The key to the longevity of any movie/TV franchise is to find new stories to tell while still maintaining adherence to the core concepts that attracted its fan base to begin with. Over its six decades in existence, Star Trek has managed to succeed at that task more times than it has stumbled. But never has it so completely dropped off this highwire to land with a wet thud in the sawdust below than their latest offering, the TV movie Star Trek: Section 31.
Michelle Yeoh headlines this effort, reprising her Star Trek: Discovery role of Phillipa Georgiou, the exiled Empress of the Terran empire from the Mirror Universe. She now runs an intergalactic casino outside of the jurisdiction of the United Federation of Planets, allowing her to facilitate a great number of less than legal dealings. It is because of these connections that she is recruited by the Federation’s super secret black ops organization, Section 31, for help with a certain problem that they can’t take a stand against in a more public way. Against her better judgement, she soon finds herself as part of a rag tag team of miscreants and outlaws on the trail of a doomsday weapon that is in the wrong hands.
The premise of Section 31 is fairly firmly entrenched in Star Trek lore going all the way back to the original series’ second season episode that established the Mirror Universe. Some familiarity with Georgiou’s convoluted backstory is also required. So just by that rubric, the film is somewhat limited just for the fans. But that still doesn’t fix the issue of it straying a bit too far afield of the core concepts that earned the franchise its fans in the first place. The concept of the Federation in the Star Trek franchise is that it is somewhat of a utopian vision of the future, with the crews of the various starships we see being explorers and scientists first and foremost. The idea that they would need a super secret black ops organization feels like a betrayal of those principals. At the very least, if you are going to go ahead with this premise, perhaps exploring this moral dichotomy in some way would be in order. The filmmakers do not seem interested, though.
But even beyond that, the number of issues with Section 31 are indeed legion. It’s characters are broadly and blandly sketched, if they are bothered to be given any distinguishing characteristics at all. Many of the team assembled around Yeoh’s Georgiou character barely register on the screen. They have no presence and their dialogue that one assumes should be fun and quippy is nothing but leaden and dull. Not all of them live to see the final credits, and we feel nothing when those characters meet their ends. This is just the latest entry into the growing subgenre of science-fiction adventure films that throw together a motley assortment of characters to go on some sort of mission where they learn how to become a team. James Gunn set the template with his Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy and The Suicide Squad. Section 31 feels like a pale imitation of a shadow of those films.
I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky though. This project started life as an ongoing TV series proposal, and was initially developed as such before being downgraded to just a TV movie. As a TV movie, this is just a one-off, easily dismissable and soon to regulated to fandom’s dustbin next to The Star Wars Holiday Special. Sure, Section 31 could be viewed as something of a proof of concept pilot for a potential series, but as it stands, the concept is rotten.
