If you don’t know who Emperor Philipa Georgiou is and you never watched a minute of the pre-32nd century episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, then I can pretty confidently say that Section 31 is not the film for you. While the film does offer a pretty quick rehash on Georgiou’s history (as well as some deeper dives into her life before she switched from the Terran Empire into our central Trek universe that does help to flesh out the character in some interesting ways), you’re going to be incredibly lost throughout the story if you’re coming to the film with just your knowledge of Section 31 gained from, say, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But if you’ve seen Discovery and want to see more of Georgiou kicking ass and taking names, well, you might enjoy Section 31.
I say “might” because Section 31 is a fascinating film – but not for the reasons I suspect writer Craig Sweeney (who was also a writer on Discovery) wants it to be. The film is less about the shadowy Starfleet organization with a penchant for manipulating the fleet in ways most officers never realize and is instead almost like a Suicide Squad story draped in Section 31 clothing. We’re introduced to a rag tag group of characters with key specializations that can (and do) help the team at points throughout their mission to steal back a MacGuffin device from our masked villain – with only a single actual Starfleet officer among then (that would be Kacey Rohl’s Lt. Rachel Garrett, a character who will – in the future – appear in the beloved Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” as the Captain of the Enterprise-C). So, this Section 31 is really just a black ops organization under the control of the Control personality from back in Discovery (whose human face – and voice – marks a fun cameo in the film that gave me a good chuckle), tasked with protecting the universe with very minimal actual Starfleet oversight.*
*How this version of 31 morphs into the really dark spy version from DS9, complete with all the really interesting morally gray areas that come with it, is a bit hard to see from the film. Not having 31 have any real Starfleet connection here is a strange choice, as the idea that 31 is operating from within Starfleet without checks is what, for my money, made the organization so terrifying on DS9. That version of 31 was able to manipulate Starfleet through the use of key personnel and the idea that Starfleet needs a secret set of leaders that can get their hands dirty so that the central sectors of Starfleet can stay clean is what makes the organization so darn interesting. Here, with a bunch of, frankly, expendable individuals teaming up for a mission to save the universe, it doesn’t really feel like Section 31 as most Trek fans think of it as – not a bad thing, but the lack of Starfleet connections save for Garrett, who is seen for much of the film as a killjoy, take some of the mythos and creepiness out of 31 as a whole. If there’s no deeper link to Starfleet, no shadowy admiral calling the shots and directing the action, it’s then just a buddy film with characters we largely don’t know trying to solve a pointless problem that doesn’t speak to the most interesting parts of what makes Section 31 what it is.
As a story, Section 31’s tale is pretty meh. The team – who we get to know precious little about on the whole – are tasked with getting Georgiou’s help in extracting a device with the capability to destroy the galaxy. Of course, the device has a link to Georgiou’s own past, and that leads to us learning a bit more about her path to becoming Emperor and the great cost that journey extracted on her personally. Humanizing a character like Georgiou is always a risky move, since so much of what makes her truly interesting is how she lacks a moral compass in almost all scenarios, but the film manages to walk the line of filling in her past without fully blunting her edges (and you can tell that Michelle Yeoh, who is in fine form here, is still having a blast playing the character).**
**I was a huge fan of Yeoh’s work on Discovery as both versions of Georgiou, so much so that I stopped watching the series when this Georgiou left the future and headed back to the past. I was never a huge Discovery fan, but Yeoh’s work on the show added some interesting layers to a series that was often a bit too earnest for my tastes.
The supporting cast assembled for the story – some of whom turn out to be basically cannon fodder in our Suicide Squad – doesn’t quite work as well with Yeoh’s performance, largely because the writing routinely opts to lean into the comedy when it, frankly, doesn’t need to. Sven Ruygrok (who plays an interesting character named Fuzz), in particular, spend a lot of the film hovering at an eight in the overacting scale when he really, really doesn’t need to. The vibe of much of the film is “fast and loose” with characters squabbling with one another, making silly mistakes, joking about each other, and really not taking much seriously until they get scared into relative compliance (which, of course, still means some really dumb dialogue and jokes). This is meant to be a thriller-type movie, but it never really gets to any real suspense largely because you can barely take any of the characters seriously. I will say that Sam Richardson is trying his absolute best to do something with almost nothing, but even he can’t quite get this disappointing script to work.
I’m not suggesting that you couldn’t have a more comedic spy-thriller film in the Star Trek universe. But what I am saying is that crafting one such film around the character of Georgiou is . . . not a great choice. Yeoh is playing Georgiou as a terrifying panther of a character, looking to win at all costs, laying in wait for a mistake before pouncing. That type of personality doesn’t mix well with a bunch of goofballs, a deadly serious team lead with a host of past trauma he won’t look into (that would be Omari Hardwick’s Alok, a role Hardwick plays with almost zero personality), and an uptight Starfleet officer. In terms of Suicide Squads, this one is more the first DCEU film, not the second.
I suppose the nicest thing I could say about the film is that I’m glad it’s a film and not a ten-hour series, because man, if this story were being told over that timeline, yeah, it would be a mess. But the film does let us get a bit more time watching Yeoh having a ball in a character she clearly loves portraying. And it is a bit fun to see a character like Garrett in her earlier Starfleet years. But this is definitely not the right vehicle for telling a Section 31 story, a Georgiou story, or a Starfleet story. Hell, it isn’t even trying to tell that latter of the three, which is part of what makes it just such a miss in my book. I really wanted to give this one a look because I’ve always been intrigued by Section 31 as an organization in Star Trek – and I loved Yeoh’s work on Discovery – but this film is not worth your time unless you’ve been craving a silly, uninspired morally questionable gang team up tale set (loosely) in the Star Trek universe.
Section 31 airs on January 24 on Paramount+.
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