Film Discussion | Star Trek: Section 31

That was the best Syfy-channel-pilot-for-a-show-that-ultimatley-didn't-get-picked-up-from-2002 that I've ever seen.

So the Terran empire runs some kinda hunger games for the next evil emperor… and the current evil emperor is just cool with abdicating I guess?

I wish I could enjoy it, but it just feels so dumb to watch a fairy tale transfer of power in the most evil setting.

There’s a germ of a good idea here. A show following a band of misfits around the edges of the Star Trek universe while they get into and out of trouble could be fun. Several of the characters like Zeph and Fuzz have interesting concepts which we haven’t seen yet in Star Trek.

The bad however out weighs the good. One, it makes no sense for a super-secret spy agency to employ this bunch of marginally competent weirdos and it really doesn’t sell why a team of by the book Starfleet Intelligence officers couldn’t have handled this problem by the end of the opening credits.

Two, a history as a genocidal space dictator isn’t just a quirky character trait. The movie sometimes wants to deal with that seriously and other times treats it as a joke. I don’t know if there is a right way to deal with it, but this movie definitely isn’t it.

Three, this movie definitely inherits many of Discovery’s worst traits of frenetic camera work and inability to slow down long enough for us to get to know the characters.

Okay, I enjoyed it as a breezy action movie.

I had a goofy grin on my face for much of the first act - it had style, which sort of fell away over time, which was unfortunate.

The Georgiou story is by far the strongest aspect of the movie - long-lost lover seeking revenge isn't the most original of plots, but it's executed well enough, and Michelle Yeoh is pretty terrific as expected. I particularly liked her line about a monster with a conscience being useless.

The middle act probably should have been simplified. The mole storyline was a distraction that prevented us from getting to know the new characters, and every single one of them suffers for it. Garrett's storyline needed more meat, and I would have appreciated more time spent with Alok beyond just the exposition of his backstory. Quasi skates by on Sam Richardson's considerable charm alone.

All in all, I think the movie is worth the time, even if no one's going to call it "deep" any time soon. I'd certainly be interested in watching them go to Turkana IV.

RIP Zeph. You were too beautiful for this world.

Despite my negative reaction to the trailer, and hearing all the early spoiler-free reviews validating that reaction, I went into it hoping for a guilty pleasure of some kind, where I can go "yeah that wasn't great, but I kinda liked it".

Not so much. (I wrote up a full thing over here. Spoiler: it's a 1 out of 5 for me.)

But here's some positives, since this group contains perhaps the most generous comments I've ever seen about it so far, and I don't want to spoil that vibe:

• I think the cast was decent; the guy playing Quasi especially stood out to me. Liked their casting for Rachel Garrett, and the bit of personality they gave her; it doesn't stomp on her TNG appearance, just adds to it. And she kinda looks like her if you squint.

• The core concept is fine, and with a huge overhaul they could have had something here. Yet by the end of this thing, I could almost see this going forward with more episodes. Few shows hit the ground running before finding the right balance. Unfortunately this will never get that chance.

• The sets and VFX are quite good for a streaming series at times.

• The angry face on the Deltan before she left was amazing? (I'm really struggling here.)

I was reasonably entertained while watching the movie, but ultimately I can't quite figure out what the show was trying to say.

Given that "Section 31" was originally conceived as a series, I think the influences of that are clear. For example, the introduction of a band of misfits that are clearly meant to keep on adverturing and the framing device of "transmissions" with individual titles.

The challenge is that the time we were allowed didn't give us enough time to really know any of the new characters, which is a shame because they offered an interesting and rare opportunity to see what life is like in the ST universe outside of Starfleet. Those unique perspectives are one reason why DS9 continues to be so well-regarded and why I found season 1 of PIC actually quite compelling.

I think the shorter format would have been better served if it was a story exclusively about Georgiou finding a new place for herself after what she had learned from her DIS experiences, maybe leading up to a final confrontation with San which interrogated the idea of a "good dictator". Indeed, I found the flashbacks and her interactions with San the most engaging parts of the movie. But because that comprised only a small part of the movie, we didn't really learn much more about her than we already knew. And the actual bond/conflict between them was never particularly clear, with San's motivations coming from left field.

The movie also suffered from what I call the "Inception effect" which is that it set up some potentially interesting mysteries but then solved them in the most boring manner. Having Fuzz be the mole was such an obvious choice, given that they had clearly established his ability to control electronics. As I was watching, I actually thought he was a red herring and that Melle was the mole all along, using her masked accomplice to fake her death at the beginning (a la "Gambit"). That would have at least turned Melle into an actual character, but I guess Deltans are cursed to die in the first third of any movie they're in.

I like a goofy team of eccentrics but I have no idea why these people would be hired by an ultra secretive espionage agency. Did Zeph even get to punch anything in the end? Quasi really had very little to do which is a shame.

It felt like a movie that was desperately trying to be serious while the cast was thinking it was a comedy.

Tone wise it was a complete mess.

It had some really fun ideas but overall I think the end product was worse than the sum of its parts.

In the end, I can't say I enjoyed it but I don't regret watching it.

I actually enjoyed it. For a movie that apparently squeezed a season of ideas into a single feature, it came out pretty... coherent? 😂

Sure, it's silly and weird, but I'm glad that the powers that be at the Star Trek industrial complex are not afraid to try different things

My only worry is that we'll be seeing less new different Trek going forward as Paramount don't seem quite so willing to spend big and greenlight everything these days

I'm glad people are finding it tolerably fun, I guess. I'm about 30 minutes in and don't know if I can keep watching. It's so bad.

EDIT:

Powered through. Hot garbage. The best thing I can say about it is it was a better movie than Rebel Moon.

SPOILERS throughout. I thought it was mostly okay, but kind of underwhelming with a middle that just felt like filler. -The mirrored version of the Logo had me half worried I somehow started streaming on a pirated site, but then it switched around and it was cute.

-Speaking of which, any particular reason they mirrored the text into the lake establishing shot. I like some movies where they make the text part of the environment but this ain't that.

-I get she's supposed to be out of breath but the airiness of her words is really tempting me to break a self promise of avoiding subtitles for movies to better my listening skills.

-I was beginning to wonder if those were eggs boiling in the stew and then it turned out to be poison.

-Was this supposed to mirror the beginning of DSC with the walking on sand and getting picked up?

-I loved the one lady in the background casually smiling at the burning hot torture.

-That said this ascension trial seems rather peculiar and unusual for the Terran empire. I'd have thought a dash of nepotism would've been in order but she's just some rando.

-That briefing was rather cheesy. The mystery McGuffin. "This dog bites back?"

-Stardate "1292?" but still using CE year in that earlier briefing without saying it's CE? I see they continue with the trend of making dates more about vibes than making sense or sticking to a system.

-I do like the design of the swirly space station.

-Bubble Gum spotted. Now I'm thinking about that scene from DS9.

-OMG it's those half-white and half-black guys from TOS. I never expected to see them again.

-That singer in the "bagel hole" shot along with the edible eye prop kind of made me think EEAAO.

-Okay, I did wonder why that Vulcan was laughing so hard, but I figured he might've been half, or Romulan or something. Glad to see that was a deliberate "what's wrong with this picture?" in a later reveal.

-They're really hamming it up with these "gathering the team" scenes. It's a bit goofy.

-Is there a Guy Ritchie inspiration to this movie? Wouldn't surprise me.

-I'll be the one to ask the inevitable "why doesn't it/she/they phase through the floor" question.

-I turned the subtitles on. I just couldn't make out "Give me the case" and this sound balancing was bothering me.

-Did that naked Andorian have no genitals? Perhaps confirmation of that 3rd/4th Gender from the extended stuff?

-Ugh, I hate the "breaking a bottle on a head" cliche.

-I do think the phase fight was kind of cool, Kitty Pride is among my favorite X-men, but I'll always have the why phase through walls and people but not the floor question in my mind, and the glitching at the end felt cheap—but it's always better to be unlucky in getting into more problems than out of them from a writing perspective.

-I do think the Emperor's reflection while San explains "it is all for you" was a nice shot.

-I definitely laughed at the "I forbid you to die" line.

-It does seem kind of silly that Section 31 has a uniform, even if it's all black.

-The God's End vs Godsend joke fell flat for me.

-it sure became nighttime rather quickly.

-It's a mole subplot. If done wrong I'd probably hate it. I don't like guessing. RN I'll guess it's the leader Alok who's the mole and see how that sticks.

-Are they really going so fast to say it's the mech-head with no seeming brain. I feel like it's a fakeout.

-Okay, so it was. It feels like the mole revealed plot was over a little too quickly. What was it, 13 minutes? -The tunnel fight felt a little too "shakey cam" for me.

-I'm getting flashbacks to Mozart's laugh in Amadeus.

-The callback about the confusing name also fell flat for me.

-I think they take the "we're direct to streaming, we can swear whenever we want" card too far with ST and it continues to be poorly implemented here.

-Three parts of "coded transmissions." ~40 minutes, 25 minutes, 25 minutes, roughly. I can see this having been a miniseries earlier.

-The doll's kind of creepy. I do like the "different region, different safety standard" bit of world building with the battery. It reminds me of power outlets or how British and U.S. eggs are illegal in each others' countries. Stuff that adds verisimilitude.

-I feel that the struggle with the autopilot robot went on too long, considering the mild incompetence it was showing earlier at blending in.

-The microbe has a monologue about small things surviving big explosions but then gets defeated by an explosion? Okay.

-So San gets cut in the Carotid artery it looks like. Is this a reference to McCoy saying something along the lines of "if you were to kill me cut me here" while in the Sickbay of ToS with a knife on him?

-Who was that hologram lady supposed to be at the end? She looks vaguely familiar but I couldn't place her.

The movie ended up being what I expected from the trailer: a disappointment. This should have been a movie just about Georgiou, and a movie about Section 32 should have been something else a entirely.

The Hunger Games concept was kind of dumb, but I actually liked the San story. It gives Georgiou more depth and complexity, but it could have been a lot more. Unfortunately, it was just sandwiched in between an action-whodunnit with a lot of new characters (who were not adequately developed on their own rights) instead of being a drama with some action scenes, as a story like it should have been.

I love Michelle Yeoh, and I'll watch her in anything, but this was a poorly written and directed movie that didn't know what it should have been.

Annotations for Star Trek: Section 31 up at: https://startrek.website/post/18738476

Some random thoughts:

• I like that this current era of Star Trek tries out new styles instead of simply copying the "7-ish crew members stand around on the bridge of a Starfleet ship and go on weekly adventures" formula. Some of those new styles work, others don't. Section 31 unfortunately didn't work. But this TV Movie format could be a neat way to try out new things.
• As a lifelong Star Trek fan I liked the species they've brought back (Deltans! Cherons!) and giving the tricorders the TNG sound effect was neat too. Also, I'll have a closer look on the Federation map. I always love those canon tidbits.
• Speaking of canon tidbits, at the end of the movie they go on a mission on Turkana IV. That's Tasha Yar's home planet on which the government breaks down sometime in the 2330s. And judging by Rachel Garret being a Lieutenant Commander she's probably still a decade or so away from commanding the Enterprise-C, so the Section 31 movie is set in 2330s. That means that Section 31 could have a hand in Turkana IV's government collapse (either causing it or trying to prevent it).
• The characters in this movie behave just as nonsensical as the DISCO characters. They condemn Georgiou for being Literally Space Hitler but in the end they all hug and become best friends. WTF?
• Other than that, this is a generic sci-fi action movie. If it weren't for the couple of species and namedrops, this wouldn't have any connection to Star Trek.
• If I had a bar of gold-pressed latinum everytime they produce Star Trek movie featuring Section 31, and that movie then became the worst Star Trek movie at the time, then I had two bars of gold-pressed latinum. Which isn't a lot but it's still weird that they made that mistake twice.

Lately, we’ve seen a lot of evidence that turning a movie script into a show doesn’t work. Here’s the flipside of the coin, where the story treatment for an entire season’s worth of TV cannot be adequately condensed into a single TV movie.

Certain elements are interesting, and I didn’t hate it by any stretch, but generally speaking this was a poor use of time and talent.

Star Trek III was a better heist movie.

I enjoyed it for a dumb popcorn flick, but to me it just didn't feel like it really took place in the Star Trek Universe.

It just felt pretty generic to me. Kinda like the Halo show. Like they had a script and just said replace some things with Star Trek things and call it a day.

I hope the prequel film will be better.

Worst Star Trek movie so far.