Michelle Yeoh leads a mediocre mission impossible in outer space

The spin-off from Discovery squanders a solid idea into a generic genre offering without adding anything to the iconic franchise.

Plot: Philippa Georgiou, the parallel timeline version of the deceased USS Discovery Captain, was Emperor of the Terran Empire before coming to our timeline where she joins a secret division of Starfleet known as Section 31. Tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, she also must face the sins of her past.

Review: I am often an apologist when it comes to big franchises. I have overlooked a lot in Marvel, DC, and Star Wars in favor of pure, unadulterated entertainment. Since Star Trek returned to the small screen in Alex Kurtzman’s expanding portfolio of Paramount+ series with Discovery, I have found a lot to enjoy in each series. While Prodigy and Lower Decks have taken a new angle to Gene Roddenberry’s creation through animation, Picard mined nostalgia for The Next Generation. At the same time, Strange New Worlds harkened back to the heyday of The Original Series. While it had its fans, Discovery was the most divisive Star Trek creation with its revisionist take on canon that resulted in a time travel plot device to distance the series from the rest of the franchise. One of Discovery‘s brightest spots was Michelle Yeoh’s performances as Philippa Georgiou, the deceased Starfleet captain, replaced by her parallel universe doppelganger, who was a bloodthirsty dictator. Chewing the scenery, Yeoh earned her own spin-off series following Georgiou as she joined Section 31, Star Trek’s equivalent of the CIA or Impossible Mission Force. With her Oscar win and dwindling availability, Star Trek: Section 31 was changed from a series to a feature film with the potential for spin-offs down the line. Having seen Section 31, I can say the outlook for sequels is, as Spock would say, highly illogical.

When we last saw Phillipa Georgiou, she was working for Section 31 and partnered with the crew of the USS Discovery to stop rogue agent Leland, who had merged with an A.I. intelligence known as Control. Destroying Control, the Discovery and her crew go nine hundred years into the future, leaving Georgiou behind as an agent of the clandestine agency now under the leadership of former Klingon spy Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif). As the Section 31 film begins, we learn that since the 2019 episode of Star Trek: Discovery, Georgiou has gone rogue and runs her own space station outside of Federation space. When a threat requires her unique skills, a team led by Alok (Omari Hardwick) recruits Georgiou. Alok’s team includes Quasi (Sam Richardson), a Chameloid shapeshift who can look like anyone and whose species was last seen played by Iman in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) is a Vulcan with a very different personality from what we have seen on screen. Zeph (Robert Kazinsky) is another agent who wears an exoskeleton suit and has dysmorphia issues. Melle (Humberly Gonzalez) is a Deltan, the same species key to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, who uses her sexual magnetism to make people do her bidding. The final member of the crew is Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), a Starfleet officer who franchise fans know eventually becomes the ill-fated captain of USS Enterprise-C, and who was seen briefly in an episode of The Next Generation. This rag-tag team is full of weirdos, dropouts, and criminals and is meant to evoke the kooky dynamic of Guardians of the Galaxy but doesn’t have nearly the same charisma.

Michelle Yeoh brings her biting sense of fun that she gave Georgiou’s doppelganger on Discovery as her backstory as Emperor of the Terran Empire is briefly explored at the film’s start. The item that Section 31 is after has a direct connection to Georgiou’s parallel world, which forces the former despot to team up with the squad sent from Starfleet on the covert op. Everyone in the group has the requisite skills and personality differences that would have made for good character development in a long-form series. You can still get an idea of what Section 31‘s first season would have developed into as this is less a movie rather than three episodes crammed together. The film is divided into three chapters, complete with title cards, which just so happen to coincide with the approximately forty-minute runtime for an episode of a streaming or network series. Had these been three episodes of a season, I would consider them the first, second, and final entries in a ten-episode run. Watching Section 31 feels like you checked out the premiere episodes of a new show and then missed everything until the finale. The pacing worsens the disjointed structure, which does away with any consistent momentum.

To avoid spoiling the big twists in store for the most ardent Trekkies, Section 31 builds towards what it thinks will be a shocking reveal that may have worked had it been stretched out for more time. As it stands, characters are killed off without a second thought but because we have no time to care, the impact of their demise is negligible. Michelle Yeoh never gets the opportunity to really inhabit her role as she did on Discovery, but since we know Georgiou already, she is the easiest to align with. Played as something of an anti-hero, Georgiou’s connection to the villain and the weapon they are both vying over makes it even harder to like her since she is a monstrous totalitarian, albeit a redeemed one, who massacred billions. But because she is a “badass bitch” we are supposed to forgive her? Star Trek: Section 31 makes a huge mistake in investing in the opposite of Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision for this universe by investing in terrible, broken people motivated by greed and self-gain rather than the betterment of the galaxy.

Written by Craig Sweeny, who scripted an episode of Star Trek: Discovery and served as a consulting producer, Section 31 is directed by veteran Trek helmer Olatunde Osunsanmi, who has helmed sixteen episodes of Discovery and serves as executive producer on the upcoming Starfleet Academy series. Watching Section 31 does not feel any more cinematic than any other Paramount+ Trek series, with the production values identical to the prior entries in the franchise. This series succeeds in differentiating itself from the other entries produced by Alex Kurtzman, which have limited references to existing canon or Starfleet and the Federation. But, name-checking the marquee organizations in Star Trek still happens consistently, even if they are not the central focus of the narrative. The absence of Ash Tyler as leader also feels odd, with the role replaced by a cameo in the film’s final minutes that feels sillier than the creative team was hoping for. By not really exploring what Section 31 is, this movie feels like an excuse to fulfill Michelle Yeoh’s contract rather than a creative endeavor.

I have enjoyed everything about Star Trek, even through the worst episodes of Voyager, Enterprise, and Deep Space Nine. I loved J.J. Abrams’ reinvention of the series and even forgave the bizarre change to the Klingons for Discovery. I enjoyed Picard‘s second season and even the Strange New Worlds musical episode. I am a Trek aficionado, but I could not find anything worthy of being called Star Trek in Section 31. Even if this had been a full series production, the tone and structure are missing the spark and chemistry that bridged the weakest parts of any other Star Trek project. As amazing as she is, Michelle Yeoh cannot save Section 31 from being a bad project from start to finish. This movie will debut and disappear just as quickly, and hopefully, it will not put a damper on better ideas coming through the franchise in the years to come.