REVIEW SCORE
FLEET SCORE
Focused on the outliers of the Star Trek Universe, the idea of the Section 31 film was to go beyond Starfleet and present the universe from a different perspective and in a different way. An idea thats been done with some hit and miss success over the past ten years.
Section 31’s initial pitch and writing team was something that had the potential to be something we could enjoy and even with mild hesitation, we were eager to see where the once series would go now a new writer had condensed the vague idea into a one off experiment, a streaming based movie to add to the tapestry of different flavours Star Trek has offered in resent years. It was also an experiment in offering a first real glimpse at a batch of heroes outside Starfleet’s remit and explore beyond the usual mission statements.
Now it’s live for everyone to see, it’s fair to say that whatever creative meat grinder the original concept went through, the end result just fails to land.
It’s hard to look at this film without looking back at what spawned it with Discovery. The Terran version of Phillipa Georgiou was introduced in the first season and became a recurring part of the team until it’s third. Through that time the former Terran Emperor regressed to a pety life of crime, was recruited by section 31 then influenced by the collective togetherness of the Discovery crew’s personal sacrifices combined with some forced self reflection, started to become a better person under the influence of the Federation.
Section 31 just repeats it all again. Just without the satisfying ending. Or acknowledging the character building. Or anything that really made her story work. The first twenty minutes tries to set up the story in the same method as Suicide Squad, offering files informational as Georgiou is clever and mean in her most over the top way. But even on screen you can sense the direction of this all being rushed to get to the end and into the story. It’s just a shame the story that follows isn’t very good.
A retelling of Georgiou’s guilt and an off book mission utilising Section 31 has some great potential, and some potential was shown here. When the film took itself seriously, you got a good glance at what could have been. Particularly in small, quiet moments between Alok and Georgiou. But for some reason that’s where it ended.
The rest of the team seemed incredibly unimportant, just there for a joke and a laugh or a random death scene which is a bit of a disservice to the fine bunch of actors they brought in. The plot itself is a Mirror MacGuffin that just seems sloppily convenient and all the tremendously intriguing set up from Discovery that brought us here just seems to have been reset harder than the conclusion of a Voyager episode.
In a strange attempt to appeal to a wider market, the film tries to take elements from every other franchise and completely forgets to include what made the Star Trek franchise – and it’s leading star – work. Where the film does show promise all happens in a sparse few scenes leaving the rest to be poorly constructed, poorly thought out standard B Movie fare that makes it all look and feel like a random script for Torchwood more than a Star Trek production.
What it leaves is a vague impression of what could have been and at best becomes a severe disappointment for the direction they went instead. The whole point of 31 is that they’re the morally grey area who work to justify their actions in a darker interpretation of how to protect the Federation. Here they’re just a bunch of misfits that are the go-to black ops team along with someone just there to say the word Starfleet a few times. There’s no spoilers here, but if you watch the first five minutes and have seen more than one TV show your whole life, you’ll know how the last five minutes will go.
As a random stand-alone film, this is passable mindless fun in the same way that Tank Girl or Mystery Men is. But as a Star Trek film fitting into the greater continuity, it sticks out like a sore thumb and offers nothing of note to draw people in to want more from the greater franchise. When it comes to adding another layer to the greater tapestry, it fails to add any substance in the way that it’s predecessors have.
In short, Section 31 as a concept has a lot of potential. This film just fails to find it.
Q2 Fleet Review
About the author
ADM JT Marczynka, DoFA
Creator of things, writer of words, caffeine addict. Director of Communications for Starfleet Command Quadrant 2.
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