The distortions that a series goes through before it hits the air—creative decisions and studio requirements, castings and stand-ups, rewrites and stalls, shrinking or expanding budgets, the shards of art and business colliding—are nothing I’d normally notice in reviewing a show. But in the case of “Star Trek: Section 31,” out Friday on Paramount+, the product seems so expressive of the process, it seems worth mentioning.
Originally conceived as spinoff series from “Star Trek: Discovery” To a star Michelle Yeoh As Philippa Georgiou, an agent for the Black Fleet’s secret arm, the Enterprise was demoted or upgraded to a “feature”, officially the 14th in the “Star Trek” canon, and Franchise Firstly, a “television movie.” Although this decision apparently predated production, everything about “Section 31” says “pilot episode,” as if any ideas informed that the aborted series was still driving the vehicle, positioning the characters for the episodes in which Still to Come – It’s as if the movie has happened and you don’t want to give up the possibility of it being a TV show.
“Star Trek” is a serial thing. The prequels, which include “The Original Series” and “Generation,” just took TV shows to the big screen as a way to introduce the additional adventures of established, likable lead actors—an occasion to visit old friends on later (and sometimes earlier) star dates. They’re like canon fan fiction. Post-TOS TV series, although they may start with new sets and settings, have the advantage of time to establish a world, navigate characters, build relationships, and outsmart any fans of their doubts.
We at least go to “Section 31” caring about Georgiou, with whom we have a history, and who we last saw near the end of “Discovery” Season 3, parting ways with Science Officer Michael Burnham — her adopted daughter on her dual master world, but as good as her daughter — on the doorstep. A time portal would send Georgiou back to when the primary and mirror universes were still aligned in order to save her life. (He paused.) It’s a real emotional scene, and it’s the kind of thing where “The Journey” is particularly good. Puts work. Earn feeling.
Returning to the Mirror Realm, described here as “a parallel world with the most criminal population in recorded history,” Georgiou had brutally ruled the Terran Empire as her most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus, Reginaus, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius. How this came to be is the subject of some of the back stories at the top of “Section 31,” a process that is a bit gruesome and ridiculous, as if the Emperors were chosen at the end of an evil galactic contest (no details given), or if, or if, after the drawing With the sword made of stone, Arthur had to cut off the head of the last man to try before they would let him be king. The back story, which will drive the later plot, is meant to make her character tragic, but we got to know her well during her time discovering stars, living among nice people, which she has largely softened. She was practically in love by the time she entered that portal.
Perhaps you’ll be surprised, then, to find Giorgio reverting to something resembling narcissism, conducting her novel from Rick Amerian’s café in the out-of-space borderlands of the 23rd century, using the alias Madame de Franc (and speaking little French). The introductory narration tells us, as in The beginning of the episode “Mission: Impossible” – which is an admitted inspiration – is that after returning from the 32nd century to 2257, she joined Section 31 for a while and then Lost. How this was introduced with Georgiou already being an Agent of Article 31 in Season 2 of “Discovery,” meaning, which agency she’d rejoin, I’m not sure at all time travel would play out in your mind if you let it.
Robert Kaczynski as Zev and Omari Hardwicke as “Star Trek: Section 31.”
(Jan thijs / paramount+)
In this faerie joint, of all the faerie joints in the galaxy, walks the team of Section 31 Alpha, assigned to carry out missions, it would be useless for the Federation to look. (“Getting her hands dirty” is the phrase used here.) They’re trying to get a new hyperbolite—no one knows exactly what it is, but they know it’s bad—that might show up on the black market there.
They often argue among themselves, when they are not insulting each other, there seems to be no less impossible task force than a dirty half-dozen. (They are, at least, an unlikely crew to send out to save the universe.) Team leader Alok (OMARI HARDWICK) is a 20th-century Earthman who turned into “augmentation” during the Scion Wars (he’s been “asleep” for a few hundred years). Quasi (Sam Richardson) is a formable chameleon, which, appropriate for a creature without a specific form, freezes when faced with too many choices. Zev (Robert Kaczynski) is a guy in a big mechanical exoskeleton (“It looks like a Swiss Army knife,” says Georgiou), and it’s good to know that brand will continue far into the future.
Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), who seems given the Vulcan paradoxes to hilarity and rage, is a microscopic creature (very well conceived) who experiments with the Vulcan shell; Melle (Humberly González), two deltas like Khambatta’s favela in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” mostly to look weird; And straight arrow Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), a “Next Generation” Easter egg, was hired by Starfleet to “keep the peace and make sure ‘actually goblin chaos, right?'”
Alok convinces Georgiou to join them on their quest, offering her “the chance to return to the action on a galactic scale”, rather than spending her life “bar tending”. (Don’t actually do that.) And off we go. “Section 31” packs in Tropes. You get martial arts fights. extraterrestrial nightclub scenes (they still use autocorrosion, unfortunately); Battle over transport vehicles, as in more than one movie “Indiana Jones”; Sparks and fire. Familiar technique, jury-rigged fixes and brilliant last-minute improvisation. Plus a flying garbage truck.
It’s a bit of a mishmash tone. Comedy and tragedy typically share “Star Trek” space — “Section 31” begins with a quote from Aeschylus and includes an extended discussion of whether the Gizmo they call “Godsend” or “God’s End.” For the most part, comedy, which comes out of the characters, works better than tragedy, which comes from the feel of it. Maybe the chain was a rum thing, once you got going.
The film, because that’s what we have, is engaging, if sometimes frustrating. Yeoh, as ever, is in whatever mode he is required to play; It’s just fun to watch. Richardson, not a million parsecs of the character he played “suffix,” He is always a welcome presence. But the actors, too busy getting to know each other, feel the suggestion is on the verge of something that will never come — a second episode, which it explicitly sets up, with others to follow weeks in a row, rather than the many years it would take for a sequel feature to arrive, if one comes at all.
