STAR TREK Is On A High - Why Bring It Down With A Section 31 Movie?

Do we need a movie about Space Hitler and the Space Stasi?

Michelle Yeoh is coming back to Star Trek with a “special movie event” where her evil genocidal Mirror Universe character will be in Section 31, the black ops division of Starfleet (it isn’t really supposed to be that, but the newer iterations of Trek have turned it into that). This was supposed to be a TV show that was being developed - and went nowhere - for years, and I imagine Yeoh’s Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once lit a fire under the gang at Secret Hideout, who make the new Star Trek.

Look. maybe this will be good. We don’t know who is writing and directing it yet. But coming off the final episodes of Picard season three, an absolute highlight of modern live action Trek, it can’t help but feel like a step backwards. The whole project feels antithetical to where Trek has found itself, with Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds and now Picard all capturing aspects of what we love about this franchise.

Yeoh’s character was introduced in Star Trek Discovery; she died in the very first episode, but later in the season the characters visited the Mirror Universe (an alternate dimension where everyone is cartoonishly evil) and found that the Mirror version of her was the Emperor of the Terran Empire. She was brutal and evil and a pretty good villain.

Then, for reasons that Discovery never fully worked out for itself, the evil Emperor joined the crew of the USS Discovery and had some adventures with them, as well as getting involved with Section 31. Then she ended up 1000 years in the future with the Discovery crew before the showrunners realized they had just absolutely no idea what to do with this character, and so  they had a very bad episode where she was sent back in time, towards what we then thought would be her own spin-off show. And that was the last we heard of her for years and years.

The recent run of good Trek shows have all had something in common - they’re all positive, hopeful depictions of the future, even when things get pretty dark, as they have in the later episodes of Picard season three. In the end this darkness always serves to give a dramatic backdrop against which the light can shine, and that is where Star Trek is at its best, showing how the human spirit and progressive ideas can break through even the most dire scenario.

There’s room for nuance; Deep Space Nine is the very best of Trek, and it was a show full of deeply flawed characters who sometimes did terrible things. If the Federation of Star Trek is a utopia, Deep Space Nine showed what it might take to safeguard that. It’s this nuanced (but hopeful!) show that first gave us Section 31. Years into the Dominion War, the WWII of Star Trek’s future, the characters became aware of a black ops division of Starfleet, one willing to use dirty tricks and even genocide to safeguard the happy, post-scarcity galaxy. What was intriguing in DS9 is that it was never clear if Section 31 was actually a part of Starfleet Intelligence, or if it was a group of rogue agents using a clause in the original Starfleet charter (they get their name from it - Article 14, Section 31, which allows for extraordinary measures to be used in times of crisis) to justify their skullduggery. The DS9 characters are just as much against Section 31 as they are the Dominion, and in fact our heroes have to steal the cure to the genocidal virus that Section 31 has unleashed on their enemies. Section 31 is interesting, and Section 31 in DS9 opens a lot of great ethical arguments - how far should a society go to protect itself? In times of existential threat what measures are going too far? - and also opens up a lot of ideas about how the Federation and Starfleet work. Yes, it’s a utopia, but the utopia has to exist in a galaxy filled with other species and civilizations who do not share these utopian values. What would a society like this do to protect itself?

But DS9 was unequivocal - Section 31 were bad guys. Maybe necessary bad guys, but bad guys nonetheless. The look of Section 31 characters was purposefully made to reflect fascist fashion. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion costume designer Bob Blackman said:

"We design a lot of Gestapo / S.S. / Naziesque outfits for our villains. And when they're really the ultimate, like the Section 31 people, we immediately go that way to make them look like storm troopers, because that's imagery that works best, not only for the viewers but for the producers. For 'Inquisition,' Ira asked for dark black, severe, hostile looking garments. Well, that's black leather."

Of course we’ve come a long way from the 1990s, and black leather is now what the heroes wear. It’s a different world, but the creators of DS9 were not pussyfooting around what Section 31 was.

If it has stayed there all might be well, but Section 31 showed up in Enterprise, the prequel series that marks the end of the original era of Trek. Here Section 31 is less of a mysterious, possibly non-existent group and more of a classic spy organization. It’s not great, but on the other hand nothing Section 31 does in Enterprise feels too far beyond what regular old Starfleet Intelligence might do. There’s no genocide - in fact Section 31 in this show helps stop a virus that is mutating Klingons - and they operate against a human supremacist group thats’ trying to disrupt the founding of the Federation (Enterprise takes place after the creation of Starfleet but before the United Federation of Planets fully came together).

Then came the movies, and Alex Kurtzman, who seems to have Section 31 on his brain. In the atrocious Star Trek Into Darkness Section 31 has a big old base under London, and they thaw Khan out of cryofreeze, and they build big destructive starships. It sucks, and it’s just a huge misunderstanding of what Section 31 is and what makes it interesting. It’s not the CIA! It’s not even really the OSS. It’s closer to the Culper Ring, the loose-knit network of spies who worked directly for George Washington in the Revolutionary War… but with a more ruthless attitude. The whole point of Section 31 is that it has no base, no leadership, no membership - it is a shadow that perhaps doesn’t even exist.

But Star Trek Into Darkness is a movie set in an alternate universe, so whatever. We can happily let that go… except that STiD writer Kurtzman became the guy running Star Trek for Paramount+, and he brought his vision of Section 31 into the main universe. They became a huge part of Discovery, and that’s where he really fucked things up. In season two of Discovery Section 31 has a whole fleet of ships, and they’re run by an evil AI called Control - just a dumb shitshow of bad ideas. Discovery season two takes place before the original Star Trek, and at the end of that era everyone involved took a sacred oath to never mention the events of that television series (for real, this is not a joke) so fans use this as a way to explain why nobody in Deep Space Nine had ever heard of the group with a fleet and an AI boss. Because by the time DS9 rolls around, over a hundred years after Discovery, nobody has ever heard of Section 31.

Section 31’s activities do play a role in the latest season of Picard (which is the best live action Trek since Deep Space Nine), but it’s in the proper context - the actions of Section 31 are seen as shameful and horrible, a blemish on the idealism of Starfleet and the Federation. Considering the story of the season, which involved the Dominion, Section 31 was unavoidable, but I think the showrunners did a great job of handling it. And Starfleet Intelligence exists here, just a regular spy group, no Section 31 required for the spy stories.

I give you this history of Section 31 to show the devolution of a good, nuanced idea into a generic space badass organization. Kurtzman really loves them, and you get the sense that his take on Section 31 is that they could be morally good if just used properly - after all, Section 31’s big issue in Discovery is that they’re run by an evil AI. And so they’re giving us this Michelle Yeoh movie that will be all about Section 31.

Look. I get that they want to use Yeoh. They likely have a contract with her and now she has an Oscar and so they want to take advantage of that. They made a big deal out of spinning her off into her own show years ago but that never went anywhere (people embedded inside the Paramount+ Industrial Complex have told me the issue was the nobody could ever figure out what the fuck the show would be about). You strike when the iron is hot. I get it.

But Yeoh’s Emporer Georgiou character, and Section 31, should stay in the past, to be forgotten about along most of the events of the first two seasons of Discovery. Over the past couple of years streaming Trek has found its feet, and the shows that are being produced right now feel like what Trek is supposed to be. Why take a step back and make a show about Space Hitler (as a friend calls her) working for Space Stasi?

There’s an argument to be made that a rehabilitation of Georgiou would be a very Trek thing, but I don’t think that’s really true. It’s a very Star Wars thing. Trek is not full of rehabilitated bad guys; there are a couple of Cardassians who died heroic deaths at the end of DS9, but in general the real bad guy of that show, Dukat, did not get redeemed. And he couldn’t be - the breadth of his evil actions over seven seasons of that show would have made it impossible to have a feel good ending where Dukat came out a nice guy. He was a scumbag until the end, and that was so satisfying, and it’s why he’s Trek’s greatest villain.

If Dukat - who just committed atrocities against one planet - could not be redeemed, how the hell do you redeem a character who is seen eating a sentient species that serves on Starfleet ships (she eats Kelpians, the race to which Discovery alien guy Saru belongs), and that’s just one of the horrific crimes she has committed against the galaxy. Yeah, the galaxy is an alternate universe, but still! Discovery tried to redeem her, but it never felt right to me. It never worked.

Let’s be fair - appealing to Gene is the lowest form of Star Trek criticism. It was what everyone lobbed at DS9 when it premiered, and they were all proven wrong. And Gene’s vision led to some very, very boring early seasons of The Next Generation. So let me just appeal to reason: it’s boring to do another show about morally gray characters doing bad things for good reasons. It’s just dull at this point. We’ve been there, and we’ve been there in extraordinarily good programs. Antiheroes have been the rage for over a decade, and while I do love them - Yellowstone and Succession are two of my favorite shows, and between the two of them they could field maybe three characters who have a moral compass - I don’t need them in this franchise. I don’t mind conflicted or murky characters, but Space Hitler and Space Stasi - ain’t nothing murky here.

I’ve been wrong before, and not just once. I’ve been wrong a lot of times in the past, and I’m passing judgment on a show that doesn’t have an announced creative team yet. But the Kurtzman of it all makes me nervous; nothing tells me that Kurtzman has come to Jesus on the topic of Section 31 and seeing as the gold pressed latinum stops with him I am not filled with hope. And honestly, in this fucked up world, hope is one of the great things Star Trek can offer us.