There’s an old adage, taken from one of our holiest texts, that all nerds know well: “As sure as day follows night,” it goes, “sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit”. Technically Section 31 is “Star Trek 14” so we should be onto a winner. Alas, it doesn’t fit the pattern. That’s probably because this straight-to-Paramount+ special never really feels like a movie at all. It’s more akin to the double TV episodes they used to stitch together for VHS release, though it falls some way short of the best of those. Section 31 doesn’t have the budget or the onscreen weight to justify the “film” label. In the old days we’d have called it a “TV movie” or “straight-to-video”.
Some critics have been absolutely savage – “unwatchably bad … the single worst thing to carry the Star Trek name in living memory” said Engadget under the headline “An embarrassment from start to end”. “Badly goes where everyone has gone before”, said Den of Geek. IGN went slightly further: “Blandly going where no-one should go”. That all feels excessive. This isn’t great Trek by any means, but anyone who thinks it’s the franchise’s lowest point has never seen that Next Generation episode where Dr Crusher bangs a ghost. Or that really racist one in the first season. Or the Enterprise finale. Or Star Trek V. This is a franchise that, for all of its astounding highs, has dredged the bottom of the swamp many times and Section 31 is far, far from its worst offender. What we have here is a perfectly serviceable space romp that bypasses the rather dry ideals of Starfleet by diving into the murky world of its black ops division. It’s at its best when it leans into campy fun, though wobbles off course whenever it tries to be a serious thriller.
Michelle Yeoh returns as Philippa Georgiou, the deliciously amoral former emperor from Star Trek: Discovery’s Mirror Universe. She’s still a bad guy, technically – you don’t get to wave away multiple genocides with a redemption arc – but she’s our bad guy, and Yeoh has always been brilliant in the part. A high camp, high kicking villainess with great dress sense and a spark of warmth somewhere under all the scheming. Section 31 might feel cheap sometimes, but Michelle Yeoh always brings gold … which can be a problem. Georgiou herself may have given up on mass murder, but Michelle Yeoh’s megawatt, Oscar-winning charisma still vaporises everyone else on screen. There’s a supporting cast here, and they’re presumably trying their best, but it’s hard to notice anyone else.
The plot, involving a doomsday weapon called the “Godsend” (the name of which gives us one of the best jokes here), throws together a Dirty Dozen/Guardians of the Galaxy-style team of misfits pulled from deep Trek Lore. There’s a shape-shifting Chameloid (last seen in Star Trek VI), a sexy Deltan (a callback to The Motion Picture), and a young Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl) – future captain of the Enterprise-C. The deep-cuts will please hardcore fans, even if the characters themselves never leave their mark. You’ll struggle to remember their names once they’re off screen for a nanosecond.
Rohl as the prissy Lt. Garrett stands out among the supporting cast, finding nuance where others settle for broad strokes, and perhaps earning her future-captaincy. The same can’t be said for Sven Ruygrok’s Fuzz, who attempts an Irish accent apparently based on the Leprechaun from The Leprechaun. Elsewhere there’s little character-depth to be found. Omari Hardwick’s Alok feels dull and worthy, Robert Kazinsky’s mech-enhanced Zeph and Humberly González’s Delton Melle remain intriguing but unexplored. The villain twirls a metaphorical moustache with abandon – there’s even an honest-to-god maniacal laugh at one point – which means we can at least be entertained by mannerisms even if motivations are rarely given much thought. This isn’t Star Trek at its worst, but it is at its thinnest.
Director Olatunde Osunsanmi and writer Craig Sweeny, both Discovery veterans, never make the most of their premise or their cast, and the budget is visibly stretched. The SFX sequences feel weightless and video-gamey, and the plot explanations get increasingly hand-wavey as we progress. The stakes are supposedly massive, but they never feel real – it’s not a great sign when the fate of the galaxy is on the line and you don’t particularly care.
Section 31 works best when it embraces its pulpy, spy movie roots and lets Yeoh camp it up as the slightly-but-not-quite-evil antihero. It’s less successful, dramatically so in fact, when it reaches for gravitas in its final act, having done nothing to earn the tonal shift. The ending sets up a series, or possibly a sequel, but unlike Discovery’s other spinoff, the brilliant Strange New Worlds (currently firing on all thrusters as it approaches its third season), there’s little here that demands further exploration. You get the impression that Paramount knows that too — at present it’s not even highlighted on the app’s landing page. You shouldn’t need to use the search function to find the new entry in an iconic franchise on the day of its release.
Star Trek has had its ups and downs lately – Discovery ran out of steam in its final two seasons, Lower Decks was beloved and brilliant, but cancelled. Section 31 sits squarely in the middle. It’s fine. Totally fine. Broadly fun. You’ll have no real wish to watch it again, and no burning desire to see more of these characters, Georgiou aside. It doesn’t add anything meaningful to the wider Trek canon, but then, charitably, it’s not really trying to. Phasers were locked on target, but ultimately they were only set to stun. If Paramount want to do more of these Trek one-shots, they’re going to have to increase the power.