‘Star Trek: Section 31’ review: Not great Trek, but still fun sci-fi

Olatunde Osunsanmi’s Section 31 is a TV movie any sci-fi series would be lucky to have, but Star Trek has shown it can do better.

If you poll random Star Trek fans for their thoughts on the current state of the franchise, you’ll likely hear it’s either the best or the worst time to be a Trekkie. The franchise has been experiencing record output, releasing as many new Star Trek series in the last eight years as it did in the first 35. But the film franchise has all but fizzled out (the troubled development of Star Trek 4 has its own Wikipedia page) and a small but extremely vocal portion of the fanbase have criticized some of the series for not feeling like “real Trek.” For what it’s worth, this critic is old enough to remember when fans were complaining that Deep Space 9 and Voyager didn’t feel like “real Trek.” But it’s hard to ignore the extent to which Star Trek: Section 31, the franchise’s first new film in over a decade, feels distinctly alien from the rest of the Star Trek franchise.

Section 31 follows Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), a genocidal despot from an alternate universe who developed a conscience during the events of Star Trek: Discovery and now runs a space night club. A quick Mission: Impossible-style voiceover exposits all this backstory in the opening scene. And that vibe continues when Alok (Omari Hardwick) and his team (Kacey Rohl, Sven Ruygrok, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky, and Humberly González) appear. They’re from Section 31, the secretive and often overtly fascist black ops group that has been a recurring presence in Star Trek for twenty years. Georgiou susses out their identities immediately and agrees to assist them on a simple smash-and-grab mission. When things go awry, Georgiou partners with Section 31 to prevent the use of the universe-ending weapon she herself created.

Identity crises.

That Mission: Impossible reference is more than a casual nod. Parts of this feel torn directly from the 1966 television series and transposed into space. But whether you compare it to the original Enterprise crew (who debuted just days before Mission: Impossible did) or the 2017 series where Yeoh’s character first debuted, this doesn’t feel like Star Trek. Which raises the question of… how much does that matter? The film isn’t dreadful as a standalone work, though the film’s awkward development process has certainly left some scars. The cast has a fun chemistry and the screenplay understands how to milk drama from only a few locations. Plus, the sets and special effects are of a calibre plenty of other sci-fi shows would kill for.

But a television film is an undeniable step back for a franchise that has been doing theatrical blockbusters since 1979. And it really doesn’t feel like Star Trek, especially with its relatively dull and toothless approach to the moral questions posed by Georgiou’s past and Section 31’s existence. Most jarringly, parts of this don’t even feel like a movie. At 95 minutes, it’s the shortest Star Trek film and feels more like an extended television pilot than a feature…because that’s exactly what it was intended to be. Section 31 first entered development as a television series but COVID-19, the SAG/WGA strikes, and Yeoh’s busying post-Oscar schedule resulted it being sloppily reworked into a film. So even viewers who can separate this from Star Trek will have their enjoyment tampered by the film’s awkward reworking.

The bottom line.

Section 31 really does hold value, most noticeably in its cast. But that value will be largely lost on Star Trek fans, and Paramount will be hard-pressed to find fans of low-budget sci-fi who aren’t part of that alienated demographic. The ones that are out there will likely have a good time. Devotees of old television films should find a nostalgic element to enjoy. Everyone else should temper expectations accordingly.

Star Trek: Section 31 is available to stream now on Paramount+. Watch the trailer here.

---

Images courtesy of Paramount. Read more by Brogan Luke Bouwhuis here.