The Star Trek franchise goes beyond the final nadir with its latest offering. Here’s our Star Trek: Section 31 review.
Spoilers for Star Trek Discovery lie ahead.
Over many decades, the debate has raged: what is the worst Star Trek movie? The somnambulist pondering of The Motion Picture? The ego trip of The Final Frontier? The strained last gasp of Nemesis? Well, ask no longer. We have a clear cut answer and it isn’t even close.
For my money: Star Trek: Section-31 is the worst Star Trek movie ever made.
One caveat: it isn’t quite the same beast. Never designed for theatrical release, indeed initially conceived as a limited-run television series, Section-31 is the streaming equivalent of ‘straight to DVD’ fodder. Feature length but rooted in Star Trek’s modern TV aesthetic, this looks no better, visually, than the majority of episodes produced since the franchise was revived in 2017.
It is also true to say that Section-31 would not exist were it not for that initial revival, Star Trek: Discovery, principally given Michelle Yeoh ā before she became an Oscar winner in recent years ā helped launch that series. She was Phillipa Georgiou, a 90s-era-style captain immediately killed off to make way for Yeoh getting to play an evil Mirror Universe equivalent, basically a Space Hitler in a Space Nazi regime.
The whole scenario would probably have worked had Discovery stuck to its founding principles and not caved to both Yeoh’s star power and an inability to let go of the evil parallel universe concept (which to be fair Star Trek has been playing with for nearly 60 years). Georgiou therefore came back and ended up tethered specifically to another Star Trek concept in the titular Section-31, Discovery attempting to spin her out as a sassy anti-hero/semi-villain.
Discovery never successfully made this work, primarily because its writers had established Georgiou as a genuine tyrant responsible for millions of deaths, which no amount of spiky dialogue or Yeoh displaying her kung-fu skills could really shake off. You can’t rehabilitate Hitler. The glamour never worked for me. Yeoh was her best playing the original, ‘Prime’ Georgiou, and it remains a real missed opportunity that it ended so suddenly.
Especially after Yeoh’s Oscar moment for Everything Everywhere All At Once, Kurtzman realised Star Trek was onto a good thing, that Yeoh was above the calibre of actor the series could now recruit, and even though Discovery had essentially moved past her, she was worth trying to get her back to Trek. That Section-31 was clearly born out of this cynical motivation is apt given what we ended up with. It purely exists to keep Yeoh connected to the franchise.
Returning to the idea of Section-31 for a second, Discovery’s treatment of it has riled Star Trek purists for over half a decade now. Introduced initially in Deep Space Nine through a sole shadowy figure, the idea was that baked into the core Federation utopian charter existed a stopgap to prevent corruption of that progressive ideal; a secret organisation designed to compromise morality in a way Starfleet could never do for the greater good of protecting the Federationās utopian ideals.
In several DS9 episodes, this serves as a Star Trek mirror for 90s conspiracy theory and reflection of 20th century Cold War morality in the wake of that conflict, suggesting a paradoxical double standard at the centre of progressive American unipolar politics and culture.
After a brief flirtation with it in the JJ Abrams reboot films, the idea returned in Discovery in a far less intelligent fashion ā a rogue AI essentially, flanked by rather bland agents in black leather, with typically a universe-bothering master plan (which a lot of modern Star Trek seasons tediously have). Section-31 is reduced in that show from a moral concept into a devious spy organisation without any of the depth or nuance. Inevitably they try and recruit former Emperor Georgiou and finally, here we are. This movie.
The context is important because Section-31 doesnāt exist in a isolation. Itās a consequence of Star Trek’s increasing own moral vacuum as the franchise has steadily been placed in the hands of people who might well have grown up with it, but don’t seem to understand it.
Section-31 is the absolute ne plus ultra of modern Star Trek in terms of everything anathema to fans who grew up with it a generation ago; rampant profanity, no interest in exploration, a reliance on dull action set pieces and, most egregiously of all, characters who talk like they’re in 2025 rather than 2325.
Every single one of these is turbo charged in Section-31 to a degree that, right from the off, makes you feel a bit nauseous.
Georgiou is recast as ‘Madame du Franc’, who runs a seedy space casino (because of course she does) in the early 24th century, not that they really make it easy to place. As a Star Trek fan, I only know this because of the inclusion of Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), here a Lieutenant but one day Captain of the USS Enterprise who meets, as we will see in a memorable The Next Generation episode, an unusual fate. You need to have more than a passing knowledge of Star Trek lore to know the significance of her as the movie makes no suggestion of it. She could have been any character.
Ultimately, the Craig Sweeny script is structured as part heist film, part-Suicide Squad rip off, part-Guardians Of The Galaxy take off, with a soupçon of Mission: Impossible.
Section-31 send in a team to remove Georgiou and double as her, only to find she’s too formidable to outwit and she ends up helping them track a dangerous courier who has a weapon called the God’s End (or Godsend, in the only moment of the entire film that gave me any sense of enjoyment), which can… destroy planets like a virus or something. Honestly, these things are ten a penny in Star Trek now. They make them in the Unimaginative Writers Plotting Factory. They’re probably half price in Costco by now.
The God’s End has a link to Georgiou and her dark past, where after a Hunger Games-style election in her Terran Empire evil parallel universe, she defeated San (James Hiroyuki Liao), a young man she loved and who became her slave until he seemingly died, only he didn’t and is now back for dimension-spanning revenge. So far, so Fast & Furious yet for you? Good. Anyway, you can probably imagine where this goes. Attempted narrative hand wringing about whether Georgiou can atone or some cobblers (she can’t, she’s Space Hitler, just a reminder) dressed up just so we can have lots of hand to hand combat and dull special effects sequences. Which is what everyone involved is really interested in.
We haven’t even discussed the ‘team’, beyond Garrett, who are the most annoying ensemble you could probably imagine, all pooled from the Star Trek encyclopaedia.
We have Alok (Omari Hardwick), the dullest original survivor of the Eugenics Wars (see The Wrath Of Khan). We have Quasi (Sam Richardson), a Cameloid (see The Undiscovered Country). We have Melle (Humberly Gonzalez), a Deltan (see The Motion Picture). Rob Kazinsky as Zeph, some sort of mechanised British geeeeeza. And for some baffling reason, we have Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), a fast-talking Vulcan (sort of, not quite) who speaks with a “oh fiddle me dee!” Irish accent.
What about Yeoh? She’s what this is all about. She’s why we have a very famous cameo at the end. She’s why they threw all this money at this script.
There’s no interest in exploring Section-31 as a concept, they’re just a hook to hang on the worn old “loveable anti-hero team” trope on, and it barely gets a mention beyond that. They might as well have called this Star Trek: Georgiou. It is hard to get away from this being a vanity project for her. There’s even less character there now than there even was in Discovery.
A huge point of debate among Star Trek fandom has been language since 2017. When Discovery first arrived, there was a sense it would bridge old and new. Eschew too much ‘technobabble’ that some of the 90s series drowned in while not moving too far into modern speak. Star Trek was always a show that combined escapism with Hornblower-esque structure in how officers interacted. It was formal but lyrical and unique to Star Trek.
Modern series, attempting to find a youth market, have thrown all that out of the window. Characters swear regularly. They use 21st century aphorisms. They talk like people today. Section-31 is the apogee of that dumbed down trend. These people talk like they’re addressing TikTok first and foremost.
This might sound snobby but the truth is, Section-31 is everything Star Trek never was. Brash, ugly, snide, visually depressing and entirely focused on the kind of people traditionally the series would point out to be thieves or idiots. It perhaps is the Star Trek of America circa 2025 ā free of moral principle, shy of any kind of nuance, and one where we’re supposed to believe a fascist should be followed and accepted as the hero.
Did I mention the lead was Space Hitler? No matter how you slice any of this, that’s the core problem here. You wouldn’t make Suicide Squad with Darth Vader.
Section-31 is many things, most of them utterly inept and puerile, but it is not Star Trek. We can debate that, or call it gatekeeping until the cows come home, but search your heart of hearts, and you know it’s true. One hopes this franchise cannot sink any further from grace than this.
Star Trek: Section 31 is streaming now on Paramount+ if you really want to see it.
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