alt Hacker NewsStar Trek: Deep Space Nine introduced Section 31, an organisation which regularly acted in the way you describe the characters from 24. They operated outside official channels and used questionable methods to do whatever was necessary “for the good of the Federation”. The character of Odo criticised it well:
> Interesting, isn’t it? The Federation claims to abhor Section 31’s tactics, but when they need the dirty work done they look the other way. It’s a tidy little arrangement, wouldn’t you say?
Replies
zhivota • yesterday at 10:15 PM
Sounds a lot like Special Circumstances in The Culture books.
DS9 had an actual instance of torture too, but it was a hero being tortured by... half-hero, half anti-hero[0]? Not sure that one led anywhere, beyond being a very disturbing way to do character development.
Section 31 angle is tricky, because the writers unintentionally[1] made them literally save the entire alpha and beta quadrants, and possibly the entire galaxy, from slow-burn genocide. The Dominion was known to systematically subjugate and ultimately eradicate solid life, and other than the Federation Alliance bloc (that prevailed only because of Section 31's bioweapon short-circuiting the war[2]), the only power left in the known galaxy strong enough to resist the Dominion would be... the Borg Collective, which wasn't really that much better[3].
So, as much as I love DS9, I feel the show (and the larger franchise) has so much unintentional depth, that most obvious takes don't work with fans, because they don't survive scrutiny :).
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[0] - The simple tailor was anything but.
[1] - At least as far as I recall, Section 31 were written to be the rotten apples that got revealed and removed by the heroes, in a pretty straightforward way - but IMO, they failed at this, and instead created something more of Deus Ex Realpolitik.
[2] - And a little bit of actual fleet-eating Deus Ex Machina, on the account of having a demi-god in their midst.
[3] - And nobody in or out of universe really wants to talk about what happened to the latter, except the last season of PIC that tacitly acknowledged it in a "blink and you'll miss it" way.