Section 31
|Far beyond Federation space, a diverse band of operatives are gathering at the Baraam with the explicit intention of intercepting the transfer of an experimental bioweapon technology from an identified trader to an unknown buyer, the deal brokered by the mysterious Madame Veronique du Franc, though to the leader of Alpha Team, Section 31 operative Alok Sahar, she is known under another name, Philippa Georgiou, formerly Emperor of the monstrous Terran Empire in a parallel universe.
His team comprising another Starfleet Officer, the human Rachel Garrett, assigned to ensure they do not stray too far from core values of the United Federation of Planets, the “Mech” Zeph, the Chameloid Quasi, the Deltan Melle and the Nanokin Fuzz, presenting himself in a “Conveyance” modelled after a Vulcan male, each have particular skills but they do not function smoothly as a unit, Georgiou immediately seeing through them, possibly Alok’s intention, and the former Section 31 operative invited back into the fold for one last mission which unravels at the first encounter.
Introduced in the first scene of Star Trek Discovery as Captain Georgiou of the USS Shenzhou before her “mirror” counterpart was revealed later in the season, Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Michelle Yeoh was too valuable a player to be lost to both Starfleet and Paramount Studios, a spin-off featuring her character officially proposed as early as 2019 and now arriving as the standalone “original movie” Section 31 on the streaming service Paramount+, tellingly the first Star Trek film never to receive an official wide theatrical release.
Directed by The Man Who Fell to Earth’s Olatunde Osunsanmi from a script by Elementary’s Craig Sweeney based on a story by Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt with credit given to Gene Roddenberry who dug the wellspring though no acknowledgement is made of the writers on Deep Space Nine or Discovery who originated Starfleet’s covert intelligence agency or the lead character of the new film, there had been an expectation that Section 31 would follow the methods of Luther Sloane, stealth, cunning and subtlety as well as other tools from the bag of dirty tricks.
Instead, intrigue is off the table, and after the flashback to Georgiou’s tortured past, a lifetime and a universe away, and a quick heavy-handed of voiceover scene setting to establish the setup for newcomers unfamiliar with the background, Section 31 makes a bid for Mission: Impossible antics and action – another Paramount property, so why not? – before the cracks in the team begin to show and Starfleet’s top undercover team begin to resemble a very different science fiction B-team, Cardiff’s now-disbanded Torchwood.
Omari Hardwick’s Alok the stiff unbending pole around which Georgiou dances, implied to be one of the sleepers of the Eugenics War, Kacey Rohl’s Garrett is equally stiff, while Sam Richardson’s Quasi has many faces but little personality, Humberly González’ Melle is more suited to seduction than confrontation and Robert Kazinsky’s Zeph and Sven Ruygrok are both defined by their defects, unpredictable, ill-tempered, easily provoked and utterly unsuitable for the job at hand.
More of Section 31 devoted to the sniping, bickering and backstabbing within the team when it is suspected there is a mole sabotaging their efforts, the subsequent fingerpointing recalling The Adventure Game, the immediate challenge of finding a lost component to make a derelict ship fly might have been less easily resolved had the deserted world they were marooned on not been threaded by an underground network of high-tech transit tunnels, apparently included solely for a muddled chase sequence rather than to provide salvaged resources and materiel.
Undeniably a child of Discovery, like the previous ongoing spin-off Strange New Worlds, too often the question asked by Section 31 is “does it look cool?” rather than “does it make sense?” and as with drilling a hole through an asteroid with phasers to get to the other side rather than simply going around it, the result is a screaming dog’s dinner designed to appeal to the Tik-Tok generation rather than anything of intellectual or emotional substance.
Star Trek is not the first brand to actively turn away from established and loyal long-term audiences in favour of an apparently more desirable youth market, but surely a middle ground to reinvigorate without abandoning the essential tenets which define an enduring ideal which has traditionally held itself as a banner for progress, inclusion and high principals might have been possible and preferable, particularly in times when those who strive to better themselves during adversity look to something to hold onto and inspire?
As it is, Section 31 is not terrible, but nor is it particularly good; it offers little new in terms of story or character, it does not expand the worlds of Star Trek other than to establish that Starfleet’s recruitment policy for its most clandestine operations needs review, even the unruly officers of the Cerritos considerably more professional and adept despite their quirks, and above all it is largely forgettable even with the sleight-of-hand mirror quadrant-wide genocide conveniently ignored in the final scene, perhaps the most damning accusation which can be made of a high profile production which has been in development for over half a decade.
Section 31 is streaming now on Paramount+