Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Kacey Rohl
Have I Seen it Before: Never. Brand new. Weird moment when for a day or so—although it happens more and more frequently these last few years—when somebody could ask me “Have you seen all of Star Trek” and I have to answer “not yet.” Even weirder still is the brief moment when someone can ask me, “Have you seen all of the Star Trek movies?” and I have to say I’m working on it.
Did I Like It: Assessing any Star Trek movie begs more than a few questions, although as I continue to write this review I find those questions to be more than a little bit inter-related. First—and this question really ought to be used to judge any film—does it succeed on its own terms? On this front, yes, I think it does. It wants to be a fun, light adventure a la Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), and while one might be able to quibble with just how naturally a bunch of goofballs on a heist format onto Roddenberry’s utopia, it’s clear that the movie has decided what it wants to be and follows through on that.
Second question: Does the movie work for someone who isn’t already steeped in the lore of Trek? Frankly, all of the great Trek films straddle the line, bringing in elements of what came before but making it accessible to a wider audience. Here, Section 31 works pretty well. Explaining just who Georgiou (Yeoh) is and her previous activities is dispensed with as quickly as possible without just directing viewers to the first three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. But other than that, these are new characters who we are just getting to know. A fan like myself will see Rachel Garrett (Rohl) and know fate will take her in the future*, but Joe Everybody off the street will just be able to see her as the archetypical Starfleet officer, futilely trying to bring order to the chaos on display. This might be something I would recommend to someone just coming in to the franchise.
Finally, and this question can plague many of the other Trek films: Is it worthy of being a feature-length story, or is it really an extended episode? Star Trek Insurrection (1998) is often maligned for being an extended episode and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) started life as a pilot to an eventually abandoned second series with the original crew, and never quite outruns the gravity of those constrictions. This, too, was originally to be the first episode of a spinoff starring Yeoh, but after she won the Oscar, cooler head prevailed, and we are left only with this “event movie.” There’s room to check in with this rag-tag team in the future if this film works, but it definitely feels like a pilot for things that will never come. I was prepared to answer this question and only view Section 31 as something of a mixed bag, but then I remembered what this really means for the future of Trek. After a whirlwind few years where we were treated to a number of series, the streaming wars appear to have ended with no real winners. By committing not to multi-year series with inevitably diminishing numbers of viewers, changing the way Star Trek comes to us may yet widen the lens. We could see more 24th Century stories a la the hinted Picard sequel, Legacy. Indeed, the limits of what could be done may no longer exist. If that ends up being the case, Section 31 may end up being a noble experiment, indeed.
*In addition to being the only real clue that this story takes place roughly forty years after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and about forty years before the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
