I’ll admit, it’s been a hot minute since I last kept up with Star Trek as I haven’t really been sticking with the Alex Kurtzman era of the franchise since Star Trek: Discovery beamed over from Netflix to Paramount+ (I mean come on, I’m not made of money). However, with the arrival of Star Trek: Section 31, a brand new feature that has spun out of that world, I guessed it was time to once again boldly go and see what Starfleet have been up to since I’ve been gone.
Now, I would exactly call myself a Star Trek fan persay, but I’m fairly familiar with the basics. I mean I’ve never been overly into the shows but when it comes to the movies I like the even-numbered Kirk ones, I like First Contact and I was fully on board for J.J. Abrams’ zhuzhed up reboot. However, even though the feature arm of the franchise has headed “into darkness” more than a couple of times, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a Star Trek movie that’s gotten on my nerves more than Section 31. And I’ve watched the one where Worf went through puberty…
For those not on the know, Philippa Georgipu once ruled the vicious Terran Empire with an iron fist in an alternate mirror dimension that essentially cast her as Ghengis Kahn meets Hitler with a weakness for unspeakable genocide. However, after getting brought into our world courtesy of the crew of the Discovery, she’s had to find a way to live in a universe that usually frowns upon violent acts of sadism and eventually discovered a modicum of peace despite the fact that the handy flashback that opens the movie shows that she poisoned her own family to be deemed fit to wear the mantle of Emperor. However, after being considered for recruitment for Section 31, the Starfleet version of a CIA blackops team, she promptly vanished.
It seems that since then she’s been running a snazzy space station of ill repute, but when a particular package is due to be delivered through her new kingdom, Section 31 show up to ask her to aid them to intercept it for the good of the universe.
The team is about as rag tag as it gets, with a defrosted, 300 year old Alok Sahar in the lead and uptight Starfleet officer Rachel Garrett lending oversight, but from here the team gets noticably weirder. There’s Melle, an alien whose species is virtually irresistible; there’s the chameloid Quasi; there’s Zeph, a man fully and happily bonded to his metal exoskeleton and last, but certainly weirdest, there’s Fuzz, a microscopic lifeform who pilots a robot suit that looks like a Vulcan with an Irish accent. However, it soon becomes apparent that this mission could have ramifications that could effect the universe and even has ties back to Philippa’s rule back in the Mirror Dimension. Can this bickering and highly unorthodox group manage to pull together and save everyone despite not being able to trust each other as far as they can throw them?
Star Trek: Section 31 won’t have been playing for long until you clock that it has the feel of a failed pilot episode that’s been retooled into a movie to squeak out an extra bit of exclusive content for a streaming service desperate for more views. The truth isn’t actually that different as the proposed Section 31 series was kept in drydock while Star Trek: Strange New Worlds got put into production instead, but I guess that someone, somewhere felt that they needed to justify hiring the great Michelle Yeoh for the role in the first place. The result is not only probably one of the most uneven and obnoxious films I’m likely to see all year, but it’s entire raison d’être seems to be the complete antithesis of what I thought Star Trek was supposed to be about. Now, I get that a long running franchise has to change here and there in order to ajust to the times, but am I the only that finds that the concept of a Starfleet Suicide Squad the most un-Star Trek thing I’ve ever heard of. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the entire point of the way that Gene Roddenberry stylised the original universe is that there is now no need for such things as an off-the-books wetworks team as Starfleet is supposed to be a benevolent force for good. Sure, it may be something of a naive, pipe dream compared to how the world actually works, but isn’t that the fucking point? Isn’t Star Trek supposed to represent a future where we’ve finally moved on from all that paranoia politics and bettered ourselves as a species?
Apparently not, because now we have Alternate Dimension Hitler leading a band of awful side characters in a loud, irritating Mission: Impossible rip off that, for some reason, thinks that the anarchic tone of Suicide Squad or Guardians Of The Galaxy will somehow fit in a franchise that used to prize positivity as its main focus. Maybe I wouldn’t be so confused if the humour was actually funny and its swaggering, “edgy” outlook was actually cool, but if you thought the most cringe-worthy aspect of Star Trek’s history was watching a 57 year old Nichelle Nichos do a seductive fan dance in The Final Frontier, buddy, I’ve got news for you as almost every aspect of this film falls painfully flat.
While Yeoh is still the best thing on offer here, she’s now seems to be playing her anti-hero character as a vampish, pantomime dame who swans arounds in lavish costumes, clicks her fancy nails extravagantly and basically carries herself like she’s catwalk strutted her way out of Desperate Housewives Of Starfleet. Elsewhere, her teammates are the most random displays of misguided fan fiction you could hope for as almost everyone comes equipped with a bunch of unfunny quips and eccentric personality traits that will cause you to roll your eyes so much you’ll look like a fucking chameleon. If its not the argumentative dumb guy bolted into his mech suit, it’s the microbe living in a Vulcan suit that overacts horribly with a thick Irish accent, or the love alien who can make anyone fall in love with who brings so little to the story, they kill her off early in order to convince us there’s actually stakes involved.
The actual plot is the usual “stop the WMD” type of thing that’s standard for team on a mission movies, but the film continues to keep the slick, lens flare look that Star Trek has had ever since the Abrams reboot which may make things look incredibly expensive, but it also makes it tough to see what’s going on in a lot of the action scenes. Also, if the addition of a traitor in their midst subplot was supposed to add to the tension, it ends up equalling the average fail rate of the Kobayashi Maru test.
Annoying, unfunny and ultimately pointless, if Section 31 is supposed to be an indication of where Star Trek is headed, you’d better hope that Starfleet’s ships have the ability to reverse because this latest attempt to give Star Trek an edge ends up shooting itself in the foot with its phaser at every turn by somehow being the complete antithesis of everything the franchise seemed to once stand for. Simply put, if this film was a female, not even Captain Kirk would be willing to bone it.
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