Well at least Odo walked away from this incident relatively unharmed. Its not as if he got infected with an engineered virus created by some secret Starfleet group or anything while he was on Earth.
The scene with the Changeling O'Brien stuck with me in the months and years after 9/11. When everyone was freaking out about terrorists, the Changelings words about there were only 4 of them on the entire planet and all they had to do is sit back and watch as humanity destroyed itself kept coming to mind, and kept me from giving into the same panic. It was a powerful moment.
Ronald D. Moore said that Benteen being captain of the Lakota was an in-joke made by Ira Steven Behr as there was a Frederick Benteen who was in command of a 7th Cavalry battalion under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer when Custer and his battalion of men were decimated by Lakota Sioux at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
“No one was hurt, well maybe hospitals but they would have to have backups” Good sir have you SEEN how federation tech works. Even TRIPLE backups automatically fail when the primaries go down.
@@mikegates8993 Five years after Picard Season 3: Some random Starfleet engineer: "I have a great idea... let's link all the computer systems on all of our starships. Think of the _efficiency!"_ Other random Starfleet engineer: "What if we also made the systems AI?" First random Starfleet engineer: "Damn, dude, that's briliant!"
The one issue that always bothered me with these 2 episodes was that it started with Changelings being on Earth (with the explosion) and literally none of that was resolved or has any consequences down the line. The changelings plot gets completely overlooked for the conspiracy plot and when its done everyone pats themselves on the back for a job well done with lip service being done to.. "we won't do it for them" and everyone just goes home. Maybe all the changelings just gave up and left I guess to be Klingons.
It's somewhat addressed by the O'Brien Changeling. He states that with only four Changelings on Earth, they've managed to sew chaos, implying it's more of a commando raid rather than an outright campaign of terror. Whether you see that as a satisfactory explanation is another matter!
It is there to underline that the changeling threat is real. Even though the episode isn't really about that. The underlying fears are real too. If Leyton did overthrow Jaresh-Inyo and proclaim himself President it is entirely possible the Federation Council, Supreme Court, and other state institutions would just go along with it. Along with many ordinary people. You can see how Papa Sisko went from being livid at merely being asked to provide a blood sample to touting the virtues of martial law. And all it took was a power outage!
Not to mention how he tries to get Sisko to back down by stressing the importance of the chain of command, when he is planning to overthrow the president who is the head of the chain of command.
Yeah, warhawk, ends-justify-the-means types love to emphasis loyalty when it concerns _them_ because it helps to facilitate what _they_ want to happen.
@@Avenger85438 Which hardly makes them unique. _Everybody_ emphasizes the arguments they believe will convince their audience, even when it's hypocritical.
At times it feels like we've forgotten that characters are meant to succeed in fight against their worst fears and impulses instead of giving in because producers think its "more real". One of the best thing about 90s t.v. is that it was able to address these topics while still mostly siding with optimism.
Ironically, I can see S31 opposing the coup. Their whole thing is "we do the nasty stuff to preserve the Federation." They're the bad guys, to be sure, but they're still weirdly patriotic, and would want to preserve democracy.
Think about something for a second: in this episode, the capital world of the entire Federation had a planet-wide(!) power outage. _Right now,_ with our much less advanced technology, it's rare enough to even have a _city_-wide power outage in any developed nation! But the UFP set up a planet-wide power grid with a single point of failure (Why? HOW?), and then were so lax in securing said point that maybe a dozen Not-A-Military _cadets_ broke in and disabled it. If the Federation weren't the protagonists of the entire IP, we'd be mocking them as inferior intellects to the freaking _Pakleds._ Tangentially, the underlying "Security vs Liberty" conflict of these two episodes was more or less what I was hoping for from _Captain America: Winter Soldier_ based on the trailers for that film. And while the movie we actually got was... fine... I guess... I still think it was a missed opportunity not just for the film, but also for the MCU as a whole.
No, they did that worldwide. There wasn't just one point of failure but several of course. And Starfleet has probably access to them all and thus were able to attack it. That's why it couldn't have be done by the Changelings.
@physeter_de595 First off, what are you basing that on? Because I don't recall anything in the show itself suggesting that Red Squad attacked targets "worldwide;" and the Federation has a positively Soviet fetish for building One Big (Whatever) and running everything centrally. But also, how many people do you think are part of Red Squad? Even if we ignore that a "squad" is typically under a dozen soldiers, because linguistic drift happens, the fact that they're described as an elite group among the cadets at Starfleet Academy signals that they can't be a _large_ group - that's not how "elites" work. And remember, this is not a highly experienced team of commandos, this is a gaggle of _literal trainees._ So next we have to consider the nature of the targets. The most favorable assumption for your argument is that critical nodes in Earth's power infrastructure - sufficient to throw the entire planet into darkness - are not only _unguarded_ but fully automated and thus _unmanned,_ thus allowing Red Squad to spread themselves as thinly as possible. But even assuming Red Squad can send one cadet to each site for their attack, and also assuming an unusually large membership in Red Squad, we still come to perhaps four (if not fewer!) critical points of failure per continent - much, _much,_ *MUCH* worse than the existing power grid as it stands right now! The UFP are an unholy fusion of the Borg and the Pakleds, just with better PR.
A changeling may be able to perfectly shapeshift into a new form easily, but I have to imagine the one pretending to be O'Brien had to put in a lot of effort to get that Irish accent down well enough to fool Sisko.
3:30 , this further strengthens my position that replicators aren't being used to feed the entire population of the federation. Its one thing to tap into the power already available on a starship to replicate 3 squares a day for a few hundred or few thousand people. Along with other suppli3s as needed. And when even a galaxy class has finite storage its probably preferable to burn a bit of extra power than try to store years worth of everything onboard. But on a planetary scale replicating billuons of meals a day along with whatever else is needed is just a vast misuse of resources. So in closing, i imagine earth and most other planets get their foods and goods using largely conventional methods, certainly refined through technology, but done via practical and efficient methods that dont require dotting the landscape woth what amount to thousands of warp cores to power their post scarcity wonderland.
Replicators as presented never made much sense. Transforming pure energy produced in a matter/antimatter reactor still requires mass... if you want to replicate a cheeseburger, half the mass of that burger must be matter and the other half antimatter, plus a bit for the loss that's always present. It would be much more efficient to replicate by breaking down substances at the molecular level and reconfiguring the result into beans or bacon or whatever. I could see huge vats of basic proteins and other glop that could be turned into food via something similar to the transporter. Much less energy intensive, especially since it takes a shitton of energy to make the antimatter in the first place. That crap just isn't lying around. A lot easier to change something from other matter than to create the matter from energy.
The thing is, planets don't lug around a power supply; they get lugged around _by_ their power supply. The sun offers absurdly more power than they seem to use even if their solar panels aren't any better than ours. That is, after all, where the energy in food comes from in the first place.
"Where's General Hague?" "General Hague... is doing _Deep Space Nine._ It seems he was double-booked by his agent and there was nothing to be done. So you have to do with me, sir." Possibly my favorite outtake of all time.
Interesting that you brought up Washington, DC as a comparison for why the Federation President wouldn't be dealing with a strictly Earth-centric emergency, when in the Constitution, Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over laws in DC, and the DC mayor and city council only exist at the permission of Congress - so in a way I wonder if something similar happened with Earth's government after the Federation formed, where control was slowly given away to the Federation President and Council as Earth found itself with far less problems that a full planetary government would be needed for (when most bureaucratic and logistical needs could be taken over by the Federation)
I loved this episode, but it always struck me as weird that Sisko didnt just walk down the hall and find an admiral. Like how many of them are there. Because every couple episodes we meet a new one. From tng thru ds9. Oh well be on all them starships that never seem to be in the sol system. You know, the place thats the central hq for starfleet. The place where strategic planning is carried out. The place where cadets are trained. The place where starships are built. And Layton, a rear admiral, is the highest ranking guy available.and besidrs Sisko n that female Lt. The only other personnel imvolved are a bunch of unsupervised teenagers.
@@Kameth true, but admirals actually work at the admiralty,not on space ships. An admiral on a lone star ship is the exception. An admiral at hq is the rule. Hence my point, that Sisko should have very easily been able to find a higher ranking admiral. Layton was NOT the highest ranking officer in starfleet, the very nature of his dutires assure this. Any hierarchical structure is literally designed so that its higher echelons, as much as its lower, do not have the authority to act with complete impunity. Tbh, tjis is just sloppy writing
Never understood why that changling approached Sisko in the 1st place. The Amrials actions was giving them what they wanted, right? Why tip off Sisko if you know he'll try to stop it? Hell, why not take that opportunity to kill Sisko, take his place, and push the civil war even harder?
Suspicions were so high that he risked being caught by Odo. Buuuut revealing himself to Sisko made sure Sisko went against Layton, so it was ultimately a mistake.
Well, if you ignore the meta explanation that the writers wanted to give exposition for the audience, it can be somewhat explained that the Changelings are very arrogant and just wanted to gloat.
@noblehelium3794 idk, man. I never got a gloating kind of vibe of them. They're arrogant, yes, but not to the point of hubris. Your point that it's a scene that the writers were using to highlight the point of "A power cannot be destroyed from without until it has been destroyed from within a d the road from freedom/liberty and a dictatorship is a slippery slope" is definitely correct but I'm just wondering if I was missing something and this wasn't a plot hole
Was there ever a scene in this 2 parter were it was revealed or implied that the Changelings revealed their suicide bomber on purpose to provoke the Ambrail into kicking off a civil war? Or was I the only one to think that made sense
If this episode were made today, they would have made Admiral Layton a member of Section 31. That they didn't shows just how good the writing team for DS9 was.
@@dupersuper1938the difference is that they made sure to keep Section 31 as an ambiguous shadow group that may or may not exist - and they aren't constantly involved in every shady action being conducted by Starfleet Command/Intelligence.
@@dupersuper1938 yes but it's left ambiguous whether or not the group is a huge, fully-functioning agency with their hands in everything, or if it's just Sloan and his agents. It's left up to the audience whether or not to take him at his word.
Just to point out a slight flaw in your timeline, the bombing of the world trade center was in 1993 and this episode aired in 1996. So what we have here is the 9/11 before 9/11 and a issue episode or whatever you call it that was looking at the almost exact same issue that happened prior to the issue that actually came to fruition.
I love the casting choice for Leyton. An actor recently known for starting a coup against the civilian government. But what's up with cloaked Dominion ships?
Although a much shorter timeframe, it would be interesting that hear your thoughts about this compared to the Babylon 5 episodes which covered martial law and civil war.
As much as I love DS9 this (1:32) never made any sense to me. It was possible red squad was in the middle of a mission. After the attack they were recalled and three hours later after they got the greenlight from the president they got deployed again.
This is my issue with people talking about a new American civil war. Political discourse is fairly stratified, but is it to the point where components of a national military will open fire on some kind of state military? I sincerely doubt it.
@@mikegates8993 But that was fought because some states wanted to leave the union and others insisted they couldn't. By which I mean that the conflict between those two levels of military was the entire crux of the conflict. It was also fought along a dividing line that had been deepening since the founding, and which no longer exists.
An action that seems inconceivable today can become frighteningly possible tomorrow. COVID is the obvious example. Before 2020, the idea of a lockdown seemed absurd until it wasn't.
Any new American civil war wouldn't likely look like the first. It would be more like the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, but magnified tenfold. Guerilla warfare, bombings, assassinations, sniping, and cutting off of vital services like food and electricity. Where does the military even shoot?
well, there were real Terrorist involved in the attack. allegedly. we found one of the terrorists passports, that exited the plane it was in, in the middle of an explosion and crash, without damage, flew down and landed on a building that would survive, and be found by a TLA agent later. though not in the destruction of Building 7. and there is some question about just what struct the pentagon. which brings up questions about the two planes that struck at the towers, and their subsequent attack. well, this episode isn't as bad an example of predictive programing, as the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, which aired 6 months before 9/11, and involved a government conspiracy to crash a remote controled airliner into the twin towers, had a terrorist group ready to take credit, all so that the Industrial Military Complex can make money, and so that desired policies could get passed. nope, nothing weird going on here.
The issue is that there was a wall between agencies that went through the Clinton White House that prevented intel from passing between agencies. So the agencies that were looking for a reason to go after Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists didn't get that info, and the Clinton White House ignored/downplayed Osama Bin Laden's threat/goals and DIDN'T kill him earlier, which likely would have derailed 9/11. So it's incompetence/corruption, because the Clintons had to hide their corruption that might show in foreign surveillance, at best.
@@jlev1028 look at evidence instead of bowing to accusations like "Truther". Did you know that the government poisoned alcohol and killed people during prohibition by poisoning alcohol to get people to stop drinking?
Well at least Odo walked away from this incident relatively unharmed. Its not as if he got infected with an engineered virus created by some secret Starfleet group or anything while he was on Earth.
Don't be absurd. Star Fleet would never condone an organisation such like that! It simply could not exist.
Changing AIDS?
@@mikavanpolen8418 Actually its in the charter, technically.
Picky, picky.
Womp Womp Wommmmp
Security is like a beast on a chain, and if you sacrifice freedom for security, you'll have neither.
This is an excellent two parter.
The scene with the Changeling O'Brien stuck with me in the months and years after 9/11. When everyone was freaking out about terrorists, the Changelings words about there were only 4 of them on the entire planet and all they had to do is sit back and watch as humanity destroyed itself kept coming to mind, and kept me from giving into the same panic. It was a powerful moment.
Ronald D. Moore said that Benteen being captain of the Lakota was an in-joke made by Ira Steven Behr as there was a Frederick Benteen who was in command of a 7th Cavalry battalion under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer when Custer and his battalion of men were decimated by Lakota Sioux at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Dr Bashir's glare is so goddamn funny
“No one was hurt, well maybe hospitals but they would have to have backups”
Good sir have you SEEN how federation tech works. Even TRIPLE backups automatically fail when the primaries go down.
That's just for unimportant systems like warp core ejectors.
All the power is diverted to the film cameras; it was off screen, so they should be fine.
6:42 Going off of Prodigy, Lower Decks, and Picard, they still desperately need that software security upgrade.
Never going to happen. The Federation likes to think diplomacy is their hat, but it's really terrible security.
@@mikegates8993 Five years after Picard Season 3:
Some random Starfleet engineer: "I have a great idea... let's link all the computer systems on all of our starships. Think of the _efficiency!"_
Other random Starfleet engineer: "What if we also made the systems AI?"
First random Starfleet engineer: "Damn, dude, that's briliant!"
The one issue that always bothered me with these 2 episodes was that it started with Changelings being on Earth (with the explosion) and literally none of that was resolved or has any consequences down the line. The changelings plot gets completely overlooked for the conspiracy plot and when its done everyone pats themselves on the back for a job well done with lip service being done to.. "we won't do it for them" and everyone just goes home. Maybe all the changelings just gave up and left I guess to be Klingons.
It's somewhat addressed by the O'Brien Changeling. He states that with only four Changelings on Earth, they've managed to sew chaos, implying it's more of a commando raid rather than an outright campaign of terror. Whether you see that as a satisfactory explanation is another matter!
It's not a question of solving it.
It's a question of is you'll let it control your life.
It is there to underline that the changeling threat is real. Even though the episode isn't really about that. The underlying fears are real too. If Leyton did overthrow Jaresh-Inyo and proclaim himself President it is entirely possible the Federation Council, Supreme Court, and other state institutions would just go along with it. Along with many ordinary people. You can see how Papa Sisko went from being livid at merely being asked to provide a blood sample to touting the virtues of martial law. And all it took was a power outage!
Quite a bit of hypocrisy when Layton criticizes Sisko for his lack of loyalty after he had Sisko framed and imprisoned.
Not to mention how he tries to get Sisko to back down by stressing the importance of the chain of command, when he is planning to overthrow the president who is the head of the chain of command.
Yeah, warhawk, ends-justify-the-means types love to emphasis loyalty when it concerns _them_ because it helps to facilitate what _they_ want to happen.
@@Avenger85438 Which hardly makes them unique. _Everybody_ emphasizes the arguments they believe will convince their audience, even when it's hypocritical.
Papa Sisko provided much need wisdom and heart for this weighty plot. My respect to the Actor (as it has been since I first saw these episodes)
Yeah, I love all the interactions with him a Sisko. Pure gold
DS9 had some darn good writing! :D
At times it feels like we've forgotten that characters are meant to succeed in fight against their worst fears and impulses instead of giving in because producers think its "more real".
One of the best thing about 90s t.v. is that it was able to address these topics while still mostly siding with optimism.
I hold to the theory that Section 31 discovered, or were recruited into, the conspiracy, and helped just enough to get Layton to hang himself.
Ironically, I can see S31 opposing the coup. Their whole thing is "we do the nasty stuff to preserve the Federation." They're the bad guys, to be sure, but they're still weirdly patriotic, and would want to preserve democracy.
Please no. Section 31 needs no more exposure.
Think about something for a second: in this episode, the capital world of the entire Federation had a planet-wide(!) power outage. _Right now,_ with our much less advanced technology, it's rare enough to even have a _city_-wide power outage in any developed nation! But the UFP set up a planet-wide power grid with a single point of failure (Why? HOW?), and then were so lax in securing said point that maybe a dozen Not-A-Military _cadets_ broke in and disabled it. If the Federation weren't the protagonists of the entire IP, we'd be mocking them as inferior intellects to the freaking _Pakleds._
Tangentially, the underlying "Security vs Liberty" conflict of these two episodes was more or less what I was hoping for from _Captain America: Winter Soldier_ based on the trailers for that film. And while the movie we actually got was... fine... I guess... I still think it was a missed opportunity not just for the film, but also for the MCU as a whole.
No, they did that worldwide. There wasn't just one point of failure but several of course. And Starfleet has probably access to them all and thus were able to attack it. That's why it couldn't have be done by the Changelings.
@physeter_de595 First off, what are you basing that on? Because I don't recall anything in the show itself suggesting that Red Squad attacked targets "worldwide;" and the Federation has a positively Soviet fetish for building One Big (Whatever) and running everything centrally.
But also, how many people do you think are part of Red Squad? Even if we ignore that a "squad" is typically under a dozen soldiers, because linguistic drift happens, the fact that they're described as an elite group among the cadets at Starfleet Academy signals that they can't be a _large_ group - that's not how "elites" work. And remember, this is not a highly experienced team of commandos, this is a gaggle of _literal trainees._
So next we have to consider the nature of the targets. The most favorable assumption for your argument is that critical nodes in Earth's power infrastructure - sufficient to throw the entire planet into darkness - are not only _unguarded_ but fully automated and thus _unmanned,_ thus allowing Red Squad to spread themselves as thinly as possible. But even assuming Red Squad can send one cadet to each site for their attack, and also assuming an unusually large membership in Red Squad, we still come to perhaps four (if not fewer!) critical points of failure per continent - much, _much,_ *MUCH* worse than the existing power grid as it stands right now!
The UFP are an unholy fusion of the Borg and the Pakleds, just with better PR.
A changeling may be able to perfectly shapeshift into a new form easily, but I have to imagine the one pretending to be O'Brien had to put in a lot of effort to get that Irish accent down well enough to fool Sisko.
3:30 , this further strengthens my position that replicators aren't being used to feed the entire population of the federation. Its one thing to tap into the power already available on a starship to replicate 3 squares a day for a few hundred or few thousand people. Along with other suppli3s as needed. And when even a galaxy class has finite storage its probably preferable to burn a bit of extra power than try to store years worth of everything onboard.
But on a planetary scale replicating billuons of meals a day along with whatever else is needed is just a vast misuse of resources.
So in closing, i imagine earth and most other planets get their foods and goods using largely conventional methods, certainly refined through technology, but done via practical and efficient methods that dont require dotting the landscape woth what amount to thousands of warp cores to power their post scarcity wonderland.
Replicators as presented never made much sense. Transforming pure energy produced in a matter/antimatter reactor still requires mass... if you want to replicate a cheeseburger, half the mass of that burger must be matter and the other half antimatter, plus a bit for the loss that's always present. It would be much more efficient to replicate by breaking down substances at the molecular level and reconfiguring the result into beans or bacon or whatever.
I could see huge vats of basic proteins and other glop that could be turned into food via something similar to the transporter. Much less energy intensive, especially since it takes a shitton of energy to make the antimatter in the first place. That crap just isn't lying around. A lot easier to change something from other matter than to create the matter from energy.
Picard acted like his brother was a luddite outlier for not having one, and Keiko could barely believe that O'Brien's mom handled real meat...
The thing is, planets don't lug around a power supply; they get lugged around _by_ their power supply. The sun offers absurdly more power than they seem to use even if their solar panels aren't any better than ours. That is, after all, where the energy in food comes from in the first place.
When the Sisko is barring down on you like he was with that cadet, you better pray he's feeling merciful.
The aliens are due on Maple Street.
Robert Foxworth was unavailable to reprise his role on Babylon 5 due to guest starring in this two parter.
He had to oppose Totalitarianism because he needed to make his own! 😆
And had to be reported by Jack from MacGyver
"Where's General Hague?"
"General Hague... is doing _Deep Space Nine._ It seems he was double-booked by his agent and there was nothing to be done. So you have to do with me, sir."
Possibly my favorite outtake of all time.
@@evenmoor Cpt. Sheridan: That’s fine Jack. Did you by chance bring MacGyver with you?
@@keiththompson9435 "No, but I am being chased by Seven of Nine and Janeway. Will they do?"
Interesting that you brought up Washington, DC as a comparison for why the Federation President wouldn't be dealing with a strictly Earth-centric emergency, when in the Constitution, Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over laws in DC, and the DC mayor and city council only exist at the permission of Congress - so in a way I wonder if something similar happened with Earth's government after the Federation formed, where control was slowly given away to the Federation President and Council as Earth found itself with far less problems that a full planetary government would be needed for (when most bureaucratic and logistical needs could be taken over by the Federation)
I loved this episode, but it always struck me as weird that Sisko didnt just walk down the hall and find an admiral. Like how many of them are there. Because every couple episodes we meet a new one. From tng thru ds9. Oh well be on all them starships that never seem to be in the sol system. You know, the place thats the central hq for starfleet. The place where strategic planning is carried out. The place where cadets are trained. The place where starships are built. And Layton, a rear admiral, is the highest ranking guy available.and besidrs Sisko n that female Lt. The only other personnel imvolved are a bunch of unsupervised teenagers.
Most Starfleet admirals we have seen were crazy, I dread to think how bad the admirals were that found themselves grounded.
@@Kameth true, but admirals actually work at the admiralty,not on space ships. An admiral on a lone star ship is the exception. An admiral at hq is the rule. Hence my point, that Sisko should have very easily been able to find a higher ranking admiral. Layton was NOT the highest ranking officer in starfleet, the very nature of his dutires assure this. Any hierarchical structure is literally designed so that its higher echelons, as much as its lower, do not have the authority to act with complete impunity. Tbh, tjis is just sloppy writing
Never understood why that changling approached Sisko in the 1st place. The Amrials actions was giving them what they wanted, right? Why tip off Sisko if you know he'll try to stop it? Hell, why not take that opportunity to kill Sisko, take his place, and push the civil war even harder?
Suspicions were so high that he risked being caught by Odo. Buuuut revealing himself to Sisko made sure Sisko went against Layton, so it was ultimately a mistake.
Well, if you ignore the meta explanation that the writers wanted to give exposition for the audience, it can be somewhat explained that the Changelings are very arrogant and just wanted to gloat.
@noblehelium3794 idk, man. I never got a gloating kind of vibe of them. They're arrogant, yes, but not to the point of hubris. Your point that it's a scene that the writers were using to highlight the point of "A power cannot be destroyed from without until it has been destroyed from within a d the road from freedom/liberty and a dictatorship is a slippery slope" is definitely correct but I'm just wondering if I was missing something and this wasn't a plot hole
Was there ever a scene in this 2 parter were it was revealed or implied that the Changelings revealed their suicide bomber on purpose to provoke the Ambrail into kicking off a civil war? Or was I the only one to think that made sense
(8:34-8:42) Which episode did that happen?
If this episode were made today, they would have made Admiral Layton a member of Section 31.
That they didn't shows just how good the writing team for DS9 was.
Though that was the writing team that gave us Section 31 in the first place...
@@dupersuper1938the difference is that they made sure to keep Section 31 as an ambiguous shadow group that may or may not exist - and they aren't constantly involved in every shady action being conducted by Starfleet Command/Intelligence.
@@CaptainJZH They made them shadowy, but they clearly existed.
@@dupersuper1938 yes but it's left ambiguous whether or not the group is a huge, fully-functioning agency with their hands in everything, or if it's just Sloan and his agents. It's left up to the audience whether or not to take him at his word.
Just to point out a slight flaw in your timeline, the bombing of the world trade center was in 1993 and this episode aired in 1996. So what we have here is the 9/11 before 9/11 and a issue episode or whatever you call it that was looking at the almost exact same issue that happened prior to the issue that actually came to fruition.
I love the casting choice for Leyton. An actor recently known for starting a coup against the civilian government.
But what's up with cloaked Dominion ships?
Edit never mind on 2
Although a much shorter timeframe, it would be interesting that hear your thoughts about this compared to the Babylon 5 episodes which covered martial law and civil war.
As much as I love DS9 this (1:32) never made any sense to me. It was possible red squad was in the middle of a mission. After the attack they were recalled and three hours later after they got the greenlight from the president they got deployed again.
It's still so suspicious that it had to be investigated.
This is my issue with people talking about a new American civil war. Political discourse is fairly stratified, but is it to the point where components of a national military will open fire on some kind of state military? I sincerely doubt it.
I would argue you could've said the same about the original civil war, and yet it still happened.
@@mikegates8993 But that was fought because some states wanted to leave the union and others insisted they couldn't. By which I mean that the conflict between those two levels of military was the entire crux of the conflict.
It was also fought along a dividing line that had been deepening since the founding, and which no longer exists.
An action that seems inconceivable today can become frighteningly possible tomorrow. COVID is the obvious example. Before 2020, the idea of a lockdown seemed absurd until it wasn't.
Any new American civil war wouldn't likely look like the first. It would be more like the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, but magnified tenfold. Guerilla warfare, bombings, assassinations, sniping, and cutting off of vital services like food and electricity. Where does the military even shoot?
"I was just obeying orders."
well, there were real Terrorist involved in the attack. allegedly. we found one of the terrorists passports, that exited the plane it was in, in the middle of an explosion and crash, without damage, flew down and landed on a building that would survive, and be found by a TLA agent later. though not in the destruction of Building 7. and there is some question about just what struct the pentagon. which brings up questions about the two planes that struck at the towers, and their subsequent attack.
well, this episode isn't as bad an example of predictive programing, as the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, which aired 6 months before 9/11, and involved a government conspiracy to crash a remote controled airliner into the twin towers, had a terrorist group ready to take credit, all so that the Industrial Military Complex can make money, and so that desired policies could get passed.
nope, nothing weird going on here.
The issue is that there was a wall between agencies that went through the Clinton White House that prevented intel from passing between agencies.
So the agencies that were looking for a reason to go after Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists didn't get that info, and the Clinton White House ignored/downplayed Osama Bin Laden's threat/goals and DIDN'T kill him earlier, which likely would have derailed 9/11.
So it's incompetence/corruption, because the Clintons had to hide their corruption that might show in foreign surveillance, at best.
Don't bring Truther nonsense here.
@@jlev1028 look at evidence instead of bowing to accusations like "Truther".
Did you know that the government poisoned alcohol and killed people during prohibition by poisoning alcohol to get people to stop drinking?