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Star Trek: Section 31 Review: The franchise’s first Paramount+ film that’s boldly going… nowhere

Star Trek: Section 31 Review: Boldly Going Nowhere

Review: Star Trek: Section 31

Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh returns to her iconic Mirror Universe character in Section 31, a movie that, in our eyes, marks the first fail of the new Star Trek era thanks to its disorienting cinematography, shallow characters, predictable plot, and charmless world.

You’ll remember that Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) journeyed to the future with Captain Michael Burnham in Star Trek: Discovery, but left through the Guardian of Forever soon enough because she was too far removed from her own time and her universe. It appears Georgiou landed in the early 23rd century, and soon set up shop at a massive space station, where Section 31 tries to recruit her for a shadowy mission.

We are first informed of her tragic past before we explore Georgiou’s activities in this new time. In the Mirror Universe, a teenage Georgiou (Miku Martineau) left her family’s home on an unnamed planet in the Terran Empire to participate in a contest with 18 other young people to see who would become the new emperor of the Terran Empire. This contest, which happens entirely off-screen, aims to turn one of the young people into the purest form of the Terran Empire – so in other words, not a good person. During this contest, Georgiou became close to a young man, San (James Hiroyuki Liao). The pair ultimately fell in love as they competed in this contest together, and even adopted a phrase they secretly shared that symbolized their relationship: “We are two, but one.”

This being the Mirror Universe, this story has an unfortunate ending. Georgiou does succeed in the contest, which means she gets to return home to her parents and two siblings after two years of being absent – but only because she needs to kill them as a final rite of passage to emperorship. Moreover, San, who was unable to kill his own family to secure the empire’s leadership position, becomes Georgiou’s servant and is even physically branded as such. Thus begins the diabolical reign of Philippa Georgiou.

L to R Rob Kazinsky as Zeph and Omari Hardwick as Alok in Star Trek: Section 31 streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

A Night at the Baraam

In the early 24th century, Georgiou is living a fanciful life on a fancy space station, the Baraam, under the alias Madame Du Franc; her role here, seemingly as a proprietor, is somewhat mysterious and never explained. Section 31, the black ops organization first introduced in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and then featured prominently in the second season of Discovery, sends its creatively named Alpha Team to the station to forcefully recruit her for a mission. The mission involves arresting the infamous Georgiou and using her likeness to secure a piece of technology brought aboard by a black-market weapons dealer, Dada Noe (Joe Pingue); the Alpha Team must accomplish this mission in 24 hours (for some reason).

“Being authorized to arrest me isn’t the same as being able to arrest me.”

– Georgiou to Alok.

Let’s talk about Alpha Team first, along with our brief impressions of them:

  • Alok (Omari Hardwick), the leader of the group. Alok is the only one with any substantial backstory, but even this attempt at characterization falls flat thanks to the “tell, not show” style in which his story is presented. More on that later.

  • Quasi (Sam Richardson), a shapeshifting Chameloid who aims to be the movie’s comedic relief but fails thanks to an anemic script that doesn’t know when or how to crack a joke.
    • Quasi came on Section 31’s radar because he proved the existence of gleo-clusters, a formerly theoretical area of science that proves events in life “bloom and blossom” in any number of possibilities. Strangely, gleo-clusters are never mentioned again in Section 31 despite the attention paid to it during Quasi’s introduction. Perhaps such clusters are this franchise’s attempt to be flexible with established Star Trek canon?

  • Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), who is not the emotive Vulcan he appears to be is a microscopic organism called a Nanokin who controls a Vulcan android. Fuzz, who inexplicably has an Irish accent, can leave the Vulcan at any time and fly into tiny spaces. Is this Men in Black, or a Star Trek movie?

  • The mech-man Zeph (Robert Kazinsky), is a human who has a mechanized exoskeleton. To our great disappointment, this character is played as a stereotypical meathead and seems so out of place in a Star Trek story. His banter with Quasi tries to relieve tension but ends up being cringy.

  • Melle (Humberly González), a seductive Deltan who, despite her white dress, meets a red shirt’s fate early in Alpha Team’s mission.

  • Lieutenant Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), a young Starfleet officer who is involved in Section 31 to ensure they stay on the straight and narrow. In The Next Generation’s classic “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” Garrett is later seen in this timeline, where she heroically captains the Enterprise-C back to an unwinnable battle with the Romulans. Garrett learns a bit in Section 31 about being in chaotic situations, which we are led to believe informs her later command.

Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou in Star Trek: Section 31 streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

With their idea to capture Georgiou off the table, Alok gets the former emperor in on the mission by alluring her with promises of “getting back in” on the action (as if we hadn’t heard that cliché line before) something she likely has sorely missed since being on the Baraam. Alpha Team describes to Georgiou the intricate way they initially planned to capture the dealer, but Georgiou suggests a simpler, more effective plan.

Using a phase discriminator both on herself and then on the case that holds the weapon, Georgiou simply confronts the dealer, grabs the case, and walks away, leaving the frustrated Dada Noe unable to do a damn thing about it. Of course, things aren’t that simple, as a masked person arrives using his discriminator and tries to grab the case for himself, which leads to a protracted melee between Georgiou and this man for control of the weapon case.

This battle is a neat concept and perhaps the most creative offering this movie produces. The two fighters turn their discriminators on and off to navigate the fanciful environment as they vie for control of the weapon case – although we got flashbacks to The Next Generation’s “The Next Phase” as we repeatedly wondered why Georgiou, her opponent, or the weapon case don’t go through the floor as they discriminate in and out of phase.

Georgiou ultimately loses control of the case to the masked man, but not before getting a look at what’s inside it: a horrible weapon that she, back in the Mirror Universe, commissioned to strike fear in the hearts and minds of enemies everywhere. How did this weapon come to be in the Prime Universe, and what does the masked man want with it? Georgiou will get no answers before she’s knocked out by Alok, who grows even more suspicious of the former emperor upon learning she knows what the weapon was.

After Georgiou gets knocked out, a bit of her backstory is revealed. In her prime as the Terran Empire emperor, she commissioned a weapon of unspeakable power, something that would keep her enemies in line through fear alone. Such a powerful weapon even led to its creators committing suicide, in shame for what they created. Delivering the final product to Emperor Georgiou is San, who is also horrified by Georgiou’s intentions. The man even commits suicide himself, preferring death to serving under a tyrant. San’s demise hurts Georgiou, who still valued him as a friend even after years of servitude.

The former emperor wakes up deep underground in a Section 31 safehouse facing Alok, who has some questions for Georgiou. But before that, Georgiou reads Alok like a book and determines he must have faced tyranny at some point in his life. Alok readily tells Georgiou his story, hoping to gain her trust.

Alok was born in 20th century Earth, just a kid when the Eugenics Wars raged. His family was slaughtered by augments, but one of them took him in (for reasons unknown) and augmented him. This led to Alok fighting with the augments against his will. It sure would have been nice if we saw this story play out, instead of Alok simply monologuing about it.

Rob Kazinsky as Zeph in Star Trek: Section 31 streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

The Godsend

Georgiou describes to Alok and his team that the weapon stolen from the Baraam was the Godsend, a doomsday device designed to help Georgiou rule the galaxy. The Godsend – which, at Georgiou’s discretion, doesn’t have a failsafe – could cause a chain reaction of destruction from planet to planet – kind of like a Death Star on steroids. The answer to how the weapon came from the Mirror Universe comes from interrogating the weapons dealer, Dada Noe, who is actually from the Mirror Universe, and reveals there is a pathway to that universe hiding in the Crescent Nebula. Regularly, two ion storms collide in this nebula, which creates a passage to the Mirror Universe. Noe insists that the masked man was able to steal the Godsend on Baraam because there must be a mole in Alpha Team. Before anything can be done with this information, an explosion interrupts the interrogation.

After Georgiou and Alok are transported off the exploding ship, they face a concerning question: is there a saboteur amongst the Alpha Team? The disturbing fact is that any one of them could have a motive, which leads to intense tension in the group as they embark on an investigation to find the saboteur and get off the planet.

“A monster can only be a monster. A monster with regrets is useless.”

– Georgiou to Alok

While Georgiou, Quasi, and Fuzz try to repair a garbage hauler that is conveniently and inexplicably located near the safehouse, Alok, Zeph, and Garrett try to repair the safehouse’s communications array. Things get more complicated when, after the array is mysteriously fired and a message sent somewhere to the stars, Zef is found dead; evidence on the body initially points to Rachel Garrett as the saboteur.

While questioning Garrett over her possible role in Zeph’s death, Georgiou deconstructs the young Starfleet officer, which helps illuminate more about Garrett’s character – or at least, her character as portrayed in this movie. Despite outward appearances, Georgiou thinks Garrett is someone who thrives in chaotic environments, and she reasons Starfleet assigned Garrett to this Section 31 mission because that’s where she’d be most useful.

Thanks to footage reconstructed from Zeph’s mecha-suit before he died, Georgiou soon deduces who the saboteur is. By infiltrating Zef’s body, Fuzz was able to control the man’s mech suit, destroy the communications array, and then gruesomely kill the lunkhead before beaming away to the masked man’s ship. Alok also asserts Fuzz planted Zef’s blood under Garrett’s fingernail to frame the Starfleet lieutenant, but we’re not quite sure how the tiny Nanokin would have accomplished this.

Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou and Omari Hardwick as Alok of Section 31 streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

A long, ugly fight scene ensues as Fuzz, with Zeph’s exoskeleton under his control, tries to escape the Section 31 facility. We mean ugly, in that the unnecessarily fast editing and subpar visual effects mean this sequence is just tough to watch. Good luck keeping track of who is where and when. The fight ends with Georgiou and Fuzz high above the base on a platform as the Vulcan reveals San is still alive, and that the pair are working together. And just like that, Fuzz is whisked away via transporter to San’s ship.

“The past catches up with you.”

“Doesn’t mean it always wins.”

– Georgiou and Alok.

Alpha Team gets the garbage hauler operational and chases after San, who has the Godsend and is on his way to the Crescent Nebula to hand the weapon over to the Terran Empire. The empire, in turn, will use the Godsend against Starfleet and conquer the quadrant. High stakes, then, for our protagonists who only have a garbage ship at their disposal. Alpha Team is also extremely lucky, in that they can reach the Crescent Nebula from this unnamed Section 31 safehouse in less than 30 minutes, which is how long until San is supposed to use the opened passageway.

The Passageway

The hauler, navigated ably by Quasi despite not quite knowing how to read the language the controls are in, indeed catches up to San and gets close enough for the garbage ship to lock on with its numerous tractor beams. With San unable to traverse the passageway, Alok and Georgiou beam aboard.

Alok and Fuzz get into a fight of their own, which ultimately sees the micro-being escaping San’s vessel and damaging the garbage ship. Luckily, Garrett is learning to embrace chaos, and she devises an unusual plan to destroy Fuzz’s ship using… a teddy bear. Yep, Garrett triggers an explosion near Fuzz’s ship using the combustive components of a teddy found in the garbage ship’s hold.

Meanwhile, a melee ensues between Georgiou and San, which culminates in not only the Godsend activating and counting down until detonation, but also the former emperor mortally wounding her former friend and lover. To Section 31’s credit, this scene introduces a rare bit of vulnerability and emotionalism to Georgiou’s character, who mourns San’s passing. This sequence is where Yeoh, the Oscar winner, shines the most in Section 31. Soon enough, San is dead and Georgiou and Alok await the explosion generated by the weapon which will permanently close the passage to the Mirror Universe. Lucky for them, Quasi beams them out just in time… as if there was any doubt.

Three weeks later, the gang, who are quite chummy with each other now, finds themselves back on Baraam. Georgiou needs to decide if she wants to continue working for Section 31, and of course, she does. The team, which now includes Fuzz’s wife inhabiting an identical Vulcan body as her husband, has their next mission described to them via Control (Jamie Lee Curtis), the AI governing Section 31’s operations. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis cameos as Control, which we didn’t have on our Star Trek bingo card. Her casting here seems out of place and distracting.

Sam Richardson as Quasi and Humberly Gonzalez as Melle in Star Trek: Section 31, streaming on Paramount+, 2025. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

All Cloak and No Dagger

Section 31 is a movie that contains mostly never-realized potential. First and foremost, the movie’s TV show roots are evident, as the story was clearly written for multiple episodes but was then chopped and reorganized into a 95-minute movie. Whereas so many TV shows these days should be movies instead (we’re looking at you, Star Wars and Marvel), this is an instance of a movie needing to be a TV show.

Some expansion on Section 31’s story would have done this production well. Here are some aspects of the movie’s story that, if included, would have made the narrative more cohesive and worth getting invested in:

  • Seeing young Georgiou compete to be the Terran Empire emperor seems like a natural way to invest the viewer in her decision to kill her family and enslave her lover. Still, as it stands we have no idea what this contest entailed. Moreover, what motivation did she have to follow through with that final rite of passage? Was her lust for power great enough that she was okay with killing her family? Where did that lust for power come from?

  • Why did Georgiou and San fall in love? What attracted them to each other? Was it just the fact that they were competing in the Terran Empire’s brutal contest together? Again, we don’t know anything about their time in the contest.

  • Seeing Alok’s tragic backstory as an augment instead of just hearing about it would have made his role in the end-of-movie melee more impactful. Exploring the impact of genetic augmentation has always been an interesting theme for Star Trek; Section 31 takes a swing at tackling this subject and completely misses the ball.

  • How did Georgiou go from stepping through the Guardian of Forever in Star Trek: Discovery to being proprietor on Baraam? And why did she adopt the alias, Madame Du Franc?

  • How did San fake his death right under the emperor’s nose? Wouldn’t Georgiou have confirmed her lover’s demise and done something with the body? As it stands, we only know San gradually immunized himself to the same poison Georgiou used to kill her family, but that hardly explains how he was able to fool the cunning Georgiou.

Story defects aside, the directorial style Olatunde Osunsanmi employs does the movie no favors. We were used to Osunsanmi’s dexterous camera on Discovery, which included substantial movement to generate energy and cinematic flair, but here he goes overboard. There are punch zooms seemingly every few seconds – it’s like the camera is on a yo-yo! These annoying zooms happen even when the scene’s energy doesn’t call for it, which is just distracting.

Most action scenes aren’t well choreographed either, save for the aforementioned Baraam fight. A particular low point in the movie is the chase that happens atop a moving platform between Georgiou, Fuzz, and others in the sprawling Section 31 safe house. This scene is filmed and edited so poorly, with distractingly bad effects work, that it’s just hard to keep track of what’s going on.

Section 31’s new characters are unendearingly archetypal. Quasi, the comedic relief, is undermined by weak attempts at humor – which is a shame because we know Sam Richardson, who you might remember from Veep, can be quite funny. Zeph is a formulaic “meathead,” out of place in Star Trek‘s typically intellectual or morally complex pantheon of characters. Fuzz’s Irish-accented Nanokin controlling a Vulcan android feels gimmicky and unexplored, and having his wife show up at the end feels even more gimmicky and ridiculous. Alok, perhaps the most grounded character in Alpha Team, is betrayed by poor writing despite the hint of a great backstory.

Rachel Garrett is the most disappointing addition to this movie. It’s an inclusion that feels more like fan service than anything else. We understand Garrett here is young, while Garrett in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is older, wiser, and burdened by unbearable decisions. We’re led to assume Garrett’s experiences embracing chaos in Section 31 will ultimately inform her character in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” but did any part of Garrett in TNG seem like she enjoyed the chaos of command? We would love to ask the creative minds behind Section 31 why they opted to bring Garrett back into the franchise in this way, and not just write Garrett’s role in this story as a new character.

There are traces of a good Star Trek story here. Georgiou’s reckoning with a superweapon she created during her monstrous reign is ripe for interpersonal exploration, especially when that weapon led to the death of her only friend. Alok’s story, meanwhile, touches on complex themes begging for exploration, like the consequences of genetic augmentation, dual identities, redemption, forgiveness, and free will, but this movie does very little with it.

It pains us to say it, but here’s our takeaway from Section 31: it’s dumbed-down Star Trek with little soul or respect for the intellectual franchise it inhabits. Any substantial storytelling here is threatened by an over-reliance on action, cliché spy tropes, and ineffective characters inhabiting a fancy but hollow world. As a vehicle for her exploding stardom, Michelle Yeoh deserves better, and fans deserve a more thoughtful Star Trek story.

Stray Thoughts:

  • The movie’s reversed opening logos for Paramount and Star Trek reflect the Mirror Universe aspect of this story.

  • The Terran Empire’s ship that appears at Georgiou’s homeworld looks like it could be the ISS Charon, the Terran flagship as seen in Discovery.

  • We’ll examine a common movie trope by questioning how Control obtained the footage of Georgiou shown in the beginning briefing section.

  • The Federation can’t legally go to the Baraam and thus needs Section 31 to do so, because of the Treaty of Ka’Tann. This treaty is referenced in Enterprise’s “Fallen Hero.”

  • Chameloids were previously seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

  • Why did Georgiou’s foot get stuck on the other side of a wall after she phased through it? It seems like it’s a problem with her phase discriminator, but wouldn’t that mean her leg phased into solid matter? And she’s able to undo the glitch no problem…?

  • In the scene where San commits suicide, why would Georgiou immediately assume he took the same poison she used on her family years ago?

  • Georgiou has amazing eyesight if she can pick out one brunette hair on Zeph’s dark suit in the middle of the night.

  • Why didn’t Alok or anybody else hear Zeph’s exoskeleton move as the team was confronting Fuzz?

  • Control notes the next mission Alpha Team will go on involves Turkana IV, which is the planet Tasha Yar comes from in The Next Generation.

  • Where is Baraam going in the final moments of the movie? It warps away along with all the ships surrounding the station. It’s a neat visual but prompts so many questions.


Stay tuned to TrekNews.net for all the latest news on Star Trek: Section 31, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Prodigy, and more.

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Written By

Kyle Hadyniak has been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and isn't ashamed to admit that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis are his favorite Star Trek movies. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @khady93.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Dan Davidson

    January 23, 2025 at 10:54 am

    Spot on, man. A complete and utter disappointment on so many levels.I used to love Section 31 because of what it stood for – it was the dark side of a Federation and prompted many moral discussions. This was just garbage and I feel bad for Michaelle and Olatunde, and especially for Boey and Erika who had originally been tapped to run the series when it was first announced.
    This isn’t Star Trek at all. It was a complete mess with a Star Trek sticker thrown on it. 🙁

    • Kyle Alexander Hadyniak

      January 23, 2025 at 7:47 pm

      Yeah, super disappointing. I watched it twice for the review and I doubt I’ll ever watch it again.

  2. Cheve

    January 24, 2025 at 11:54 am

    It breaks my mind that the normal thing nowadays in fan sites is to publish the complete plot of a movie the day it is released.

    Is completely beyond my comprehension.

  3. GoingPostal

    January 24, 2025 at 4:27 pm

    The editing is dreadful – it’s worse than every few seconds in places; there are dialogue scenes where the camera cuts to something else every second and it completely kills those scenes it’s so distracting. I don’t want to feel like I’m sat in a shaking box when I’m watching a movie.

  4. Jerry

    January 24, 2025 at 8:02 pm

    Oh, how we wanted this to be great.

  5. Arthur MacArthur

    January 24, 2025 at 11:44 pm

    This is not Star Trek. I turned it off after 10 minutes. Paramount lost money and subscribers trying to rewrite Star Trek into all sorts of spin-offs until they finally listened to fans and produced the smash hit, Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Did they learn anything from this? No. They come out with yet another non-Star Trek spin-off that is once again overwhelmingly criticised. Stay true to Star Trek canon, Paramount, and stop wasting your time and money driving subscribers away with trash like your latest effort.

  6. Emin can

    February 2, 2025 at 12:31 pm

    I can’t wait to watch Michelle Yeoh again and again in the new episodes of Section 31, it was an excellent series, her acting was excellent.

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