Outside the Beltway

Nerd Corner: Section 31

A review.

Steven L. Taylor · Monday, January 27, 2025 · 10 comments

And now for something completely different…*

So, I am a huge Star Trek nerd, having fallen in love with the franchise as a small child watching syndicated re-runs of the original series. I am pretty much a Trek completist,** so I watched Star Trek: Section 31.

The short review:  it wasn’t very good.

The slightly longer review, which echoes the few non-spoiler reviews I had seen:  it is a meh action movie that barely feels like it is in the Star Trek universe. (“Meh” may be too kind).

I went in with low expectations. They were not met.

And please note: I like new Trek.  The best of it has been Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks.  I enjoyed all three seasons of Picard more than a lot of people (although, yes, I can see the flaws).  I even like Discovery, although I see its flaws as well.  Indeed, if I were to rank Trek shows, it would likely be at the bottom, but I honestly still think it has a lot of positives.   So, I am not a new Trek hater by any stretch.

Indeed, I was not opposed to the idea of Section 31 show, although I had my doubts they would pull it off.  

I will say that while it is hard not to be at least a little enchanted by anything Michelle Yeoh does, the whole notion of making the Terran Emperor an ongoing character as part of the Federation in any way never worked for me.  She is, after all, a genocidal tyrant.

I will note that the movie makes an attempt (I almost said “stab” but that is too on the nose) at taking her crimes seriously, but it really fails to do so.  Indeed, like much of her treatment in Discovery, there is a lot of handwaving away of truly awful crimes.

The movie’s plot is thin, it drags especially in the first 30 minutes, and the characters are not compelling.

I was disappointed in the lack of any treatment of her journey from the future via the Guardian of Forever back to the past. While there is a line of dialog*** that would suggest this movie is set in the early 24^thCentury (which comports with the existence, age, and rank of a pre-existing Star Trek character), it would be kind of nice to understand why she is where she is (but that is probably my pedantic inner nerd talking).

I cannot recommend the movie unless one has Trek completionist disease.

Hi, my name is Steven and I have Trek completionist disease…

At any rate, more below.

Warning:  Spoilers Beyond This Point

Basic summary:  a team of Section 31 (a covert branch of Starfleet) operatives have to block the sale of a dangerous weapon at a space station outside of Federation space.  The station is run by Philippa Georgiou, the former Emperor of the Terran Empire/former Section 31 operative, and one-time character on Star Trek: Discovery (I am not going to go into a lot of detail here, as I can’t imagine anyone having read this far without knowing the basics).  The story ends up being about a doomsday weapon from the Mirror Universe and a whole lot of forced action scenes.  There are some splosions and eventually the good (?) guys win.

I found the plot and McGuffin (the Godsend) to be trite, uninteresting, and not especially compelling. Since this was clearly a pilot, there were a lot of “what does this character do?” scenes.

I will note that the banter about whether the device was called the “God Send” or the “Gods End” was perhaps the best part of the movie.  

That observation should tell you a lot about the movie.

Of the Section 31 team, I was probably most intrigued by Melle the most, although maybe just for the ST:TMP call back (and she dies—remember, I already issued a spoiler warning!). Quasi was fine, but mainly because Sam Richardson has a lot of charisma.  The fact that he is a shapeshifter seems mostly pointless for this movie (although I suppose it would have been an ongoing plot point for a series). Garrett also tickled some nostalgia as the future captain of the Enterprise-C, but her “chaos, chaos, chaos” scene was ridiculous.

Zeph was utterly annoying and Fuzz was only slightly less annoying than Zeph.

Alok Sahar, while ostensibly the leader with a very Trek backstory (he’s a 20th Century Augment, which is a bit of a yawn at this point), was boring. His story did not make sense, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention, and I am not going back to find out if the problem was the writing or my comprehension. He was practically a nullity as a character. I just didn’t care about him.  He lacked charm, wasn’t especially interesting, and mostly was just there to do whatever it was that the plot needed doing.

One of the problems often with Mirror Universe storytelling is that the writers forget the context and want to write the characters and situations with Prime Universe elements when they are lazily trying to plot things out.

Specifically, there is this notion that at one point young Georgiou was an “innocent girl.”  First, whatever weird morality would be needed in the MU for it to function as it does would call into question what being an innocent girl would mean in that context.  Second, given the nature of the Hunger Gamesesque (but worse) scenario introduced at the beginning of the movie, there is no way that we could see young Georgiou as “innocent” by the time she is one of two survivors. This applies as well to San.

Indeed, the idea of even being chosen for such a contest rather eliminates the notion of “innocence.” 

Side note:  while killing one’s way to the top fits the ethos first created in TOS’ Mirror, Mirror, I found the notion that there was some kind of contest of younglings to take the throne to make no sense whatsoever. I still wish that Georgiou had been a descendant of Empress Sato as seen in ENT’s In a Mirror, Darkly (but that is just more nerdliness on my part.).

In terms of San, I found his whole story to be ridiculous and unbelievable. Ditto his character and his motivations. 

While maybe (and I stress the word) some sort of MU invasion into the Prime Universe would have been a good problem to solve, just having San alone in a ship trying to get the Godsend was just plain lame. As was the notion that some cyber bureaucrat stole a weapon that sounds like the Time Lords (yes, wrong universe) invented for the Time War and was going to sell it in the Prime Universe’s black market.  All of which raises weird questions about how San lived, kept the device from being destroyed, but allowed it to be stolen.

The fight between Georgiou and San was clearly a “we have Michelle Yeoh, so there will be lots of hand-to-hand combat” scene.  Their dialog during the fight was ridiculous and woodenly delivered, on balance.

The timeline also makes no sense. Georgiou was Emperor in the early 23^rd century, but this story takes place almost a century later, but San hasn’t aged?  I just realized all of this and I am not sure I am willing to delve much farther, but the timeline stuff is actually a massive plot problem.  Nerd alert!  Spock’s rebellion should have happened between Georgiou’s exit from the MU to the Prime Universe and the events of this film.  It all makes even less sense the more I try to think about it.

Quite frankly, I was hoping that Georgiou was going to die in the explosion of the Godsend at the end in a way of some minor (relative to her crimes) sacrifice to protect the Prime Universe from the minions of the MU.  Alas, that was not the case.

I did not, in the least, understand my Georgiou and Alok Sahar were holding hands tenderly when they were about to die. It made zero sense.

And man, that last scene with Borgy Jamie Lee Curtis as the Big Giant Head Control made the pilot-ness of the whole thing pretty obvious.

As much as I am a sucker for more Trek, but no thanks.

I was a bit surprised by this because it had been stated there would be no series and that this was a stand-alone movie. I think part of the problem is that it clearly was written as a pilot and does not really feel like a movie.  I cannot imagine a non-Trek fan watching this.  Indeed, it is easier for me to imagine a lot of Trek fans not watching it.

*People have complained about too much Trump, so be careful what you wish for!  The problem is I am not sure how many readers care about this stuff.  This post does marry up with a pending project that should be made public soon.

**Full disclosure: I am currently slowly making my way through Enterprise, which I did not finish when it was first on for various reasons, mostly linked to small children and being pre-DVR. The fact that it is not the best of the series didn’t help. I saw probably 65% of it the first go-round, missing mostly chunks of s2 and s3 before coming back for most of its best season, s4.  

***This assumes I heard what I thought I heard and am remembering it.  I am not going back to fact-check and you can’t make me.