Julien Neaves, Sci Fi Head Writer
Plot: Reformed ex-Terran Emperor Philippa Georgiou is recruited by a motley team from black ops organisation Section 31 for a mission to stop a powerful weapon.
Review: I have been a Trekkie since I first watched The Wrath of Khan on video cassette (remember those?) as an awkward pre-teen. Since then, I have watched every Trek film, and every episode of every Trek series save for the final few episodes of Lower Decks’ final season (What? I’ve been busy). So, I can speak with some fan authority when I say new film Star Trek: Section 31 is one of the worst things to bear the Star Trek name in the almost six decades of the Sci Fi franchise. With a galaxy-spanning SPOILER ALERT let’s dive in!
Now I can’t say that I was all that excited about the concept of the film. While Michelle Yeoh’s deadly, stylish, morally gray anti-hero Georgiou was easily a highlight of the mixed bag that was Star Trek: Discovery, that show bungled the concept of Section 31 which was introduced in the later seasons of best Trek series ever Deep Space Nine.
Instead of a shadowy organisation that sought to advance the interests of the Federation by any means necessary, Discovery had a mildly covert group that identified themselves with black badges. And the trailer for Section 31 with its generic Sci Fi action scenes made me concerned that the new film had missed the boat as well. But no, they didn’t miss the boat, they had a team of burly crewmen crap all over the boat and then set it aflame.
The film starts decently enough with young Georgiou brutally poisoning her family as her final task in her ascension to Terran Emperor and also scarring her lover and rival San, who becomes her servant. Sadly, this is the darkest and most interesting the movie gets. We then flash forward to Georgiou running an entertainment space station Baraam under the alias “Madame du Franc”.
And we are then introduced to the Section 31 team seeking to recruit her: human team leader Alok, played by Omari Hardwick with one expression; shapeshifting and wisecracking Chameloid, with Sam Richardson unable to squeeze any comedy out of the terrible jokes; bland meathead exoskeleton wearing Zeph (very covert outfit there); nostalgia baiting but underbaked future Enterprise-C captain Rachel Garrett aka “chaos goblin” (oh, the cringe); microscopic Nanonkin Fuzz whose grating accent probably set back Irish representation two decades; and sexy Deltan Melle, who gets killed off pretty quickly.
In films, you would usually have one or two annoying characters that you have to grin and bear with. But in Section 31 it is pretty much all of them. They try for a snappy, Guardians of the Galaxy vibe, but screenwriter Craig Sweeny is no James Gunn. We are left with a group of unlikable and underdeveloped characters grinding against each other like nails on a chalkboard. Yeoh tries her best but not even an actor of her caliber can make the dumb dialogue and banal plot work.
Speaking about on the plot, it was SO obvious that San was the masked villain seeking the galaxy threatening Godsend. And Section 31 just happened to recruit his former lover on a mission to stop his plan? This is just one of several plot holes in this very bumpy road. The action is also poorly edited, and the pacing here is so off, that by an hour in the movie little to nothing has happened. And why use the concept of Section 31 if they are not allowed to kill or do anything morally dubious. That moral ambiguity should have been the main theme here! But no, this film is too uninspired for that.
And after a painfully generic finale, Section 31 had the unmitigated gall to setup future installments with a Jamie Lee Curtis cameo no less. No. Just no. Like Star Wars misfire The Acolyte, this just needs to die. I would have given it one point out of ten if not for Georgiou’s cool outfits and the novelty of seeing Trek species return like the Chameloid, the Deltan and Cheron from the memorable The Original Series episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”. But other than that, there is nothing of worth here.
Editor Jules’ Score: 3 out of 10
Have you seen Section 31? How would you rate it? And you can boldly go into more Trek content below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “13 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.