Star Trek: Section 31

Section 31, when it was announced, showed so much promise.  In the recent era of Trek on TV, the character of Phillipa Georgiou, as portrayed by Michelle Yeoh, was one of the most intriguing and complex additions that Trek had seen since the Deep Space Nine era.  From an initial prime universe version who was imbued with Starfleet honor and values, we were then presented with a Mirror Universe variation who evolved into something that trod the fine line between potential threat to anti-hero, with a story arc over her three seasons on Discovery that finished with her sent back in time – an open door to allow further exploration of this fan favourite should an opportunity present itself.  Section 31, as pitched as a series, would have been an ideal way to allow the darker aspects of her, and of Starfleet’s secret black-ops faction, to be explored in a fresh manner.

Sadly, production on the planned series stagnated, with the events of the writers strikes adding additional delays, and rather than reassembling and picking the project up, instead the decision was made to repackage the event as a one-shot movie.  The end result is a 90 minute feature that feels underdeveloped, derivative, and in the end, quite pointless!

Starting with an exposition dump of information to bring viewers up to speed on what feels like scenes that would have been paced out over the initial opening episodes, the main plot kicks in which sees Georgiou teamed up with a bunch of random operatives to track down a macguffin weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.  However, the team suffers internal conflicts between each other, and suspicion that at least one of them is a traitor causes additional complications.  Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?  Well if you think this could very well be the plot of something such as Suicide Squad or Guardians of the Galaxy, you’d not be wrong.  The team are a mishmash of characters that, whilst having some unique characteristics physically that separate them (one is a microscopic alien who pilots an artificial body, one is a cybernetically enhanced warrior, etc), all seem to have the exact same personality trait – that of a snarky antagonist – and sadly it makes for a tiresome experience as the film tries desperately to get you to love their “witty” banter between each other.  In the middle of this Yeoh tries her hardest to make an impact, but is burdened with an underdeveloped script that far too swiftly moves her character through personality changes that would have made more sense over a running series.  Nobody is given time to grow, we are just expected to somehow care for them in the hope that we will then be shocked or surprised when they are either dispatched or revealed to be a traitor (look, I said it was like Suicide Squad).

Visually it does look good, especially the space set scenes, and there are a few decent action moments that impressed, but sadly this is all icing and no cake, with the whole affair feeling tired within the first 30 minutes, and leaving no impression by the end of the run-time.  I’d not even go so far to say that this felt like a pilot episode of a prospective show as it doesn’t feel like it has any reason to continue from this point (despite a final scene desperate attempt to suggest further adventures).

Such promise that has resulted in such a mess, and absolutely destroyed one of the most interesting characters modern Trek has ever given us, Section 31 is a low-point for the franchise, and failed to ignite any excitement in this die hard Trekkie.