Star Trek: Section 31 - This May Not Be the Trek You’re Looking For
By John Kirk
Rating: C
Star Trek: Section 31 actor Robert Kazinsky struck a vaguely Star Wars/Obi Wan-ish note in an interview in SFX Magazine this month when he worried out loud that maybe this is “not the Trek people want.”
His admission that he’s “terrified of how it's going to be received,” reflects the trepidation Trek fans may experience when watching Star Trek: Section 31.
The story: Empress Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) from the Mirror Universe’s Terran Empire has gone rogue in the Prime Universe and established a night club on a station just outside Federation Space. Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick) and his team have been assigned to make contact with her to assist in the retrieval of a deadly doomsday device that threatens the peace of the galaxy.
When Georgiou realizes that the device is a weapon of her own construction from her own universe, then even she is motivated to assist with the Section 31 team in its retrieval.
The team is comprised of Quasi, a Chameleiod (Sam Richardson), a sort of shapeshifting creature who seems too jovial to be on a Black Ops team. Then there’s Melle (Humberly González) a Deltan who’s obviously there for eye candy purposes. Zeph (Robert Kazinsky) is a human with cybernetic augmentation and looks like he rolled out of a 1980’s sci-fi film set on a forgotten, apocalyptic planet.
Finally, the team is rounded off by Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) a nano-lifeform who delights in piloting/posssessing humanoids. Of course, that he picks a Vulcan with an Irish accent and a merry sense of humour not only seems counter to the low profile of the group, but also to the traditional way Vulcans are perceived. Finally, there’s Lieutenant Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), a Starfleet Science officer who’s there to somehow keep the team on the straight and narrow.
A side note to this: this character is THE Captain Rachel Garrett who commanded the Enterprise NCC-1701-C in the pivotal The Next Generation episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, or rather her younger self.
It’s a bit unexpected and puzzling as to why the writers would choose this as this character’s origin as she is such a venerated captain and figure in canonical history, deserving of better care, given that she has a “stick so far up her ass that it’s coming out of her mouth.” That’s an actual quote from the episode and it’s a cheap treatment. But if you want to chum the waters for swarms of bloodthirsty fans to express their anger onto their keyboards in the wee hours of the night, then it’s the right thing to do.
However, Michelle Yeoh’s martial arts talents haven’t left her. She’s an Oscar-winning level actress and that’ll be a draw for many fans. Even if her interpretation of Georgiou doesn’t seem consistent with the first time we met her, this is her production. Fans of Yeoh should enjoy watching her taking center stage.
Olatunde Osunsanmi is a gifted director. He directed “Such Sweet Sorrow”, the Discovery episode that saw the USS Discovery and its crew jump into the 32nd Century and presumably out of further canonical harm’s way. Admired by Jonathan Frakes, he’s a dab hand at action.
But the whole standalone film is a bit weak, frankly, especially in the character development. Before the audience meets the group, we’re given a short insight into Phillipa’s ascension to emperor.
Apparently, she had to go through some sort of a Hunger Games-esque contest to be Emperor of the Terran Empire, which really doesn’t hold right with all of the other glimpses we’ve had into the Mirror Universe, pre-Discovery. As the Discovery-era Terran Empire showed Phillipa Georgiou to be sadistically ruthless, she’s shown more as a playful vixen.
After all, Section 31 is the sinister department of espionage and black ops that are anathema to the Federation’s high ideals. It was first introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Inquisition” and has long been a subject of intense and excited speculation in Star Trek fan circles.
Essentially, it’s Anti-Starfleet and it’s an organization that prides itself on being able to do the needed things that the Federation can’t do, hampered by its own principles. Murder, deception and even violation of things like the Prime Directive are looked upon with passivity.
This fan definitely does want to explore this darker side of Trek but this Section 31 story is presented to the audience like a cross between The A-Team and Mission: Impossible. There’s also a level of campy humour that is out of place in a story about a clandestine unit of operatives acting outside their boundaries and the principles of Starfleet. Worse, this presentation of Georgiou is more playful, coquettish and manipulative than she is a genocidal tyrant and ruthless killer.
The other characters don’t seem to fit the mould of practiced espionage agents either. They’re nervous, suspicious of each other and don’t seem to have a lot of chemistry. When you consider that three of them are from races that are either new to the Star Trek universe or have obscure connections that even fans have to scramble to look for, this show falls into the same trap that Discovery did in its first two seasons: in that it created something new rather than go with what Trek fans are expecting.
What is recognizably Star Trek is underplayed and, in the background, like something planted to legitimize the show. Heck, even the ships have a Discovery vibe to them in their asymmetrical designs.
Section 31 (the unit, not the show) is a dark place for Star Trek stories. It’s used as a foil to show why the Federation and Starfleet are deserving of the utopian principles Gene Roddenberry tried to instill within his vision of the future. But can a show based on the opposite values of Star Trek succeed?
Who knows? I do know Star Trek is a franchise that evokes protective instincts in its most ardent fans, and one of those instincts will be to simply defend anything associated with it, even a poor showing like this production.
Star Trek: Discovery had its bright spots, but overall, it wasn’t the best iteration of Star Trek. But even Discovery fans will have to admit this spin-off is just simply a weakly told story. The characters are contrived and even a talent like Michelle Yeoh can’t save it.
Star Trek: Section 31. Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. Stars Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Kasey Rohl, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Humberly Gonzalez, James Hiroyuki Liao. Begins streaming on Paramount Plus Jan. 24.