Captain Picard would not approve. Luckily, he isn’t around yet to comment on “Star Trek: Section 31,” the 14th film in the franchise and the first to be made for streaming. Set in 2333 — in the so-called Lost Era between the original movies and Picard’s series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” — this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink movie is stuffed with so many neurotic mutants and hidden motives that even the unflappable Jean-Luc would struggle to keep them straight.
Pity the poor viewer, then. Centering on an extravagantly coifed and costumed Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, the onetime ruthless ruler of a dehydrated parallel universe, the action veers from camp to cartoon and back again. A brief prologue reveals Georgiou’s heinous past behavior; now she’s among the Federation’s most wanted, and Starfleet’s Section 31, a black ops spy agency, has 24 hours to find her and neutralize a new, unspecified threat.
And find her they do, running a nightclub in a space station far, far away from Federation oversight. It’s immediately clear, though, that Georgiou needs little more than platform boots and a Nosferatu manicure to best her enemies — even the ones, like certain Section 31 operatives, who alter their look more often than Chappell Roan. Among these is a nasty little microbe encased in a Vulcan exoskeleton, histrionically played by Sven Ruygrok with an inexplicable Irish accent. (This one gave me flashbacks to Dr. Who’s naked Daleks) There’s also a nervous shape-shifter (the likable Sam Richardson from “Veep”), a so-called human augment (Omari Hardwick) and a body-modification addict (Rob Kazinsky) whose illegal mechanical add-ons have turned him into a walking scrap yard.
With no Starship Enterprise, no Starfleet unitards or lectures on the Prime Directive, “Section 31” feels more like a superhero movie than a Star Trek adventure. Originating in 2019 as a spinoff series for Yeoh’s character in “Star Trek: Discovery” (2017-2024), Craig Sweeny’s screenplay struggles to impart too much information in too little time. (Yeoh’s dance card filled up pretty quickly after the 2022 success of “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”) As a result, “Section 31,” bravely directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, is a dog’s dinner of head-snapping reversals and explanatory dialogue — a movie with little on its mind but mayhem.
The film might, for instance, have usefully interrogated why the supposedly ultravirtuous and idealistic Federation is running what appears to be a death squad.
“Starfleet does not do assassinations,” announces Lt. Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), the Section’s uptight science officer and (as fans of “The Next Generation” know) a future starship captain. Sadly, that’s a moral gauntlet that writers of the sequel (promised by a major celebrity in this film’s coda) will have to pick up. As Picard would say, “Make it so.”
The post ‘Star Trek: Section 31’ Review: Set the Phasers to Shun appeared first on New York Times.
