“Inquisition”

Good plot, good drama, good use of the age-old dilemma of consequentialism.

Unfortunately, the concept of Section 31 is completely anti-Federation and completely anti-Roddenberry. At this point, the show stops being "Trek." I suppose I could buy it if Section 31 was brand-new, i.e., had been created to counter the Dominion threat, but to stake its origins to be concomitant with the founding of the Federation went too far.

Still, I love using Luther Sloan in my STCCG deck.

EP, if Trek is supposed to be so naive as to not allow something like Section 31, then I'm glad DS9 is nothing like Trek. I guess I don't really like Star Trek; it's too sterile and boring. DS9 is at its best during its darkest, anti-Trek moments.

"Unfortunately, the concept of Section 31 is completely anti-Federation and completely anti-Roddenberry."

Really? You really are a naive little thing aren't you, EP? I wasn't so suprised to find out the Federation had an organization like this. In fact, I would have found it less believable if they DIDN'T have one.

These kinds of organizations crop up in every large governmental body. The Romulans have the Tal Shiar, the Cardassians had the Obsidian Order. Is it really so far fetched that the Federation has a similar organization?

However, unlike the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order, who try to actively manipulate their respective governments, Section 31 stays in the shadows and lets the Federation do its thing. They don't advertize their existance to even their own government, let alone a rival power, and they have no desire to run the Federation. They simply exist to do the things for the Federation that Starfleet is unable to do.

Overall, I don't think Section 31 undermines the "goodness" of the Federation. Instead, I think Section 31 represents an "elightened" Federation Black-Ops organization. It's what the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order SHOULD have been to their respective governments until they got drunk on their own power.

My point being, groups like Section 31 have been a part of government since it was invented, and will CONTINUE to be part of government even 400 years from now.

I suppose you buy into the hilariously ludicrous Roddenberry concept of evolving beyond interpersonal conflict. As long as two people exist, they will sometimes fall into conflict.

EP, I respectfully disagree.

The idealism of Star Trek had already been fully exposed in the original series, then taken to its utopian end in The Next Generation (which is where Gene cut loose with his ideology). After those two shows, what was left?

Simple; exploring the dark side of the Federation, its history and the "Star Trek" universe in general. Section 31 was just the culmination of that. Maybe it's not true to what Gene Rodenberry would have wanted, but as a viewer I think DS9's greatest strength was flipping his vision on its head.

(Firefly did a similar thing, but didn't have the scope or duration of DS9 - I prefer this).

It is a little silly to argue in favor of something like Section 31 because it is "realistic." Star Trek was never supposed to be a realistic portrait of the future, but an idealistic one. As such, the organization, if it really exists, is definitely at odds with Roddenberry's vision of that future--it was specifically chosen to be so in order to push the series in new directions.

I think fans overlook that the material reality of Section 31 was kept somewhat cloudy on DS9. Ultimately, we can wonder if it was only a small number of rogue operatives doing whatever they felt they had to do rather than a sanctioned, known entity directed by Starfleet Command. The idea was not that Section 31 was some "realistic" look at how everyone was "actually" doing business, but some who had gone too far and operated without oversight. Our heroes were firmly opposed to those actions, so the series' heart remained in the right place.

Well, I guess I'm not too much of a fan of Rodenberry's vision, since it's exactly elements like Section 31 that makes DS9 by far my favourite Star Trek series. And let's not forget that even with a more cynical view, the Federation is still a very benign force as it relies on consent rather than coercion. DS9 is just willing to expose some of the rougher edges the Federation and humans (still) have and to be critical of the Federation's moralistic tendencies.

One thing's for sure, DS9 has certainly sparked more debate about morality than any other Star Trek series, and in a way that's what Star Trek is really about: questionning our vision of "right" and "wrong."

"Conspiracy" (TNG season 1) was originally supposed to be about a military coup within Starfleet, but Gene Roddenberry would not allow it and thus the alien parasites were introduced. Based on this I am pretty sure he would have put the kai-bosh on Section 31.

Label me naive but I still believe in Gene's idealistic view of the future. I believe humans will continue to make mistakes, but that we will learn from those mistakes. I certainly believe that despite all the problems in the world today, we have improved over the last 400 years, and will continue to improve over the next 400. I believe in non-violent resistance to opression (a la Gandhi/Dalai-lama), but thanks to DS9 (and Orwell's 1984) I also understand that not everyone has the courage to suffer opression without fighting back.

Sorry for going off on a tangent there, but getting back to "Inquisition" I think it's a wondefully constructive and disturbing episode centered on my favorite character of the series. So you could say I am conflicted: on the one hand I find the fictional concept of 31 fascinating, but on the other I sincerely hope that nothing like it will exist in 400 years.

Again, DS9 takes people and ideas from the 20th-century and plops them into Gene's universe, without taking into account or acknowledging that the universe itself is impossible without the realisation of the ideals. It is the paranoia and egotism of the capitalistic 20th century which led to all those things which the federation is supposed to be against. Either humans evolve or they don't. I agree with Nic. We aren't fighting Crusades or hanging witches any more (well not all of us). We should be beyond things like internal conspiracy by the 24th century. End of discussion. If the writers wanted to take a different view of the future, write something which isn't Star Trek (yes, I know they did, but this show still exists with Star Trek on the merchandise).

People quite childishly confuse enlightenment with naïveté, itself an expression of cynicism which belongs in our past (and that in our past in the 20th/21st century).

That said, the "conspiracy theory" air of the episode is certainly infectious. No doubt, the visceral feeling of quiet dread makes the show very watchable and entertaining...but entertainment can't justify the immorality of the message.

You make some valid points, Elliott, but there is a distinction to be made between fictional characters (or organizations) who committ immoral actions and episodes with an 'immoral message'. Ferengi society is sexist, that doesn't mean Ferengi episodes have a pro-sexism message. Klingons use violence to solve all their problems, but that doesn't mean Klingon episodes are pro-violence. Similarly, I think this episode (and "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges") make it very clear that although Section 31 is part of the Federation and may have 'good intentions', the ends DON'T justify the means and as such, their actions are immoral. That's what DS9's best episodes do: explore gray-area characters who can't be pinned as 'good' or 'evil' and force you to think about the issues and make up your own mind.

In fact, the only episode I can think of right now (though there may be others) that had an 'immoral' message is "For the Uniform", where Sisko decides that to beat the 'bad guy' you have to become a bad guy, which is completely the opposite of what I believe (and, unfortunately, seems to be a predominating theorem in Hollywood these days). Oh, and there's also the last scene of "Waltz".

Interesting tidbit: over three years before this episode aired, Babylon 5 introduced a secret organization within the Earth government that was very similar to Section 31 (cf. "Spider in the Web"). Its name, coincidentally or not, was Bureau 13. (!!)

Anyone who understands Roddenberry's design of 'The Federation' back in the late '60s should be able to realise that something like 'Section 31' would never be necessary in such an idealised future.

Another of Roddenberry's ideas for the Federation was that we had evolved beyond the need for money. Anybody can have anything they need, the 'system' will provide it free of charge. Technology such as replicators had become so efficient that the economic concept of 'scarcity' simply didn't exist and once that is true, currency itself becomes unnecessary.

People can argue about the 'realism' of that if they want to, but they are completely missing the point. That was what Gene wanted the Federation to be, end of story. Along with eliminating money, humans had managed to eliminate war, poverty, crime... pretty much every single negative aspect of human existence did not exist in Roddenberry's original vision of what 'The Federation' was.

This is quite easy to see in the original series, in most episodes. While there was conflict between humans and other species, the humans internally seemed to be completely at peace and united.

Of course, Gene and every writer since found it difficult to create compelling stories and characters within such a framework; conflict is essential to storytelling and suspense so even in the original series, the reality of Kirk's behaviour was often far from what you would expect from a super-enlightened race as Roddenberry designed them.

If the Federation really *was* so enlightened and peaceful, Kirk would have had brain surgery shortly after birth to change his obvious violent and irrational tendencies that were visible from examining his DNA. Right?

Roddenberry, for all his genius, wasn't quite clever enough to bring us a real believable version of this 'perfect' society that the Federation was supposed to be. For one thing, it is pretty obvious if you care to look that Human Society as shown in TOS and TNG was basically a communist, invasive hierarchy where people had no privacy and everyone worked as a cog in the giant Earth machine. Think about the sensor technologies they had in TNG; I wouldn't want to live in *that* kind of 'utopia' in a million years. No thanks.

Now, the Sci-Fi author Ian M Banks *has* managed to create a society in which technology has completely eliminated money, or 'wants' in general, where people spend their lives free to pursue whatever they like, including several gender reassignments per lifetime, practically infinite life-length, real AI that is vastly more powerful than any organic brain, and implants that let humans metabolise any drug of their choosing at will just by thinking about it... for pleasure as well as to enhance physical attributes.

This society is called the 'Culture' in his novels and by setting them in a society that is many thousands of years more evolved than our own, he is able to make all this seem quite believable.

Roddenberry's problem was that he gave just 100 years after the eugenics wars for mankind to become so enlightened, and from the comments even on this page it's obvious that people don't believe that's long enough to really transform society. If TOS was set in the year 10,000... all that utopian mumbo-jumbo would have been a lot more beleivable. But I don't think Roddenberry had the sheer imagination required to realistically portray a culture that far evolved from our own.

And the tech, makeup, and set-building of the 1960s wouldn't have allowed it either.

Anyway, back to the original point: No, 'section 31' would never have existed in Gene's original version of the Federation. But this original vision was hopelessly compromised even in the TOS run in order to come up with plots, so it's silly to expect DS9 to be more 'pure'.

In reality, the universe as portrayed in TNG, Voyager, DS9 and even Enterprise was far darker and meaner than Roddenberry's original vision of super-enlightened mankind and similarly advanced aliens. We do get Picard and others *appearing* to take the moral high ground time and again, even making quite enormous sacrifices to do so. But in reality the Federation could not exist in the universe as we see it in the various series' without being just as immoral as many of their enemies. Section 31 would *definitely* exist.

Star Trek only started to get good after Roddenberry ceased to be involved, and the writers were able to begin deconstructing the Federation.

I loved it when Sloan remarked how convenient it was for Bashir et al. that the Dominion left their runabout parked in orbit around the prison.

I know I thought the same thing at the time.

@Neil

Even the Culture has Special Circumstances, which does the "dirty work."

Call me cynical, but humans may evolve, eventually, but human nature will still remain. There will always be a need for a Section 31, or Special Circumstances, if nothing else to do the things necessary which can't be done by a Utopian, evolved socoety.

@RickMunich : human nature is not intrinsically negative; there are aspects which are hostile and selfish and aspects which are altruistic and compassionate: the question of human evolution becomes which qualities the society encourages in its citizens. If a society chooses the easy route and succumbs to its baser qualities, then yes, section 31-like organisations are necessary. If, however, one chooses to look beyond the petty and the paranoid (forcibly ignoring that which holds back our alturism), such organisations become obsolete. Such was Gene's vision.

@Nuncle : So, nothing before TNG season 5 was any good, and Enterprise was gold huh?

@Neil : No one is (or should be) suggesting that the Federation and its citizens are perfect, merely, that they attempt at all times to be altruistic. I can accept that an organisation like 31 might exist as a remnant from a previous era, but what really gets me is that people in the Federation feel that it's necessary because it makes them feel safer/less responsible.

@Nic : I wasn't purporting to take issue with the immoral characters (Sloan, eg), but rather the episode's stance that Bashir's lone attitude is foolish and naïve. It reads like a slap in the face to those of us who feel that the Star Trek vision represents the most genuine expression of human greatness--THAT is what I find immoral. It glamourises cynicism and opportunism--then again, this series has often done so in the glorification of Sisko himself.

This argument is futile. Obviously the utopian and principled position of the Federation (and thus GR's grand vision) is not threatened in any way by the presence of a secret intelligence division. The whole point is that they're *bad guys* only wearing the same uniform as the good guys. (And even then the whole black-hat trope is highlighted during the end reveal when they try to recruit Bashir while wearing *evil* black leather smocks.

Drama is all about conflict. The entire Alpha quadrant isn't one big happy love-fest. The fact that some humans are willing to break violate the jus cogens in order to advance Federation interests doesn't *undermine* the principles Star Trek stands for -- it puts them into conflict.

Was Star Trek undermined when Sesca was outted as a bad guy? No. Of course not. Rogue elements don't undermine the whole -- they bring things into focus.

The best part of that conflict though is that its more nuanced and sinister and cool than many of the other plots tried. 400 episodes and 3 series later straight conflict with Klingons was long, long, overplayed. Excellent episode -- and rather chilling pre-9/11. How could there be a multi-year war on in the Star Trek universe without an 'ends justify the means' episode?

@ZeroOneCommand:

It's not the presence of S31 which threatens the "principled position of the Federation" but the attitude of Starfleet and its choice to ignore the immorality of Sloan et al. which is inexcusable.

@ Rod..yeah I think that was an in-attempt to admit how stupid that was. Voyager did it too...making fun of earlier dialogue where they had deuterium shortages.

I think some are looking back at Roddenberry with rose-colored glasses. Star Trek was never presented as a pure snow-white future or even a idelistic one. Just a better, more just, future. But it was understood and all but stated several times, that times may change but people do not. i think later producers and writers went overboard on the moralising and political correctness.
Also, if Section 31 has been around for 300 years, since the birth of the Federation, who are these officers to be so-self righteoous to know better? This is a point I made on another board as well...

First off, love the episode.

About Roddenberry: Hats off to him for coming up with "Trek." But the honest truth is I don't think he even had much of a vision of the Federation, at least during the original series.

At best, it was a vague backdrop for Starfleet. And that was at best a vague backdrop for the Enterprise.

Almost no original series episodes gave you a sense of the Federation. The only one that comes to my mind as really starting to give you any notion of the Federation is "Journey to Babel."

I don't think Roddenberry had any notion or real concepts about how it worked, who was in it, etc. It just came off as little more than a United Nations in space. And I never interpreted it as some kind of Utopia -- just a better future.

"Court Martial" and their only two-parter, about Talos, gave you a little bit of an idea about Starfleet worked, but not much.

So to say something in DS9 supports or violates Roddenberry's vision strikes me as a bit funny, because frankly, Roddenberry hadn't seemed to have thought it out a whole lot at all based on the 72 episodes or so the original series.

His thoughts seemed almost exclusively on Kirk, Spock and McCoy and just moving them place to place, unconnected to anything before or after.

Just watched this again. The main problem with the episode is that it is obvious what is happening - my wife got the twist as soon as Bashir woke up tired. Trek is never very clever with its plots and since Bashir obviously can't be an agent as he's a main character (and this isn't BSG or even B5) the episodes content is rendered rather pointless. Still its carried through reliably well and the concept is interesting even if like most of DS9's threads poorly handled later on.

3 out of 5 for me

How freaking relevant is this episode now in the wake of all the recent revelations about the covert activities of the NSA?

Agree with Elliott. DS9 is at its worst when it drifts towards a kind of right-wing appologia. This episode isnt gritty or realistic, it's depressingly reactionary (in its defense, the episode knows the Section are essentially "bad guys"). Note too that Elliot specifically mentions "capitalism". Far too many Trek fanboys are pro-capitalist and franky ignorant when it comes to post-neo classical economics and economists. A post-capitalist society gets there by embracing ethics, and ethical is precisely what capitalism is not.

I don't buy the concept of a secret Star Fleet agency with the authority to basically jail the senior staff of DS9. Interesting, but also frustrating, predictable (holodeck, lol) and not terribly believable.

5/10

Bringing shades of grey to Star Tre and showing a world within Trek that is not the Gen's paradise, is intriguing and welcome. But to completely overthrown Trek's universe is a whole different thing.

In this episode, DS9 has really gone way too far again. Once more, the show pretty much painted a Federation and a Starfleet that are, both, simply not the same as one can find in the other Trek media. And that is disappointing: Federation and Starfleet can operate in a more dark boundary such as in DS9, but they have to be the same institutions across different shows.

Elliot's darn correct.

But complaining about Section seems a bit pointless.

DS9's ENTIRE DOMINION WAR is STUPID and contradicts the Federation ethos. The Federation would have found a way to avoid it or appease the Dominion. No enlightened society would have gone to and instigated war like the Federation did in DS9.

And spare me the "DS9 is complex because its kinda like 9/11" talk. No its not. 9/11 was caused by Western Empires putting dictators all ove the map in an attempt to stop left wing and communist (ie Federation) governments. The West is the Dominion, not the Federation. DS9's Dominion war demonstrates a very white, middle class, myopic, Western misreading of history.

@corey:

You're in favor of the good guys "appeasing the Dominion"? The female shapeshifter made the founders' aims. Lear in an early episode: they want to ensure their security by ruling over solids with an iron hand. And countless eps have shown HOW they rule: by tyranny and violence, using their minions - who have been bred to revere their shapeshifter masters as God.

Hitler was not satisfied with enslaving merely Czechoslovakia to his Reich. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is not satisfied with torturing only the citizens of Raqqa as they pursue their dream of a caliphate. Peacemaking and appeasement have their limits. As do liberal apologetics.

Yeesh. Since when is Syria an "Islamic" state? Did Bashar al Assad lose the civil war to the Al Qaeda-backed rebels while our attention was focused on Russia/Ukraine?

Otherwise, can we have a ban here on comparisons to Hitler. You'd think no one had heard of Godwin's Law before.

Josh, look up ISIS. Toraya isn't saying that Assad's Syria is "Islamic."

"The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is not satisfied..."

So are we talking about one state or two?

What is ISIS? Immigrant Settlement & Integration Services?

I've looked it up. I still fail to see the point Toraya was trying to make. Who is appeasing Syrian rebels? And the whole Third Reich analogy falls flat. The "appeasement" argument is just another grade 7 history lesson that oversimplifies and is used incessantly to "show" why we have to "get tough" on "tyrants" and the like.

All that aside, the others above apparently are under the impression that even a necessary war isn't stupid. It is. But it took WWII to convince most of us that global-scale conflict is something best prevented.

Oy. My point: Appeasement is only possible when Team A is willing to settle for what Team B is willing to hand over. Are you playing dumb for some particular rhetorical reason?

To keep the examples in-universe: Fifty-some years ago, the peaceful Bajorans appeased the expanionist Cardassians by becoming their subjects. In this way they kept the peace, were rewarded handsomely, and lived happily ever after. Dunno why those dumb resistance fighters had to screw things up by getting all violent.

Again, what does this have to do with appeasing Syrian rebels? Nothing, as near as I can tell.

As for 1938, I'd suggest that neither Britain nor France were especially prepared for war and - at the time - German annexation of the Sudetenland seemed justifiable (sort of) from a self-determination angle. It was less than 20 years from the end of The Great War, still in living memory for every political leader then. The failure of the Munich Agreement is what led to the Anglo-Polish alliance, and it was less than a year from Munich that the war started. The usual argument that "appeasement" failed because it somehow "emboldened" Hitler is simplistic and borderline ludicrous, especially as it's applied to just about every political situation since. After all, Russia's annexation of Crimea required nothing of the sort, but Putin always had the advantage of the facts on the ground - so did Germany in 1938, and nothing about the appeasement policy allowed for the seizure of all of Czechoslovakia.

And I don't know what you're talking about with the Bajorans. It's not "appeasement" when a state falls under military occupation and its inhabitants are not able to readily expel the invaders.

To follow up further, the Federation employs agencies like Section 31 because they are not willing to let their way of life and independence be threatened by aggressors that may prove intractable. As ever, there's never been any textual evidence to suggest that the Federation has ever stopped facing these threats, nor that a bit of realpolitik is inimical to Star Trek.

Eh...Going back to the episode and the concept of good vs. evil of intelligence agencies.

Let's be honest here, Roddenberry was not enemy of War or Conflict; look at his two other pet projects: Andromeda and Earth Final Conflict as examples of military doctrine and conspiratorial groups. He just thought we could come together eventually as a people, once we recognize that the universe is too big to think of ourselves as one nation-state versus another.

Personally, I think Babylon 5 was better in this regard of how they portray our future; we won't escape nation-states even after first contact with aliens, instead we would pool our resources together in an UN-esque planetary alliance. It will take centuries or even a million years before we reach true peace with everyone.

As an inter-universal retcon, it makes sense for a lot of the loose canon in Star Trek around rogue admirals and secret weapons projects in Starfleet, including the Pegasus experiment in TNG (The novels directly linked Section 31 to that).

Section 31 is not an issue in Star Trek; it is merely an understated reality in the past that has been made overt in DS9.

I give this episode:

10/10, it finally reveals something that has been in the back of everyone's mind since TNG.

Solid episode with good acting, sure it was a bit "cheaty" that it all happened on the holodeck but had me guessing for a while.

I disagree with anyone who thinks this one is predictable....Is it really that crazy to think DS9 would have bashir be an unwitting spy. It is this same character who was just a season ago revealed to have been impersonated for months while the real bashir was in a prison....How is programming him Geordi Laforge like really in any way unthinkable. I was actually surprised he wasn't. On to the Section 31 debate, DS9 has always been a little silly about this kind of stuff. We are made to believe that what section 31 did here was wrong, NO QUESTION, yet the very next episode Sisko is faking evidence to bring a whole empire into a war....What did section 31 do....put Bashir in a holodeck for 2 days...WOW crimes against humanity!!!! still..10/10 episode.

I've never been a big fan of people proselytizing Roddenberry as a sort of martyr of enlightened Star Trek ideals. To indulge in such specific idealism robs one of the ability to critically think of what's being said and instead regresses the discussion to a basic, superficial level. In other words, screaming it's 'anti-Trek' or 'anti-Roddenberry' is the same as saying the point of the specific story (or the enjoyment of or the critical thinking of) is now moot and only belief in Roddenberry Almighty will save us from our sins. Yes, Roddenberry did create a wonderful sandbox for people to play in and expand upon. And, no, I don't believe that his enlightenment ideals are necessarily unrealistic. The expectations of said ideals, however, and the hedging of all bets fundamentally on them is unrealistic, inherently flawed, and, from a creative standpoint, extremely detrimental to any storytelling process.

As for this particular episode is concerned; it is very well-written, masterfully executed, and is among the high-end installments of DS9 with ramifications that will, for better and worse, see fruition down the line. The idea of Section 31 itself was not much of a shocker to me and actually made sense logically. I agree with some above comments concerning comparisons between this autonomous organization and others (Tal Shiar, Obsidian Order, etc.). They were power hungry and interfered with their respective governments to a fault where 31 is truly independent and strive to do their jobs without political agenda.

Not a classic episode, but very close and is a fantastic job all around.

3.5 stars.

@Vylora :

Proselytising Roddenberry is not fundamentally the issue people take on here: or perhaps better, the proselytising of "his" ideals is an emotional testament to the reaction such writing as is seen in this episode engenders. But there is an empirical argument to be made against the methods DS9's creative team often employed, without the emotional baggage.

It is perfectly logical and reasonable that Section 31 would have been founded hundreds of years in the past to protect humanity's (and later the Federation's) interests covertly. It is evident that the fully realised manifestation of Gene's philosophy did not evolve in the Star Trek universe until the 24th century. Kirk's era is clearly in a transitional phase between something what we are now and what Picard and his crew are like in TNG. So, the group's existence is not in itself even a contention against the philosophy. In fact it helps prove the veracity of Federation ideals in its relative primitivity, an artefact of a bygone era.

Where the gears start to grind is in the treatment of Sloan as a strawman. He is an antagonist whose cynicism is bepedestaled as a kind of "rational" counterweight to Bashir's idealism. But where this argument falls apart is in that what for *us* in our time is idealism is for him in his (fictional) future a tested practice and a fully integrated part of the culture. In this context, Sloan's philosophy is not only conservative, it is regressive, fundamentalist.

It's admittedly been a while since I watched this episode, but if memory serves, where I started to get really annoyed was with the main cast's (and by extension the Federation's) apathy to the inevitable, as though the idea of Section 31, while perhaps out of their mainstay doctrine, was not particularly abhorrent.

Remember when Picard and Riker exterminated the scorpion creatures in "Conspiracy"? THAT is precisely the kind of reaction learning of 31's existence should illicit in any Starfleet officer and that is where I personally have a problem with the depictions of human beings on this programme.

I loved how Sloan commented on the runabout conveniently being left unguarded in orbit around the internment camp in "By Inferno's Light". To me, that was the writers poking fun at themselves and saying "Yeah, we kinda screwed up that time."

Good episode.

Also, considering the events of the next episode, Bashir's line "But what would that say about us? That we're no different than our enemies? That when push comes to shove, we're willing to throw away our principles in order to survive?" seems very prescient. Deliberate foreshadowing on the writers' part?

Section 31 is a "Star Fleet" organization, not a Federation one. It protects Federation interests now because Earth is a member of the Federation. I don't know of any Federation Charter that authorizes an organization like section 31. (the writers even get this wrong VIA Odo's words at the end of the episode)

JAM: "Sloan has a number of theories that seem insidiously plausible, even though he has no evidence." - agree Jammer, the first time I saw this episode and Bashir is beamed up to the Domion ship with Weyoun I was thinking this could be true!

I enjoy this episode each time I see it. Our introduction to Section 31. All the performances are noteworthy. I love Sisko at the end telling Julian he will accept his next invitation.

3 stars from me.

Actually, Section 31 is born of Babylon 5, where the series is based off. That's why DS9 isn't like normal Trek.

Even through that, S31 seem to be totally tacked on to me. The writers wanted to add some drama to the show and just added B5's Psi-Corps with a tweak.

Oh, and yeah, Bureau 13 from B5.

It's clearly a stolen idea. But the writers forgot that you can't just tack that into a story from nowhere. There was no clue, and nothing leading up to S31... it was just "Hey, guesss whoooooooo!?"

Section 31 isn't anything like the PSI-Corps.

What clues did you want? They don't operate on the front page of the "Star Fleet Journal".

This is a strong episode with a surprisingly compelling twist at the end of it. It actually uses a number of Trek tropes, but does them really, really well. I generally don't recommend episodes in which Nothing Is As It Seems or So None Of This Is Real!? because the conclusion usually guts any drama that happens during the episode. But this one genuinely works because how well it's designed to take Julian to task and how actually convincing the arguments against him are.

Episodes in which nothing is as it seems, like "Whispers" or "Distant Voices", always intentionally feel off and it becomes a matter of how long it takes for the main character to crack the code (so to speak) as the weirdness piles up. But "Inquisition" feels real because Sloan's case against Julian makes sense, referencing a lot of his past actions on the series. Getting beamed to the Dominion ship works too because we already know that even our own characters - Julian especially - aren't safe from twists like this. Plus, since the weirdness involves one of the show's main storylines, and not bizarreness from out of the blue, it starts to feel genuinely heavy.

It helps that everyone involved puts in a good performance: Julian (whose looks of being defeated really ring true), "Weyoun", and especially Sloan. Sloan is probably one of the more menacing villains so far, and he's only been in one episode! William Sadler is pretty much perfect here. Probably the best guest character the show's had.

I could have done without Julian outsmarting the scenario because of Something You Can't Possibly Know, but it's also not really so bad because when he finally tears down the fiction around him he finds something so much more unexpected. Suddenly everything about the Trek, our heroes, and their way of life looks a little bit different with the implication that the Federation is a bit of a fiction itself.

This one is a strong 3 stars, but for an episode like this the individual star rating is inadequate. It suggests it's a recommended episode of the series - but really, it's essential viewing because of how much it informs the rest of the show. The thing about "Inquisition" is that its implications are far more important than the 40 minutes needed to reveal them. On its own merits, this episode is very well done. What it means to series, however, is immeasurable.

I have just one problem with this episode, why did they use Weyoun as the Vorta at the internment camp? He was not the Vorta at the camp, I can't remember his name but he was not Weyoun. Julian should have asked Sloan about this, since he didn't know about Miles accident either.

"It won't be easy. If it's true this section has existed since the birth of the Federation, they've managed to hide their tracks very well"

- Right, by telling every Tom Dick and Harry they interrogate about their existence and purpose. Surely NO ONE would have EVER heard of them by now.

Come on writers, this is ridiculous.

Section 31 is probably just a relatively small black ops segment of Starfleet Intelligence (Sloan did say that they are a branch of SI).

If a naval captain questioned the Defense Department about the actions of some intelligence operative, the Defense Dept would simply respond back without confirming or denying the existence of the operative or his unit. Whatever Starfleet admiral Sisko contacted probably has no control or authority over the specific operations of a highly classified wing of a relatively autonomous segment of Starfleet Intelligence, and wouldn't discuss such matters with a mere Captain anyway.

As for what Section 31 does....they probably do some of the same things our own 21st century CIA does, and with the same questionable ethics. They aren't quite the Obsidian Order, they don't seek to overtly control the entire Federation and all its citizens and military personnel. But they are willing to skirt the constitutional laws of due process and search warrants to seek out major political threats. Starfleet and Starfleet Intelligence disavows any knowledge of their existence and gives them a lot of leeway to do whatever they need to do to accomplish their goals. Is it too much leeway? Maybe. But so long as they get results (and it seems like they usually do), Starfleet and SFIntel don't bother asking too many questions or making too many complaints.

Sloan to me is very much James Bond without the cinematically provided certainty. If you think about it, Bond does act as judge, jury and executioner in all those films. He investigates perceived threats, breaks into people's homes, steals property to gather evidence, takes people against their will, interrogates them, and kills them if/when HE deems it necessary.....all without any court, judge, or lawyer. The audience just *assumes* Bond/Mi6 is always right (which I'm sure Sloan assumes about himself), and the films usually show us the evidence supporting that (or the supervillain's confession). Bond has killed evil henchmen/villains on far less circumstantial evidence than what Sloan had against Bashir.....and to Sloan's credit, he gave Bashir far more of a chance to defend himself than Tain or Garak probably would have in the old Obsidian Order. Bond doesn't carry handcuffs with him and make warrant-approved arrests, he just goes out and takes care of threats....quietly.

One other point......can we Trek fans PLEASE disavow ourselves of the supposed notion that Roddenberry's Trek a Utopian vision that DS9 somehow violates?

Earth itself may be generally painted as a paradise compared to what we have today where war, hunger, and poverty have been eliminated. But I have a hard time accepting that even 23rd century humans are really all that evolved when you consider that the captain of the flagship of that universe is a guy that basically beat the crap out of every alien he couldn't sleep with.

There were any number of conflicts, skirmishes, and even outright wars that broke out between the Federation, Klingons, and other powers during the run of TOS. Even in the TNG days, the threat of war with the Romulan Empire always seemed to be right around the corner.

Roddenberry Star Trek shows a Federation that is constantly on the brink of war. Earth may not be a hotbed of territorial conflict and war any more, but humans were still shown to be just as flawed and confrontational as ever when it comes to civilizations outside. By that measure, present day America is a utopian paradise because we don't have inter-state fighting any more and we only go to war against other countries. To be fair, we probably are more evolved in certain ways than some of our counterparts of the 16th/17th centuries, but we still carry a great deal of flaws that can be examined.

The 1st season of 23rd century TOS Trek showed us a Federation that declared war on Klingons, referenced prior war with the Romulans, and sought war with the Gorn. There are still human smugglers, and con artists, and space pimps (though that might have all been just Harry Mudd). Penal colony administrators who torture prisoners, a Starfleet lieutenant who fakes his own death as part of a revenge plot against his captain, humans who were only too willing to kill any alien they didn't easily understand or identify with, humans who became uncontrollably dangerous a-holes under any intoxicating substance or when given a little extra power. Even the hyper-logical half-Vulcan Spock was willing to go Grand Theft Starship and risk a death penalty just to help out a disabled officer he once served with. And just to ensure that stealing an entire starship for personal motives wasn't limited to people with Vulcan blood, Kirk did the same thing in Star Trek III. And of course, let's not forget McCoy's rather constant racist slurs against Spock. And I won't even bother addressing the myriad of human/Federation problems in TNG.

All in all, this hardly paints an evolved or enlightened portrait of humanity. If DS9 appears "darker" it may be simply because the writers examine the atrocities they use for their episode backstories rather than simply glossing over them or forgetting about them at episode's end. DS9 dives into the horrors and aftermath of 50 brutal years of Cardassian rule over Bajor. TOS takes a civilization with a centuries-old history of enslavement, persecution, and rebellion, grabs one ambassador from each side, sits them at a conference table, and wipes their hands and walks away never to return again. That isn't human idealism. That's laziness and naivete bordering on criminally negligent and ignorant.

Both Kirk and Sisko were prepared to go to war with the Klingons. The only difference is that the non-corporeal Organians stopped the war, whereas the non-corporeal Prophets stayed out of the way.

Brian S.,

Well said.

MsV,

Here an exchange from that scene between Bashir and Weyoun:

"BASHIR: What truth? That you broke me when I was in the prison camp?
WEYOUN: We're not barbarians. There was no torture involved. We simply helped you to see that there's no way Starfleet can defeat the Dominion. And because you didn't want billions of Federation citizens to lose their lives needlessly, you agreed to provide us with information that would help us end this war quickly. You rose above the petty question of whose side you were on and made a moral decision. It's not surprising, really. After all, you are a doctor."

I think it's fair to read this as "you" and "we". I don't think Weyoun is being literal here. ... and Bashir was defiant where Weyoun asked him about the scone.

But good catch nonetheless.

I dont understand this complaint of "all this never really happened." The writers are showing us how this what if premise would play out, they're the ones telling us this is how the characters would react.

Finally, its not all "undone" by the end because it impacts Bashir, adds Section 31 to the series & we see the regulars debating it.

The idea could've been quite bland but in the end the writing & performances take this familiar idea & make it intriguing & a lot of fun!

absolutely love the concept of section 31. kinda nice to see the Federation has more of a badass covert ops organization than the talshiar and obsidian order.

this arc is definitely my favourite.

Strong Bashir episode and a bit more atmospheric than some we've seen recently. Yes, the "it was all on the holodeck" is a bit of a cheat, but it's not obvious when you are watching so I can let that slide. The argument constructed against Bashir is actually the most subversive bit, given that it actually creates a credible (if circumstantial) case that Bashir is guilty - and the tip of the hat to the orbiting runabout is a nice one. The misdirections of Bashir's rescue by the Dominion and subsequent rescue by the Defiant are also nicely played.

As to Section 31, there have been hints of a dark element to Starfleet since early TNG, so I think it fits in OK. 3 stars.

Hey, I like this one! (Review...eventually.) This is the first episode I ultimately recommend since "Far Beyond the Stars." I am uncertain about aspects of the revelations here, and Section 31 generally, but this has got great pacing and great material for Bashir, managing to pull together disparate strands of his character. This episode is actually pretty important for making Bashir's character arc cohere -- Bashir the doctor, Bashir the genetic freak, Bashir the man obsessed with intrigue, Bashir the pessimist, Bashir the pacifist, and Bashir the idealist are all brought together. (Actually, a lot of this is due to "Statistical Probabilities," which I also like.) I think that besides Odo, it's actually Bashir whose character growth I'm most happy with over the course of the series of the main cast.

Plot summary: DS9's writers get together and decide that the entire crew should directly contradict the very next episode following this one. Irrelevance and confusion ensues.

Is Section 31 anti-Roddenberry? You're damn right it is?! And know what? I really don't care. In fact, I applaud "Inquisition" for just that reason. Sorry, Gene was a phenomenal story-teller who cooked up a wonderful universe for us all to play in, but he was also quite a fucking loon most of the time. No interpersonal conflict? No medium of exchange? "Love counselors" instead of marriage vows? Ferengi with gargantuan cod-pieces? The entirety of TNG: "The Neutral Zone"? Yeah, he could be a real hack sometimes. It's nice to know that "Deep Space Nine" was written and produced by actual adults who understand the concept of "moral grey areas" instead of starry eyed Roddenberry-esque children.

For the first few acts, the episode plays like a remake of TNG:" The Drumhead". That's not a bad thing, as "The Drumhead" was one of the best episodes of that series. However, it ends as the complete opposite of that episode, which I also don't think is a bad thing. Both plots appear to be the same, someone from Starfleet shows up and is driven by personal reasons to uncover a conspiracy that most likely isn't there. The differences set in at around the half-way point, because while Admiral Satie used outrageous arguments to justify herself - thereby making herself the obvious villain - Sloan offers arguments that are, at least, plausible. In fact, they are so plausible (even using direct continuity with several previous episodes) that the audience honestly can begin to wonder if he may be correct - especially when you remember that something very similar was done to LaForge in "The Mind's Eye" (he was abducted by the Romulans, mentally broken and turned into a Romulan agent without his knowledge) and even more so once Bashir is kidnapped by Weyoun. The major difference is that "The Drumhead" ended with a Picard Speech concerning due process and "Inquisition" ends with Sloan saying such a position is naive.

Let me make one thing crystal clear, this is an interesting moral argument and it absolutely has to be discussed. The problem with Roddenberry's vision of the future is that for it to work you have to pretend a lot of things simply don't exist (like basic Human nature and needs). If Star Trek really is supposed to be a franchise about exploring the Human Condition then Gene's rules are simply counter-productive or outright in the way. In the real world there are organizations like Section 31 that act in very similar ways. How are we supposed to move past the obvious need for these groups if we're not allowed to have a mature conversation about them?

And speaking of mature conversations.... that's exactly what this episode is. Sloan is actually allowed to make reasonable arguments. He is not just a delusional madman or someone who is clearly the villain (like Satie). He is allowed to hold his own against Bashir and, at times, even comes across as the more sophisticated of the two. But what makes this so mature and adult is that the writers, while clearly coming down on the side of "Section 31 is bad" (see the episode's coda), allow the audience to make up their own minds. Nothing is force-fed to the audience here. Another wonderful example of this same type of argument is the movie "Captain America: Civil War", which makes really strong and compelling arguments in favor of an organization somewhat similar to Section 31.

Given that "Inquisition", VOY: "The Omega Directive" and "In the Pale Moonlight" all aired within two weeks of each other, I'd say Trek writers were really ready to abandon the "Roddenberry Box".

HOLODECK TOYS - 23 (+1)

10/10

Luke's getting to this episode makes me want to say a thing or two more about it --

One of the things I find interesting about this episode is the bait-and-switch it employs -- as Luke just pointed out, it starts off as something of a "The Drumhead" story, in which we feel the walls closing in on Bashir, which doubles as both

1) an extreme interrogation method, not (physical) torture, but some pretty deep psychological games, which obviously ditches due process entirely and, like Satie (and Worf), uses not just questionable methods but questionable logic to implicate Bashir; and then

2) a switch wherein it is revealed that it is an even deeper, more secret, less due-process-filled organization behind it...but which nevertheless, in the character of Sloan, is willing to drop his case against Bashir, having been convinced by him.

So to some extent the Drumhead-trial level is just a ruse of Sloan's, and he *apparently* was less convinced than he actually had appeared to be that Bashir was a spy. He was pretending to use those tactics, basically, rather than actually using them. But think a bit more and we are left wondering, as Bashir is, how close Bashir came to failing Sloan's test, *regardless of whether or not Bashir was actually guilty*. Sloan appears more competent than Bashir had expected, which is a bit of a clever dodge around the obvious problem with what Sloan is doing, but it's also noteworthy that the guilt-by-association type arguments used against Bashir couldn't still be used to ensnare him (and frankly couldn't be used to ensnare innocents). It is possible we are meant to take on faith that Section 31 really is good at what they do and doesn't make mistakes, but I tend to think it's that Section 31 is better at what they do than we are used to in shady conspiratorial organizations, but there is still the big risk. Anyway I tend to see this more as an introduction to Section 31 than a big statement on them, especially since they are only revealed at the very end and Sloan has mostly not actually tipped his hand that much.

While Sloan puts a friendly spin on it, I actually wonder how close Bashir came to failing the "test," despite not actually being guilty of being a Dominion agent.

@ William B,

When you suppose that Bashir might have failed "the test", what do you think the test was in that context? What could Bashir have 'failed'?

It seems to me there are two possibilities. One is the mundane one, which is that Sloan was vaguely testing to see whether Bashir would consciously opt to take shelter with the Dominion and help Weyoun if it appeared that Starfleet was turning against him. This test in itself would be lame, except that there is a better possibility, which would to test how strong Bashir's resolve was the the Federation should surrender to the Dominion (from Statistical Probabilities). In that episode he stops Jack from undermining Starfleet despite his view that Jack was fundamentally correct that Starfleet should surrender. The one thing apparently stopping Bashir was his oath to Starfleet, so maybe Sloan wondered whether Starfleet turning their backs on him would nullify that oath in Bashir's eyes and reopen the concept of trying to get the Federation out of the war. Even so, if we're to take the end of Statistical Probabilities seriously then it would appear that Bashir legitimately saw the error of his ways and learned his lesson, in which case this kind of test would be somewhat redundant. But in this scenario Bashir could potentially fail the test by reverting to his earlier conclusion that the Federation must surrender.

The other possibility, which I think was actually the case, was that Sloan wanted to recruit Bashir and had precisely one concern about him, which was that the Dominion could have broken him in the prison camp and used his enhanced mind to be a sleeper agent. If this was the test then Bashir's conscious loyalty wasn't the issue, and the sole issue was whether the Dominion actually broke him or not. This isn't the type of test Bashir could fail despite being innocent, since his mind was either altered or it wasn't. In this scenario Sloan was just verifying a fact, and Bashir wouldn't be able to 'screw up' the result. The question is, how could Sloan decide that he had verified one way or the other based on his test? The answer to this is probably more startling than the actual content of the episode.

For Sloan to know that this type of procedure could undo a mental compartmentalization he would have to have understood the procedure for both implanting that type of conditioning and removing it as well. I think it goes without saying Sloan has encountered agents of this type before, and deprogrammed them as well, so he would know how far he could go before it was apparent that no conditioning on Bashir had been done. But it gets better. Sloan specifically comments on how Bashir's enhanced mind was specially suitable for that type of reprogramming, which directly implies that Sloan has dealt with agents before who were genetically enhanced, and even has direct knowledge about attempts to compartmentalize someone's mind when they are, and when they are not genetically enhanced. This means that Section 31 has either employed, or at the very least, had to deal with this conditioning before. It also means that Section 31 almost certainly has or had agents in its employ that were enhanced like Bashir. I would even go further than this and suggest that Section 31 would have no problem with going ahead and *creating* genetically enhanced people and training them from a young age to work for them. Now that I think about it I would be surprised if they didn't do this. Their main problem would be that such people wouldn't officially be allowed to serve in Starfleet and would have to work for 31 off the books, whereas Bashir has a prominent post in Starfleet and therefore had access that a civilian wouldn't.

All this to say, I think we should take very seriously the fact that Sloan singled out Bashir to be a potential agent when they no doubt have many agents already who are more compliant and versed in intrigue than Bashir is. But none of them were in Starfleet and none had a reputation for trustworthiness that a spy would need as capital.

@Peter G.,

I know I should write more carefully. I actually do think that it's quite likely that Sloan was actually working to recruit Bashir for Section 31 (and unlikely that he only decided to go for that at the episode's very end), and running experiments to test his responses to certain kinds of pressures.

The other read is that I think that the test was, as you suggest in the first, one of Bashir's resolve. It's kind of an entrapment situation -- put someone in a sufficiently difficult situation (in a simulation) until they either:

1) as possible, here, agree that they should go over to the enemy in desperation, with their present life on the line;

2) eventually become convinced that they are a double-agent and sign a false confession; or

3) simply fail to be convincingly patriotic -- behave in a way that is deemed by the investigator to be consistent with how an ordinary person behaves.

However, on 3, I agree that ultimately Sloan is only play-acting the role of the HUAC agent who fails to take into account that innocent people often behave in ways that are consistent with a theory that they are behaving guilty. I just wonder to what extent a sufficiently long session could make someone with a sufficient degree of insecurity agree to a confession, either because they have become convinced of their guilt (or started imagining false memories which they were told were mostly-blocked) or because they come to believe that this is their only option. I think that probably Sloan as presented is too smart to accept a forced confession as any proof, even if the forcing is lighter than the type of false confession we imagine the Cardassians or Romulans might be able to extract. I guess my point is that I think that in duress, people are much more able to be convinced of difficult things and their resolve slips, and I think that being able to distinguish false from true confessions (or judging someone's reaction to a scenario accurately) is something that could still be done wrong. I may, of course, be overstating how breakable people's minds are, but I think that there is the suggestion here (or in "Second Skin," or in "Frame of Mind" for a different example regarding insanity instead of double agentness) that it takes a remarkable strength of will to hold out against psychological assault convincing someone that they have a second buried identity and are mistaken about themselves.

I agree that the episode makes the most sense though if we view Sloan as trying to recruit Bashir, and it is pretty interesting to consider to what extent Section 31 has genetically engineered operatives. That said, given that genetic engineering is not easily detectable -- Bashir went a long time without detection -- I'm not sure that it would be obviously true that Section 31 trained genetically engineered operatives would not be able to be in Starfleet. I wonder how much Bashir was a potential recruit specifically because of his position on DS9 and its centrality to the war...though if that were the case, it becomes odd that the one time Sloan did try to use him was on a mission *away* from the station, albeit one where Cretak was present.

I really don't know why people are jumping down the throats of fans of the original Trek. As someone who has been a longtime fan of Star Trek/Genes vision AND enjoys DS9. I also don't consider myself a "naive little thing" either. Please! this is Sci-Fi /Fantasy. You are actually challenging people and their street smarts on a forum about a fantasy show. I watched Star Trek because I liked the 'hopefulness' it had for our future. I mean there are plenty of scifi shows with dark themes like X-Files (another show I enjoy). There are plenty of shows that show us how dreary everything is, I mean I can understand why some people don't like the idea of Star Trek being touched with it. Sometimes DS9 fans take this show too seriously. I mean its almost as if people take Roddenberry's vision and his fans ideas sooo personally like they are these billy bad arses for pointing out what children they are. Its as if these people forgot what fantasy is, lol. Your Sci-Fi "realism" isn't going to impress anyone in the real world. Also, let me tell you, I actually think DS9 takes a lot of its dark concepts and distills it into something more simplistic to validate people who don't like Roddenberry. Newsflash: DS9 chickened out on lots of its own attempts to portray a more layered world. So. yeah. Though I love DS9 its really not that edgy and it has it's flaws.

Anyways, I thought this episode was really interesting and I find the Sloan character entertaining. I thought the acting in this was strong. I was laughing when Sloan first opened his mouth because I'm used to hearing the actor do more deep western or southern accents. He's always been one of my favorite character actors, as Bashir is my favorite DS9 character. Siddig and Brooks also did a good job and Micheal Dorn aka Worfs direction was surprisingly good for his first DS9 episode. Too bad he didn't direct more. Like the reviewer, I was also disappointed that it was an illusion. Despite that I think it was one of the best episodes of the season.

Had never seen this one before!

Yeah, really good. Being roughly aware of what it was about I was hoping that during the interrogation things like Bashir’s time in the prison camp or his wish to surrender to the Dominion would be brought up. Well that and more. Really appreciate writing like this which credits the viewers with an understanding and knowledge of the characters.
Must admit I thought the beam over to the ship/holodeck happened when he was ”busted” out by Weyoun. As soon as he arrived there I said aloud “Holodeck!” It was only when I looked at the script this morning I realised the whole thing was set on the holodeck.
Sloan was great. William Sadler is an excellent actor and portrayed him really well. I read that Martin Sheen was considered as well. Would have been pretty awesome too.
No qualms with the existence of Section 31. Makes sense for any society that has a military capacity, and Starfleet is that, would also have a side that does the dirty work.
Easily agree with Jammers score and I’d be tempted to knock it up to 4/4 just because of the cleverness of the writing.

A good episode and I think that the creation of Section 31 is a logical thing inside the Federation. Speaking of that, I would have loved it if one of Sloan's men was a Vulcan. I could see a Vulcan seeing S-31 as something "logical". Plus, it was always one of my nitpicks about all Star Trek, not enough aliens in Star Fleet uniform. We see them all over the station, but not enough in uniform.

This episode laid the ground work for a great scene that never happened and should have happened. How many would have loved to see the conversation between Bashir and Garak AFTER Garak finds out that Section 31 exists and that they tried to recruit Julian?

I'd rather Sloane's organisation had sprung up in response to the Dominion threat, or perhaps the re-emergence of the Romulans in TNG. Having Section 31 be centuries old makes it feel more like a conspiracy theory.

It could have been interesting to tie Sloane in to Admiral Leyton

One of my favorite Trek episodes ever. Unlike Jammer and some other posters, I never saw the twist(s) coming, and I thoroughly enjoyed the performances of the actors.

I like Dr. Bashir, or rather what DS9 writers have done with him over the 7 years. He has gone from an overly enthusiastic 'youngster' to a mature, composed character with many facets to his personality and existence. This was an episode in which he got to display those qualities and show how much he has evolved.

It also helps that everything that happens in this episode is very relevant to today's world of government, policing, and politics, down to the details of the dialogue between Sloan and Bashir in the holodeck toward the end, as well as the closing discussion between Bashir, Sisko, Kira, and O'Brien.

Fantastic execution all around, hats off to Dorn for directing and to Thompson & Weddle for the writing.

I don't buy it. Who funds it? If Sisko's admiral knew about Section 31 then do all admirals know about it? Are they briefed when they get promoted? Kirk was an admiral, along with plenty of captains who got promoted. But Sisko is the first person to learn about it who decided to do something about it?

If Section 31 is such a secret, why did Sloan tell Julian about it? He must have known there was a significant chance Julian would react precisely as he did -- telling the rest of the senior staff about it.

Also, there must be some reason to believe there is a spy. Does the Dominion have intelligence it could only have learned from a turncoat in DS9? Why else would they come after Julian in the first place? That thread is left hanging.

So, I have one major issue with this episode, and I don't think it's been brought up yet in the comments.

The original charge against Bashir was that he had compartmentalised his traitorous memories — in effect, splitting his mind in two, a traitor and a loyal Federation officer.

Now, I realise that this charge was almost 100% certainly a false accusation, and just a ruse to mess with him, create stress, test his resolve, etc. But let's assume it's a real accusation and go from there, to establish the internal consistency of that line of thinking.

Because it does bring up the important (and interesting) concern: How do you sentence someone in such a case?

Sloan plays both the good cop and bad cop, at first trying to suggest that he can help Bashir out of this situation, if only he would be willing to be effectively a triple agent and reveal information about his captors. As soon as he refuses — which, honestly, you should probably expect, given that he has no memory of what you suggest (but see below) — he immediately jumps to bad cop, declaring that he'll make sure Bashir goes to prison for a long time.

But realistically, what would the punishment be? As I see it, there are three possible scenarios for entering into such a situation:

1: Something external was done to his mind, that he had no control over. Regular Bashir was left as a cover personality, while traitor Bashir works without the other's knowledge.

In this case, he would be 100% a victim, regardless of what his traitor-side did. The "punishment" would be nothing more than extensive mental treatment (be it technological, and/or some form of counselling) to undo the damage.

2: He was tortured to breaking, and either his mind split of its own accord, or they coerced him into doing it.

This is largely the same as above. Although "known to break under torture" is something that would probably compromise his security rating — limiting his promotion potential, and keeping him off away missions and far away from classified intel — it's not exactly a crime. He could easily continue being a doctor, though he might get transferred back to work somewhere a bit safer than DS9 and the Defiant.

3: He turned to the Dominion under minimal coercion, agreed to spy for them, and set up the mental blocks to aid in doing so.

At this point, the question really becomes "what personality survives?" If he just reverts to his traitorous personality once discovered (and "good" Bashir was purely a false construct), then sure, lock him up. On the other hand, if you're left with a "good" Bashir who is devastated by what his "bad" side did … well, I think there's a lot of precedent in the Trek universe for letting him off the hook for this. Especially if he subsequently agrees to counter-spy, and/or feed the Dominion false intel.

—

So, all this being said: Why does Bashir refuse to even entertain the notion that one of the three above scenarios may have happened? He can certainly reject #3, and he might think he has the willpower to reject #2 (but there's no way to know). However, nobody can say whether #1 might have happened — there's actually previous evidence in the Trek universe to say it's quite possible (see e.g. that episode where LaForge is brainwashed).

In other words, he has no grounds to be able to insist that it couldn't have happened — and even if it had, he could probably get off pretty lightly, so long as he cooperates to the best of his ability.

(I realise that, in today's world — or at least, in Hollywood — it's generally considered bad advice to just tell the police absolutely everything, if there's any risk of you being a suspect. But this is supposed to be a more enlightened justice system. Fancy clandestine spy organisations notwithstanding, anyway … and not being something any of our main characters knew about, until this episode.)

Now, I get why Bashir wouldn't necessarily put all this together in his head, genetic enhancement or otherwise — he's under a lot of stress, he's sleep deprived, etc. But having Sloan turn so quickly from good cop to bad cop, without spending more time detailing why it's in his best interests? Having the (simulated) crew tell Bashir that he just needs to stay strong and they'll get him out of this? Surely everyone should have been telling him to just submit to a few tests — with oversight from Sisko if needed — and they can sort this all out.

Because that's how Trek has always worked in the past. You get kidnapped, something is done to your head, your crew step in and prevent the damage, you get help, and you learn to live with what you've done. It's formulaic, sure, but it set a strong precedent, and it's weird to see that *so thoroughly* subverted right from the very start, just to create some more tension and suspense.

—

Also, regarding the episode being predictable: I think it really depends on your frame of mind, and what conclusion you jump to first. I've actually *seen* this episode before, many years ago, and even I didn't twig that it was a holodeck simulation until Weyoun showed up.

I think the big difference for me was that my thoughts immediately turned to Boomer's predicament in Battlestar Galactica. Her situation is a lot more obvious — "waking up" completely soaked after her sleeper personality turned control back over to her cover personality, right after she'd delivered explosives to the ship's water tanks. (I never did understand why the Cylons wouldn't have waited a bit longer to hand control back over to her. Maybe they figured it was better that she be terrified and try to cover things up, than risk her noticing smaller inconsistencies and try to investigate them.)

So when presented with "Bashir is going to be accused of treason" and "Bashir didn't get enough sleep" — and from his "one of those mornings" comment, potentially the notion that *this happens to him a fair bit* — my thoughts immediately turned to "whoa, what if the twist is that it's all actually true?" And I guess that's what led to all my thoughts about what the justice system would have to say about that.

Oh, and that moment when they asked him to sign the confession? Yeah, no. Not consistent at all.

You don't go to someone and say "hey, I think you're secretly a traitor, but even you don't know that, and you have no memories of it, so please sign this false confession for memories you don't have". In fiction terms, that instantly means you're the bad guy and the accused is innocent.

Of course, I just assumed that meant that the fellow DS9 crew had found out about his extradition and were conspiring to kidnap him for his own safety. Once the Dominion showed up, *that's* when my thoughts immediately turned to "oh, it's a holodeck simulation".

@ Wisq,

The reason the crew and Sloan didn't explain things helpfully to Bashir is because they weren't really the crew. There's no reason why they should act optimally or do things in an enlightened Federation fashion since they were just part of a holodeck program. Sloan specifically did *not* want Bashir to be treated fairly, nor did he intend to give Bashir the actual option to comply. The program was designed to raise the tension and deliver Bashir to Weyoun in extremis. For better or for worse, Sloan felt this was the best way to test Bashir.

{ Sloan seems like he has good intentions, but maybe that's simply not enough. }

He thinks he has good intentions, but he does not. He believes that because he must - cognitive dissonance would not allow anything else.

{ While Sloan puts a friendly spin on it, I actually wonder how close Bashir came to failing the "test," despite not actually being guilty of being a Dominion agent. }

Exactly the problem and exactly why Sloan is not a "good guy who happens to use more edgy methods than most".

{ Overall, I don't think Section 31 undermines the "goodness" of the Federation. Instead, I think Section 31 represents an "enlightened" Federation Black-Ops organization }

Not as portrayed in this episode (or any other, really). They are no different than the Tal Shiar or Obsidian Order other than being better at hiding, perhaps.

{ His rights so obviously violated? Because Sloan wanted this guy to crumble, and he knew that a guilty man would do just that. }

So would many an innocent man - as any study of real-life police interrogation will show. Many people who were later proven innocent (and the government just says "oops sorry my bad" and then lets them out with no recompense for stealing that person's life away) were put under psychological stress to gain dubious confessions.

Some people deify Roddenberry

Interesting and well-acted episode messing with Bashir's (and my) mind but disappointed that it's all a holodeck con job on Bashir. Certainly have to question the ethics of all this as an inquisition within Star Fleet but then if it's a Section 31 job does that absolve all those concerns? "Are we willing to sacrifice our principles in order to survive?" Indeed.

The idea of walls inside Bashir's mind was interesting -- almost to make him break down and confess to something. The episode does make a good point of picking up on past episodes where Bashir has done some questionable things -- but really the only questionable thing is not telling Sisko and Star Fleet medical about the genetic engineering.

The whole Section 31 as a separate part of the Federation -- so I guess the good guys aren't so good after all. "In the Pale Moonlight" certainly makes that point.

The Sloan interrogator character was effective and in the end did come across as a suitable leader for Section 31 -- it was a nice way to make the whole episode sort of make sense in the end.

2.5 stars for "Inquisition" -- plenty of interesting things that seemed real but I'm disappointed because they're all fabrications. The Section 31 idea...not a fan of it -- having the authority to do whatever they feel is best and putting Bashir through hell. And in the end Section 31 wants Bashir to join? How is Sisko supposed to put with this nonsense? Got a bit carried away with the holodeck use here.

I think it's a neat episode with great acting by both Siddig and William Sadler. Like a few commenters have already said I think the inclusion of Section 31 is an interesting story element because of how they clash with the Federation ideals. I don't think having a secret cabal doing what they think is best for the Federation changes anything about our characters and the rest of Starfleet, because while our hero characters have been by necessity good blokes we've seen plenty of bad or misguided eggs like Ronald Tracy, John Gill, Janice Lester, Garth of Izar, Admiral Cartwright, Eric Pressman, Norah Satie, Vice-Admiral Kennelly, Admiral Leyton and Admiral Doherty. Section 31 is just a bunch of pricks who've been doing it longer.
My only quibble with the episode is having Section 31 be in the shadows for over 200 (or 300) years. Now on the one hand I think it's a cool story idea that around the time of First Contact a bunch of people got together to further Earth's agenda as they ventured into the stars. I like seeing different factions played off one another, like seeing SG1 vs the NID, or the Machine team vs Samaritan, and it was fun seeing them back in Enterprise. But on the other hand I feel like it diminishes the individual if they retcon that S31 had a hand in every major plot in Star Trek. Cartwright was just a disillusioned guy who made a deal with his counterpart Chang. Doherty was just a dumb idiot suckered in by whatsisstretchyface. Not everything needs to be connected.

One more for the list of stupid things writers did in DS9. They "invented" section 31 as a CIA-like organization inside Star Fleet, so, why Sisko was needed to play Devil's advocate in the very next episode?
Wouldn't be more logical to have them organize something to bring the Romulans to Federation's side? I'd buy it if instead of Sisko being the one pulling everything in "In the Pale Moonlight" it'd be Bashir, especially because of his close relationship with Garak.
Anyway, it doesn't surprise me at all, maybe this was the worst planned ST series, I insist they should had bought the entire script from Straczynski.

@ manolo,

"maybe this was the worst planned ST series"

It was the *only* planned ST series. And maybe you didn't notice but this is the fourth out of five episodes in a row that feature a story that involves moral shades of grey and people finding a conflict between duty and doing the right thing. Two episodes before this string of 'grey area' episodes is Far Beyond the Stars, an episode about how law can be an instrument of tyranny and that each person needs to weight right and wrong regardless of what the rules say to do. Seems pretty thematically organized to me considering the fact that the scripts have different writers, but the level of professionalism here can be chalked up to the fact that the writers worked as a team.

"I'd buy it if instead of Sisko being the one pulling everything in "In the Pale Moonlight" it'd be Bashir, especially because of his close relationship with Garak."

You'd rather a junior officer and no diplomatic authority took steps to alter galactic relations rather than the CO? And you're the one with a problem with the CIA-type organization that does things it's not supposed to? Seems like a contradictory set of criticisms to me.

Rewatched this ep for the first time in years and I feel that this ep epitomizes the stark difference between TOS/TNG and DS9.

On TNG, the holographic Moriarty episodes were used to explore broader points about humanity, illusion/reality - cerebral stuff to make us ponder. DS9 on the other hand used the holodeck as a straight up plot device and emphasizing the horror aspect - I.e the technology's capability for bad (or should I say, misuse by unscrupulous actors)

I say this not as a criticism of DS9, but as an observation. Nothing wrong with the darker approach - after all, they were trying to tell a different type of story on DS9 as opposed to TNG. (And of course TNG used holodeck malfunctions as one of their more infamous plot devices)

Starfleet Brass is consistently portrayed as a bunch of hard-nosed types that are frequently dead wrong or full of rogue elements, insane captains, and dangerous secrets. Starfleet seems to spend half of its time at war. If your society is at war that often, ain't no way it's going to stay idealistic.

Humans are far from perfect in Star Trek despite their high ideals, which are just that... ideals. Even Roddenberry wrote that way. They have to work at it. Sometimes they fail.

PS - The Federation was a bit of a retcon in TOS, for awhile it was "United Earth" or some such.

I was bothered by the sudden introduction of Section 31 in the same way that I was bothered by the sudden revelation of Bashir as genetically enhanced, as Rom as a technical genius, and Klingons as intolerant to cold. It's a dramatic change in canon. If they had thought ahead, they could have hinted at all of these earlier. It would have worked better even if they just hinted that Section 31 was responsible for some of the stranger and darker episodes we've seen in both TNG, DS9, and even TOS. Like maybe the TNG Enterprise crew kept inadverently disrupting Section 31 operations, so Section 31 tried to sabotage the Enterprise, like in "The Game".

Eh
2-2.5 stars

I’m
Not a big fan of The Bashir character. He’s kinda dull and can grate on me like nails on a chalkboard. The acting in this episode wasn’t that great either

The only really interesting part of the episode was the introduction of section 31 and the subsequent chat in holodeck once ruse was exposed. The rest of the episode felt like assembled from better done TNG mystery shows like Future Imperfect or Ship in a Bottle. This time with the crew’s odd behavior and Miles’ shoulder giving it away

Yes it did an admirable job tying together bits and pieces from earlier episodes to incriminate Bashir but wasn’t very riveting

like a lot of DS9’s mythological pieces , Section 31’s initial introduction was lackluster but would go on to be out to better use later on.

I’m surprised at how strong the evidence is against Bashir.

When you look at it objectively:

- Bashir sabotaged the Defiant communication system and almost precipitated a war with the Tzenkethi. Only it turned out that that was a Founder impersonating Bashir (The Adversary)

- Bashir helped the Jem’hadar when they wanted to break free of their ketracel-white addiction. O’Brien was so emphatically opposed to helping the Jem’hadar that he disobeyed Bashir's orders (Hippocratic Oath)

- Bashir spends a month as a guest at the Dominion DoubleTree (In Purgatory’s Shadow)

- Bashir almost blew up the Bajoran sun, and a huge chunk of the Federation, Klingon and Romulan fleet along with it. Only it turned out that that was a Founder impersonating Bashir (By Inferno’s Light)

- Bashir lied to get into Starfleet. He’s genetically engineered like Khan Noonian Singh. He was only allowed to keep his commission in a deal that sent his father to prison (Doctor Bashir, I Presume)

- Bashir recommends surrendering to the Dominion (Statistical Probabilities)

Add to that the fact that Bashir had access to the absolute most sensitive of Federation intelligence when he was filling in for Worf as strategic operations officer (Soldiers of the Empire), plus the fact that Bashir is starfleet’s closest contact to Garak and thus the the Obsidian order - it would be almost criminally negligent not to subject Bashir to a rigorous evaluation seeing as he holds a sensitive post in a time of war.

DS9 has suffered treasonous defections (Lt. Cmdr. Eddington), starfleet saw an attempted coup (Paradise Lost), are we really so naive to think that in a time like this, the Deep State wouldn’t resort to extra-legal means to do what they thought was necessary?

Watching and commenting:

--Julian's going to a medical conference on Cassperia Prime, but yuh oh. Internal Affairs is at the station. I've been to meetings like this. Very glum. But apparently, this is not about who keeps stealing lunches from the fridge. No conference for Julian.

--The Interrogater takes a much different tack than my boss did about the fridge. Though this last minute, seemingly insignificant question, I've seen that on Columbo.

--Ah! So Julian is the Dominchian Candidate?

--Sloan is really hammering Bashir. The actor doing a great job.

--Weyoun also hammering Bashir, in his way. Combs does such a nice job. Is this the holodeck? Trying to get Bashir to confess to "Weyoun?" Ah, ha! I guessed right.

--Section 31. The Obsidian Order of Star Fleet, I guess? Or are they still holograms, telling Bashir baloney?

--Hmmm. I guess Section 31 is for real. Bashir's 007 dreams come true.

Pretty good ep. Nice twist, well done. Though, who was the traitor on DS9?

@Springy

"Though, who was the traitor on DS9?"

I believe that the simulation begins from the moment Bashir wakes up with the time seeming off kilter at the beginning. Thus, we can assume everything that happened from that point on was part of an elaborate test for Bashir. Too bad Section 31 wasn't around when Eddington was on the station, eh?

@Chrome

Oh, yes, I agree. It was all a simulation for Bashir, from the minute he woke up and had to go to the staff mtg, instead of a conference.

But I assumed that Section 31 really did have reason to believe that there was a spy on DS9, and that it was likely Bashir - they were determining if he was the spy. I saw the "I think you'd make a good agent" business as something that occurred to Sloan, afterward.

I didn't assume it was all to test Bashir for suitability for Section 31, and that there was never a spy on DS9.

I'd have to rewatch, on that score. I can only say it didn't hit me the way you're suggesting.

@Springy

I think you're correct that they suspected Bashir might have been compromised and they wanted to test that hypothesis and that the traitor in question was none other than Bashir, if any traitor existed. Rather than describing any sort of covert activity or foul play aboard DS9 itself, Sloan only looks at Bashir's history. Indeed, it's specifically Bashir's history littered with dealings with the Dominion that are suspect when looked at in a certain light. However, I believe once Bashir was capably exonerated, Sloan realized how talented Bashir was for making it out of incredible difficult situations with the Dominion without being compromised.

@ Chrome,

I'm not sure I disagree, but there's another possible way to see Sloan's test. What if he was testing to see if Bashir could be actively turned away from Starfleet? After all, having a series of sleep deprived persecutions, followed by Weyoun insisting that he was a covert agent (and we may even suspect that Bashir was being drugged at the same time), might have perhaps led certain people to either panic or else to begin to wonder whether it was possible that they really were covert agents. In Bashir's case he was so resilient to confusion, as well as arrogant and naive in the same package (naive that he could never be turned, and arrogant that he could never be turned), that he proved that as a 31 agent he would be very hard to compromise if the other side tried to mess with him. Seen in this way, it would mean the testing wasn't to see if he was loyal, but rather if he was effective. And I sort of prefer this head canon because frankly despite how interesting the case was that was built against him as a traitor, in the end it would have been quite a stretch to actually think he wasn't loyal after all he had done for Starfleet. If anything his James Bond persona alone should prove that his ego about being loyal was probably exaggerated even compared to other Starfleet officers.

@Peter G.

I was thinking about this when I responded to Springy, and honestly I can't tell for sure if they were trying to recruit Bashir from the start or whether just him knowing about S31 was enough to make him a potential agent. Though if you really think about it, there are some good rational reasons for considering Bashir a security threat. Thee's the unaccounted days with the Dominion, the sympathy Bashir has shown to Jem'Hadar, and perhaps the biggest one: Bashir actually making a heartfelt plea that Starfleet surrenders to the Dominion in "Statistical Probabilities".

So, while I can kind of see where you're coming from that it's unlikely Bashir's a traitor from the audiences' point of view, from a security point of view I can see why they'd want to tie up even the slightest possibility of Bashir being an operative, even if it's unknowingly.

@Chrome @Peter G

Interesting thoughts.

Here's all Sloan said regarding a spy on DS9

Opening staff mtg:
SLOAN: Starfleet Intelligence has reason to believe that there's been a security breach aboard Deep Space Nine. It appears that someone has been passing information to the Dominion.

When Sisko is visiting Bashir:
SLOAN: That's exactly what I think. When my son's convoy dropped out of warp to rendezvous with a Klingon bird of prey, they found three Dominion attack ships waiting for them instead.

He mostly focuses on Bashir's suspicious behavior, independent of all that, true.

So, I guess it's possible that the business of believing "there's a spy on DS9!" was all a lie, part of a set up to test Bashir.

I mean, that it wasn't anything besides Bashir's odd behavior (like with the other genetically enhanced folks, etc) that got Section 31 on his tail. There was no info leaking out of DS9, that they had noticed. There was no son killed by the Dominion. That's certainly not clear to me, though.

I do love this episode but one element bugs me whenever I watch it.

It makes no sense for the Dominion to brainwash Bashir into serving as a spy and then allow him to escape. They already had a changeling posing as Bashir, who would not have been caught had it not for the real Bashir's escape.

On top of that, why have humanoids serve as spies at all when the changelings do a better job of it anyway? And they are more versatile because they can assume other forms whenever their current one falls under suspicion.

Yes, I know that Bashir never actually was a spy. I know that Sloan was just BSing that story to mess with Bashir's head. But even for a BS story, the logic makes no sense. Bashir (given his super genetically enhanced brain) should have realized this and brought it up.

But nobody brought it up. So it just lingered in my head while I watch the episode. It's even worse when you don't already know the ending and you think Bashir's life really hinges on this flimsy logic :P

Some terrific writing / lines in this episode at the end between Sloan/Bashir after the holodeck simulation ends and then with Sisko/Kira/Odo/Bashir about the grey areas Section 31 operates in, how it is like the Obsidian Order to the Cardassians, etc.

Have to give credit for how this episode picks up on the various dubious decisions Bashir has made, none the least of which is his hiding his genetic engineering. And yes it makes perfect sense for Section 31 to recruit him.

Definitely adds a nice wrinkle to DS9 which already has a ton of moving parts providing intriguing interactions. Introducing a Section 31 to Star Trek on DS9 absolutely makes sense and especially just before "In the Pale Moonlight" when Sisko feels he has to cross the line.

Upgrading my rating to 3 stars for "Inquisition" -- the fact that most of the episode is a simulation for Bashir is a drawback but for the end-product of unwrapping Section 31, it's worth it. This episode also feels more significant in light of DSC Season 2 -- the last act had more intelligence about motivations/operations for Section 31 than did the entire 2nd season of DSC.

Ve are section ein und dreißig, und ve change into ze lederhosen und kinky threads of leazer ven we are found out, ja?

Inquisition

All section 31 agents are white males dressed entirely in black. Star trek has never been particularly subtle about race casting but this one feels like a hammer blow to the head.

Females officers routinely give orders and make demands upon their male piers and subordinates (dax told julian to 'get ma a raktajino' in one episode and julian wordlessly complies with the demand) but it is a rare occurrence (ever?) when we see the reverse - but more on this later.

The casting and costuming of section 31 personnel is just a race case of the above gender issue. To put it bluntly, we would never see a gang of rogue black bad guys dressed in black, set up to fail and used as a plot device to preach a moral behavioral lesson. It is just a wonder that dax or kira is not cast as the heroin to unmask, expose then emasculate the white male evil doers. See kira and gul dukat or kira and damar or kira and quark for a relevant example. Or, in a slightly different style but still emasculating, watch kira and keko do it to the chief or early in the series as dax is allowed to toy with julian's affections.

Another episode which isn't quite equal to the sum of its parts.

In some ways, it's interesting to see DS9 choosing to do another witch hunt story- if anything, it's arguably overdue, given the Founder's shapeshifting capabilities and willingness to embrace strategies considered unethical by the federation, from secret treaties and betrayals to manipulating and perhaps even turning Federation staff with the assistance of their superior medical sciences.

Equallly, it’s nice to see that it’s not just another courtroom drama. And there’s some entertaining elements - the writers almost break the fourth wall when highlighting just how ridiculous - and potentially suspicious - some of Bashir’s past escapades have been.

However, for all that it’s front and centre, the trial of Bashir isn’t really the main element of this episode - after all, everything gets reset back to Business As Usual at the end of the episode. Instead, the main point of this episode is to introduce Section 31.

(And arguably, the trial was entirely a sham, intended solely to test Bashir’s suitability as a S31 resource...)

Truth be told, I’m comfortable with the concept of Section 31; there’s always been people willing to perform illegal or immoral actions “for the greater good” (or to maintain the status quo, which isn’t always the same thing…), and virtually all societies have had black ops organisations dedicated to protecting or maintaining the status quo. From drug-running CIA agents to the British Special Irish Branch and the Roman frumentarii, there’s plenty of examples going back all the way to the dawn of civilisation.

And so, I’m more than willing to accept that the Federation has its own clandestine organisation, to counter those of their traditional rivals, the Klingons and Romulans, both of which have had their own secret organisations muddying the waters since the days of TOS. And with the Cardassians and Founders proving to be at least as devious, it makes perfect sense that Section 31 would be involved in pushing them back.

However, for all that the episode has some good points, the ending is pretty ridiculous; we're meant to buy into the idea that there has never even been a single rumour about S31's existence? The writers could have maybe made this work if they'd wiped Bashir's memory before returning him (in some conveniently reversible way), but instead S31 left Bashir with all his memories intact, which in turn meant he could freely discuss them with the rest of the crew.

If they’re really so blase in their approach to interrogation and recruiting, how can there not be a single bit of evidence, rumour or conspiracy theory to be found anywhere in the Federation about their existence?

It’s almost as if this is because they didn’t exist before this episode. And therein lies the main issue I have with Section 31. As with several other recent revelations (Bashir’s genetic engineering, Dukat’s dalliance with Kira’s mother, etc), their appearance from the shadows feels distinctly contrived - little more than a set of new elements to throw into the final season.

So yeah: an interesting concept, but one that came too late in the show's lifecycle for me.

It's a shame, as S31 would have been a perfect tool to explore some of the more morally ambiguous aspects of DS9. After all, can a society be deemed valid if it's principles can only be maintained by breaking those principles? Can a society retain it’s principles when interacting and/or competing with other societies with differing or actively contradictory principles? How do you fight against someone who’s prepared to use tactics deemed immoral or invalid by your society? Who watches the watchers? And so on.

Sadly, all we get in this episode is some grandstanding from Sloan and a single throwaway conversation between Sisko and Bashir. And while I generally try to avoid future-episode spoilers, the few later episodes which do feature S31 are distinctly underwhelming when it comes to exploring the ramifications of their existence.

I also find it incredibly odd that the very next episode didn’t feature S31, given how the plot was pretty much tailor-made for their underhanded machinations…

Bleh. I always hated the Section 31 plot line. It simply doesn't make any sense and completely falls apart with the slightest bit of logical scrutiny. Putting aside how utterly at odds it is with everything the Federation is supposed to stand for, the simple fact is massive conspiracies like it never make sense.

Believing the towers were brought down by the US government is moronic, because it would require a conspiracy of thousands of people, who all manage to never get caught, no one ever lets something slip, and everyone who knows about has never said a word.

Section 31 is no different. We're expected to believe that there's this global conspiracy, that everyone in Starfleet Command "knows" about it but is in on the coverup despite how utterly antithetical it is to their ethics and ideals, that the Federation Council either condones it or has been ignorant about it for centuries, that every member world has never objected to this horrific thing, but somehow the general public is completely unaware of it. Nah. Not buying it brah.

It's, frankly, complete and utter bullshit, like most conspiracy theories. The Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order work precisely because they DON'T rely on a giant conspiracy keeping silent about them for centuries. They make sense. Section 31 is fantasy, and bad writing.

This worked well in no small part because in Doctor Bashir, I Presume, they had shown willingness to make significant character changes involving Julian himself.

It’s a great episode, but considering it’s supposed to trick the audience, I think it gives it away to some degree by laying it on super thick. More subtlety might have been nicer.

However, it is still legit because it just means Sloan’s simulation laid it on too thick. From that perspective, that’s actually a strength of the episode. It mostly avoids the typical problems of this sort of story where the illusion is too perfect and incorporates things the illusion creator couldn’t know.

Look how little Sisko really offers in the end meeting with Odo and the others. Starfleet won't confirm nor deny the existence of Section 31, etc, then he *advises Julian to accept being recruited*.

Seems to me Sisko, as a high ranking officer in a critical post, is perfectly well aware of Section 31 and may have even recommended Julian for recruitment.

I like how people talk about Gene Roddenberry's ideas for Trek like it's some kind of religion. You guys are almost better than TV.

The man was an absolute horndog and pulled some serious dickbag producer moves (Like writing lyrics to Alexander Courage's "Star Trek" theme music, just so he could cash another royalty check a month, for instance), but then, you end up reading a story about how he saved over 100 airline passengers who crash landed in the desert by taking command of the situation and leading them to safety, where they were able to contact someone to get them the heck out of there.

He was a man, taken for all and all, and we shall not look upon his like again, but people talk about him like he had some vast, sweeping idea for how things in the real world can be done. He didn't. The man just had a streak of inventiveness like no other, and it makes great storytelling.

Ideology is a subject that does not deal in stories; it deals in facts and possibilities in the real, bloody, muddy, shit-covered world. Don't compare Gene Roddenberry's science fiction to such a thing; that's apples and Gagh.

This episode has always rubbed me the wrong way.

We essentially watch Bashir get renditioned, beamed to Guantanamo Bay, and tortured until he admits he's a "terrorist". He's robbed of any legal protections, and is subjected to the whims of a black ops body who are acting on hunches, and without oversight. The suspension of habeus corpus is all done for the "greater good", the episode then says. After all, there are "bad people out there", and when "push comes to shove", sometimes you need to abduct guys from their homes in the middle of the night, waterboard them, and hook their nipples up to electrodes in some CIA black-site in Turkey.

Those who don't accept this logic, are then positioned to be "naive" or "idealistic" or "ignorant of how the world works".

Except a precise awareness of how the world works, and how extralegal American government "departments" were acting throughout the 1950s and 60s, is what inspired Roddenberry's Federation. The Federation was a critical response to this behavior - in Vietnam, in Korea, in the Philippines, in Latin America, in black communities etc - its not borne of an ignorance of it.

Assuming "Inquisition" is not all an elaborate plot to recruit Bashir, the episode thus puts forth a kind of false binary, of a type which Ds9 loves to trade in (and then pat itself on its back for "daring to tackle"). But IMO its far more edgier to do the complete opposite of everything this episode shows.

Imagine if the episode had opened with an official from the Federation Department of Counter-espionage visiting Bashir. He brings a lawyer with him, assigned to defend Bashir, who is being held and questioned because he is suspected of being a terrorist and enemy operative. Bashir, the lawyer and the counter-espionage guy then discuss this matter reasonably and rationally, and Bashir - being reasonable and rational - understands why he seems suspicious and why he should be arrested and questioned.

The debate then becomes: how long do you reasonably hold someone, and is it right to hold someone without proof? Your hypothetical episode can go either way, and still be "Roddenberrian". Either Bashir's lawyer argues that he can't be kept and questioned longer than a few days unless formal charges are made, or Bashir's lawyer explain to Bashir than the Federation has passed special executive laws which suspend habeus corpus in very very very special circumstances.

The task of the episode would then be to convince you, the audience, that an individual's rights can be suspended if very specific conditions are met. The audience will be forensically shown why Bashir seems guilty, why these conditions are met, but contrary to this episode, will never veer into Guantanamo Bay territory. Instead, the Federation, being "enlightened", bends over backwards to coddle and protect Bashir. The Federation is shown to be intimately aware that something fundamental - some fundamental right - is being breached, and so is extra careful of how it proceeds.

"Inquisition", however, argues that you can't do that. Sometimes, the episode argues, suspects must be kept in the dark and tortured to "reveal their true face". The task of the aforementioned hypothetical episode would be to show that there are ways other than, or better than, torture to reveal information.

My feeling is that a high-tech organization like the Federation would simply get Bashir to consent to some kind of lie-detector (and revoke his security clearances otherwise), or at the most extreme, maybe put the guy under 24 hour secret surveillance. Actually abducting the guy and torturing him seems far too primitive, especially since contemporary CIA studies already deem torture to be a waste of time.

In the episode's defense, perhaps Sloane's holo-program is deemed "humane" in the future. I can buy that (Bashir wasn't starved, he was just given a plate full of nutritious gagh!), but IMO it still reads too much like an extrapolation of stuff that goes on at real world black sites- Bashir is abducted, isolated, denied food, and yelled at until he begins to think he's the enemy. Its all done in a very sanitized and clean way, but the details are still resolutely old school.

@ TheRealTrent,

This may be one of those "whoosh" moments, because your argument seems to be based on this:

""Inquisition", however, argues that you can't do that. Sometimes, the episode argues, suspects must be kept in the dark and tortured to "reveal their true face"."

Whereas in fact the episode is roundly and clearly arguing that these tactics are wrong. The fact that Sloan argues they're right does not mean the episode is debating the merits of it. There are really no merits at all shown in the episode, whereas in every meaningful way Bashir is clearly shown to have been wronged, and Sisko agrees. So unless you can show me any sign of Sloan's POV being wha the writers actually believe, it seems like you're literally taking an episode denouncing these kinds of tactics being executed by people with a god complex, and trying to make it show that DS9 is offering reasons why someone's rights should be suspended. Well the answer is they shouldn't be, and the episode says as much.

As for your idea of having it be a cordial and open interview with a lawyer present, Bashir was never really being accused in any official capacity, so that's moot. Besides, the concept of the episode is to make *us* question whether Bashir might be a double-agent. Or at least, it wants us to entertain that Bashir might entertain it. Obviously this entire elevator pitch would have to be scrapped and replaced with a different story if there was no subterfuge. It's kind of like saying wouldn't In the Pale Moonlight have been better if Sisko had just sent a memo to Starfleet security and left the mission with them. It would kinda ruin the fun...

Peter said: "Whereas in fact the episode is roundly and clearly arguing that these tactics are wrong."

IMO it's not "roundly" and "clearly" arguing that these tactics are wrong. It's doing what DS9 often does: arguing that the Federation is "little better" than a contemporary superpower. Ira Behr has repeatedly said as much when discussing Section 31 (paradise, he believes, cannot exist without an obscene underside).

Sloane's final speech to Bashir is itself given equal weight to Bashir's counter, because the writers - and Behr in particular - honestly do believe Sloane is putting forth a decent argument; you must sometimes violate principles to uphold principles. Sisko, in other episodes, himself agrees with this.

DS9 likes to have things both ways. It will play lip-service to "bad stuff being bad", whilst simultaneously arguing that this stuff is nevertheless pragmatic, understandable or necessary for the greater good. It will give weight to both these premises, and act like no other options exist. DS9 is very insidious in the ways it shuts down "other options" and aggressively shunts you into accepting its Yins and Yangs.

So you'll have Section 31 inventing a genocide virus on one hand, and Bashir countering the virus on the other, with the show able to have its cake and eat it too (see Section 31 is bad, and should be opposed by our heroes, but isn't it ironic that its virus might have saved the Federation!?).

A better writer wouldn't humor the Sloane view at all. That's generic, Batman-level philosophizing. They'd skip all of that and start looking for other options.

Peter said: "As for your idea of having it be a cordial and open interview with a lawyer present, Bashir was never really being accused in any official capacity, so that's moot."

The point is, he should have. This entire issue can be handled entirely above board.

Peter said: "It's kind of like saying wouldn't In the Pale Moonlight have been better if Sisko had just sent a memo to Starfleet security and left the mission with them."

lol, I legitimately think 90 percent of DS9 should have been Sisko deferring every decision to Starfleet and actual experts.

Watch "What We Left Behind" for Ira Behr crying about what DS9 wasn't more popular. Prepare to see a LOT more of Behr than, say, the cast, including his big ass on the cover art.

Of course Roddenberry's Star Trek was idealistic, largely optimistic and almost certainly unrealistic.

It's world building and the reason fans complain isn't that they believe this world will occur, but they don't want the fictional world torn down. They don't want to see the Millennium Falcon or TARDIS show up in a Trek show. They don't want to see Trek turned into yet another human dystopia.

“ They don't want to see Trek turned into yet another human dystopia.”

They must be awfully disappointed these days.

Yeah I've not even bothered watching the new stuff because I'm aware of all that.

I am baffled why it's considered bold and new to turn Trek into "The Expanse With Phasers" or "Galactica With Pointy Ears".

Excellent episode: hugely enjoyable from start to finish.

The one nag I have is Bashir's holier-than-though tirade at the end. Dude, get real. It's a war. The other side is playing dirty. It's all well and good to insist on maintaining the high moral ground at all costs but we all know that's unrealistic. Somebody has to do the dirty work. If you don't want to be a part of it, k, but don't dump on those who do.

Their little scheme, to infiltrate section 31 and, presumably, "expose" it, doesn't sit well with me at all. As I said elsewhere: If you're about to have a boxing match and your opponent brings a chainsaw into the ring and starts going at you with it, you don't stand firm on obeying the Queensberry Rules like a fool; you get a chainsaw yourself... - a bigger one.

Sheesh.

Three to 3-1/2 stars.

There is one major flaw that bugs me in this episode, and that's in the logic behind Sloan's test for Julian.

Accusing Julian of being a brainwashed enemy spy makes no sense when that enemy is the Dominion. The Dominion has far better ways of infiltrating the Federation, that being THE CHANGELINGS. And they have already demonstrated that the Changelings prefer this tactic. Also, Sloan accuses Julian of being brainwashed during his time in the Dominion prison. During that time the wormhole wasn't mined yet, and the Prophets had not yet intervened, so it's not like most of the Changelings were stuck on the other side and needed an alternative. And lastly, THEY ALREADY HAD A CHANGELING POSING AS BASHIR AT THAT POINT. Why dedicate the time and resources to brainwashing a potentially less effective replacement for a spy you already have installed. If they were going to brainwash anyone, brainwash someone who was going somewhere that had not already been infiltrated.

I know this whole accusation was Sloan's way of testing Bashir, not a real accusation. But until Sloan's true intentions are revealed, the audience has to buy into the logic of the accusations (especially when they have Weyoun show up and try and convince Bashir that it's true). So if the logic doesn't make sense, the audience doesn't buy it and it makes the episode more confusing.

@ JonR,

I think your objections are overshadowed by the fact that Bashir is a regular cast member on a long-running TV show, one with a track record of never killing off main characters unless an actor quits. The probability that DS9 would do a BSG-type move of making Bashir a Cylon is zero, so Sloan's arguments are implausible right out of the gate before he even says a word about it. Beyond that point it's about hearing the story :)

I feel like Section 31 as a storytelling concept has been overused and hit diminishing returns hard since its introduction on DS9, to the point where if I am ever put in charge of running the Trek franchise, I would ban its use for a minimum of five years.

"Inquisition" introduced the concept of S31 with a very well-crafted plot and stunning twist. The dialog between Sloan and Bashir on the holodeck is absolutely beautiful, and the ethical questions inspire debate to this day. The writers were smart enough to balance things out very well between Sloan and Bashir, such that where you fall on the debate very much depends on your own personal POV and reasoned fans have room to disagree.

S7's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" brought back the ethical dilemma at full force and displayed S31 at their most devious and cunning, and also showcased how otherwise good men might be willing to work with people like Sloan under desperate circumstances. And it sparked a ton of great questions of its own, in addition to expanding on the ones raised in "Inquisition". In hindsight, this ep is where S31 as a concept peaked.

S7's "Extreme Measures" was a severe disappointment on many levels, but still superficially entertaining. The dialogue between Sloan and Bashir was still a highlight even if it wasn't as sophisticated as "Inquisition" and "Inter Arma". And at least the writers were giving it their best shot - I'm willing to cut them some slack, since the DS9 final chapter arc was the first time a story arc on that scale had been attempted in sci-fi up to that point. We take it for granted today, but it was a huge undertaking back then and there was bound to be at least one dud.

ENT's "Affliction"/"Divergence" two-parter brought back S31 as a mildly amusing bit of fan service. When their part in the plot was first revealed, it piqued my interest initially. Unfortunately, they ultimately got played for chumps by the Klingons, thereby deflating their currency somewhat, and their ultimate motivations really didn't make much sense when you think about it for a minute or two. The S31 agent from this two parter showed up once more in "Demons" because the plot needed a way to get info to the main characters fast, and that was pretty much it.

ST Into Darkness, which I consider to be one of the worst Trek movies ever made, basically sold them as just another cliched black ops division making weapons and stuff in secret. Yawn. There was barely the pretense of a philosophical debate beyond the completely superficial before the movie got on with its super-convoluted plot buried under enough fast-paced action to cover up the nonsensical plot holes and illogical character motivations.

And don't get me started on how Discovery used them. "wE dO wHaT wE dO sO yOu dO wHaT yOu dO". Barf.

Basically, every use of S31 after DS9 has been trying to re-capture the high of "Inquisition" and "Inter Arma", with limited success at best. At at some point, you have to admit to yourself that certain concepts have been overused/maxed out and put them out to pasture. Just ask the Terminator franchise about how that worked out.

Are all Section 31 agents so loose tongued about their own organization? Section 31's strength is supposed to be it's own deniability. The fact that even most high ranking Federation officers have never heard of what makes them powerful. But Sloan was very willing to spill the beans about Section 31, it's origin, it's purpose, etc, all in an attempt to recruit one guy who hadn't even shown interest at that point. As a result of telling Bashir, Sisko found out, his senior staff, and likely more. If this has been how Section 31 operated, they would not have stayed a secret so long. They would be just as well known as the Obsidian Order or the Tal Shiar.