“Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by David Livingston
Season 7, Episode 16
Production episode 40510-565
Original air date: March 3, 1999
Stardate: unknown
Station log. Kira is running a meeting that includes Cretak, Worf, Odo, and O’Brien, discussing repair schedules and shore leave requirements and other such fun stuff, which includes a great deal of snarking back and forth between Worf and Cretak on the subject of their respective nations’ prosecution of the war and need for shore leave.
Cretak is off to a conference on Romulus, which Bashir is also attending. Garak and Bashir discuss the conference—Garak was less than impressed with Romulus when he was assigned there as an agent of the Obsidian Order—and then Bashir is awakened in the middle of the night by Sloan, who says that Section 31 has an assignment for him: to gather data about the Romulan leadership, to take the pulse of the Romulan government. Bashir doesn’t like the idea of working for 31, nor does he like the idea of spying on an ally. Sloan points out that they’re a temporary ally at best, and he’s just there to gather information. Sloan predicts that, when the war ends and the Dominion retreats to the Gamma Quadrant, the Federation and the Romulans will be the only significant powers left, as the Klingons will take a decade to recover from the war and the Cardassians will be an occupied nation.
Bashir still doesn’t want to take the assignment, as he doesn’t work for 31, but Sloan is very insistent. However, Sisko has consulted with Ross, and the investigation that was promised after “Inquisition” has never materialized—which means that either Starfleet Command doesn’t take 31 seriously or someone in Starfleet is protecting them. Sisko wants Bashir to go along with Sloan, pretend to work for him and give him at least some intelligence, while finding out more about 31.
Bashir, Ross, and Cretak are being transported on the Bellerophon, where they share a (newly legal, thanks to the alliance) Romulan Ale. Their conversation is interrupted by Sloan, who is posing as Wendell Greer, a cartographer. Using a map-maker’s interest in Bajor as an excuse to get Bashir alone, he has a brief conversation and sets a meeting for later.
Ross checks on “Greer,” and his cover is solid. Ross thinks they can limit his access on Romulus, but he tells Bashir that he’s worried about what his presence means for Bashir’s mission.
Later, Bashir and Sloan go over the personnel attending the conference, including Praetor Neral, who has been the head of the government for a year, and the chair of the Tal Shiar, Koval. Koval isn’t on the Continuing Committee, which is usually a given for the head of the Tal Shiar. There’s an opening on the committee, which Cretak is lobbying for—and so is Koval. Sloan reminds Bashir that Koval is against the Federation alliance—which may be why he’s been denied a seat on the committee—and if he gets the seat, the Federation will be in trouble. Sloan also believes that Vice Admiral Fujisaki, the deputy director of Starfleet Intelligence, was assassinated by Koval, but there’s no proof. In addition, 31 has heard that he might be ill with Tuvan’s Syndrome, but they can’t confirm it. Bashir, however, can.
At a reception on Romulus, Bashir is approached by Koval, who asks him about the blight from “The Quickening”—specifically how to introduce it to a population—and then buggers off. Cretak is impressed, as Koval rarely speaks to anyone, particularly someone from the Federation. Later, Koval has a front-row seat for Bashir’s lecture on the blight. After the lecture, Bashir reports that Koval is showing signs of being in the early stages of Tuvan’s Syndrome, which means he only has about 25 years left. Sloan then asks if there’s any way to accelerate the syndrome’s effects.
Bashir is appalled, and Ross expresses similar dismay when Bashir reports to him that Sloan is talking about assassinating the head of another nation’s intelligence network. Ross does admit, however, that he shares Sloan’s preference for Cretak on the committee rather than Koval, since the latter has always wanted to see the Romulans conquer the Federation. Ross can confine Sloan to quarters, but he also may have a confederate. Bashir is sure that Sloan does have a confederate, and that it may well be a Romulan. But Ross points out that they can’t tell the Romulans about 31, as describing a rogue Federation organization out to kill a high-ranking Romulan official will likely destroy the alliance. Ross orders Bashir to do nothing until he hears from the admiral.
The next day, Bashir overhears a Bellerophon officer saying that Ross collapsed at his desk with an aneurysm. With Ross out of action, Bashir goes to the only person he can actually trust: Cretak. He asks her to access Koval’s personal database to find who might be Sloan’s ally. In addition, Bashir sows some seeds of doubt with Sloan as to whether or not Koval has the syndrome, but Sloan’s response is to put a microadhesive on Bashir’s hands so that he’ll get a skin sample when next he shakes Koval’s hand. He can test it and then they’ll be sure.
Bashir meets with Koval and does shake his hand—and then Koval brings him to an interrogation room and places a probe on his head. Unfortunately for Koval, the probe doesn’t work on his super-duper enhanced brain. So he brings Bashir to a courtroom—where the committee, led by Neral, has put Cretak on trial for trying to access a Tal Shiar database. Bashir tells the truth: about Sloan, about 31, about the attempt on Koval’s life, about his trying to get Cretak to help.
Koval then brings in another witness: Sloan, who’s been very badly beat up. Koval reveals that Sloan is a regular old Starfleet Intelligence operative who was mentored by the late Fujisaki, and after his death, had a psychic break. He made up an organization called “Section 31” and concocted a scheme whereby he would get revenge for the imagined assassination of Fujisaki, using Bashir and Cretak as his patsies. His fatal mistake was to go on the mission himself, not realizing that the Tal Shiar knew who he was.
Cretak is found guilty of treason. Bashir is to be remanded back to the Bellerophon, while Sloan is to be held by the Tal Shiar for further questioning. Sloan, not liking that idea, tries to break free, forcing Koval to shoot him.
On the Bellerophon, Bashir goes to Ross—who seems to have made a complete recovery from his aneurysm—and asks where Sloan is. Ross insists that Sloan is dead, so Bashir asks again. With a sigh, Ross takes off his combadge, as he’s only willing to have this conversation completely off the record. Bashir also removes his combadge.
Ross asks how Bashir knew, and Bashir says the revenge-crazed Sloan that Koval described and whom he saw in the courtroom was not the man who recruited Bashir. Sloan is incapable of being that sloppy. Plus, the whole notion of an accomplice came from Ross, which is what got this whole mishegoss started, and Ross was the one who ordered the communications blackout, who told Bashir not to do anything without hearing from him, who told Bashir not to tell the Romulans about the attempt on Koval, and who had a damn convenient aneurysm.
Ross doesn’t know for sure where Sloan is, but he is probably still alive, since he was supposed to be beamed away at the split second before Koval fired on him. Koval has been a Starfleet Intelligence asset for about a year—Ross isn’t sure how long the chairman has been in 31’s pocket. Koval’s anti-Federation stance will make it more convincing when he pushes to keep the alliance intact, where Cretak would sell the Federation out in a heartbeat if she thought it would further Romulan interests. Ross isn’t happy about it, but he likes ordering people to their deaths even less. Bashir reminds Ross that he’s done so by trampling over the very ideals that those people are dying for.
After reminding Bashir that the conversation never happened, Ross puts his combadge back on and dismisses Bashir.
Back on DS9, Bashir is again awakened by Sloan interrupting his sleep to thank Bashir for being a good person. His decency made the mission workable—and it also reminds Sloan that he’s what the Federation needs, and who 31 needs to protect. Bashir is less than impressed.
The Sisko is of Bajor: Sisko is not happy that Starfleet Command has buried the investigation into 31. What’s hilarious is that he and Ross have both supposedly come to the conclusion that there’s someone in Starfleet covering for them, with Sisko not realizing that the someone is Ross. (Yes, Ross denies that he’s working for 31, but Bashir makes the same denials at the top of the episode, for all the good that does him. I can’t imagine that 31 gave Ross any more of a choice than they gave Bashir.) There will, sadly, be no consequences to this revelation, as Ross goes back to being Mr. Happy Friendly Admiral in the rest of the series.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira apparently holds weekly meetings that involve station business among the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan personnel on DS9.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf tartly points out to Cretak that Klingon ships need more repair because they fight more aggressively.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: When Odo suggests that Romulans and Klingons not have shore leave on the station at the same time, Cretak kindly says the Romulans will delay their leave because they’re professional soldiers and don’t need to get drunk at Quark’s.
Victory is life: Bashir is sent to the conference on Romulus because he’s the foremost expert on ketracel-white and Dominion biogenic weapons. Lucky him.
Keep your ears open: “Let’s make a deal, Doctor: I’ll spare you the ‘ends justify the means’ speech and you spare me the ‘we must do what’s right’ speech.”
Sloan cutting off the inevitable argument between him and Bashir (also one of my favorite lines in the history of Trek).
Welcome aboard: This episode has five returning characters, only three of whom are played by the same actor. Two of those are recurring regulars Andrew J. Robinson as Garak and Barry Jenner as Ross. The third is William Sadler, back after “Inquisition” as Sloan—he’ll return for a third and final time in “Extreme Measures.” The other two are Neral (last seen played by Norman Large in TNG’s “Unification” two-parter) and Cretak (last seen played by Megan Cole in “Images in the Sand” and “Shadows and Symbols”), but these two Romulans are played in this episode by, respectively, Hal Landon Jr. and Adrienne Barbeau.
In addition, John Fleck is back for his third DS9 role, and fourth Trek role out of an eventual six. He played another Romulan, Taibak, in TNG’s “The Mind’s Eye,” and played a Cardassian overseer in “The Homecoming” and the Karemma Ornithar in “The Search, Part I.” He’ll go on to appear on Voyager’s “Alice” as Abaddon, and have the recurring role of the Suliban named Silik on Enterprise.
Trivial matters: This episode was switched with “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” because Paramount wanted to air the other episode during February sweeps.
Section 31 is solidified as a recurring concern in this episode.
Neral is established as having ascended to the praetorship some time after “In the Pale Moonlight.” By the time of Star Trek Nemesis (which takes place four years after this episode), he will have been replaced by Hiren. Neral’s fall and Hiren’s rise is chronicled in the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz.
Koval appears in several works of tie-in fiction, in all of them as an important member of the Tal Shiar. There’s two Lost Era novels—your humble rewatcher’s The Art of the Impossible and Margaret Wander Bonanno’s Catalyst of Sorrows (which established a previous romantic relationship between Koval and Cretak)—as well as Andrew J. Robinson’s Garak novel A Stitch in Time, the Section 31 novel Rogue by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, the short stories “Blood Sacrifice” by Sherman & Shwartz in Tales of the Dominion War and “Suicide Note” by Geoff Trowbridge in The Sky’s the Limit, the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy by Sherman & Shwartz, and the Titan novel Taking Wing by Mangels & Martin, in which he is assassinated. Alternate timeline versions of Koval appear in Gene DeWeese’s Engines of Destiny and your humble rewatcher’s A Gutted World in Myriad Universes: Echoes and Refractions.
Ross’s connection to Section 31 will be seen again in the novels A Time to Heal by David Mack and your humble rewatcher’s Articles of the Federation.
Cretak refers to Sub-commander Velal at the end of the meeting in the teaser—the character will appear in “When It Rains…” and “The Dogs of War.”
The Bellerophon is an Intrepid-class ship, the same as Voyager, which enabled DS9 to use their sister show’s sets for the scenes on that ship, done when Voyager was using a different sound stage.
Romulan Ale was first seen—and established as being illegal—in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The poem that “never say die!” derives from is mentioned in passing by Sloan. The actual poem is “The Merchant of Venice: A Legend of Italy” by Thomas Ingoldsby (a pseudonym for Richard Barham).
Sloan makes a reference to the “Jack pack’s” insights into Damar in “Statistical Probabilities.” Bashir gives a lecture about the blight from “The Quickening.” Garak’s time as a “gardener” on Romulus was first mentioned in “Broken Link.”
The white dress uniforms that Starfleet personnel wear during the conference were first seen in Star Trek Insurrection, and are among the ugliest things ever put on a person in the history of Star Trek.
Walk with the Prophets: “So is that what we have become—a 24th-century Rome, driven by nothing other than the certainty that Caesar can do no wrong?” When I first watched this episode, I was thrilled by the scene in the courtroom where Koval outed Sloan as a fake. I was cheering—I just adored the notion that Section 31 was all a delusion of Sloan’s. Sure, it made Bashir look like a chump, but I was okay with that. They even set us up for it when Sisko gave his two options for why Starfleet had dropped the investigation—one possibility was that they didn’t take 31 seriously, and they wouldn’t if it was just one nutjob with access to a holodeck and a transporter.
So it was kind of disappointing for it to all have been part of Sloan’s elaborate plot to get an asset into a better position. It also made Koval a bit less of a nifty bad guy if his entire performance in front of the Continuing Committee was, in fact, only a performance.
Plus, honestly, there are few things in this world less interesting than the all-powerful bad guy. The laziest writing tool in the book is the unstoppable foe, in which the foe always manages to avoid detection, always manages to plan three steps ahead, always manages to do something impossible to get away in the end. In this episode alone, Sloan manages to sneak onto and off a military base in the middle of a war twice, get himself assigned to a sensitive mission, corrupt a Starfleet admiral, fake his own death, and get away from the most secure location in the Romulan Empire. We’re given no explanation for how Sloan does any of this—the death-faking is the only thing that even gets a token attempt, and it’s pretty much the same trick the mercenaries pulled in “Gambit, Part I”—we’re just supposed to believe that 31 has infinite resources, ones that they inexplicably don’t share with anyone else. (Having said that, the ruse helps keep 31’s secret via Keyser Soze’s dictum that the best trick the devil ever pulled was making the world believe he doesn’t exist.)
Barry Jenner’s excessively wooden performance as Ross doesn’t help matters. The confrontation with Bashir at the end required an actor with more nuance to his line deliveries than Jenner can truly manage.
However, up until the double fake, this is actually a very fun episode, full of some crackling dialogue. Every scene with William Sadler and Alexander Siddig sparkles, and this episode serves as a magnificent showcase for both of them. Coming up very close behind them are a superlative Adrienne Barbeau (who brings much more nuance to the role of Cretak than Megan Cole’s bland delivery could manage) and an oily John Fleck, who’s controlled delivery makes Koval a magnificent character.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido really enjoyed the crap out of writing Koval because John Fleck’s voice and affect are just magnificent.
I like Section 31, I mean, as a story device obviously, I wouldn’t buy and wear a S31 tee shirt or anything. So, I quite like this episode. Thanks again for all the insight into it.
Another way in which we are asked to suspend our disbelief about Sloan is his apparent ability to fool Tal Shiar mind probes. The interrogation clearly involves them, and Bashir is able to resist because of his enhancements, but somehow Sloan is also able to throw them off. That Section 31 training must be really, really good.
I did appreciate the reference to the “Merchant of Venice” poem, though, as a lot of viewers probably tend to associate “never say die” with the Goonies…
Oh, I agree, it was way cooler when you find out Section 31 is a faaaaaaaaaaaaake! Like, kind of a ballsy scheme, really – invent this unknown, untouchable organization that nobody can find evidence of becuase it ACTUALLY DOESN’T EXIST.
And I had the same thought about Sloan’s invincibility. I can enjoy plots with twists and turns, but this had a few too many.
Meredith: Sloan doesn’t necessarily have the ability to resist the mind-probe because the mind-probe in question was being wielded by Koval, who works for Sloan. In fact, we have no empirical proof that Koval ever even used the mind-probe on Sloan, since both he and Sloan were performing for the Continuing Committee’s benefit in any case.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So that very first picture looks like the Romulan is giving Bashir a massage.
@@.-@: You’re right, of course. My brain is just not suited to the twisty maze of passages that is a Section 31-Tal Shiar conspiracy. :)
And I’ll see your claim of “ugliest ever” on the white dress uniforms, and raise you what the men wore in “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”
This episode and the whole “Section 31 made an anti-Changeling bioweapon” subplot really did a lot to boost the Federation in my book, because there was finally a group in the Federation that was consistently competent and pragmatic in its problem solving. It was kind of like Guardians from Plato’s Republic, just without that “royal lie” thing, because you don’t need one in Star Trek, when the Federation is the only interstellar democracy of note and the galaxy is full of threats, ranging from the insignificant to the existential.
Then the novels turned them into a clone of Cerberus from Mass Effect, complete with the stupid superweapon backfiring stuff and Star Trek into Darkness ran with that. What a waste of potential.
I kinda like the dress uniforms. I’ve never gotten why Keith hates them so much.
Are we sure the Neral who appeared here is the same person as the one from “Unification?” The actor is 11 years older and looks decades older. Isn’t it possible that they’re brothers or cousins or something?
^ Yes, it’s the same person. First off, Occam’s Razor. Secondly, when asked why Norman Large wasn’t cast once again, Moore said they wanted to go in a different direction. If it was supposed to be a different person, he would’ve said it was a different person. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@9: Sure, but that’s out-of-universe evidence. In-universe, I don’t think it was ever explicitly said that this Neral had any connection to the events of “Unification.” After all, it’s not uncommon for members of the same family to go into politics — the Adamses, the Tafts, the Cuomos, the Bushes, the Clintons — so I don’t think it violates Occam’s Razor to postulate that they could be relatives. It’s the simplest explanation for how they could have the same name yet be so different in age.
Bashir says that he was a proconsul up until a year earlier, and Garak also made reference to Proconsul Neral in “In the Pale Moonlight,” who has the exact same name and implied prominence that the character in “Unification” had. The recasting is no more problematic and in need of explanation than there is to justify how Zefram Cochrane lost half a foot of height between 2063 and when he went missing, or why Saavik looked and acted totally different between The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I must admit I love the dress uniforms – the collars connected to the grey midpiece and the tapering white parts. They’ve always looked swish in that nautical way.
As for Neral being a different person, nice – it makes much more sense given there is nothing spoken connecting the two. It also makes sense that names could be repeated in culture too.
I must admit, I do quite like the white uniforms. I know it makes them look like waiters, but I still like them.
As for S31. Well, it is a good job JJ destroyed Romulus, because between this and Sisko from Pale Moonlight, they just started the next war. This time with Romulus. But then, is not that the same thing covert agencies always want. War without end, eternal emergencies to justify eternal special measures, and there is always some gullible sap that buys the pragmatism and ruthlessness line. Its the most realistic that Trek has ever been. Showing our eternal stupidity in accepting agencies like that. Accepting continual provocation of agression and calling it ensuring peace and security.
One thing I did quite like about this is that it shows, by implication, where Sisko’s rubber stamp from Starfleet admiralty came from for Pale Moonlight. It came from Ross. While he might have thought Ross was giving him the greenlight on his plan as the right and necessary thing, it turns out it was from someone in the pocket of the dirty tricks brigade. It fouls even further that most repellant plan. It removes even the barest shred of legitimacy from Sisko’s actions.
Krad, maybe you are right. I guess Neral looking older compares easily with Cretak in this episode. You could even say she has had some fine surgery in the months before, which is of course entirely possible given what we saw in Unification or in other episodes…so why not Neral?
The best/worst part of the white dress uniforms is that they remind me of the Love Boat/TNG parody on SNL when Patrick Stewart hosted back in (*looks* oh god) 1994. I hadn’t thought of that skit for years until I saw the picture above and had to go find it again. The costumes aren’t identical, but since the parody uniforms were first, that’s what I think of whenever I see the canon ones. Unfortunate timing, at least for me. :)
I also like the dress uniforms. Compared to the truly hideous dress uniforms from TNG, the white jacket ones are kind of snazzy. And not even vaguely close to being the ugliest things in a series where everyone off duty seems to insist on wearing horrendous silk “show off most of your chest” blouses. Not to mention Jean-Luc’s shorts in The Captain’s Holiday.
As for the episode, I remember liking it at the time. I liked the fact that they hadn’t weakened Section 31 in any way, because I firmly believe that a government as “benevolent” as the Federation would need an organisation like this in the background doing the dirty work that they can’t admit needs to be done.
As long as we’re ganging up on Keith, I like these dress uniforms too.
@11: It would be a little surprising though if the Procounsel Neral of Unification was able to hold on to power following the events of that episode. The movie Nemesis stated that Romulan governments fall fairly frequantly, so it’s doubtful the Romulans are willing to tolerate failure in their leaders, and Neral suffered a major (and very public) defeat in Unification what with his involvement in a scheme that resulted in nothing but the deaths of 2,000 Romulan soldiers. How likely is it that that Neral would be allowed to remain in power after such a huge failure? (You’ll notice we never see Sela again after Unification.)
bguy: You’re assuming that Neral ever let his involvement be known to anyone. He probably set up Sela as the fall guy to take all responsibility.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“Section 31” can get all those resources obviously because that’s just the name that the Federation uses for plausible deniability when the top echelons need to reach done to agents at Bashir’s level. Notice how we always see “evil admirals” and corrupt bureaucrats in a supposed utopia? It’s the same way how our own country (I’m speaking as an American) is founded on utopian principles when we’re all aware that the government is at best compromising our principles and at worst directly acting against us (look at reveals like the NSA leaks) – the Federation and Starfleet, existing amidst all these empires like the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians, and the Dominion, are the same way times ten. The line-level officer (and of course the local citizen) is inevitably a true-believer, but those who can do the dirty work rise to the top (hence why Janeway made Admiral and Picard didn’t) so that the illusion can be maintained. It’s the price of paradise. Remember, Section 31 refers to the part of a charter allowing for the Federation to do what claims it needs to do – if you consider what we face already with a Bill of Rights, consider what a government with the exact opposite sort of secret charter is actually like behind the facade…
Another pro vote for the Love Boat dress uniforms. They’re not great but not what I’d call “ugly” either. And in my opinion nowhere as hideous as the admiral uniforms from early TNG. Or the pajamas from TMP. Or the Soviet uniforms from STID. Oh yeah. “Warp speed, comrade.”
What we are all forgetting is Wesley Crusher’s “Acting Ensign” uniform with the triple coloured stripe. Truly the most hideous item of clothing on any television programme, ever.
@22
Sure, it’s the most hideous thing in the universe, but I don’t think it qualifies as a uniform but rather Wesley Crusher’s awful taste in civilian clothing. Though I guess it could’ve been his tribute to LeVar and Reading Rainbow.
I love the Garak/Bashir scene at the beginning for the dramatic irony. Bashir’s going on about how this could be a bright, new future between the Federation and the Romulans.
But he has no idea he’s sitting across from the man who assassinated a Romulan Senator to bring about this grand, new future. He also has no idea his commanding officer’s equally complicit in that crime.
Speaking of which…I’ve also been kinda surprised Bashir never put 2 and 2 together; he’s intelligent enough.
“…are among the ugliest things ever put on a person in the history of Star Trek.”
Especially when combined with that horrible bead… thing Patrick Stewart is made wear on his head in Insurrection.
Also – I really liked this episode for giving us a proper insight into Romulan politics for the first time in a loooong while, rather than the done-to-death stuff on Qo’nos.
Kind of why I was naively looking forward to ‘Nemesis’…
@22: Hey, I have the hoodie version of that, and I like it! :P
I enjoyed the twists and turns but it’s hard to believe the Tal Shair is really that incompetent. Their head is a foreign agent – again! They have not figured out the existence of Section 31 in several hundred years. It’s quite incredible.
I like this one overall, but I always cringe when Bashir says the episode title at the end. That moment is so contrived and makes him sound like such a pompous ass…
And the dress uniforms are nice. So there!
Does anyone wonder if Sloane or 31’s postwar calculations accounted for the possibility of a Reman insurrection as we got 4 years later?
tortillarat: Except Bashir doesn’t say the episode title at the end, Ross does. Bashir provides the translation.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
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@21 – with all the changes to the uniform, I can’t keep them straight. Was the early TNG Admiral uniform the dress and leggings combo?
@33: I think that’s the early dress uniform. The early TNG admiral uniform would seem to be this one. (All hail Memory Alpha!)
@34 That dress uniform… actually looks like a literal dress.
I just knew you were going to rip on the Insurrection dress uniforms. Personally, I feel they’re a bit awkward, but still miles better than that dreaded red surgical outfit.
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges. If there’s one thing I never forget about this episode it’s this damn title. Back in the 90’s, I used to keep track of episode titles as a hobby. When this was announced back in 1999, all I could think of was “What the hell is wrong with these writers? How do I memorize this? Are they so out of ideas that they need to borrow from Latin?”
Once I figured out what it meant, I was fine with it. I even quoted this phrase when the Guantanamo torture scandal broke out during the Bush administration. Seems fitting to assume the first thing that goes out the window during a war is common sense, or the right choice.
DS9 is often seen as the red-headed stepchild of Trek. However, no one can argue that Section 31 became a major source of original material, not only for the novels, but also for Trek canon. Manny Coto and Roberto Orci had no problem borrowing from S31 for their stories.
As for the episode, I definitely enjoyed it, even if I feel blatantly manipulated by it. I certainly enjoyed the new Cretak. I always adored William Sadler’s performance, as well.
I can see this Neral as being the same proconsul from Unification. I always felt the Romulan/Vulcan reunification could have been revisited (granted, there’s no way DS9 could have added an extra plot point by then). It only reminds me how they could have expanded on that particular thread when Berman developed Nemesis (and they could have even tried to get Nimoy to replay Spock).
Yeah, I was also expecting that to come back into play once the Romulans joined the War late in Season 6.
With everything else going on, it’s no surprise that the chance to further explore Romulan culture/politics wasn’t possible.
And as for the title, even SF Debris had trouble with this one during his review.
He finally just gave up and started calling it “Enter the Dragon” instead of “Inter Arma”.
@38: It’s actually not that hard to pronounce it, especially if you speak a similar language like Portuguese, the way I do.
The problem is in spelling it, letter-by-letter. Took me a while to memorize it. And it came right after Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang, which let me wonder even more whether they were running out of ideas.
@25: But the bead thing is a joke. It’s not supposed to look good. It’s supposed to be embarrassing for Picard.
See, the reason the title bugs me is that Cicero actually said “silent enim leges inter arma” which is far prettier Latin, stylistically speaking.
Being a Classics geek can really skew your view of the universe.
@19: Maybe, but Neral denying he was involved in the Vulcan operation might make him look even worse since it would effectively mean he had no control over the Romulan military. (Being unaware that your own miltary is invading a core world of a rival superpower does not exactly make you look like a strong, capable leader.)
@36: You’re not the first person I’ve seen refer to DS9 as a red-headed stepchild, but I cannot fathom why this is the case, because it’s also commonly cited as a favorite series. Yes, it was a very different take on Trek compared to the other four series, but it’s good. Why do people love to hate DS9, and hate to love it?
@43: Yes, DS9 is a favorite of those who watched it, but in its initial run, it was kind of the overlooked sibling, overshadowed by TNG and then by Voyager — both in public awareness/ratings and in Rick Berman’s priorities as executive producer. Which was actually to its benefit creatively, since Berman pretty much gave Ira Behr free rein. It’s easier to take risks when you’re overlooked.
So nobody’s calling it a bad show, just acknowledging that it didn’t get as much attention as the other shows.
@43: The red-headed stepchild was more of a common comment back when it first aired, especially because Voyager was gettng all of the attention back then, being the UPN’s flagship, while DS9 was still syndicated.
Time was kind to DS9’s reception, since a lot of the previous disdain turned into goodwill thanks to displaced fans who felt disenfranchised by a lack of Trek. This was true, especially after Enterprise was cancelled, and many realized they had overlooked DS9, giving it a second chance.
I see the same thing eventually happening to Enterprise as well, in a foreseeable future, if it isn’t happening already thanks to some of the backlash towards the last two films.
@34
Oh, there was more than one ugly admiral uniform in early TNG. This one comes to mind. Possibly either designed by Q or… Liberace.
@43/44: Oh! You’re both quite right, of course – I was placing the description into the context of current views of DS9, rather than contemporaneous opinions. Eduardo, I particularly like what you said about it being “rediscovered” after Enterprise went off the air – I would even count myself among those who rewatched DS9 on DVD between Enterprise‘s end in 2005, and 2009, when the new movie gave us some new material to gnash our teeth over.
And of course, for vitriol heaped upon DS9 as it aired, it didn’t get much better than Joe Stracynzki bitching up a storm on GEnie about his idea being stolen…I distinctly remember B5 fans being anti-DS9 at the time.
Two thumbs up for the dress uniforms. Mind you, Bashir has a good figure for white – a chubbier character might look more like a peeled potato.
@45: “I see the same thing eventually happening to Enterprise as well, in a foreseeable future, if it isn’t happening already thanks to some of the backlash towards the last two films.”
And a decade or so from now, the same thing will happen with the Abrams films, thanks in part to the backlash against the next new incarnation of Star Trek after them. This pattern has been repeating itself with every new iteration of the franchise for over 40 years now. The new stuff always gets the most hate, until it isn’t new anymore.
@49
Maybe but maybe not. Even with the passage of time, Insurrection and Nemesis are still lackluster movies, as is Final Frontier. If anything, I can see future audiences getting a good laugh from all the shaky cam and lens flares in Abrams’ cartoons. “What were they thinking back then?”
@50. I suspect it will come to be seen as indulgent as all the FX work in TMP (which I actually quite like as a sort of 70s mood piece). Great technical achievement, for the day, shame they forgot to put a decent story around all that FX.
@50: There are things to laugh at in every incarnation of Trek. When people come to accept them, it doesn’t mean the problems go away — it just means they learn to forgive the problems and appreciate the virtues.
@43: My impression is that even now, DS9 (along with Enterprise) is seen as an outsider by more casual Trek fans. Somehow it just never escaped the reputation of being less universally-appealing than TNG, or even TOS/Voyager.
To some extent I guess that could be true because of its less episodic, more serial story. If you watch a random episode from a random season of DS9, it’s more likely than TNG to make no sense to someone who hasn’t watched the previous episodes — especially if they’re a casual fan who can’t be bothered to keep track of any Trek cultures beyond human, Vulcan, Klingon, Borg. (“Cardassian WHAT now?!”)
All of this is sad, because DS9 is at least as good overall as TNG, and decidedly better than TOS or Voyager … :-( But that’s how I think the world still works, outside of the dedicated nerds who do things like visit Tor.com.
For some absolutely unscientific numbers, here’s a collection of IMDb ratings that finds the ranking as TNG, TOS, DS9, VOY, ENT. I’d much rather have viewership numbers from Netflix or DVD sales information, although that wouldn’t capture different types or levels of fan interest.
I think DS9’s aged the best of all the shows and plays better to a modern crowd because it was doing stuff that’s common now (arcs, character development, serialization), but which none of the other shows had really done up to that point (or arguably even since).
I’m surprised folks have found the reception for VGR to be better than DS9. Anecdotally, I’ve found that TOS and TNG are the most beloved, VGR is tripe, ENT is something-worse-than-tripe, and DS9 is forgotten. As a result, it is neither loved nor hated. But, maybe that’s just my circles (which skew more SW than ST).
@34 – thanks for the links. I find that admiral uniform to be a….bold decision.
@47: never really understood the whole DS9/Babylon 5 fan divide.
As a serious B5 fan, I still enjoyed DS9 and never really felt one show was ripping off the other. The similarities are all they are: similarities. Both shows take place on a space station. Like Sisko, Sheridan also lost his wife as backstory. And that’s about it in terms of similarities. The Shadow War was completely different from the Dominion War in every aspect.
I remember Robert Hewitt Wolfe also shot that ripoff theory down on Twitter in defense of Michael Piller’s integrity and willingness to create new stories. Did Straczynski make a fuss about his idea being stolen? Possibly, but that really wasn’t the case and he should have been assured he had a truly original idea which I personally felt was better executed than DS9 much of the time. Then again, B5’s creative consultant happened to be none other than Harlan Ellison, a writer whose behavior we all know too well.
The plot here always reminded me in many ways of John le Carre’s breakthrough novel “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,” with the obvious exception of returning to the status quo ante for the main characters. Anybody happen to have heard if that was an influence on the writing of this episode? Or does it just more generically draw on the common wheels-within-wheels plot devices in intelligence fiction that le Carre popularized?
S
@57: Oh goodness, yes. Straczynski would tell anyone who would listen that he’d pitched B5 to Paramount long before DS9 happened, and that they’d stolen his idea. He never blamed the showrunners, it was always the executives – here’s a GEnie post saying that very thing – but he certainly had no trouble telling everyone that DS9 was based on his B5 pitch. I may not remember the details of every post, but I remember clearly – from over 20 years ago – that he definitely made a fuss on the SFRT.
Related Tor.com post: Is this the smoking gun proving Deep Space Nine ripped off Babylon 5? (Do read the comments, too.)
@55: Enterprise embraced serialization in its final two seasons. The third season was one big story arc, and the fourth had a very innovative structure, consisting mostly of 3-part and 2-part arcs with only a few single episodes, with ongoing character threads evolving through the season.
@57: I agree. I always found the tension between B5 and DS9 fans to be sad, because both shows were celebrations of diversity and inclusion. B5 and Trek stood for the same values and had much the same vision of a better future; it’s just that Trek showed a humanity that had already achieved that future, while B5 showed one that was still going through the messy process of building it. They were on the same side in every way that mattered. And I, too, was a fan of them both (although I don’t think any of JMS’s attempts at B5 sequels worked that well).
@31
My mistake, though as you point out Bashir does give the translation. It’s still a painful moment to watch. That little speech is, in my opinion, the episode’s weakest point.
As for the series debate that’s popped up…well obviously DS9 is the best…and much better than B5. Doesn’t matter which came first or who supposedly stole from who; when it comes to the finished product Ds9 wins hands down. Except maybe for the hairstyles. B5 certainly nailed the bizarre alien hairstyle thing.
@52
When you find the virtues in Abrams’ movies, you let me know.
@62: The virtue in Abrams’ movies is that Kirk was using his tablet to zoom around the scene of the explosion, which shows the photo was a holographic recording being displayed as a two-dimensional image from any given angle. This explains why they can “magnify and enhance” parts of pictures on the different shows.
DS9 was the Star Trek series for people who didn’t think they liked Star Trek. I think certain themes and subjects had something to do with it as well. Who in the 1990’s wanted to watch shows that regularly featured terrorism, authoritarian governments, inter-galactic politics and aliens forced to learn to work together for the greater good?
I like the white dress uniforms. The formal white over black pop. I love the premise of Section 31, b/c the whole Gene Roddenberry idea of humanity’s “evolution” in 350 years to utopoia is absurd, bland and unrealistic. Humanity is about as greedy and cruel as we were in the 17th century, we just have a veneer of technology and “civility” over it. I’m optimistic but basic human nature isn’t going to change THAT drastically in another 350 years.
Ideals and principles are great things to have. But if your enemy doesn’t care a fig about principles and only about grounding you into the dust, some leeway has to be given. How much is the problem. But an organization like Section 31 (like the N.S.A., MI5, and God knows what else we don’t know about) is necessary so people can wax poetic on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Remembrance Sunday about our high-minded principles and love of freedom and honor, etc. It is a cold, cruel and unforgiving world we live on. I wish it were different, but the title of a horrid 1st season episode says it best: “If Wishes were Horses.”
@65: First off, there’s statistical evidence that humanity is getting less violent, more ethical, etc. over time, albeit slowly. The average person today is less likely to experience violence directly than at most times in the past. Things that used to be normal and accepted, like slavery and blood duels, have been outlawed and more or less eradicated. Groups that were once ostracized are increasingly accepted as equals. Progress is being made.
Second, I don’t accept the argument that dirty-tricks organizations like S31 are “necessary” for the greater good, because history shows that such tactics tend to do more harm than good. The CIA overthrew Mosaddeq in Iran and restored the Shah to power because they believed it was necessary to prevent the Soviets from getting a foothold in the region, but the extreme brutality and corruption of the America-backed Shah triggered a populist revolution that ended up with the Ayatollahs in power and anti-American radicalism dominating the new Iranian state. So an action intended to make America safer had the opposite effect. Then we backed Saddam Hussein’s regime against the common enemy of Iran, and that just made Saddam more emboldened and tyrannical, to everyone’s detriment. The CIA also promoted guerrillas in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, and one of them was Osama bin Laden. America has a habit of creating its own worst enemies — backing corrupt leaders or violent groups in the name of security, only to see them turn on us and become dangers to our security and everyone else’s. Doing bad things tends to provoke bad reactions and consequences, no matter how good the intentions may be.
And at least the CIA is an actual, lawful intelligence agency, answerable in principle to the people. Same with those other groups you cited. You’re making the common mistake of treating Section 31 as an intelligence agency. It isn’t. It’s an illegal cabal within Starfleet, a conspiracy of officers with their own private agenda. It’s answerable to no one, and so there’s no way to keep it in check. It’s an insult to agencies like the CIA and MI-5 to compare them to Section 31, because it’s equating them with criminals.
As a historian, I tip my hat to you, Christopher, for @66. Well said.
I would only suggest that slavery is far from eradicated worldwide, it merely takes different forms from what were are familiar with from antebellum America. Blood duels, however, are far less fashionable than they once were. :)
@67: You’re quite right — unfortunately, slavery is still a pervasive reality. But it is no longer legal in any country on Earth (I’m pretty sure), and that’s definite progress in a remarkably short time, on a historical scale.
Section 31 is (or at least at one time was) a legally sanctioned organization; its name comes from the original Starfleet charter, Article 14, Section 31, “which allows for extraordinary measures to be taken in times of extreme threat,” according to Memory Alpha. Based upon Section 31 having a cure for the Founders’ morphogenic virus and the Federation Council rejecting giving the cure to the Founders, I think that Section 31 reports directly to the commander of Starfleet and the Federation Council. It could be compared to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, with few agents, no real headquarters and virtual autonomy from the Israeli government. Section 31 isn’t a “rogue agency” but a semi-autonomous one (like the Obsidian Order or the Tal Shiar. And the fact that somewhere between 100,000-500,000 civilians died in the Iraq War according to the Iraq Body Count project, the tens of thousands killed so far by ISIL, the genocide in Darfur that has killed over 300,000 and displaced up to 3 million more according to the United Nations. Over 382,000 civilians were killed by homicide last year or an equivalent population to Cleveland being wiped off the map every year. Not to mention all the other conflicts around the world, before we even mention physical and sexual violence against individuals. We aren’t as violent as we were in medieval times but we are no where near the Eden-like paradise you seem to want to claim we are.
@69/SethC: I don’t agree that they’re “legally sanctioned.” I think they just twisted a vaguely worded clause as an excuse for their extralegal activities. I doubt the writers of the charter actually intended “extraordinary measures” to mean a secret conspiracy that exists for the express purpose of breaking the law. More likely it was intended to mean that lawfully elected or appointed authorities could act on the record to suspend normal rules for the duration of the emergency and with clear limitations on the suspension, and thus be answerable for the consequences of doing so. Nobody writing a law would say “Oh, and people who want to break the law with impunity can do that and not have to answer to anyone and be impossible to rein in or stop from doing whatever the hell they feel like, so long as they pretend it’s in response to an extreme threat.”
I’ll come in on Krad’s side about the uniforms. They look like waiter’s uniforms and they drew my attention instead of blending into the background. I enjoy looking at costumes but they shouldn’t take attention away from the story. I found myself staring at the uniform and not paying attention to the story.
I’ve been in a mood to re-watch Romulan-centric episodes of TNG and DS9 because of Picard.
So I just finished re-watching “Inter Arma” and I noticed there’s a nice, subtle bit of foreshadowing in Sloan’s first conversation with Bashir. Specifically, it’s his complete confidence that the UFP’s going to win the War and that the Dominion will be defeated.
On the first viewing, it just seems like he’s overconfident or is confident in the agency’s post-war projections. Alternately, one can see it as a quiet acknowledgment and confirmation that 31’s aware of the revelations of “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” (either from Odo’s reports or their own intel assets). So they know the Great Link’s dying and the Dominion’s going to be leaderless soon.
But after getting through the Final Chapter, you can also arguably be seen as a subtle hint 31 knows they’re going to win because they created the damm Virus in the first place and everything’s proceeding along their schedule.
Or at least that’s one way of interpreting it. I’m not sure it was intentional or not of RDM.
The dress uniforms look so much like the US Navy’s Dinner Dress White uniform:
https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/References/US-Navy-Uniforms/Uniform-Regulations/Chapter-3/Male-Officer/Dinner-Dress/Dinner-Dress-White-Jacket/
…that I have to think they’re based on it. In which case, I wouldn’t blame anyone at Star Trek for their perceived ugliness; they were perhaps just nodding to Starfleet’s ancient naval roots.
I personally like them. Did we ever see them again?
I so would have enjoyed if Section 31 had been nipped in the bud right here. Instead we get so much awfulness, and there’s more awfulness to come if it gets its own TV show. Oh well.
@73,
The Insurrection Dress Uniforms made one appearance after this: Riker and Troi’s wedding in Nemesis.
So far, no sign of them in Picard (and even if they do appear, with the passage of 20 years and the two uniform redesigns since then, it’ll almost certainly be a new variant).
I think the mistake Trek has made in the years since DS9 was misunderstanding why 31 worked. It worked because Bill Sadler is a good fucking actor. Not because the concept is any great shakes. Sadler is incredible in his DS9 appearances.
I think the mistake Trek has made in the years since DS9 was believing that 31 worked.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@77/krad: I believe the mistake DS9 made was believing that the idea of Section 31 would work.
Christopher: also that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I remember being impressed by this episode back when it was first shown, and even on a first rewatch some years ago. But for some reason, today I find Bashir’s attitude unbearably naive. Of course the Federation needs to spy on its allies. The allies are doing it to them, and they need to keep up. Information – as long as it’s reliable – is always useful. And Bashir asking Cretak to do some spying for him is exactly the same kind of manipulation that Ross and Sloan did to Bashir himself, yet he doesn’t seem to realize it. I don’t think she would have fallen for it, frankly. She would at least have had an employee do the actual searching.
My main problem with Deep Space Nine was always that, in trying to show that the Federation couldn’t be Roddenberry-esquely pure, it went too far the other way and spoiled the whole concept. I think this is why the original series and TNG were so beloved – they focused more on the positive, without going overboard to make the people seem like angels. DS9 ended up making most of its characters look like jerks or idiots. In trying to make the Trek universe more “realistic” they lost the inspirational value that made people first love it.
Harsh, I know. Also, I’m in the anti-white-uniforms group, I do think they make them look like waiters.
@80/The Queen – I think that there’s a very real difference between “spying on your ally” and “assassinating the head your ally’s main intelligence agency” or “toppling a member of their government to replace her with a puppet.” That said, I certainly agree that late-series Deep Space Nine went too hard into crapping on the utopia just for the sake of it (and the writers’ concept for an imaginary eighth season in What We Left Behind seems like it would have gone even harder into that).
Personally, I actually liked the white dress uniforms on their aesthetic merits, but I seem to recall reading in a contemporary issue of Star Trek: Communicator or the like that they only introduced them in Insurrection because they were afraid that general film-goers would make fun of the much more attractive frock-style dress uniforms, which makes me dislike them on principle.
@80/The Queen:
There’s no general objection to spying as such; all nations do it, and we’ve seen many stories in Trek about Starfleet Intelligence. The specific objection to Section 31 and its practices is that it goes beyond—well beyond—the bounds of the Federation’s values, in ways that should not be allowed or tolerated.