Star Trek: Section 31 — Olatunde Osunsanmi
The Star Trek franchise has finally delivered its first truly unwatchable feature film
An improbable 14 films in, and the Star Trek franchise has finally delivered its first truly unwatchable feature film. It’s difficult to think of a previous low that even approaches this level of low in the tenured body of the series, and even those who come to Star Trek: Section 31 with nothing but fond memories and fuzzy feel-goodery in their hearts for Star Trek: Discovery will find little to redeem this Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou spin-off.
Section 31, as the secret wing of Starfleet charged with the shady, uncharacteristically Starfleet missions, is the CIA of the United Federation of Planets. Georgiou comes to them as the former familicidal and genocidal dictator of the “mirror universe,” the alternate reality where right and wrong trade places. Set in the time between The Original Series and The Next Generation, the Starfleet of Section 31 calls on Georgiou’s services to help handle a terrorism plot being cooked up on the outskirts of Federation territory. The Section 31 crew that comes in arrives with clumsy introductions and one-note caricaturistic quirks — Quasi (Sam Richardson) shapeshifts, Melle (Humberly González) seduces, and so forth. Meanwhile, future captain of the USS Enterprise-C Rachel Garrett’s (Kacey Rohl) one quirk is that… she is a future captain. And make sure to pay close attention to these quirks because, if you don’t, the characters are at risk of being forgotten as soon as the credits roll.
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