Please, do NOT watch Section 31

My review of the absolute nadir of Star Trek

I did not have high hopes for the Section 31 film. I was never a fan of Emperor Georgiou, whose character arc never made much sense. I certainly never thought a full series about Section 31 was a good idea, and I was pleased when Michelle Yeoh’s sudden surge in popularity seemed to render it impossible. And when I saw that it was going to be a made-for-streaming movie, that obviously signalled something of a throwaway product.

Having just finished it, I can only say that I never could have imagined how bad it was going to be. It is the worst thing I have ever seen. The whole movie exists solely to get Michelle Yeoh on screen for a Star Trek project one last time, and perhaps also to justify a single jarring line of dialogue where Empress Georgiou tells Michael Burnham that she reminds her of “San” (a previously unmentioned character) before being transported back in time. The result is a dog’s breakfast of poorly conceived characters, sub-Marvel-level “quips,” terrible pacing, often incomprehensible plotting, and endless badly CGI’ed fight scenes. Its 90-minute run time is padded with what seriously feels like at least ten minutes of “flashbacks” to earlier scenes in the movie we are literally watching.

I went into it thinking that it would be a betrayal of Star Trek values, but I walk away primarily outraged that it betrays Star Trek’s production values. It is simply a shoddy piece of workmanship, beyond the level of even the worst episodes or movies. It is an unwatchable piece of trash that never should have been made. I would happily Clockwork Orange myself for weeks on The Final Frontier or Into Darkness or Nemesis or “Threshold” or “Spock’s Brain” before I would even consider rewatching this.

If this is what the Star Trek franchise has left in the tank, it’s time to close up shop and go back into hibernation for a decade or so. If Berman and Braga got shown the door for Enterprise, then Kurtzman richly deserves to be fired for greenlighting this.

BONUS MORNING-AFTER CONTENT:

Two further thoughts occur to me in the cold light of day. First, this isn’t even a Section 31 story. The only “moral ambiguity” is that they’re operating in an area where Starfleet doesn’t have authorization—but their goal of preventing an ultra-deadly weapon from falling in the wrong hands is unlikely to raise eyebrows. The only questionable methods they use are to punch a guy a couple times during interrogation. Second, it isn’t even a Michelle Yeoh vehicle. As in Picard, the new characters take up a bizarre amount of space, and her fight scenes don’t even showcase her that much. (Also like Picard, it concludes with a Marvel-style “stinger” for a show no one could ever possibly want to watch — but Section 31 goes that extra step of joking about Turkana IV, which Tasha Yar described as dominated by “rape gangs.”) My thought going into this is that it might be a halfway decent espionage thriller that’s a little glib about the liberal values associated with Star Trek. I walk away not knowing what anyone involved even thought it was supposed to be at all.