4 Ups & 4 Downs For Star Trek: Section 31

Section 31, the organisation, was a controversial insert to Star Trek from the very first episode in which it appeared — Inquisition. Like the Emperor, the group also tried its hand at genocide. Sloan and his cronies lived and operated by an entirely other kind of morality, perhaps even an amorality. Wrong as they evidently were, like the despot, they were already convinced they were right. Their 'inter arma…' was all the time.

There is a fundamental flaw in trying to rationalise what lies outside the rational, to justify the unjustifiable. What recent incarnations, including this, have failed to realise is that Section 31 can't be moralised, nor is it owed a lofty explanation or a grand and noble raison d'être. Like all the most frightening things, to be frightening, Section 31 only has to exist.

From counterpoint to paradise, Section 31 is now the point. Pulled in from the fringes, along the road to being pushed back out, the group has been robbed of its power to shock. Through attempts at rationalisation, at justification in the galactic scheme of things, Section 31 has lost its potential to provoke. In the silence of that debate, the law falls.