The official trailer for “Star Trek: Section 31” is here, and it’s clear once again that Paramount+ is boldly going into uncharted territory for the franchise: The first ever direct-to-streaming “Star Trek” movie could very well, as Jonathan Frakes noted to IndieWire earlier this year, open up a whole new format for “Star Trek” storytelling — a format that could simply allow for a whole new array of “Star Trek” stories to be told.
Michelle Yeoh is back as sassy, psychopathic Philippa Georgiou, who was the Emperor of the Terran Empire in the mirror universe, where she ate conquered subjects and threw nemeses in her “agony booth” at a whim. She’s joined by Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky, Kacey Rohl, Sven Ruygrok, James Hiroyuki Liao, Humberly Gonzalez, and Joe Pingue. Miku Martineau will play young Philippa Georgiou.
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, with a screenplay by Craig Sweeny and story by Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt, “Section 31” is expected to focus on Georgiou in the late 23rd or early 24th century (and include an appearance from doomed “Yesterday’s Enterprise” captain, Rachel Garrett), after she parted ways once and for all with the Discovery crew. In this trailer, she’s apparently running her own space station, which is some kind of floating pleasure palace, it looks like. But of course, the Federation pulls her back in.
The existence of Section 31, a clandestine black ops intel organization inside Starfleet, was first revealed on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” in the ’90s. Generally depicted as morally bankrupt, the idea is that Section 31 is willing to do whatever it takes to protect the Federation. It’s “the ends justify the means” here to protect the rest of the interstellar union and ensure that Starfleet can be as pie-eyed and optimistic and egalitarian as they want to be. As the trailer says here, “to protect the light, they fight in shadow.” Someone has to do the dirty work so everyone else can keep their hands clean.
Is this a betrayal of the Federation’s values? (Or a betrayal of franchise creator Gene Roddenberry’s values?) Well, to many other Starfleet characters depicted in the franchise over the years, it is. (Section 31 was depicted on “Star Trek: Enterprise” as even predating the Federation, existing as early as the 2150s.) It’s also a way for “Star Trek” to have it both ways: If none of your characters have conflict, if they’re all good people, it can be tough to find the drama. By focusing on Section 31, it’s like the writers having fun with being bad. But of course, in very PG-13 terms.
Will it all hold together? We’ll find out, when “Star Trek: Section 31” streams on Paramount+ January 24.
