A Brief Guide to Star Trek

war are all individuals, leaving behind family and friends. ‘They’re not just names’, he says. ‘It’s important to remember that – we
have
to remember.’
    Moral ambiguity was also more prevalent in
Deep Space Nine
, with the station’s resident Cardassian character – a tailor named Garak (Andrew Robinson), who befriends Dr Bashir – revealed as a former secret policeman turned spy. The ending of the Dominion War largely depended upon a very un-Starfleet-like deception enacted by Sisko with Garak’s help. In the season six episode ‘In The Pale Moonlight’, Sisko participates in a conspiracy to bring the Romulans into alliance with the Federation, but which also leads to Garak committing murder on his behalf – an event covered up to preserve the greater good. It’s a subversive take on the usually very black and white moral universe of
Star Trek
. According to writer Michael Taylor, this episode ‘showed how
Deep Space Nine
could really stretch the
Star Trek
formula. It pushes the boundaries in a realistic way, because the decisions Sisko makes are the kinds of decisions that have to be made in war. They’re for the greater good.’
    Another sign of
Deep Space Nine
breaking taboos was the way in which the series undermined the purity of the Federation, something
The Next Generation
had only briefly toyed with (in the episode ‘Conspiracy’, and later in the movie
Insurrection
). ‘Conspiracy’ was the penultimate episode of
The Next Generation
’s first season. The first story ideas had a group of warmongeringStarfleet officers try to provoke war with the Klingons. Revised following Roddenberry’s intervention, the episode instead featured an alien-driven conspiracy in which Starfleet Admirals were possessed by alien parasites, as he felt Starfleet officers themselves would never turn against the Federation. A suggestion that the alien creatures might become recurring adversaries was never followed up.
Insurrection
saw Picard turn against a wing of the Federation Council, which was conspiring to steal the secret of long life. Neither of these stories suggested that Starfleet had a secret intelligence wing, although it might be supposed that despite such enlightened future times such a thing would not be impossible.
Deep Space Nine
would spend several episodes exploring the implications of just such an organisation within an organisation.
    Dr Bashir was the centre of the Section 31 episodes. Introduced in the sixth season’s ‘Inquisition’, Section 31 was depicted as a Starfleet agency operating without oversight, represented by Sloan (William Sadler). It is clear to Bashir that Section 31 is violating long-established Federation values, a position defended by Sloan as ethical compromises necessary to defend those same values in times of war. This drew on real-life 1990s concerns about the activities of US and other intelligence agencies that used the excuse of defending liberty to justify inhumane actions such as torture. As alien security officer Odo comments in the episode ‘Dogs of War’: ‘Interesting, isn’t it? The Federation claims to abhor Section 31’s tactics, but when they need the dirty work done, they look the other way. It’s a tidy little arrangement, wouldn’t you say?’ Odo’s scepticism is interesting, especially as it would later transpire that Section 31 both created and provided the cure (once Bashir extracts it from Sloan’s mind) for the ‘morphogenic virus’ affecting Odo and the Founders. Sharing the cure with the Founders helps bring about the end of the Dominion War, and it’s an action Odo takes in defiance of Federation policy. Complex shades of grey dominate morality in
Deep Space Nine
’s complex storytelling.
    Gene Roddenberry’s view of
Star Trek
’s future would havelittle room for such a covert organisation as Section 31, seeing it as unnecessary in a utopia. The creators of
Deep Space Nine
, however, had truly escaped Roddenberry’s box and had bypassed his storytelling limitations while still trying to stay true to the heart of
Star Trek
. Behr limited Roddenberry’s view to Earth, refusing to accept that things might be the same on an outpost such as
Deep Space Nine
in the middle of a war. ‘We decided that Earth is paradise – we’ll buy into that [Roddenberry notion]. I don’t quite understand it, but we’ll buy it. “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise,” Sisko said in “Maquis, Part II”. To have a Federation