Bashir’s (Third of a) Dozen
However maybe the very best parallel to Part 31’s Soiled Dozen outfit isn’t any different iteration of Starfleet’s soiled secret, however the characters launched within the Deep House 9 episode “Statistical Potentialities.” In it, we meet 4 people who’ve been illegally “genetically enhanced.” There are longer discussions available about Star Trek’s problematic use of genetic enhancement and eugenics as a stand-in for persecuted minorities, however right here different issues are happening. These usually are not Khanian supermen. They’re, frankly, massively autistic-coded.
They aren’t shunned from society as a result of they breach the Federation’s unimpeachable beliefs round equality. Nor are they shunned due to a predilection for violence or deception. Their sin is way worse: They’re awkward. They don’t slot in. They’re socially tough. The Federation’s all-encompassing tolerance would possibly absorb Klingons, Androids and EMHs (to an extent), Changelings, and even the occasional Borg, however the line is drawn at folks you would possibly keep away from at events.
However, as is at all times the case in these tales, on a foggy Christmas Eve it seems that having a crimson nostril is tremendous helpful. As a lot because the Federation is blissful to shun these characters, it’s prepared to profit from their insights into the Dominion battle. And when it does, we the viewers study concerning the Federation, the way it works, and what it stands for.
So, returning to Part 31, what does it must say concerning the Starfleet it’s contrasting itself towards? Or, to place it one other means, what can this model of Part 31 try this common Starfleet can’t?
Do you want somebody to go undercover to hold out morally shady acts to chase down a weapon of mass destruction? Starfleet’s very personal morality poster boy, Captain Picard, does this in “Gambit” (Components 1 and a pair of). Okay, however perhaps to get this WMD you want Part 31 to cross enemy traces, and for Starfleet to have the ability to disavow it ought to they be caught. You understand, like Picard and his most upstanding officers did in “Chain of Command.” Hell, in “I, Borg” he’s prepared to unleash a weapon of mass destruction on a genocidal scale. Identical to Sisko drops a WMD on an inhabited world to lure out a Maquis operative in “For the Uniform”. And that’s not even touching the shit Sisko will get as much as in “Within the Pale Moonlight.”
In comparison with this, and a laundry checklist of different actions together with secret weapons packages, undercover work, rogue admirals, so many Prime Directive violations we can’t depend them, and naturally, murdering Tuvix, Evil Georgiou and her band of misfits in Part 31 barely even qualify as hijinks.
