Review by C.J. Bunce
Of the fourteen Star Trek motion pictures, you’re probably going to find the new Paramount+ movie Section 31 the most unusual. Starring Academy Award-winning actor Michelle Yeoh back again as Emperor Philippa Georgiou, the Mirror Universe version of the Star Trek Discovery captain, the story leaves centuries of Federation travels into strange new worlds behind. Far in the future the Mirror Universe is a threat to Georgiou–and the rest of us in our universe–taking viewers back to revisit her own terrorizing past. If you’re tired of Star Trek doing the same thing all over again, or you don’t care about Easter eggs as the focus of Star Trek storytelling (outside the species of the key crew), this may be your Star Trek movie.
Section 31 is Star Trek as exclusively science fiction, without the fantasy elements peppered throughout the series–no Q, no Prophets. Georgiou is recruited (again, see Star Trek Discovery) by Section 31, the covert spy ops wing of the Federation that has survived into the distant post-Voyager future. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to leave her bar owner gig and help capture Dada Noe (Station Eleven’s Joe Pingue), a Deltan cyborg arms dealer who happens to be carrying the show’s MacGuffin.
Leading the spy team is Kick-Ass and Army of the Dead’s Omari Hardwick as Alok Sahar, a stuck-out-of-time Augment from the 20th century. Other members include Wayward Pines’ Kacey Rohl as Lt. Rachel Garrett, the Starfleet representative who happens to have the same name as the penultimate captain of the Enterprise-C, but viewers never learn if she’s a time traveler or descendant of the famous captain (the original character died in the Prime timeline). Then there’s Sven Ruygrok (One Piece) as Fuzz, a Fantastic Voyage-inspired being housed inside a robot that looks like a Vulcan, complete with angry Irish accent–Fuzz is a tad frenetic. Humberly González (Utopia Falls) is a Deltan called Melle, the most promising of the team. Sam Richardson is the dapper Quasi, a shapeshifter (see Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), and Robert Kozinsky (Warcraft) is the cyborg Zeph, a bulky, clunky character straight out of Mortal Kombat. Fuzz, Quasi, and Zeph are sometimes goofy and over-the-top, like live-action versions of characters lifted from the animated Star Trek: Prodigy. In a very weird choice, one of the few lead women characters is killed off almost immediately.
The movie is so visually modern (post-modern?)–very Tech Noir–that it doesn’t connect much with any of the classic Star Trek series. It’s so unlike anything related to the spy-fi Section 31 references of past Treks that it didn’t really need that hook. The framework is close to the first season of the Picard series, including the overly large ship sets and the attempt at a diverse alien team to solve the crisis of the hour. The best visual effects involve Fuzz’s alien pilot and his flight sequences. The space station housing Georgiou’s bar is also unlike anything we’ve seen in Star Trek. The musical score by Jeff Russo (Star Trek Discovery, Picard) is typical action movie fare–no catchy tune to take away this time out. But some of the costume designs by Gersha Phillips (Strange New Worlds) stand out.
Yeoh’s real-world martial arts talents in fight scenes are among the movie’s best features. But Georgiou is not the greatest of protagonists, repeatedly responding with laughter when her past is so devious and dark. She murders her innocent family. She jokes about her many genocides. Her past mirror’s Tula’s in Dune: Prophecy, only with Tula viewers could see the weight of Tula’s early bad deeds on her mental state well into her future. Georgiou’s wickedness borders on the stuff of the Wicked Witch of the West or melodrama. Villains as stars may need a “save the cat” moment, too. Yes, the fight sequences with Georgiou up against giant, more powerful male aliens only work because viewers know Yeoh could probably kick their asses in real life. But for this kind of evil character to work in this melodramatic way, the script needed to be much funnier. It’s hard to find someone so evil all that entertaining, especially when she is the (anti-)heroine and champion of the story.
Some scenes evoke good sci-fi imagery of the past. The cinematography looks and feels more Mortal Kombat, Fringe, and Halo with investigation sequences that have a Bones vibe. When you watch the movie see if you spot scenes from Star Trek 2009 and Tron: Legacy. The storyboarding for Section 31 must have matched many scenes from these movies (the desolate planet in the introduction and the planet-drill fight sequence in Star Trek 2009, and the bar and finale in Tron: Legacy–for starters). Also keep an eye out for the destructive MacGuffin, which rings of the destructive prop in Star Trek: Nemesis, and its purpose, which rings of the destructive prop of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But the Easter eggs stop there. Hey, no Klingons! And nobody is a brother, sister, or other relative or reboot of Spock! (If her voice doesn’t immediately come to mind in the introduction, watch for Yeoh’s Academy Award-winning co-star of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Jamie Lee Curtis, as the head of Section 31).
Although it begins confusing with graphics like a video game (clunky writing and digital displays not up to the high-tech look of Trek’s famous Okudagrams), and risks of looking like The Last Jedi or Tron: Legacy and its similar splashy barroom denizens, stick with it for 20 minutes–once the character introductions have passed and a mission is revealed, the story kicks into gear and ultimately it’s a fun romp. I did find I had favorite characters, including Fuzz’s pilot, the Deltan Melle (maybe it’s just the Deltan influence), and Starfleet Lt. Garrett.
But the biggest confusion of the movie is when it takes place. If you do follow Star Trek but don’t remember the tidbit that Georgiou isn’t still in the post-Star Trek Discovery future, you’ll watch the movie assuming it takes place after Discovery. If you don’t understand stardates (even most Star Trek fans don’t), you won’t understand when Curtis says in her introduction that Georgiou was brought back from 2257, and a time stamp states it’s year 1292.4, how that relates to anything with respect to the dozen series and 13 other movies. Nothing in the movie visually would hint at a time element. Guess what? Even though it looks like distant future Discovery, it takes place 40 years before the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But how could that be? Lt. Garrett actress is 33 years old. Tricia O’Neil was 42 when she played Garrett in TNG. So even the stardates don’t jibe. That’s 9 years different, give or take, not 40. A visual clue could have helped, like having Garrett wear something like an original series skant outfit, classic weapons, etc. Casual fans probably won’t go through that analysis, so this may just be fan nitpicking. But it’s not the viewer’s job to read all the advance marketing and figure this stuff out. The bottom line? When you’re playing with visual changes between projects and your franchise is complex, you probably need some clear introductory information, so the rest of the movie can be more show than tell.
Why are there two Deltans with nothing in common in the story? Who are we supposed to cheer for? Why was this a movie and not a series? Why no backstory for Rachel Garrett? Why not more visual or musical bifurcation between the Mirror Universe and Prime timeline, as was done so well in the Star Trek Enterprise series episodes? Clearly the movie was edited back from its original scope. It could have made a good spy-fi series. The story plays out like a good tie-in novel. Two hours just may not have been enough time to tell this story. It still lands somewhere better than Star Trek: Nemesis, maybe equal to Star Trek Into Darkness. That’s not bad for a direct-to-television movie.
Section 31 is now streaming on Paramount+.
