Sisko asked an Admiral about the possible existence of such an organization after Bashir reported his experiences, and the Admiral refused to confirm or deny.

That's different from the Admiral saying that he doesn't know; it's implicitly a statement that the matter is classified and the Admiral isn't allowed to discuss it. If there were no such organization, that's probably not the response Sisko would have gotten.

The renegades in ST VI were fine because they *were* renegades; the crew was shocked that they existed and were acting so contrarily to Starfleet's ethics, but their trying to ensure that the Klingons were wiped out in war didn't undermine the premise of the setting.

Section 31 DOES.

S31 is fine existing.

Just clarify if it's a black ops organization or a paramilitary terrorist organization.

They seem to have gone with the former.

And if it's the former, it can't engage in crimes against humanity like the Changeling experiments.

I think Into Darkness having Section 31 as a thing kinda makes more sense than it being a thing in Discovery. If only because the Federation going "holy fuck, this thing came out of fucking nowhere, destroyed the Kelvin, disappeared for 20 years, showed up again, destroyed Vulcan and nearly destroyed Earth, we need something in place to deal with a threat like that if it shows up again!"

IMO, I would actually be a lot more interested in a story examining Daystrom and what's going on there. Because they've pretty consistently been framed as being part of the Federation's science apparatus while doing a lot of black box experimentation and having access to a lot of really high level technology they aren't sharing, like the portal generator. They've got a Genesis Device too.

Lower Decks and Picard made Daystrom look pretty evil (until Lower Decks swerved and revealed that they were putting all the evil AIs through therapy and weren't just locking them up forever) and Picard season 3 implies that Daystrom has a pretty large amount of political influence and no one's really sure what their endgame actually is. I don't think they're supposed to be evil, but a story about a Federation organization that is well meaning and high level but that has kinda drifted from their original purpose would be interesting.

Hell, the appearance of Dr. Daystrom in the original series could very easily be retconned into him attempting to make a less malignant version of CONTROL and not quite managing it. Like, Daystrom started out trying to take dangerous technology and making it safe and reliable but over time drifted into making the dangerous tech themselves or hoarding it and not being willing to let it out of their sight. With the result being multiple vault space stations that contain a ton of extremely dangerous tech that are obvious targets.

Daystrom Institute being shady is something that was introduced in Picard, right? I don't remember anything bad being said about the institute in the previous series (unlike section 31).

Tangent to this discussion, I am realising now that a ban on all artificial intelligences (and not only positronic brains) in the Federation would make much more sense than their bigotry against Augments. If the writers really want the Federation to be bigoted against something, having it in against a type of enemies that regularly claims its share of Red Shirts throughout all series would make much more sense than one who caused a war centuries ago on one Federation planet. There are a lot of things TOS established that have been quietly ignored since.

In TNG, the driving force behind the faction that wants to take Data and disassemble him and that sends the guy to argue against his personhood is Daystrom. And Dr. Daystrom in the original series invents a computer to run the Enterprise autonomously, and it goes bad.

And the thing with AI is that in TNG and later, we get a bunch of friendly AI. Data, the Exocomps, the Bynar mother computer (the problem it had was seemingly that it had trouble actually talking to the Federation and very little time to react to an emergency), the ringworld computer from Lower Decks, the EMH, even Moriarty isn't evil because he's an AI, he's a villain because that's his role in the original story and the computer made him self-aware so he could beat Data.

And that's before getting into how Federation computers seem borderline self-aware most of the time anyway and periodically go further than you'd expect. Like, the various Enterprise computers occasionally offer unsolicited information, but never anything that wouldn't be asked for given enough time.

A ban on AI wouldn't really benefit the Federation at all, especially since AI aren't really a "race" or a culture. The dangerous ones are like, a collection of random totally separate individuals that have nothing to do with each other and exist totally independently of each other.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:27:33 AM

Daystrom is not actually a part of Starfleet, so much as it is the Baxter Building and MIT.

They're basically where Starfleet sends all of its weird inexplicable shit to be studied.

This includes all of the deranged AI that Star Trek has had literally decades of episodes worth of encountering.

To be fair, they banned Synths not AI and Jurati got screwed over because she was specifically a Synth researcher.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 29th 2024 at 7:14:29 AM

Pretty sure it is?

There's a specific starfleet regulation about personal transfer to Daystrom (as opposed to any civilian research) (SFR-04-4930-0027).

Maddox is the Associate-chair and he's an on duty Starfleet Commander.

Might be a hybrid situation where parts of Daystrom are civilian, parts are Starfleet. we know one research annex at Daystrom on Galor IV is specifically called a Starfleet Research Annex and is led by an Admiral.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 29th 2024 at 11:16:14 AM

Daystrom seems to kinda overlap. Which makes sense, it's not privately owned but its interests are mostly, but not entirely congruent with Starfleet.

At least part of it is likely to keep Daystrom's systems separate from Starfleet's, since Daystrom seems to be one of the most high security organizations in the whole Federation.

It employs Starfleet personnel but has a bunch of civilian researchers, see Leah Brahms as an obvious example.

So? Leah Brahms was also one of the ones who designed the Galaxy Class, gonna tell me those aren't starfleet either?

Military Research employs civilians all the time. See the Manhatthan project. Or DARPA.

The ones in leadership position of the institute we do see are all Starfleet.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 29th 2024 at 2:32:08 PM

The franchise is so Starfleet focused that the Federation and even explicit non-Starfleet characters might as well all be Starfleet anyway. Most Daystrom characters don't appear to be wearing a uniform or Starfleet insignia, so it's probably similar to NASA where there is a lot of personnel overlap and joint projects.

As for AI, in the real world it's misappropriated for really well programmed software rather than a program designed for independent learning/adaptive/mission driven tasks. The machines Kirk encountered seem to be more rigidly programmed devices, hence why they could be defeated with a Logic Bomb. What made Data unique was his ability to observe and make independent choices.

I think too is that Starfleet is a little more accepting of a foreign AI as being what it is since how they work is something of a Black Box, but between the Doctor and the Exocomp they were tools that Grew Beyond Their Programming and that caused some pushback.

I think an important thing to remember is that the Federation doesn't really, like, do normal contracting the way we would. Because they don't use money.