"peaceful, enlightened, diplomatic explorers" is also hilarious when your talking about fucking Kirk of all people who through hands almost as much as he laid alien poontang.
that was more picard, he's called the college professor captain for a reason. fandoms tend to apply one character to everyone else.
other ships do things differently, that's why the jellico episode is so notorious. when was the last time anyone did battle drills on the enterprise?
Vulcan Logic is a religious cult that they all ascribe to in varying degrees.
this. the worst part any fucking glimpse on any trek wiki about vulcan lore would make that obvious, let alone watching fucking TOS. the reason vulcans turned to logic in the first place because they were basically going full krogan on each other. it's not a genetic trait (which also devalues the whole thing immensely since it was often the point that logic "clarity" takes effort and has it's issues with other races) but an effort from going full retard. vulcans are fully aware what they do, but they also fully believe it's a necessary choice, not something that "just happens".
Section 31 undermines Star Trek philosophy by basically saying that Kirk and Picard can only be a peaceful, enlightened, diplomatic explorers because there is a genocidal sociopath Sloan waiting in the wings if the going ever gets tough.
remember that's just what we see, just like characters fandoms like to have tunnel vision for certain "lore" aspects. for example from what we've seen 90% of all admirals are retards. how many episodes with competent admirals are there? obviously this doesn't make sense otherwise star fleet wouldn't work in the first place, but it's an easy villain if needed. doesn't make every admiral a villain tho.
as for section 31, a large part of glowie shit is human intelligence, like getting information you wouldn't get otherwise. just like captains there will be different people doing things differently.
another thing for example is the economics of politics. like you have an obviously corrupt dude somewhere, you could put him on trial since that's due process, but that still has a cost, be it in time or secondary effects etc. "removing" said dude with a quick, clean assassination, possibly make it look like an accident solves a lot of issues without that cost. back then one of the writers could've probably pulled off that dilemma, but we never got an episode like that from what I remember (been a while).
even when we assume humans are that much more enlightened in the future, there are still plenty of races that do and see things differently, because they're different cultures with different philosophies, and need to be countered. that's why when shit went down they sent someone like jellico to get it done, and not picard to talk about it.
