3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Star Trek: Section 31

2025, Olatunde Osunsanmi (Star Trek: Discovery) -- download

I learned a new phrase the other day -- NuTrek. Its a bit debated, but its apparently all the Star Trek media that started after Star Trek: Discovery. It includes a collection of shows that are widely disliked by some of Star Trek fandom, but in the 2020s, hating something is as much part of the identity of fandom as loving it. I don't hate any of it, but I strongly disliked season three of Picard and this "movie" seems to come from the same producer-influence / state of mind as that series. I air-quote movie because this was meant to be a series until Paramount pulled the plug, so they cobbled together what they could into a really bad movie.

I was never a fan of making Emperor Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once) into a sympathetic character, but watching Michelle Yeoh do anything on screen is always fun. Once the rest of Discovery (ship, not show, but also show) was tossed into another century, she had to be abandoned as a character. But we all knew that Section 31 would snatch her up. Again? Or was it that they always intended on her going back for Section 31, so that is why they did the whole, "Mirror Universe + Time Displacement = Disaster" plot? Who knows; I quickly forgot.

P.S. You likely don't care, but I will spoil the fuck out of this movie, that seems to pride itself on reveals.

BUT the series movie starts with her not in Section 31, but running a bar/resto/nightclub/space-station in contested space, i.e. outside the Federation's direct influence. So, they send in a team/rag-tag-band-of-misfits to get her assistance with the latest in galaxy wide catastrophes about to happen --- this time, some sort of bomb-shaped red-herring. And the bomb comes from the Mirror Universe! And it was so bad, even the Emperor decided to have it destroyed, before she grew a 0.01% conscience and came to our universe.

Oh, sorry there is also a preamble where we see some sort of Hunger Games contest to become Emperor of the Terran Empire. Really? That's how they do it? I just assumed it was a long line of assassinations and coups from within. Teenage girls killing their boyfriends and assuming the cloak/throne/mantle was not on my bingo card.

Anywayz, the rag tag bunch includes a neurotic shapeshifter (ahem.... Chameloid; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Sam Richardson, Werewolves Within), a neurotic miniscule alien riding inside a Vulcan robot robot Vulcan (Sven Ruygrok, Pulse) with an Irish accent, a stupid Australian cyborg (Robert Kazinsky, Pacific Rim) wearing a spiky/sharp-edged exo-skeleton, a horniness-inspiring Deltan (Star Trek; the Motion Picture; Humberly González, Friends & Family Christmas), a time-displaced Augment (Omari Hardwick, Army of the Dead) from the 20th century and a Starfleet Officer (Kacey Rohl, Hannibal) who is supposed to be babysitting them all but has her own issues.

They succeed in stopping the sale of the bomb, but not the stealing of the bomb. But at least they have the seller, who turns out to be from the Mirror Universe himself, but really, they should have used the opportunity to make him the Mirror Universe Harry Mudd -- I guess Rainn Wilson (beardless I guess?) wasn't available. They head back to a "safe house", an old mining base on an abandoned junker planet, so we can get some exposition and get to know the ragamuffins a bit better -- they are all pretty much at each other's throats. They then get betrayed by one of their own, their ship blown up and end up flying a literal garbage scow off the planet. Star Trek attempt to do Star Wars is kind of fun, but... not?

Of course, in Star Trek tradition, but entirely obvious to us watching, the Bad Guy turns out to be Georgiou's old boyfriend who has decided that the dying-from-within Terran Empire could use her old bomb to destroy a good amount of our universe, and give them a whole new territory to conquer. It doesn't work out.

The problem with cobbling a movie from a failed series is that not everything was likely filmed or even reach post-production. And in this instance, what was left appeared to be nothing but hand-to-hand fight scene after hand-to-hand fight scene. Oh, there is some fun to be had with Star Trek trying its best to be quirky not-Star Trek but there is a reason it was killed on the vine. Seriously, if they were going to do something with Section 31, they should have gone the darkest of the dark, and told stories of the Federation that most fans would shudder at, instead of this eye-rolling event.