I agree with you on pretty much all points. DS9 was a different view of starfleet life than TNG. They each have their strengths and each showed a different side of life on a starship/spacestation.
TNG as more hopeful and DS9 was grittier.
But the way the writers handled Section 31 was so dumb. Only made worse by how they’ve handled it since. The two things I hated most about DS9 was the prophets/pah wraiths/bajoran religious terorrists and section 31.
Take the dominion, the writers made some mistakes along the way. Just like the borg they overpowered the villain (camouflage and being able to transport thru shields should have made this war last 15 minutes, not to mention changelings takin down the federation from the inside but I digress) but if you ignore that, the rest of the dominion, vorta, white addiction was all a great development. They introduced a villain, realized they had something there and low key retconned it by rarely using the superpowers to avoid making the federation get conquered in a week. They made a nice pivot. Sure it doesn’t hold up to in universe logic but who cares, it made better storytelling.
But when it came to section 31 it was like they got all excited about going evil and decided to turn it up to 11. Except they had no plan and ended up making a mockery of starfleet. Like I said, sec 31 always seems to be equally omnipotent yet grossly incompetent at the same time. It was the worst of both worlds.
The idea that there was a breakaway rogue part of starfleet intelligence that splintered off and were basically extrmeists or terrorists was interesting premise. We’d seen similar ideas before where federation/starfleet elements went rogue. Even if they scrapped 31 and just went with a starfleet intelligence angle I’d be happy. We’d seen some good stuff done with starfleet intelligence before (four lights, Orion syndicate etc).
Instead we got an all knowing all powerful but evil section 31 who basically tore down everything they’d spent 40 years establishing about starfleet. And I’m hesitant to talk about how stupid 31 is within the context of the show as far as canon. I’m more looking at it from the lens of the writers wanted to do something, made some terrible missteps and then couldn’t fix it once it became part of canon. Instead of pivoting like they did with the dominion, they doubled down on it and it ended up ruining Star Trek.
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