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Michelle Yeoh Star Trek Section 31 on Paramount+

Star Trek: Section 31 Should Probably Be Sectioned Off [Review]

The Star Fleet insignia, that little delta-shaped thing so prevalent in every interation of the franchise since its creation, is nowhere to be found in Star Trek: Section 31. After the opening franchise logo that every entry in the franchise has started with since Paramount+ launched their fleet of shows, that icon of the series is completely devoid from the show. This may be the most perfect metaphor for how incredibly un-Star Trek this film is, a concept that maybe could work if it also wasn’t terrible.

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It is clear that the creators of Section 31, which was originally slated to be a TV show before being converted into this extended pilot movie, started off with the driving question that no one was asking: How do we make Guardians of the Galaxy or Suicide Squad but in Star Trek? Their answer was to take the stranded Terran Empire Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) — who we last saw in Star Trek: Discovery joining up with Star Fleet’s covert-ops program Section 31 — and plop her into a ragtag team of misfits tasked with doing the dirty work that Star Fleet can’t.

That team consists of Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick), a survivor of the Eugenics Wars; Quasi (Sam Richardson), a shapeshifting alien; Zeph (Robert Kazinsky), a human with an exoskeleton; Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), a microscopic alien piloting a Vulcan robot; and Rachel Garett (Kacey Rohl), the Star Fleet officer tasked with overseeing this team of criminals and outlaws as they head out to track down the biggest McGuffin Star Trek has ever had… and that’s saying a lot.

In fairness, the idea of a storyline taking place outside the boundaries of Star Fleet’s clear-cut lines and rules is an incredibly interesting one and Yeoh’s Emperor Georgiou, a refuge from the franchise’s Mirror Universe, is an immensely intriguing character within that concept. The problem is that Section 31 isn’t at all interested in unpacking any of it, instead content to focus on subpar action sequences, a rushed throughline for Yeoh’s character, and repeatedly trying to develop some sort of chemistry between a cast of characters who have next to none. There’s just nothing that works in this film, from its opening narration explaining the entire plot like the beginning of an early PlayStation video game to its blindingly obvious conclusion, the movie fails in almost every way.

However, its greatest sin is probably just being called Star Trek. It’s possible that without the branding you could pass it off as a cheap, little science-fiction TV show pilot with a stellar lead. It is not, in any way, Star Trek, though. There are ways to tell Star Trek stories that are outside the realm of Star Fleet. Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and even Discovery, as it veered into the far-flung future, did this to great success. Section 31 does not. It takes the grand concepts and ideas that this franchise was built on and almost completely ignores them.

Every time it seems like it’s going to veer into anything even remotely philosophical or sociological it slams into another poorly done CGI action sequence or badly choreographed fight. At times it almost seems to be willfully contradicting the very universe it’s set in with little to no regard for continuity or coherence. There is nothing here aside from the brand and, as mentioned in the opening, even that is barely present. From set design to spacecraft to costuming, nothing feels like Trek.

The most infuriating thing is that it all could work. Yeoh is, of course, fantastic in a role she has routinely discussed as one she loves playing. She clearly cherishes playing an anti-hero, especially one as obviously disturbed as Emperor Georgio. The film does nothing with it, though. Filling in a bit of her past in how she became Emperor thanks to some sort of Terran Empire Hunger Games, the movie decides to fumble its way through a love story instead of unpacking any of the plethora of thematic ideas that her character could open up. The rest of the cast around her is given even shorter shrift, reduced to comic relief or predictable stereotypes that Star Trek has spent decades already deconstructing. Every once in a while you get a hint at what could have been thanks to Yeoh’s performance or some semblance of an interesting storyline peaking through but it never stays around long enough to mean anything.

Director Olatunde Osunsanmi, who cut his teeth on Star Trek: Discovery, handles the film like a serial TV director suddenly given a bigger budget and having no idea what to do with it. His camera and editing are complete messes as the movie almost nauseatingly won’t stop moving. There are enough lens flares to make J.J. Abram’s Trek movies look like they are the cleanest images ever put to film and the movie is nearly completely devoid of any sort of pacing or impact. One gets the feeling of a TV series trying too hard to be a film and, given the movie’s ending, that’s pretty much what it is.

What may be the final nail in the photon torpedo casket is the fact that this non-Trek film is also not actually a Section 31 movie either. In their desperate bid to make a Guardians of the Galaxy/Suicide Squad film, the creators forgot to make it a movie about what it is called. Section 31, for better or for worse, is Star Fleet’s darker side but this movie is just about a gang of misfits who like to say the words Section 31 every so often. What this leads to is a film without any sort of purpose other than to get Yeoh back on the screen and hopefully suck in a few more subscribers to Paramount+ with the promise of more Star Trek. It’s a promise the movie can’t keep.


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Matthew Razak
Contributing Writer
Matthew Razak is a News Writer and film aficionado at Escapist. He has been writing for Escapist for nearly five years and has nearly 20 years of experience reviewing and talking about movies, TV shows, and video games for both print and online outlets. He has a degree in Film from Vassar College and a degree in gaming from growing up in the '80s and '90s. He runs the website Flixist.com and has written for The Washington Post, Destructoid, MTV, and more. He will gladly talk your ear off about horror, Marvel, Stallone, James Bond movies, Doctor Who, Zelda, and Star Trek.
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