The contortions through which a series goes before it reaches the air — the creative decisions and studio demands, the castings and recasting, the rewrites and punch-ups, the shrinking or expanding budgets, the shrapnel of the collision of art and business — are nothing I usually take note of in reviewing a show. But in the case of “Star Trek: Section 31,” premiering Friday on Paramount+, the product seems so much an expression of the process, it seems worth mentioning.
Originally conceived as a spinoff series from “Star Trek: Discovery” to star Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, an agent of Starfleet’s secret black ops arm, the project was downgraded or promoted to a “feature,” officially the 14th in the “Star Trek” canon, and the franchise’s first “TV movie.” Even though this decision apparently preceded production, most everything about “Section 31” says “pilot episode,” as if whatever ideas informed the aborted series were still driving the starship, as characters are positioned for episodes yet to come — as if the film did not want to let go of the possibility of being a TV show.
“Star Trek” is a serial thing; the earlier films, featuring the casts of “The Original Series” and “Next Generation,” just moved the TV shows to the big screen as a way to present the further adventures of a well-established, well-loved main cast — an occasion to visit old friends on later (and sometimes earlier) star dates. They’re like canonical fan fiction. Post-”TOS” television series, though they may begin with fresh casts and settings, have the advantage of time in which to create a world, round out characters, build relationships and to outlast whatever skepticism fans arrive with.
We do at least go into “Section 31” caring about Georgiou, with whom we have history, and whom we last saw near the end of “Discovery” Season 3, parting from science officer Michael Burnham — the adopted daughter of her Prime Universe double, but as good as a daughter to her — on the threshold of a time portal that will send Georgiou back to when the Prime and the Mirror Universes were still aligned in order to save her life. (Pause for breath.) It’s a genuinely emotional scene, the sort of thing at which “Trek” is especially good. It puts in the work; it earns the feeling.
Back in the Mirror Universe, described here as “a parallel universe with the most criminal population in recorded history,” Georgiou had brutally ruled the Terran Empire as Her Most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Kronos, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius. How this came to be is the subject of some backstory at the top of “Section 31,” a gruesome and slightly ridiculous process, as if emperors were chosen at the end of a Galaxy’s Got Evil competition (details not given), or if, after pulling the sword from the stone, Arthur had to chop off the head of the last guy to try before they let him be king. The backstory, which will drive the later plot, is meant to make her character tragic, but we came to know her well enough during her time on the starship Discovery, living among nice people, which had softened her considerably. She was practically lovable by the time she walked into that portal.
Perhaps you will be surprised, then, to find Georgiou sliding back into what looks like narcissism, running her version of Rick’s Cafe Américain in the borderlands outside Federation Space back in the 23rd century, using the alias Madame du Franc (and speaking a little French). Introductory narration, as at the start of a “Mission: Impossible” episode — an acknowledged inspiration — tells us that after her return from the 32nd century to 2257 she joined Section 31 for a time and then went missing. How this lines up with Georgiou having already been introduced as an agent of Section 31 in the second season of “Discovery,” which is to say, the agency she’s going back into the past to join, I’m not at all sure. Time travel will break your brain if you let it.
Robert Kazinsky as Zeph and Omari Hardwick as Alok in “Star Trek: Section 31.”
(Jan Thijs / Paramount+)
Into this gin joint, out of all the gin joints in the galaxy, walks the Section 31 Alpha Team, tasked with taking on missions it would be unseemly for the Federation to be seen doing. (“Getting its hands dirty” is the phrase used here.) They are trying to obtain a new terrorist hypergizmo — nobody knows exactly what it is, but they know it’s bad — that might be showing up on the black market there.
Often arguing among themselves, when they aren’t insulting one another, the agents seem less Impossible Mission Force than Dirty Half Dozen. (They are, at least, an improbable crew to send to save the universe.) Team leader Alok (Omari Hardwick) is a 20th century Earthman turned into an “augment” during the Eugenics Wars (he was “asleep” for a few hundred years). Quasi (Sam Richardson) is a shapeshifting Chameloid who, appropriate for a creature with no set form, freezes when faced with too many options. Zeph (Robert Kazinsky) is a man in a big mechanical exoskeleton (“You look like a Swiss Army Knife,” says Georgiou, and it’s good to know that that brand will survive into the far future).
Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), who appears to be a Vulcan anachronistically given to hilarity and rage, is in fact a microscopic creature (very nicely conceived) piloting a Vulcan shell; Melle (Humberly González), a Deltan like Persis Khambatta in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” is mostly there to look exotic; and straight arrow Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), a “Next Generation” Easter egg, has been assigned by Starfleet “to keep the peace and make sure no one commits murder,” though Georgiou observes, “Deep down in that pure little heart you’re actually a chaos goblin, aren’t you?”
Alok persuades Georgiou to join them in their quest, offering her “a chance to get back in on the action on a galactic scale,” rather than spending her life “tending bar.” (She doesn’t actually do that.) And on we go. “Section 31” packs in the tropes. You get martial arts battles; extraterrestrial nightclub scenes (they’re still using Auto-Tune, sadly); a fight on moving vehicles, as in more than one “Indiana Jones” movie; sparks and flames; the familiar technobabble, jury-rigged fixes and brilliant last-minute improvisations. Plus a flying garbage truck.
It’s a bit of a tonal mishmash. Comedy and tragedy customarily share space in “Star Trek” — “Section 31” begins with a quote from Aeschylus and includes an extended discussion over whether the gizmo they’re after is called “Godsend” or “God’s End.” For the most part, the comedy, which does come out of the characters, works better than the tragedy, which feels imposed upon them. The series might have been something of a romp, once it got going.
The film, for that is what we have, is diverting, if sometimes frustrating. Yeoh is, as ever, wonderful in whatever mode she’s required to play; she’s just fun to watch. Richardson, not a million parsecs from the character he played in “The Afterparty,” is always a welcome presence. But the cast, too busy to get to know one another, feels stranded on the verge of something that will never come — a second episode, which the denouement explicitly sets up, with others to follow in consecutive weeks, rather than however many years it would take a sequel feature to arrive, should one ever come.