SFDebris: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Deep Space Nine
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Captain Seafort
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SFDebris: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Post by Captain Seafort »

Blip

In which Chuck gives up trying to pronounce the title, and Bashir demonstrates an amusingly naive attitude towards politics, intelligence and alliances.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
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Re: SFDebris: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Post by Deepcrush »

Bashir, as Sloan pointed out so well and correctly, was an idealist. He wants everything to work right and be nice and everything to go by the rules. For a doctor, who lives only to save and protect life... its not really a shock.
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Re: SFDebris: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Post by Captain Seafort »

Deepcrush wrote:Bashir, as Sloan pointed out so well and correctly, was an idealist. He wants everything to work right and be nice and everything to go by the rules. For a doctor, who lives only to save and protect life... its not really a shock.
He's also a Starfleet officer, and really should have enough nouse to realise that niceness and rules rapidly go out the window when international relations are involved. He doesn't have to like it, and it's entirely understandable if he wants no involvement in it, but he should at least acknowledge that nasty shit happens. He was relatively accepting of the notion when it was Garak commenting on the "coincidence" of senior Romulans dying while he was gardening at the embassy, so it's somewhat naive of him to get out of his pram when it's coming from Sloan, especially after several years of war and a previous run-in with S-31.
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Re: SFDebris: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Post by Deepcrush »

I don't think its a matter that he "doesn't know that things will go wrong" because he's figured that out already in the show. The problem is that he hates that he can't do anything about it. Plus with Garak, there's some disbelief to be applied, a lot like the old jokes about me with my former work with the government. What I did or didn't do, what I can or can't do... its all up to people imagination. The issue for Bashir with Sloan is, he just can't ignore or play things off. Bashir isn't only connected to Sloan, but even though he doesn't want such he's very much a part of Sloan's operations. Just as Sisko raged when he found out that all along he was just a pawn for Garak, Bashir raged when he learned he was such for Sloan. The difference is that Sisko is a soldier at heart and accepts with that, he will have sins to take with him. Bashir, the supreme healer, the wannabe god like doctor, the man who lives only to save lives... just took part in putting someone who trusted him on her death bed. Because he got played, again a play back to Sisko-Eddington, a normal man with nothing but his own mortal whits. Sloan, like Eddington... battled the supposed superior minds of Sisko and Bashir and our heroes find out they aren't heroes afterall. Just men who were deceived into murder. There's no backing away for Bashir in this which is what burns him more then anything else. At the end of the episode we see in Bashir the sudden realization that maybe, just maybe, what Sloan has said and done has been right. Which leaves Bashir in another painful position, knowing that men like Sloan live, serve and die... because they believe in their hearts that men like Bashir need to be protected. Now Bashir has to live with the knowledge that not only are people dying that he knows of, or even had a part of, but there are people dying to protect him and he'll never even know them.

In the end, S31 is everything that Bashir hates and whats just as bad is he's learned that without them, everything Bashir loves would die.
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Re: SFDebris: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Post by Sonic Glitch »

I will say this for the review, it is one of the best exchanges between the other captains I've seen, particularly the Picard/Janeway interaction.
"All this has happened before --"
"But it doesn't have to happen again. Not if we make up our minds to change. Take a different path. Right here, right now."
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