[Nerdspresso] New Star Trek Flick Sets Phasers on Dumb

Star Trek: Section 31 is now out on Paramount+ and it’s supposed to satisfy our Trek jones in between the series finale of Discovery and the premiere of the third season of Strange New Worlds. Trust me, friends. You’ve got to be going through major nerd withdrawal to find this limp sci-fi actioner a worthy entry in the franchise.

This flick is the worst Trek since Kirk uttered “Why does God need a starship?” I love Star Trek, but I’m more dedicated to decent storytelling. Don’t just flash a Vulcan salute and think I’m gonna swoon. There are certain things that dedicated fans should expect from the Star Trek brand. Section 31 is severely lacking in all of them. It has some familiar aliens and a couple of recognizable characters, but overall it’s missing the nobility of this cherished franchise. I’m all for charting new territory, but at least know where you’re going. 

The vibe here is less Star Trek and more Mission Impossible meets The Guardians of the Galaxy. Everything reeks of imitation. It’s trying so hard to be edgy and cool, it comes off as sloppy and sophomoric. Remember when you were a kid and Grandma would fry up hamburger served on soggy Wonder Bread and say that it was just like McDonald’s? Consuming Section 31 feels exactly the same way. There’s the bitter taste of disappointment in every bite. 

A Trek movie about Section 31, Starfleet’s shadowy spy network operating on the fringes of the Federation, sounds like a riveting concept but they really botched the assignment. I’m not against a darker take on Starfleet’s heroes, but do it properly. Deep Space Nine had a fair share of sci fi espionage during the Dominion War storyline and it worked just fine. All this movie does is embarrass its esteemed star, Academy Award Winner Michelle Yeoh. 

From Hong Kong action flicks to James Bond movies to the surreal multiversal drama of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Yeoh‘s star has always shone brightly. Now like Michael Caine in Jaws: The Revenge or Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux, she is celebrating her Oscar victory by starring in a real turkey. Her wattage is significantly dimmed by Section 31. She is reprising her role of Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery, but it feels more like a contractual obligation than a performance.  

Yeoh played two versions of this character on Discovery. She was the commanding officer and mentor of that show’s hero and an evil doppelganger from the Mirror Universe (you guys remember that place from old school Star Trek, where everything was opposite?). Over the course of that series, the good Georgiou died and the bad one, who was actually the Emperor of the Terran Empire (that means she was super bad), assumed her identity. 

At the beginning of Section 31. Georgiou has left Starfleet and is now running a sketchy space station. She’s like Bogey in an interstellar version of Casablanca. Georgiou is approached by Section 31 agents to help them nab an arms dealer who is on board to sell a special doodad to the highest bidder. She agrees to join their squad and they secure the merch using some sci-fi gadgets that make no sense, but look really cool. 

Then a mysterious space ninja dude shows up and after a tussle that resembles that bit in the Dune movie where Chalamet and Brolin get all shimmery, he escapes with the swag. A merry chase ensues with Georgiou in hot pursuit because she realizes the pilfered treasure is a doomsday weapon she developed when she was Emperor of the Terran Empire. We get a lot of backstory about her rise to power throughout this movie. The plot is driven by Georgiou attempting to atone for the sins of her past. 

In the Mirror Universe, you become emperor by winning some kind of American Idol meets Hunger Games competition. That sounds like a smart way to pick a leader, right? You know, I’ll never understand politics. In a flashback, we learn that Georgiou won by forming an alliance with another combatant. She then subjugates and tortures this guy because she’s just that hardcore. But don’t worry, she feels really bad about it later. 

In between all the torture and domination, Emperor Georgiou and her toadie built that super weapon. She spends this movie trying to figure out how the device made it over from the Mirror Universe and then stopping the mysterious space ninja dude from using it. Georgiou is aided by the Section 31 agents that recruited her. None of these characters have any real personality, there’s just a collection of types from Star Trek lore. I guess this is how the filmmakers try to convince us that this tripe is really canon. 

The squad is a motley crew that includes a refugee from the Eugenics Wars (think Wrath of Khan), a chameloid (a shapeshifter seen in Star Trek VI), a Deltan (like the sexy bald chick from Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and a Starfleet officer based on a supporting character from a popular ST:TNG episode. There’s also a cyborg guy and an alien cribbed from the first Men in Black movie (not Trek, but still sci-fi so it counts). The character development is slight at best. Outside of Georgiou, everyone else is a talking prop. 

There are few surprises in Section 31 and even the big reveals are no big whoop. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi and screenwriter Craig Sweeny, both veterans of Discovery, wanted to deliver a badass Star Trek adventure, but they’ve given us a low grade sci-fi flick more akin to the recent Badlands movie. The story is sloppy, the costumes are clunky and there are video games with better computer effects than what you’re seeing here. 

The story doesn’t conclude as much as it just ends. Section 31 feels like a pilot for a unaired TV series because there’s a lot of set-up without a lot of payoff. Apparently Section 31 was supposed to be a new Trek show along the lines of the vastly superior Strange New Worlds. It got reworked in the wake of delays from both the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes. 

The filmmakers also realized that Yeoh’s schedule was also about to get much busier after winning the best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once. They just squished all their ideas for a series into a two hour block and hoped for the best. Yeoh deserved a better starring vehicle than this half-assed mishmash. And Trek fans most definitely deserved better. 

Instead of moving forward with a fourth big screen adventure for Kirk, Spock, and the gang, they unleash this horror on us? Paramount+ decides we can only have one more season of Lower Decks and no firm release date yet for Strange New Worlds, but we’ve got this crap clogging our feed? If you’re hungry for more Trek, please just dial up old episodes of the original series and shine on a little longer.

Watching Section 31 is like setting your phasers on dumb.

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