Star Trek: Section 31

1.5 stars.

Streaming release: 1/24/2025
[PG-13]; 1 hr. 35 min.

Screenplay by Craig Sweeny
Story by Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

Cast includes: Michelle Yeoh (Philippa Georgiou), Omari Hardwick (Alok Sahar), Sam Richardson (Quasi), Robert Kazinsky (Zeph), Kacey Rohl (Rachel Garrett), Sven Ruygrok (Fuzz), James Hiroyuki Liao (San), Humberly Gonzalez (Melle), Joe Pingue (Dada Noe)

January 24, 2025

Review Text

In terms of the television and streaming industry, it's been an eternity — a full six years — since Section 31 was first announced as the next Star Trek spinoff series. In that time, we've seen an entire generation of Trek shows arrive and depart the Paramount+ extended universe as part of the boom and bust of the streaming era — not to mention a pandemic, strike, and Michelle Yeoh, the star who was to have the series built around her, winning an Academy Award. For a long time, Section 31 occupied the space of "I'll believe it when I see it." Now it has finally arrived in the form of a direct-to-streaming movie, which looks suspiciously like a movie retrofitted from an abandoned TV pilot. Is it any good? Nope.

The problem with Section 31 isn't that it's anti-Trek or too dark or any of those other things having to do with the philosophical debate surrounding the titular black-ops organization. The problem is that it's so relentlessly generic and exists so far outside any notable part of the Trek universe to care about at all. The concept — Mission: Impossible in space — is not actually a bad one. (The episode even opens with an M:I-style voice-over from "Control" — voiced by Jamie Lee Curtis and not to be confused with the AI Control from Discovery's second season — that lays out the basics for us.) But the thing about Mission: Impossible (the movies) is that they exist in a lived-in real world where espionage, globe-trotting, and exotic locations take on an elevated appeal — while the action sequences and stunts are innovative, exciting, and absolutely first-rate. In Section 31, which is largely set-bound and obviously constrained by budgetary limitations, the main selling points of M:I become liabilities. That means the story will mostly have to carry the day.

That story is severely lacking in juice and conviction. Part of the problem is that we have to again wallow in the baggage of Emperor Georgiou's tortured past. This was probably inevitable, but it makes the story much less about Section 31 and more about the played-out Terran mirror universe. We see, in an opening origin story, how Georgiou became emperor — forced to murder her own family to ascend to the throne — while her lover-turned-rival for the throne, San, was given the same test but didn't go through with it. It's Georgiou's original sin — the deal with the devil she made for power — which, of course, will be visited back upon her here.

Georgiou joined Section 31 in 2257 but abandoned it — unbeknownst to anyone in this story — to travel to the 32nd century with Discovery, only to eventually return at this uncertain point in time, which would have to be well into the 24th century, given the presence of Lt. Rachel Garrett ... but honestly makes no sense when you try to square that time frame with an apparent gap that's something like 60 or 70 years. Georgiou has retired to run an extravagant nightclub called the Baraam that's "far outside Federation space." Now, Alok (Omari Hardwick), a Section 31 operative, has been ordered to recruit her back into the organization to stop the sale of a deadly weapon that could destabilize the region.

We're introduced to the motley crew that is Alok's team not once but twice — first in a sequence where Georgiou reveals to Alok that she has picked them out of the crowd at her nightclub based on clever observation, and then again when they all individually introduce themselves. The team includes all-angles analyst Quasi (Sam Richardson), who is a Chameloid shapeshifter (see Star Trek VI); a Vulcan robot body (Sven Ruygrok) controlled by a microscopic alien named Fuzz, who has a volatile emotional range; mechanized meathead Zeph (Robert Kazinsky); straight-arrow Starfleet overseer Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), who will eventually go on to become captain of the Enterprise-C; and Deltan sexytime-role-player Melle (Humberly Gonzalez), who is the first to unceremoniously die in the action.

Well, it turns out the deadly weapon isn't just any weapon, but a potentially quadrant-destroying doomsday device called the "Godsend" that Georgiou herself ordered to be created by the Terran Empire many years ago. It has crossed over into our universe through an anomaly (that is a passageway between the two universes) by a courier named Dada Noe (Joe Pingue), whose Terran Empire employers intend to use it to destroy the Federation and take over our galaxy in an invasion. And the one behind this plot is none other than San (James Hiroyuki Liao), Georgiou's lover-turned-rival, who now leads the Empire as an evil equal to Georgiou's reign.

This movie honestly has very little to do with Section 31 as we knew it from its limited use in Deep Space Nine, where it challenged some core beliefs about Starfleet. Section 31's role isn't even the topic of discussion here, and Starfleet is an afterthought, because it's all about Georgiou and her reckoning with her past. Not to be alone in confronting such demons, we also have Alok, who survived the Eugenics Wars of the 20th century only to be made into an Augment by the one who killed his entire family. There's an attempt to do some Character Work with these people who have done terrible things and now try to live with it, but it's pretty generic and devoid of real substance.

The scope of the storyline is surprisingly limited for an espionage-style thriller. Rather than warping across the galaxy to do spy things, the story maroons everyone on a desolate garbage planet where they learn that one member of the team is actually a mole. The question: Which one? Another question: Who cares? Since we just met everyone, it's hard to get too worked up about who might be the traitor. Granted, some are more likable than others (like, say, Sam Richardson's character) simply by virtue of us having seen the actors elsewhere. The middle passages of the movie feel mostly like much-ado-about-nothing wheel-spinning (including Zeph's murder and Garrett being framed for it) until we can reach the finale.

The finale, at least, ratchets things up a notch, with the showdown between Georgiou and San, which makes a pitch for being about the emotional resolution between these two characters and the sins of their past. Granted, it's done while a Ticking Bomb Cliché counts down to zero as the bridge of a starship explodes around them. There's a parallel fight between Alok and Fuzz (once he is revealed as the traitor), as well as Garrett working with Quasi to do the Clever Starship Maneuvers in the face of San's superior firepower. The usually orderly Garrett embraces chaos as a strategy in the face of overwhelming adversity, which I guess passes as character development. But the action is often itself filmed as visual chaos that feels like it's trying to cover up lackluster CGI. (The chase through the tunnel of the garbage planet is particularly egregious.)

At the center of it all is Michelle Yeoh, who is delightful just about everywhere I've seen her. (When she was written off Discovery, the actor was so loved that they had an extended toast to the character even though the character was such a relentless jerk to the ones doing the toast.) With Georgiou, Yeoh is saddled with an antihero who isn't likable or interesting enough to overcome the fact that her quips fall flat, and the character is beyond played out from her Discovery days. By not advancing this story beyond revisiting her Terran past, it misses the opportunity to do something else and just break loose and be fun.

That's not to say this story takes itself too seriously, because it doesn't. But overall, there's nothing inventive for Yeoh to do like in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The dialogue and jokes have nothing on Guardians of the Galaxy, which seems like another of its inspirations. We have banter free of wit or charm. Meanwhile, the action has little excitement. Yeoh is an action icon who was part of one of the greatest sword fights ever filmed, but what we mostly get here is over-edited exercises in graceless chaos. (It starts early on, with the fight between Georgiou and the suited mystery attacker, which takes place in and out of phase in a way that mostly creates messy and muddy visuals instead of coherent action.)

So, yeah, this is a wholly forgettable clunker. When you think about it, this honestly would've been better as a pilot than a movie. At least a series could've started anew the following week with a hopefully fun mission devoid of all the dour Terran backstory. As it is, Section 31 is neither fish nor fowl. It's too busy wrapping up unfinished Terran Empire business no one cares about while also setting up without following through on its true ambition to be a spy enterprise. I guess that's what happens when you retrofit a series into a half-hearted movie.

Previous: Star Trek Beyond

Like this site? Support it by buying Jammer a coffee.

◄ Section Index

Comment Section

101 comments on this post

    Ugh.

    I had reservations about the film after watching the trailer. Now, that I have seen it. The people who are in charge of Star Trek have done an ugly to the franchise. There are so many problems with the film that it is hard to know where to begin. I am feeling more worried about the future of the franchise than I did before. There is one small consolation from this - it was a one-off thing.

    At least Rebel Moon was bad in a way that was fun to tear apart. This is just plain bad.

    Like, bad fanfiction written by someone trying to copy Guardians of the Galaxy while drunk, except without any of the charm.

    This does not feel like Star Trek. This feels like a really bad Guardians of the Galaxy rip off with “Star Trek” slapped on it.

    As expected, "Section 31" opens with a massacre, child death and torture. The film then proceeds with lame humour, snark, cliches ("Oceans Eleven" meets "Suicide Squad" meets "Guardians of the Galaxy"), cartoonish dialogue, and aestheticized violence for the next 2 hours.

    nuTrek gets praised for its "special effects", but all these shows and films look cheap and trashy to me. The actors will act on little sets, while being surrounded by curved screens upon which CGI landscapes or rooms or interior backdrops are projected. Elsewhere they'll be acting on a soundstage and then the camera will pull back to reveal CGI surroundings. Rather than make the universe feel expansive in ways Old Trek couldn't, this all just feels phony to me. The actors, the studio sets and the "stuff beyond them" are never convincingly integrated.

    The writing, acting and direction are really awful in "Section 31", and one imagines that the film was rushed to completion as some kind of tax write-off, or in an attempt to save or recoup funds spent on preparing the aborted "Section 31" TV series. If the latter is true, then this film becomes the perfect metaphor for nuTrek. nuTrek (mostly Disco/Picard) similarly functions as a kind of Sunk Cost Fallacy, in which the audience naively continues hoping things get better, because they've already invested time into it.

    I know Michelle Yeoh won an Academy Award, but I've always found her take on Philippa Georgiou to be terrible. She was fine in "Discovery's" pilot as an upstanding Captain, but has never been more than a cheesy pantomime villain as the cannibalistic Empress Georgiou. Her "gang" in this film are similarly cheesy, and as typical of nuTrek, all sound and behave like they come from contemporary Earth.

    While I can't say that I totally enjoyed it (the first 10 minutes were *brutal* to get through) as a Star Trek/Mission Impossible mashup it (sorta') works.

    The problem is that I don't think that a lot of Star Trek fans were asking for a Star Trek/Mission Impossible mashup -- and the implementation here seemed too rushed to be really enjoyable.

    There were elements of the movie that were fun enough that I can at least give it 1 and a half stars. The good news is that it's finally over as we've been hearing about this project for at least 4 years.

    Can we get something we've actually been asking for now? Like maybe a "Legacy" movie?

    Utter, utter rubbish. Cardboard characters, nonsensical plot, poorly directed (Disco's spinny cam and random flames in full effect) and worst of all, dull.

    And that Irish accent was a disgrace. Want an Irish accent? Hire an Irish person

    Anyone pause the video when they show the border that Starfleet can’t cross? It appears to go through the Federation. Earth is right next to the border and 3 starbases are on the wrong side. No attention to detail.

    Man, that was dumb. Not even dumb fun, just dumb.

    I've never seen anything save Rebel Moon which fails show not tell as badly as this movie. I'll freely admit that's probably in part because it was compacted down from a miniseries into a movie. This felt like at least four episodes crammed together (Georgiou's flashbacks and the three different acts). But it feels like it goes beyond that, with the tight 95-minute runtime. I feel like there was a more coherent yet even more boring 120-minute movie left on the cutting room floor. Regardless, tons and tons and tons of the dialogue was just straight out telling us about scenes we should have seen onscreen, or characters explaining who they are. So many shortcuts to get to A to B. Things like the betrayal may have actually landed well with more runtime, but it means little to nothing here, as there's too many characters, and they're all broad stereotypes, rather than people.

    Aside from the pacing being too fast, each of the acts seemed a step down from the last. It seemed like a lot of money went into Act 1, with the nightclub. By Act 3, it had descended into modestly competent hand-to-hand combat between four people onboard a ship's bridge. The story told us the stakes kept rising, but it didn't feel like it in terms of production.

    The story setup was also pretty odd. Yes, ultimately the story had personal stakes for Georgiou, but those stakes were not revealed until later in the runtime, meaning she decided to join this misadventure essentially on a whim. This is one case where I feel like the "mystery" made the movie worse - that the survival of San (how old is he supposed to be by this time?) should have been clear right off the bat, to give her character a real sense of motivation, rather than just being a chaos goblin.

    Speaking of which, I guess Rachel Garrett at least got a tiny bit of an arc here. Can't say that for a single other character.

    It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but I do think it's the worst Trek movie. Even in Trek movies I genuinely dislike there's often little character moments that ring true, but there were no great scenes here. Everything was so perfunctory.

    Bleh.

    We had an Ocean's Eleven with DS9 in its seventh season. The DS9 episode was beautifully written in comparison to this, and it shows how far Star Trek has slipped in its quality over the years.

    There is something else. I am autistic, so I am highly sensitive to the camera motions in this film, and they increased my anxiety and stress. I wish they would stop it.

    That was godawful. The leprechaun accent was actually offensive and we Irish don't usually get offended easily by that kind of thing but I expect better from something claiming to be star trek.

    Wasn't even quality-made. The audio mixing was awful, the visuals are washed-out and/or trite, the characters are caricatures and unlikeable, the plot makes no sense, and there's no reason at all to use the time period, or even the Trek universe at all, except they're trying to milk Michelle Yeoh's fans.

    Low point for Star Trek. And I watched them rip Icheb's eyeball out.

    The movie features a child's doll that explodes with the force of a nuclear bomb if you pour some liquid on it. That's really all you need to know about it.

    That was the most indescribable piece of Star Trek awfulness I've ever seen.

    So disappointed. It had the potential to be a really smart concept and pitch but it was like a reject Guardians of the Galaxy married to a sub-standard Suicide Squad script

    It was dull, full of one-dimensional cartoon characters, derivative, demanding of a needless extended fight sequence at the end and just generally poor. Michelle Yeoh deserved so better than this.

    I love my Trek but this is the first time in forty years I've seen anything with an ST badge on it that felt like so little effort had been spent - and having so little regard for what Trek is about and the universe it tries to portray.

    If this is the future of Trek it's time for it to come to an end. Who in their right mind would want to watch any more of this?

    Some random thoughts:

    - I like that this current era of Star Trek tries out new styles instead of simply copying the "7-ish crew members stand around on the bridge of a Starfleet ship and go on weekly adventures" formula. Some of those new styles work, others don't. Section 31 unfortunately didn't work. But this TV Movie format could be a neat way to try out new things.
    - As a lifelong Star Trek fan I liked the species they've brought back (Deltans! Cherons!) and giving the tricorders the TNG sound effect was neat too. Also, I'll have a closer look on the Federation map. I always love those canon tidbits.
    - Speaking of canon tidbits, at the end of the movie they go on a mission on Turkana IV. That's Tasha Yar's home planet on which the government breaks down sometime in the 2330s. And judging by Rachel Garret being a Lieutenant Commander she's probably still a decade or so away from commanding the Enterprise-C, so the Section 31 movie is set in 2330s. That means that Section 31 could have a hand in Turkana IV's government collapse (either causing it or trying to prevent it).
    - The characters in this movie behave just as nonsensical as the DISCO characters. They condemn Georgiou for being Literally Space Hitler but in the end they all hug and become best friends. WTF?
    - Other than that, this is a generic sci-fi action movie. If it weren't for the couple of species and namedrops, this wouldn't have any connection to Star Trek.
    - If I had a bar of gold-pressed latinum everytime they produce Star Trek movie featuring Section 31, and that movie then became the worst Star Trek movie at the time, then I had two bars of gold-pressed latinum. Which isn't a lot but it's still weird that they made that mistake twice.

    Typical Kurtzman "Star Trek" - absolute garbage. Jammer being generous giving it 1.5 stars. 0.5 would be my rating.

    I intend to watch this later tonight while under the influence. Even then, I suspect I'll be lucky to make it half an hour before switching off, going by the savaging this has gotten.

    I'll give it to Jammer for maintaining his balanced analysis in spite of the online pile-on from critics and audience alike.

    Still, I'd be fascinated to know what nudged it from 1 to 1 1/2 stars.

    A couple of other random thoughts.

    1. This is a spy movie without much of anything in the way of spy shit. We have a shapeshifter who doesn't get to use their shapeshifting powers for anything other than gags, a honeypot who doesn't get to seduce anyone (and promptly dies), and a "hacker" who only uses his ability to interface with tech to betray anyone. The closest we get to a competent operation pulled off by the team was the montage showing their planned heist in the first act - which Georgiou replaces with something far more boring. Then the second act is "who's the mole" bullshit, and the final act is punching and teching the tech (which we could have seen in any Star Trek show).

    2. There's an utter failure for the motley crew to even operate as antiheroes. For all that Garrett says she's there to keep them on the straight and narrow, they're very well-behaved. They don't murder anyone innocent, or even gun down mooks with abandon (something Michael Burnham had no compunction about). They don't steal anything, they don't lie to civilians, they aren't mean to puppies and kids. Aside from a handful of torture scenes (really, one torture scene) and more swearing, what we see isn't different from what we'd get from a Starfleet officer. Which I think showcases the theme drift over time, with the group Section 31 in name only.

    3. I dunno about Jammer, but I think this movie avoids zero or 1/2 star because Michelle Yeoh is genuinely giving this at least a B+ effort. Plus, while the direction was shit, there were some genuinely inspired decisions when it came to some aspects of visual design (costumes, aliens in the first act, etc.).

    I forgot to mention that the concept of a human sized body being a robot controlled by other miniature beings has already been done before - the Teselecta from Doctor Who season 6 (Matt Smith). And it was done much better there, I assure you.

    - Another repeat of the Disovery sin of "Everybody verbally acknowledges that she was actually Space-Hitler, but quickly warms to her anyway".

    - I could do without every new ship in a Star Trek production looking like it was designed in conjunction with the ragged corpse of a game that was once Star Trek Online so they can sell it.

    - The South African actor's attempt at an Irish accent was nothing short of an attempt to knock Sean Connery off the top spot of doing those. And he succeeded.

    - Maybe if you are going to built The Ultimate Weapon, make sure its countdown sequence can't be activated prematurely by it being accidentally knocked off a relatively short table.

    Wait. "San now leads the Terran Empire" I thought the Terran Empire collapsed soon after "Mirror, Mirror" and humanity was enslaved or scattered to the winds, powerless and discontent as a result. Did some writer forget to do their homework AGAIN?

    Sputnik said: "I like that this current era of Star Trek tries out new styles"

    DS9, VOY and TNG all occasionally did the spy genre (and more outlandish "mission impossible" styled spy tales, usually involving the Holo Doctor).

    The 20+ episode Old Trek format allowed for experimentation, too.

    Michele warned us...

    This thing was horrible.

    It was obviously a TV pilot made into a movie.

    STV no longer holds the mantle for being the worst ST movie.

    When the wife and I started watching it, she said... "is this Star Wars?"

    Visually bad, the music was bad, the opening credits were bad... the plot was bad, the solution was bad...

    Who dreams this shit up?

    I could barely make out most of the movie because it was so dark.

    Total sheeit.

    The only redeeming part of this thing was we got a little backstory for Phillipa.

    You'd think part of this thing would have been Phillipa arriving from the 31st century and how she found section 31.... something.

    So much for the hopes of Georgio joining section 31, taking this opportunity to turn a new leaf and working behind the scenes to combat the Federation's enemies.

    One-half star for giving us a young CAPT Garrett?

    Yikes

    "The dialogue and jokes have nothing on Guardians of the Galaxy, which seems like another of its inspirations."

    This is the problem with Star Trek since at least 2009. The writers and directors working on this franchise seem to take inspiration from every franchise except Star Trek. Sure, they'll throw in a few Easter Eggs or memberberries from other parts of Trek lore, but, aside from SNW arguably, they seem unwilling or unable to continue pre-2009 Trek episodic storytelling, optimistic vision for the future, and intellectually engaging social commentary.

    @ Dom,

    I think the issue is that Trekkies are not a large enough audience to make modern streaming Trek viable. Or at least, the subset of Trekkies willing to pay for Paramount+. So they keep trying to market things as Trek+ something else. Discovery was originally intended to be dark, edgy modern Trek for people who liked Game of Thrones, though it quickly backed off this. Prodigy was an attempt to get kids into Trek. Starfleet Academy will likely be an attempt to get young people interested in Trek.

    This, it seems to me, was an attempt to get stupid people interested in Trek. I think it's important to note in the marketing, the Star Trek nature of this was very much played down over Michelle Yeoh. We were not the audience, as Trekkies. The audience is people who want dumb action-adventure streaming slop movies.

    Good God what a horrible piece of junk. Just when you thought Kurtzman and Co. couldn't ruin ST anymore than they have. Dom, well said about every post-2009 Trek, except SNW and LD. And please, no Legacy movie. The only good thing about Season 3 of Picard which everyone, including Jammer, has fond memories of, the only good thing was seeing the TNG cast together again on the bridge of the D, dragged out of mothballs, and then ending with a poker game like in All Good Things. But other than that, PIC season 3 suffered from all the same nu-Trek fallacies of DIS and PIC Season 1 and 2.

    In this movie, Rachel Garrett suffers the same characterization problem as Seven of Nine did in PIC. Kurtzman and Co. are just name dropping, attaching the name of a fondly remembered and venerated character to a poorly written new character that has no connection to and bears no resemblance to the old character from classic, pre 2009 Trek. The character of Seven in Picard could have been anyone. The way she was written could have been any action hero, angry misfit cliche character you see in any action movie. Same here with Rachel Garret. I see no resemblance to the Garret from the Ent. C. This Garrett could be any action hero, straight arrow/boy scout misfit cliche character you see in any action movie.

    And what the hell is a chaos goblin?? Chaos is my jam? My friend with benefits? What the hell doe that even mean?

    And it has been long lamented that nu-Trek characters talk like early 21st century hipsters, this Garret being the ost obvious offender. "Whatevs..." Please. On TOS you didn't hear Kirk and Spock and Bones saying stuff like "groovy" or "far out".

    We shouldn't be surprised that this movie was so bad, given what we have seen from Kurtzman and Co. before. Now maybe they can do a one off move with Tilly and Starfleet Academy, instead of a series. That way we won't e subjected to a series built around Tilly. And PLEASE no Star Trek Legacy movie or series. I honestly don't care about Picard adn Crusher's love child/borg hybird/conduit or whatever he was. And I've seen enough of the new Seven. No offense to Jeri Ryan though, I just don't think Seven was written well since the writers had little knowledge or appreciation for the original Seven on Voyager.

    Speaking of Jeri Ryan, you can see her again in Dark Winds, Season 2 on Netflix.

    I'm kind of a weirdo on this site because I actually really like Disco, and I'm very excited for Starfleet Academy (DS9 and TOS are my overall favorite Star Trek series because they're what I grew up on). Anyway, I thought this was the most disappointing Star Trek project I've ever seen.

    From a filmic perspective, the directing felt rushed and self-conscious, and the editing was terrible—overpaced yet somehow tedious, filled with excessive digital zooms and meaningless reaction shots. There were so many scenes of characters standing in a circle, talking over each other about things I didn’t care about, because we were never given a chance to get to know them.

    Honestly, the only thing I liked was Jamie Lee Curtis’s excessive outpouring of camp at the end. Other than that, this left me feeling depressed. I saw Letterboxd reviews from people saying this was their first Trek (because of Michelle Yeoh), and they gave it a terrible score. We’ve probably lost viewers like that for good. Just so depressing.

    Oh, sorry rant continuing: If you watch the scene before Michelle enters the Guardian of Forever, she’s doing the Prime Georgiou performance because her three months in her Mirror Universe test started her on the path to meaningful change. But all of that is gone in Section 31. She has taken nine steps back, resetting to how she was at the end of Disco Season 1.

    Some might argue that her development was never properly set up and didn’t make sense, and I get that. But if we accept her character growth in Discovery, then this project actively undermines it. Maybe everyone forgot or just didn’t care because Michelle Yeoh wanted to deliver one-liners. I love her, but being funny isn’t her core strength.

    It's not weird to win an Oscar and then do a bunch of crap think Ariana Debose, Halle Berry. Anyway, hoping this is a particularly dense moment of failure that doesn't speak to what's coming in the future.

    @ Kyle,

    Regarding Starfleet Academy, Tilly is not going to be a main character, but either recurring or a guest character (in the same vein as Admiral Vance). Jett Reno is the DIS holdover who's part of the main cast.

    It's a bit strange, given the obvious setup DIS did in order to set her up for that show, but she's been distancing herself from the Trek franchise in general for some time. Maybe she's not happy with how things worked out in Trek for her, maybe she has other personal stuff going on. My impression is she's transitioning back to theatre.

    @Brandon Adams how exactly eere yhe visuals trite or how can visuals be trite? And why was the audio mixing awful. ..just curious..thanks for sharing. Did no one like this,??

    I'd rather go back and watch Who Watches the Watchers from TNG for real Trek instead of this. On a personal note, I don't like Yeoh.. it's hard to hear what she is saying.. she doesn't ennunciate her words very well and she has no range.

    I realize she won an Oscar. Whatever I said what I said

    Maybe the one silver lining of nuTrek is that the visual style and costume design always looks really cool. Some of the character concepts like the robot Vulcan were also absurd but managed to at least be unique or new for the franchise. Barring that, this wasn't even a Section 31 movie, just a Discovery: Mirror Universe movie.

    I expected it to be bad, but I never expected it to be this bad.

    The plot, to the extent there was one, was pointless, and utterly disconnected from where we last saw Georgiou. The new characters were shallow, unsympathetic, and unfunny. Their banter was clearly a half-assed, cheesy attempt to copy the vibe of "Guardians of the Galaxy."

    The worst part? The concluding conversation, which was essentially "you're a soulless monster who killed billions, but we love you just the way you are" is just an insult to everything Star Trek once stood for. It's also an insult to every viewer who isn't as amoral as the writers and producers of this dumpster fire.

    @Kyle,

    "On TOS you didn't hear Kirk and Spock and Bones saying stuff like "groovy" or "far out"."

    That analogy really helps show why using modern language can take viewers out of Trek. To casual viewers, "whatevs" might not stick out because we're used to hearing it in our lives. But 60s hippie language would have made TOS age like milk, and "whatevs" is going to make Section 31 seem dated in a few years.

    I can't help but think about the insanely bad decision to set Picard Season 2 in the year 2024 with events and technology that clearly were not around in the year 2024.

    @Extra Bread

    "I saw Letterboxd reviews from people saying this was their first Trek (because of Michelle Yeoh), and they gave it a terrible score. We’ve probably lost viewers like that for good. Just so depressing."

    I've been warning about this for years. nuTrek fans have been defending lazy, generic, action slop by claiming that it'll help attract new fans to Star Trek. But bad storytelling is going to give people a bad impression of Trek. 15 years of this approach and can we really say the Trek franchise is bigger and in a better place? Are we actually gaining more than a handful of new Trek fans?

    @Dom

    It's true that they made a terrible movie, but since Letterboxd focuses exclusively on films, it's clear this person wasn’t enticed to watch the franchise by any of the other 13 movies, not even Wrath of Khan. They only watched Star Trek because of the pop culture buzz around Everything Everywhere All At Once and Michelle Yeoh. Maybe there’s a group of viewers who are never going to approach Star Trek on its own merits anyway. (I guess the movie could've also been good. That would've helped)

    I get what you're saying about the franchise feeling more generic, but I felt that far more in the JJ Abrams movies than in the new shows. I have introduced a lot of people to Discovery, and even more to Strange New Worlds, and now they are working their way through either TOS or '90s Trek. The earlier seasons of Discovery definitely feel more in line with the JJ films, with more style over substance, but I think season 5 in particular had a lot of TOS hallmarks. It had a grand empathy puzzle quest that culminated in a conversation with an alien explaining the origins of life. (Granted, in TOS, that would have been a single episode.)

    I think SNW S3 is the biggest chance for Star Trek to blow up in a big way. If you look at Nielsen's Paramount's recently reaching new heights in viewership. I'm hoping that SNW will be able to expand its successful run so far.

    The bad storytelling is my gripe, too. I think it's perfectly acceptable to test the water as to how far Trek can go. But you cannot do it without the basics. You have to construct engaging stories that viewers can get immersed in. If you don't write good plots and stories (Trek or others) nobody is following you anywhere. And generally speaking, why would you assume that you get new viewers when even the core audience says 'nah, it's not that good, even we don't like it'?

    Is there a *market* for blond Vulcan robot bodies with ears that stick out to the sides? 'Cause Wisp got hers awfully fast. Did she pick it up at the local used-Vulcan lot?

    Oh, and as for Fuzz's leprechaun accent: the reason finally came to me. He's one of the "little people."

    It occurred to me while watching Season 1 of that Halo television show that Kyle Killen and Steven Kane didn't like Halo. They wanted to do a sci-fi show set in a spacefaring military under siege by an alien threat set around the ethics of a supersoldier program, they realized it was too close to Halo, and so they just went and asked for the IP rights to Halo and made it there. They may never have cared that much for Halo at all.

    I think Kurtzman is the same. Whatever his words to the contrary, it's clear by now that he does not like what Star Trek was, or he'd be doing it. He DOES want to do paramilitary contemporary sci-fi adventure, but he doesn't want it to look like a Trek ripoff - which it inevitably will because Trek is the flagship example of that genre - and he needs the viewer base, so he just co-opts Trek for his own purpose and does whatever the quippy grimdark hell he wants.

    It's so disrespectful. Imagine if he liked cross-stitching, or old cars, or drones, and I came along and told him his hobbies are stupid and he needs to enjoy something else. It would hardly be my place.

    STAR TREK IS A PERIOD FRANCHISE. Its people dress a certain way, talk a certain way, think a certain way. One of the TNG producers said that someone who can write a 19th century drama is probably better qualified to write for Trek than someone who can write the best NYPD Blue. TNG remains one of the most-watched TV shows of all time, and most of Kurtzman's dreck is going to be forgotten. I'll let you decide whether that TNG producer was on to something.

    That was the worst Star Trek I’ve ever seen. The doll that blew up, as it was floating in space, said “we’re all gonna die”? Was that a self parody? The info from control felt like I was playing a 90s video game getting a mission briefing. Georgeo and main character punch the one guy in the face really hard twice and he doesn’t have a contusion or anything. Why do these shoes have to have scenes in awful night clubs? I totally don’t get the character that was like a germ or something controlling a robot. From the moment the bass dropped during the establishing shot of the club or whatever I knew there was no way I’d stay within this movie but constantly be outside the 4th wall. And again with the phase shifting, they walk through walls but still breathe air in this phase, and the floor must shift phase beneath them because they don’t fall through. Fight scenes go on for what seems like hours and no one gets tired. Nothing I like about Star Trek is in this movie. It reminds me a quote I heard once from someone in the tv industry who said “is the audience getting stupider, or is this just what we’re giving them?”

    @Extra Bread, I hope you're right about SNW Season 3. I genuinely do like SNW. It feels like they they understood the assignment: updating Trek with episodic, character-driven storytelling like 90s Trek, but with better special effects and acting.

    Really atrocious.

    Many aborted series pilots turned TV movies turn out this way. I was truly astonished it ended the way it did, presuming like this would still be the start of something. They carry out some Hunger Games-style competition to decide who's the emperor? How moronic.

    A few interesting new additions to the universe in terms of species and tech, like Fuzz and personal phased shields.

    Olatunde Osunsanmi is a terrible director. Always has been. All flash, no substance. He's from the Snyder & Bay Film School of More is More. Can't be overstated how much I dislike his work.

    Mercifully it's over, and it didn't do any damage to the canon and can be safely ignored forevermore.

    . . .

    It's a shame Kacey Rohl's Garrett was so wasted. If you're going to put a character like that in a project she should really be the hero--imagine if instead of Garrett it was a young Kirk or Picard relegated to the same role she got? But of course this is Michelle Yeoh's movie, so she has to be the hero all the time, solve every problem and punch every villain. It's inherent to the project I guess.

    Still, I enjoyed her prim-and-proper buttoned-down portrayal of Garrett a lot, at least up until the end when all of a sudden she became Tilly. Bummer.

    Also Garrett should never be okay with Georgiou. Never. Section 31 is okay with her because they're completely amoral. Burnham is okay with her because she looks like her dead mentor and it's complicated. No one else from Starfleet ever should be. Ever, ever, ever. Some kind of detente with her, maybe, if she's useful enough for their purposes, but they should never be comfortable being in her presence. "I love that for us?" Fuck off, she's killed billions of sentient beings for her ego.

    Big fan of the actress from Hannibal and The Magicians and I would have loved to see what she could have done with the Garrett character in a project worthy of her. It was great casting. Ah well, yet another disappointing "what might have been" for the Disco corner of Star Trek.

    (Which is what this should be looked at as, really, just a coda "bonus episode" of Discovery Season 5 wrapping up a loose end. And by that metric, dare I say it was at least more entertaining than the rest of Discovery S5? Such a low bar, but maybe. I'm floating the idea.)

    I groaned so hard when Omari Hardwick's character was revealed as yet another Eugenics War holdover. The raging hard-on for Nu-Trek writers for the Eugenics Wars will never cease it seems. It's just not a terribly interesting part of the canon for most of us Trekkies . . . I mean, is it? I've never gotten the sense that it is.

    Oh and they're confusing the issue again because he said "20th Century" when SNW has made clear it now took place in the 21st century as a precursor to WWIII. Great job! Then again, his character got punched in the head a lot, so whatever.

    How is Xan (San? Are we sure?) still alive all these years later? Georgiou is time displaced. And he wasn't the leader of the Terran Empire, he wanted to get the weapon to become the leader, right? And shouldn't the Terran Empire be collapsed by now? Even in Discovery S5 the ISS Enterprise had fled the collapse, meaning it had to be within 30 years of the end of TOS most likely. I guess we can squint at this one a bit since for all we know the Terran Empire IS in a state of collapse, just unknown to our protagonists and that's why the dude had access to and fled with the weapon and that's why San wants it, to bring back the Empire.

    One thing I liked was bringing back Deltans. Star Trek has been afraid to touch their whole weird sex thing with a ten foot pole and for a hot minute I was excited that maybe this Section 31 project ("movie") would have some actual balls and do something a bit risque. Silly me, they just killed her off in five minutes.

    There's a map of the Federation. Oh dear, that's never a good idea. Nerds are going to pore over it forever and point out all the inconsistencies.

    What was with aaaaaaaalllllllllllllllll the flames. Literally there's just flames going off all over the planet for no goddamn reason. Is it because Olatunde thinks flames = shortcut for badass? No, dude. Go back to director school.

    I think I'll just stop there because if I don't I'll be doing this all day. Might come back another day though and do some more though, I dunno.

    . . .

    Did you all watch the trailer for this on youtube? 'Cause if I have to find one unreservedly positive thing to say about this movie, it's that the final project was not as bad as I feared from that trailer, holy god.

    I'm shocked Jammer gave this drivel 1.5 stars. I would personally rate it 0.5 stars. Was this script written by a prepubescent boy who learned about Star Trek from video games he played with "God Mode" turned on?

    Where to begin? I'll leave out the 'This isn't Trek, this isn't Roddenberry's vision, etc.' even though those are all valid complaints. The only thing 'Trek' about this production is the background sound effects. They didn't even bother with the normal Starfleet/Federation looking phaser prop, because.... reasons???

    Since when did Terrans pick their leaders via an obviously-ripped-off-from-The-Hunger-Games process? I thought Terrans murdered their way to the top? Did Sato go through the Hunger Games after she threatened Earth with the Defiant's photon torpedoes? Fucking stupid.

    Suzanne Collins should sue Paramount for ripping off her IP.

    I said it in my comment (https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-dsc/s5/face-the-strange.php#comment-116799) on Discovery's "Face the Strange" and I'll say it again here: These stylized martial arts fights are BORING. They must have been HALF THE RUNTIME of this train wreck.

    C'mon TPTB: These were cool, a decade ago, but even then they couldn't substitute for plot. Now they are just B-O-R-I-N-G. Consider transferring some budget from stunts to the writing team....

    Rachel Garrett? She's too old for this timeline. We're supposed to believe the (at the time) 45-year old Tricia O'Neil was playing a ~100 year old woman?

    Concur with Kyle above, they're just name dropping shit hoping the fanboys go "OMFG!" instead of thinking how terrible the script, characterizations, story, and basically everything about the movie except Michelle Yeoh's wardrobe is.

    I'll repeat my lament about Discovery going back to the 2nd episode: You guys had Michelle Yeoh and the best thing you could come up with for her was this???

    Wow. This was boring generic Scifi with an actress paid 12 million for starring in this drivel. It was a lot worse than the usual discovery action hour. The story was nonsensical, humanizing space Hitler for killing their own family, to nobodies' surprise that did not really work. Otherwise, it generic Scifi action that feels not at all like Star Trek. It feels more like a bad episode of Dark Matter, but with a bigger budget. One Star, utter drivel.

    Poor Michelle Yeoh. Cuba Gooding Jr. just popped a bottle of champagne because he's no longer the fastest fall from grace for an Oscar-winning actor.

    That dishonor still goes to Cuba Gooding Jr., but only because John Q Public doesn't know about "Section 31" at all.

    Yes. This was bad. I know a couple of people who liked it, but to be honest, they like a lot of mediocre stuff.

    I hope it never gets made into a series. Hope a better idea comes along.

    I miss Star Trek. But not enough to watch bad Star Trek.

    This 90-minute telefilm has managed to unite Jammer and I in mutual dislike. One star for me. It’s just badly conceived, hokey, unmotivated, and superficial storytelling from start to finish. The over the top opening with Phillipa murdering her family recalls the trashiest and hokiest mirror universe stuff from DS9; the only thing that kept me from quitting on the show right there is the fact I’m a Star Trek completist who has sat through everything ever produced. This ranks up there with the worst of all time, full of bad production values and acting. Nothing in it resembles believable human behavior or coherent plot development; it’s just a series of empty adventures constructed from the spare parts of other stories.

    Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’ve reached another Star Trek: Enterprise moment where Star Trek has died and needs to stay dead for a while. I’m all for innovation and I thoroughly enjoyed the JJ Abrams reboot films. But with the exception of some stretches of Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy, most of the post-JJ series have been muddled messes. Much like Disney with Star Wars, it seems Paramount-CBS is just using the Trek brand to churn out meaningless drivel.

    I had planned to contribute a scornful note of my own to the sea of discontent but after watching, I'm just not feeling the vitriol that most others do. Not that I particularly liked Section 31 or thought it was good. It is merely cut from the same cloth of what we had seen before, time and again from Kurtzman-era Trek. You can praise or condemn the elements of its minutiae but in broad strokes it is really no better or worse. Actually, it earns some bonus points for cutting out the sagging middle and mystery box wheel spinning that characterizes a typical season of Discovery or Picard. By salvaging a movie out of a season of television -- which most people automatically assume to be a downgrade or mark of failure -- it efficiently combines a pilot and finale, rousing the viewer's curiosity in new characters and plot lines, and delivering any payoffs without delay. And even if it doesn't quite pay off, at least many hours and months haven't been squandered after having been strung along in vain.

    I thought the new characters were at least as interesting, if not more so, than those composing the Picard ensemble (Seasons 1 & 2). It's true that they didn't get the opportunity to really develop and be known and cared about as fully fleshed out entities, but is that a realistic expectation to have of a 90 minute movie? Do you know anything but the thinnest of sketches of the ensemble cast of supporting characters in your typical stand-alone espionage/heist movie or sci-fi thriller?

    For me to even countenance defending this tripe speaks to just how far the bar has been lowered in all things Star Trek these days. Everyone knows it. The only difference is I don't pretend there is anything extraordinarily awful about Section 31 compared to what we are already accustomed to. To be frank, it's on par, or barely a step below Star Trek Beyond and I think the only reason so many give that movie a pass is because it has so many familiar and beloved characters/actors in it.

    The real reason Section 31 is receiving such intense backlash from all quarters, even the staunchest of loyalists, is because they're just so sick and tired of it all: the lazy storytelling, the failures of imagination, the lackluster direction, the atrocious dialogue, the contempt for the vision of what once made Star Trek great and trading those values for mere spectacle and cynicism. Most of all, they're just tired of the smug, self-satisfied regime that won't stop coming out with minor variations on this played-out tune until it is supplanted by a brighter visionary.

    Star Trek has introduced many fascinating concepts. The Mirror Universe and Section 31 each raise some fascinating ideas. The new streaming Star Trek movie, Section 31, takes these fascinating concepts and reduces them to the lowest common denominator. This is a follow-up to plot lines in Discovery, which handled the concepts poorly. But Section 31 manages to amp everything up to astounding levels of stupidity.
    We open with former Terran Emperor Philippa Georgiou, returned from the 31st Century to the early 24th Century, and living on an “exotic” space station outside of Federation territory. Supposedly, Georgiou has been “infected with a conscience.” So she’s content with living a shady and seedy life, but not full-blown evil. Georgiou is recruited by the shadowy Section 31 for “one final mission” which will take advantage of her ruthlessness and special skills. But her past is never far behind.
    Based on the overall bad reviews, I wasn’t expecting much. But this is bad in a way I didn’t really expect. This is loud, mindless action, punctuated by worn tropes and tired cliches. Every plot twist is telegraphed in advanced. We are told these characters are trying to grow, but we never really see it. There is no attempt to explore any moral grey areas. Everyone is either ridiculously evil, or willing to do evil things to fight the greater evil. But nobody every stops to ask why – it might interrupt the fight scenes or the explosions.
    My biggest problem with Discovery was that it was frequently tedious. At least Section 31 isn’t boring. And Michelle Yeoh goes a good job vamping it up. The rest of the cast does a decent job with the material they’re given.
    And I'll concede that the opening sequence on the space station is interesting. But there is a ton of CGI in dark places where its hard to tell what is going on. Characters do stupid things because the plot needs to do them. And the story, such as it is, doesn’t so much resolve as just stop. It’s not thought-provoking. It’s not fun. It’s not even that interesting except to see how stupid it can get.
    I can't even properly hate-watch this. This isn't "so bad its good" or even "so bad its terrible." I simply can't get myself to care about what's going on.
    Rather, this just pisses me off. I am a long-time Star Trek fan. And I can appreciate that Trek needs to change with the times. But it also needs to hold onto the fundamentals of what makes it unique-rather than just being generic science fiction. I’m not sure what Section 31 is trying to be, but it sure isn’t Star Trek.

    I was going to watch this, but after reading Jammer's review and learning that it was directed by the talentless Olatunde Osunsanmi ("I'll try spinning the camera around a lot—that's a good trick!"), and finally after watching it be eviscerated by RedLetterMedia, I feel good about skipping this one.

    Like RLM, I'm of the mind that the Star Trek IP needs to be given to someone other than Paramount, and certainly someone other than Kurtzman/Goldsman, et al. When Marvel movies are more smartly written than Star Trek, you've got a problem...

    I'm currently taking a Search Engine Optimization course for website marketing (which, blegh) and it's almost hilarious to me how much Kurtzman is not following basic principles of running a brand and showcasing authority:

    Expertise: looking like you know what you are talking about, building trust with your audience that you can speak with authority and knowledge on the topic you are trying to speak on.

    Cohesiveness: Maintaining a proper brand identity by honing in on what audiences want and expect from your brand, and meeting the needs you promised by the product you're selling. Part of this avoiding diluting your brand by covering far to wide a range of topics. This approach suggests to audience a lack of confidence in your product and erodes trust.

    And finally, A pleasent user experience: Locking stuff behind a paywall will not encourage engagement. Filming scenes so dark it's difficult to see the content I would assume would also frusterate the user experience and lead to disengagement.

    Alex Kurtzman has created one of the most disengaging eras in a 50 year IP, and that's just from a marketing standpoint, not a creative one. No wonder Paramount has been astroturfing sites and articles, pushing ads, and going for the "It's a feature not a bug" tactic in interviews; it's the only way they can push for authority and engagement, cause the content itself certainly isn't.

    WAIT QUESTION POTENTIAL CONTINUITY VIOLATION..Hasn't anyone else realized, Burnham daid in one if her last episodes she read Georgiou's file and she dod NOT kill her own mother..so why did theu show her killing her mother and family here??

    Love this comment from Tim Buckley: “Based on the overall bad reviews, I wasn’t expecting much. But this is bad in a way I didn’t really expect. This is loud, mindless action, punctuated by worn tropes and tired cliches.”

    I miss the days when Star Trek made you think and feel something. Despite Michelle Yeogh’s game efforts, this streaming movie does neither. It’s just ugly, forgettable sludge.

    @ philadlj "Like RLM, I'm of the mind that the Star Trek IP needs to be given to someone other than Paramount, and certainly someone other than Kurtzman/Goldsman, et al."

    Who would you suggest? The only outfit that could probably pay the asking price is Disney and I really don't think anyone wants to see the Star Trek IP in their hands.

    I'm somewhat heartened they've taken a hands off approach with The Orville, but they'd never do the same with Star Trek. It's too big of a franchise. It'd be plastered all over their theme parks, there'd be a zillion different productions, they'd be even more obnoxious than Paramount when it came to suing fan productions/websites/etc., and, just, ugh. Look at what's happened to the Star Wars franchise under their "stewardship."

    I'd honestly settle for 24 episode seasons of Strange New Worlds. I know it will never happen but that's where I'd like to see them go. Get Star Trek back to "Exploring strange new worlds." I'm burned out on the "universe" they're trying to create, with this and every other franchise, and I wish this era of TV/movie making would end already.

    Just for fun, I’ve asked a chatbot to come up with plotlines for a couple of made-for-streaming movies. Here they are:

    STAR TREK: ECHOES OF TOMORROW
    When a temporal rift fractures the timeline, Captain Burnham must ally with alternate-reality versions of her Discovery crew—including a dark-mirror version of Book—to stop a paradox that threatens all existence.

    STAR TREK: LEGACY OF RED
    A new Red Angel emerges in the 25th century, but when Jinaal (Trill symbiote of the Guardian of Forever) reveals the suit’s true purpose is to reignite the Big Bang, Dr. Kovich recruits Tilly and a reluctant Adira to race against the Breen for control of creation itself.

    There you go, Paramount. Now you can give Kurtzman the boot and use the money to make more Yellowstone spin-offs.

    SNW is crap, too. It just looks semi-decent compared to all the other garbage Paramount has been churning out.

    It's unbelievable that people can watch DS9 and TNG and think that SNW is up to par.

    17 minutes in, Emperor Georgiou drums her fingernails on the table in her office. "Booorinnnng."

    JRS nods and mutters to himself. "Yep."

    *sigh*

    A boilerplate action movie with the thinnest of thin veneers of Trek applied to it - some names, some sound effects, that actually rather nifty Starfleet phaser design - that left no trope untouched in the search for...what, exactly? I wasn't entertained. Thoughts weren't provoked. It showed me nothing new, nothing unexpected.

    Directed by the reliably mediocre Olatunde Osunsanmi, whose 'style' is at least fitting for this kind of movie, Section 31 wanders all over the shop in tone. Seriously, we begin with a quote from the father of tragedy Aeschylus and you think hey, someone who was part of putting this together has actually read something. Maybe this will be a bit more intelligent than the trailer portrayed. But no. All it means is that someone read and watched a bunch of things...then ripped off the bits that they wanted, and shoehorned them into this 100 minute borefest. So we end up with Suicide Squad slash Guardians of the Galaxy slash Andor slash Men In Black slash Mission: Impossible slash The Hunger Games, only it doesn't do anything as well as any of those and does a lot of things worse. All the while failing to act or look like Star Trek. I would applaud them for doing something different if that had meant doing something different to not just previous Trek projects but to other action movies as well. No such luck, this is rip-off central. Any humour to be found is stomped on by both the resolutely terrible dialogue (shades of DIS in that regard), and the small detail of having seen the protagonist murder her parents and younger sibling at the beginning making nothing afterwards seem particularly amusing. But it tries, God does it try. Mostly by having the characters insult each other, then laugh at the 'cleverness' of their insult.

    Now, the action and fight sequences. Those should be up to snuff, eh? What with Michelle Yeoh still able to pull such things off even at 62. Well, maybe she could or maybe she couldn't. We'll never know, because Osunsanmi didn't really let us see. Perhaps all the camera cuts and pulls serve a purpose other than disguising a liberal use of stunt performers, but damned if I know what that might be. It certainly doesn't add anything of any artistic merit.

    There's the usual non-twists that we've come to expect in nuTrek from DIS and, sadly, other nuTrek productions at this point including the de rigeur 'curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!' from Sven Ruygrok's Fuzz (in the service of Georgiou's boyfriend turned nemesis San, played by James Hiroyuki Liao) that isn't just telegraphed - it has its own Bat Signal. Along with that betrayal comes our old favourite of Bond Villain Stupidity, where somehow - despite having a weapon pointed right at her - San doesn't in fact shoot Georgiou down and instead gets into a exceedingly boring fistfight with her. Pacing is out to lunch, again a DIS hallmark. The dialogue, as mentioned, is simply awful culminating in an exchange at the 41 minute mark about the name of the weapon - is it Godsend or God's End - that had me reaching for paracetamol to shake the headache that the anger had given me. None of the cast are outstanding, though Sam Richardson does his best with the material handed to him, but a special word if I may for both the cod Oirish accent that Ruygrok puts on as Fuzz and the Benoit Blanc take-off that he does for Fuzz's wife. I simply can't describe how lousy his voice work is. And then there's Kacey Rohl as Rachel 'future captain of the Enterprise-C' Garrett. Her presence here is simply so the makers can say 'see, this is so a Star Trek film!' but really this character could have been from current day TikTok right down to the outfit and hair in the end scene. Certainly it's hard to see how this woman becomes the one we saw in TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise". And even the stuff that nuTrek does pretty well - the VFX, music, makeup - was pretty ordinary here. Certainly nothing better than we see on the regular from TV Trek these days.

    Good points...man, I'm struggling. Hooray for continuity with Quasi's chameloid eyes (see Iman's character Martia in the sixth film), the mention of ion storms regarding getting from mirror universe to prime one and the reference to Turkana IV (where Tasha Yar grew up) at the end, I guess.

    I expect that there's an audience somewhere for this. But I'd be very surprised if that audience was in any way made up of Star Trek fans.

    Unlike many here, I'd rather see new crew, new adventures, with nothing more than a brief cameo by old characters, and only if necessary. I'm not fond of recycling old characters for the sake of cajoling 5-to-6-decade old Trek fans. PIC Season 3, for instance, was great for nostalgic watching (TNG crew, Enterprise D, Shelby and Ro cameos, written of unnecessarily both,by the way), but it offered nothing new, and certainly did not go even an inch into the Trekkian spirit of "seeking new worlds and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before." Thus,for me, no thanks to another project like Legacy with recycled, repetitively ubiquitous characters, especially if helmed by Matalas. PIC season 3 was fine for reasons mentioned above, but just enough, and no more!

    All this to say, I was excited for Section 31 movie, bringing in new characters..... but.... alas! As Jammer and many others have pointed out, story is lacking in depth, and cliches are in abundance. And scenes like the machine (whatever it was) not working, but suddenly working when Georgiou kikcs it, are shallow and eye-rolling.

    Yeoh is great (Jammer is right, she is delightful everywhere I've seen her too) as much as the story allows it, and objectively, costumes and make-up department do their jobs. Yet, this is your basic action (sometimes lame action) movie in space that is supposed to set up something more meaningful, but I fear we'll never get there.

    The commenters who point out the continuity violations… reminds me of McCoy in Star Trek II. “Logic? My God, the man’s talking about logic. We’re talking about Universal Armageddon.”

    The entire “movie” contained at best microshards of that which is recognizably Star Trek-any Star Trek ever filmed or produced. Picking on continuity violations is like telling someone who is cleaning a house as, without warning, it starts to burn to the ground, “Missed a spot!”

    Should I say it in advance? There were no strange new worlds or new life forms worthy of interest in this movie. Fuzz is mildly amusing.

    Who on Earth was this movie made for? The only people who might get a kick out of whatever Chat GPT-written Trek “references” like Turkana Iv will roll their eyes. Michelle Yeoh fans will not like seeing her action scenes cut in slice and dice close-up. Fans of action movies will not marvel at the CGI. The CGI literally makes garbage, look bad.

    Who can save Star Trek? Don’t know. Any younger Nicholas Meyers around?

    @ Black Oatmeal

    "It's unbelievable that people can watch DS9 and TNG and think that SNW is up to par."

    SNW > DS9 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Don't get me wrong, I love DS9, but as I've gone through re-watches of the classics (plus DSC/PIC and sadly this movie) I've come to realize that it wasn't really 'Trek' in the same way TNG or VOY were or The Orville is.

    A diehard Trek friend of mine who long resisted watching it and finally did at my behest --before my own recent re-watch -- summed it up perfectly: It's too political. I didn't realize what he meant until I re-watched DS9 from start to finish and then I understood. It wasn't a ding -- he also said it had exceptionally intelligent writing -- it was a lament.

    There's a large contingent of Trek fans that want to see that opening monologue from TOS/TNG/SNW, where we explore strange new worlds and via that the human condition. They're less interested in Bajoran/Klingon/Cardassian politics, Section 31's machinations, The Maquis' machinations, etc., etc.

    I'm into a Voyager re-watch now and am -- much to my surprise -- enjoying it more than the DS9 rewatch. The DS9 rewatch was a real slog at times, particularly Season 7. Granted, only in Season 2 right now, so ask me how I feel when we're up to 6 or 7, but still, I'm starting to think I owe a bunch of Voyager fans in my circle an apology for years of trashing the show.

    DS9 has many individual episodes in my personal Top 10 (Duet, Far Beyond The Stars, The Visitor, Rocks and Shoals, In The Pale Moonlight), more than any other series including TNG, but in the aggregate, TNG and SNW are better shows IMHO, closer to what I want 'Trek' to be than DS9 was.

    @Tim: I think the reason why DS9 is revered by some/many is because the writing overall was top notch. The show wrote three-dimensional characters with stories where drama was skillfully unraveled and messages genuinely tackled. It also had some of the best acting in Trek.

    Those are pretty universal qualities, not limited to Trek. Every show could do it. NuTrek for some reason doesn't want to go there. The writing in DSC or Sec31 was just very unambitious. And I don't understand why. Good writing doesn't cost more than bad writing. And writing with depth doesn't mean that it is difficult to understand. In my opinion it rather means the opposite. Good writing makes the story easily understood. Politics doesn't have to be part of it. But an ethical dilemma should be because it makes good drama, even in comedies.

    So I'm a bit at a loss why Trek doesn't improve its stories.

    Dunno why people even watched this. We all knew this was going to be hot garbage. I’m a sometimes defender of some new Trek (from fans who obviously don’t understand Trek and talk nonstop about womanizing a-hole Roddenberry and his “vision” while simultaneously voting for Republicans) but I don’t waste my time watching something that’s obvious trash.

    Where do you people find the time to watch things you don’t want to watch? Lol

    Wow- this is my first comment on here in a decade. This movie was pure garbage. Agree with the earlier post that this was worse than Rebel Moon 2- which while incredibly bad was at least new and didn’t feel like the last square in the script toilet bowl dispenser.

    1.5 stars is way to generous. This never should have been released. It is a disgrace to the franchise and should be embarrassing for everyone involved.

    There are so many interesting stories that could have been told involving Georgiou and Section 31, and instead they decided to make a movie that consisted of essentially 90 minutes of continuous incoherent fight scenes with a bit of juvenile humor from a bunch of incompetent characters that we have no reason to care about at all sprinkled in.

    I've never felt like I wasted my time watching anything related to Trek until this crap.

    As a fan of DS9 at its best, the show that introduced the notion of a Section 31, I can safely say I will never, ever, ever watch this movie, unless, perhaps, at gunpoint.

    Perhaps.

    @Q-less "I think the reason why DS9 is revered by some/many is because the writing overall was top notch. The show wrote three-dimensional characters with stories where drama was skillfully unraveled and messages genuinely tackled. It also had some of the best acting in Trek."

    The unspoken implication when a lot of Niners say this (not saying you're one of these) is that DS9 was somehow better than TNG in these regards. That's the characterization I reject. DS9 was not as serialized/planned as its fans claim, nor was TNG (or even Voyager) as episodic as its detractors claim.

    If you go by the test of time, well, TNG is far and away the fan favorite. Voyager beat DS9 in the ratings when they aired together.

    Again, I'm not anti-DS9. It was my very first exposure to Trek, up late one night in the 90s with insomnia and caught a 3AM (re)airing of Duet. Top 10 (maybe even Top 5) episode in the entire canon and that was my introduction to the franchise.

    It's just that I can see why DS9 isn't everyone's cup of tea. Our re-watch was a slog at times and that 'slog' was almost entirely because of the Dominion War arc. As my friend said, "It's too political."

    Ask yourself if you'd rather wake up on the Enterprise-D, on the long term exploration mission, or DS9 in the middle of a war....

    @Tim while I agree the Dominion War arc is a central feature of the series that may not be everyone's cup of tea I think the secret sauce isn't really that.

    Rather, what made DS9 special was main cast chemistry and especially the addition of so many recurring secondary support characters of such consistent quality. D' Mar, Martok, Garek, Kai Winn, Weyoun, Dukat - there are just so many stupendous actors stacking DS9's lineup and they interacted beautifully with one another and with the main cast to create so many great combinations - Garak and Julian, Martok and Worf, Weyoun and D'Mar, Kai Winn and Sisko, Dukat and Kira, Dukat and Sisko etc...

    As I have noted before TNG was largely about a handful of main cast superstars singlehandedly carrying episodes - Picard and Data, with a handful of lesser stars - Riker and Worf. Yes there were some top notch guest characters, notably Q and Guinan, but they were mostly just standalone one-offs and they didn't really have much relevance to the series as a whole and didn't matter much outside the narrow confines of a handful of standalone outings.

    I am not saying DS9 was better than TNG mind you - but even less memorable episodes were elevated by this amazing cast chemistry and plethora of storytelling opportunities arising from the diversity of the cast. This worked especially well with the long Dominion War arc where characters like Weyoun and D'Mar could shine by contributing a little something to so many different episodes. Whereas with TNG even the likes of Patrick Stewart couldn't hold the entire episode week in week out and by season 7 the whole edifice just collapsed whereas DS9 was strong to the very end.

    As for Voyager, It certainly was more accessible than DS9 with its reset button format and its insistence on negating its own premise by being "TNG in the Delta Quadrant". That accessibility may have led to its greater popularity (especially with more casual and even Mon Trek fans) which perhaps resulted in a better baseline than DS9 which ended up more as a niche product.

    But the unfortunate problem with Voyager was that while more accessible it just wasn't that good. Even accepting that there were some great characters (I know many will argue for the Doctor or 7) there just weren't enough of them and they weren't great enough to carry the series and what we got was frequently derivative and mediocre. It was truly the Berman era entering its period of complacency resting on the laurels of the past.

    @ Tim: "The unspoken implication when a lot of Niners say this (not saying you're one of these) is that DS9 was somehow better than TNG in these regards. "

    I wouldn't go that far. I can say for sure that DS9 is my favorite show within Star Trek, but other shows had great qualities, too. Sometimes I feel like watching Janeway, sometimes I want a Garak show.
    Bringing it back to NuTrek, the main difference in my opinion is that 90s Trek knew how to construct good plots and write for deeper characters. The writing in NuTrek is just not as skilled in either plot, or story or character developing. They are less logical, less thought provoking, less engaging. I don't feel that production emphasizes on good writing. Or they don't find good writers. (The new writers room system isn't exactly fostering new crops of writers.)

    @ Jason R.

    You make a lot of good points. A few of them I disagree with though.

    "while I agree the Dominion War arc is a central feature of the series that may not be everyone's cup of tea I think the secret sauce isn't really that"

    It's not just the Dominion War, although, that definitely did drag on too long. (It should've wrapped in Season 6, IMHO)

    When I said it was "too political", the Dominion War is definitely a part of that, but it's not the only part. The Maquis, Klingon politics, Cardassian politics, Bajoran politics, blah, blah, blah. Point being: There's no "Boldly going where no-one has gone before." That's why I think SNW > DS9.

    "Whereas with TNG even the likes of Patrick Stewart couldn't hold the entire episode week in week out and by season 7 the whole edifice just collapsed whereas DS9 was strong to the very end."

    TNG did run out of gas in Season 7, but, no offense, we found Season 7 of DS9 the worst part of the entire re-watch. I had to psych myself up for it, having already seen it, and my partner (a DS9 newbie) was meh on it. Season 7 of TNG has some definite low points but we never had to steel ourselves to watch it.

    The are some great episodes in DS9 S7 (Treachery, Faith, and the Great River is a personal favorite) but we were burned out on the Dominion War, Ezri was annoying AF, I've never liked the Dukat as the literal anti-Christ arc (neither did my partner), and a lot of the positive things you point out were forgotten about. Case in point:

    "especially the addition of so many recurring secondary support characters of such consistent quality"

    That's what was missing from Season 7. Where was the Romulan viewpoint character? The Breen viewpoint character? Both races were supposedly key to the war effort but the Breen didn't even get lines (literal cartoon bad guys with no characterization) and the Romulans never had consistent representation. There was no Romulan Martok. At least two good chances for one (the Romulan from The Search and the Senator from Image in the Sand) were abandoned.

    If you're gonna ding Voyager for the Reset Button™, DS9 reset the war arc at least a half dozen times in the interest of dramatic effect. That's one of my many gripes with the arc. Hugely important things (e.g., the Romulans joining the alliance) are negated with Plot Twists™ (e.g., the Breen) a few episodes later.

    Also, they kind of forgot about Bajor at the end. The whole premise of the show was to bring the Bajorans into the Federation.

    @ Q-Less "The writing in NuTrek is just not as skilled in either plot, or story or character developing. They are less logical, less thought provoking, less engaging."

    If you're talking about DSC or PIC, I mostly agree (a few noteworthy exceptions notwithstanding, both shows produced some great standalone episodes)

    SNW though? I strenuously disagree with this assessment. SNW has done exceptional work with character development, the episodes are thought provoking, and I'm not sure how to define 'engaging' but I've never been bored watching a SNW episode. I'd trade every other NuTrek series/movie for SNW on broadcast television with 24 episode seasons and suspect it'd have mainstream appeal close to TNG in a less fragmented media landscape.

    Skimming Jammer's star ratings, he's only rated 4 out of 20 episodes at/below 2-stars. Two of these ratings ("The Elysian Kingdom" and “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”) I disagree with. The former was an enjoyable romp, on TNG/VOY it'd be an above average Holodeck episode (2.5 stars from me). The latter, well, I strongly disagree with Jammer on it. We thought it was extremely thought provoking and deeply emotional. We almost cried at the end of that episode. 3.5 stars.

    How did this even get 1.5/5!?
    This is the Star Wars Holiday Special of Star Trek

    Just to jump into this completely out of place DS9 discussion . . .

    DS9 aired in first run syndication. If you don't know what that is, google it, I ain't got all day. In my market (New York City), it was aired at 7pm on Saturdays. Sometimes 6pm. I forget what channel it was on. 11? Not even part of a network, I believe.

    Voyager was a regular network show (albeit brand new UPN) and it aired mostly at 9pm on Wednesdays.

    So yeah. No shit Voyager got better ratings than DS9. People knew it existed and were actually watching TV when it was on.

    . . .

    Also the reason DS9 gave up doing Bajoran stories after the first two seasons (with the exception of that Reckoning arc) was that Paramount thought they sucked and told them to stop it. So thereafter Bajoran stuff was relegated to B plots.

    @ Jeffrey's Tube

    TNG also aired in first run syndication and blew both DS9 and Voyager away on ratings. So that's a pretty thin hook to hang your "DS9 got shafted" hat on.

    Paramount told them to stop doing Bajoran stories? Explain the focus on the Prophets/Pah-Wraiths, Sisko as the messiah, and Dukat as the anti-Christ. Explain how Kai Winn remained a central character throughout. They did plenty of Bajoran stuff, just not "Bajor joins the Federation."

    Let me add "Bajoran mythology" to my list of demerits. Doing a full rewatch without being able to skip those episodes was tedious af. Avery Brooks had to demand the goodbye scene with Kasidy (not in the original script) because the show runners were so focused on their religious nonsense they didn't consider the sheer tone-deafness/racism of the "Black man abandons his family" trope.

    The Sheridan as the messiah returned from the dead nonsense ruined Babylon 5 too. DS9 going down the same road really makes me wonder if there's some truth to JMS' accusations that they based the show on the B5 series bible.

    "TNG also aired in first run syndication and blew both DS9 and Voyager away on ratings. So that's a pretty thin hook to hang your "DS9 got shafted" hat on."

    His point was to address the comparative disadvantage in ratings relative to Voyager, not to say that being in first run syndication was a guarantee of low ratings.

    "Avery Brooks had to demand the goodbye scene with Kasidy (not in the original script) because the show runners were so focused on their religious nonsense they didn't consider the sheer tone-deafness/racism of the "Black man abandons his family" trope."

    Not to point out the obvious here but Sisko didn't abandon his family; he was basically killed while SAVING THE UNIVERSE.

    I appreciate Brooks had this particular objection, but in no way was it a "trope" even in 1990s TV that black men were 1) Prone to abandoning their families or 2) That dying heroically was tantamount to "abandonment".

    "SNW has done exceptional work with character development, the episodes are thought provoking,"


    Lol

    In 1987, when TNG premiered, first-run syndication was just hitting its stride. There were a lot of new stations looking for programming. In Louisville, where I live, TNG ran Saturday at 7 pm on Channel 3 - the NBC affiliate. In nearby Cincinnati, it ran Friday at 8 pm on Channel 19 (then independent, later a Fox affiliate). By 1993, when DS9 premiered, the first-run syndication market was saturated. In Louisville, it ran at 6 pm on Saturday on Channel 41 (by this point a Fox affiliate). Early, but immediately preceding TNG. In Cincinnati, however, DS9 started on Channel 19 but frequently got bumped to the 12:30 am Saturday night slot. It eventually got bumped to a smaller station. When VOY premiered in 1995, it started on UPN. But UPN had to compete for affiliates with WB, so it often got lesser stations - Channel 58 in Louisville; Channel 64 in Cincinnati (later Channel 25 when 64 switched to WB). TNG had a built-in ratings advantage that the later shows simply could not match.

    @ Tim : "SNW has done exceptional work with character development, the episodes are thought provoking,"

    I agree, SNW is classes better in that regard. There are some real gems, esp. in S02. The court show and the musical turned out not just better than expected but legitimately great thanks to the writing.

    @ Jason R.

    "Not to point out the obvious here but Sisko didn't abandon his family; he was basically killed while SAVING THE UNIVERSE."

    Yeah, saving the universe from the aliens we can kill in seconds with off the shelf tech (see The Assignment and The Reckoning). Good thing Sisko was there, the Federation would never have figured out what it already knew. 🙄

    I'm sorry, but you'll never convince me that story was anything but Major Suck. In any case, the point was the show runners were so obsessed with this stupid little plot they didn't even stop to think about how it might be perceived. The same team that gave us "Far Beyond the Stars."

    My partner, who is black, refers to Sisko as "Black Jesus" and says it has been done a zillion times before. It is invariably condescendingly stupid at best and racist at worst.

    I'll add another point, since you won't let this go: Sisko and Jake deserved a better ending. That's one of the best father/son pairings in television history, Brooks and Lofton had exceptional chemistry (they're close friends in real life) and our "goodbye" was Jake staring longingly out a window.

    Jammer, been reading you for OMG 30 years! Where did the time go. I have to say you must have got very generous in old age because 1.5 stars is silliness. I would have to go look at the episodes you gave zero stars to; this one has to be in the conversation for a zero

    Its NOT about Section 31. That is basically a clickbait title like all the junk flooding social media feeds these days. She used to work for them (which I thought this story would have been during that time frame), but instead is recruited for this mission because she was the creator of the weapon. We are a long long way from Sloan here.

    So the Terrans pick 18 young people to fight to the death until there are two. Those two are asked to kill their families. The one that does is Emporer and the one that does not is a lifetime subservient? I guess if they both killed their families they would have to fight to the death as well. And thats it, your Emporer. This flies in the face of everything we learned about the Terran empire. So, this isn't a mirror universe episode either. its also silly that Trek decided to take away the feminine version of the word (Empress) for her. We just can't have male/female words anymore, hey?

    So her lover must have time jumped because otherwise he would be 100 + years old (having Garrett tells us the time jump from when she was Emporer for real) how did he time jump if he just came through a portal between the two universes which seems to be just a linear door between the two places.

    Jamie Lee Curtis with what look like Borg Implants before the Federation had formal contact with the Borg? (the Enterprise stuff was apparently not known to anyone so I will just go with that).

    Hey , if this is "The Campy Adventures of Emperor Georgiou in another universe!" and leave it at that, its fine. Still a bad movie, but at least they are not insulting their fanbase. This was not Star Trek in even the most remote of ways other than name dropping people or species.

    So, who are they marketing this to. Any OG Trek Fans of any series up until Enterprise will detest this. Fans of NUTrek and even Discovery will find this stupid and ridiculous. Non Trek fans will watch it and just go 'well, that was pointless, won't give it another thought". I get the point of trying to get new fans because your OG fans are getting older,but this is not the way to do it.

    This is the low point of Modern Trek. And a very low point it is. I am sure we will find some fun and charm in SNW Season 3; but ultimately, Star Trek is in the same place as Star Wars. They really need about 10 years of complete silence before getting some fresh eyes in there and making new material.

    I watched Inter Arma Enim Silent Legis just to get a pallate cleanser after this "Section 31" movie, and I am just wondering WTF happened to Star Trek and why do they keep giving the reigns to people who just want to churn out crap.

    "Yeah, saving the universe from the aliens we can kill in seconds with off the shelf tech (see The Assignment and The Reckoning). Good thing Sisko was there, the Federation would never have figured out what it already knew. 🙄"

    Tim not really the point.

    The point is he didn't "abandon" his family anymore than a GI killed in action abandoned his family. I mean even if his death wasn't heroic and he just died from an exploding console on the Defiant that wouldn't be "abandoning" anything either.

    "I'm sorry, but you'll never convince me that story was anything but Major Suck. In any case, the point was the show runners were so obsessed with this stupid little plot they didn't even stop to think about how it might be perceived. The same team that gave us "Far Beyond the Stars."

    My partner, who is black, refers to Sisko as "Black Jesus" and says it has been done a zillion times before. It is invariably condescendingly stupid at best and racist at worst."

    I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because I truly didn't think Sisko's character or Avery Brooks's performance engaged any kind of "magical negro" or Uncle Tom tropes.

    One of the essential points is that the black savior character is there to save a *white character* who is the real protagonist of the story and the person whose point of view dominates the story. So the black savior ends up being this mechanism by which a *white character* achieves some personal growth and development. The Green Mile comes to mind as being in this vein.

    Respectfully, I don't see how that applies to Sisko. Sisko is the protagonist of the story, full stop. His point of view and beliefs and opinions as a person are the focus and whatever you think of Avery Brooks's acting style you can't deny he owns the character which isn't just some accoutrement or service to another character's personal arc. Killing Gul Dukat isn't some action Sisko does to help Miles O'Brien achieve self actualization.

    Anyway I'm not defending everything DS9 did with this particular story and I'm aware of Avery Brooks's own viewpoints on his character's arc, but I am just saying calling it "racist" is a bit much. I mean you mention John Sheridan in Babylon 5 and how his savior arc bothered you. I assume you didn't think it was racist for a charismatic white man to save the universe but it is if he's black? Wasn't Benny Russell's who idea that a black man could do the same things a white man could do? (Eg: running a space station)

    If I was Craig Sweeny I'd be too embarrassed to show my face ever again after turning in this script. But then again, if I was Craig Sweeny, I would have refused to participate in this ill-conceived project from the beginning. Disco's take on Section 31 was never particularly smart or in keeping with DS9's original conception of it, but at least you could violently bludgeon it into keeping with the canon if you made an effort. This dumbass turd makes zero sense in the continuity at all, and we didn't even get an entertaining story out of it.

    1.5 stars is generous. I'd roll with a zero, recalling Jammer's review of "Precious Cargo":

    ""Section 31" is nothing. Zero. Zilch. A test pattern. An empty vessel. A hollow corpse. A lifeless mass. A limp body. A vapid hour. A lamentable experience. A lousy outing. A table scrap. A scrap without meat. A piece of garbage. A test of viewer endurance. Television detritus. Hoary insipidity. A road to nowhere. A road from nowhere. Utter crap. Astounding banality. Awful dreck. A dismal failure. An abomination. A self-parody. A bad self-parody. An insult to the intellect. A slap to the face.

    Did I mention it was bad?"

    I sincerely hope this is the last we ever see of the Discovery-verse.

    @Tim C

    -Discoveryverse is not gone, we have Starfleet Academy coming which is in the same time frame (Tilley is in it as an instructor). It has serious actors like Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti in it, as well as Picardo. So maybe it will be better, but I do not have my hopes up.

    What a time to be around when we now have people making arguments that Sisko's story arc was racist. There is this obsessoin with finding racism in anything and everything right down to the last electron; people need to stop falling for that and get back to being normal human beings. Most of us are old enough to be around when that series started and it was a big deal. A lot of black men in the 1990s were inspired by him and given hope they could have a much brighter and better future.

    What isn't being called racist these days? We might as well just all wear tshirts that say "I am not sure why, but I am a racist too!".

    BREAKING NEWS

    The newly elected Federation President announced he is defunding Section 31 and offering all employees a buyout. Agents on foreign assignment have been put on administrative leave and told to return to Starfleet headquarters.

    Captain Georgiou (Retd) tells us this is a violation of the Federation Charter. She urges loyal Fedaration citizens to come to Section 31 headquarters and protest outside the office at noon tomorrow.

    Story developing....

    @dave

    >>So maybe it will be better

    Fool me once…

    >>people making arguments that Sisko's story arc was racist

    Well, there are plenty of idiots around, so not really that surprising.

    @ Tim

    Here's your homework done for you:

    "At one point around season two, Paramount asked the DS9 writing staff to focus less on stories featuring the planet Bajor, as market research had suggested that fans of the show found those stories least interesting. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 244; Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 97) "

    "The studio doesn't like Bajor stories in general," commented René Echevarria. "And Bajor's religion is one aspect of Bajor to which they really don't respond." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 319)"

    Thereafter, as I wrote, Bajoran stuff was mostly relegated to B plots. With Reckoning as a notable late-DS9 exception.

    @ Tim

    "Production on the episode Shakaar, a script for which was written in the second season, was set back when, in compliance with the request from Paramount, the producers opted to concentrate on stories further away from Bajor. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 244)"

    "When they revived the narrative towards the end of season three, they focused on the notion of it being a kind of homecoming for Kira Nerys. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 97)"

    @ Jason R. "The point is he didn't "abandon" his family anymore than a GI killed in action abandoned his family. I mean even if his death wasn't heroic and he just died from an exploding console on the Defiant that wouldn't be "abandoning" anything either."

    None of which negates the fact that the CHOICE was with the writing staff/showrunners. Note that with the exception of Terry Farrell (real world reasons) they killed off no other main character over seven years of show, including two plus years of war arc, but in the closing moments they kill the African-American Captain, leaving his wife, son, and unborn baby alone?

    Avery Brooks was 110% correct, IMHO, to be annoyed with this ending for his character, given everything that it represented for his community and the utter lack of awareness on the part of the writing/showrunning team.

    "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because I truly didn't think Sisko's character or Avery Brooks's performance engaged any kind of "magical negro" or Uncle Tom tropes."

    He's LITERALLY Jesus, at least to the Bajorans, complete with divine birth and death ending in resurrection. His nemesis, Dukat, is the literal anti-christ. Set aside the racial undertones if you want. I won't but you can. It's still a shitty/lazy story.

    "Sisko is the protagonist of the story, full stop."

    He WAS the protagonist, before we got into a divine birth scenario that was apparently preordained by non-linear aliens yesterday, today, and tomorrow. All free choice was removed from his character from that point forward and retroactively negated.

    This is my problem with the story and similar stories (e.g., Babylon 5, BSG). Sisko the widower, coming to terms with his grief, trying his best to raise his son in a difficult environment, all of those are laudable and relatable protagonist character traits. Avery Brooks nails it. It's what comes later that ruins the story and character for me.

    "Anyway I'm not defending everything DS9 did with this particular story and I'm aware of Avery Brooks's own viewpoints on his character's arc, but I am just saying calling it "racist" is a bit much."

    Note that I did not explicitly call it 'racist.' I shared my partner's viewpoint of the character, which is that he's "Black Jesus." She didn't call it racist either, though she does think it's tone-deaf/condescending and I 100% agree. Neither one of us called him a Magical Negro. Our archetype for that is Morgan Freeman in Prince of Thieves, one of our favorite (despite the trope) campy movies.

    "Wasn't Benny Russell's who idea that a black man could do the same things a white man could do? (Eg: running a space station)"

    I would have happily seen more Benny Russell episodes over the Prophets/Pah-wraiths. Far Beyond the Stars is Top 5, perhaps Top 3 Star Trek for me. The Prophets nonsense barely ranks above Spock's Brain or Sub Rosa. Those were at least one-off shitty episodes.

    The Prophets crap is FOUNDATIONAL for DS9. You literally cannot skip it. That's why our rewatch was such a chore. It's why I dread the day we go through Babylon 5. Or, for that matter, BSG, or in a totally different genre, Xena: Warrior Princess. Great show when the Gods were court jesters, came off the rails when it went to the "She's a God herself, this is all preordained, it happened before and will happen again" nonsense.

    I like stories about PEOPLE. At its core that's what Star Trek does best. Q is essentially "God" but TNG/VOY never treated him or his race as such. Even when they put humanity on trial and threaten the entire race with extinction, it was still a story about Picard and the human condition. I don't see that in the Prophets arc on DS9. It's barely coherent babble cut and pasted from the worst of humanity's superstitious past onto an imagined future where we're apparently still at the mercy of Gods, Demigods, and Demons.

    BORING.

    @ Jeffrey's Tube

    "The studio doesn't like Bajor stories in general," commented René Echevarria. "And Bajor's religion is one aspect of Bajor to which they really don't respond." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 319)"

    Guess the writers didn't get the memo in Season 7, seeing as how the sprint to the end was an A/B story, where A was 'Dominion War' and B was 'Prophets/Pah-wraiths'

    Nearly half the runtime devoted to this crap.

    Submit a comment

    ◄ Section Index