Starship Nomadic, Northern Ireland STARSHIP NOMADICA NORTHERN IRELAND STAR TREK FAN GROUP
FILM 14 OF 14 · 202514
STAR TREK

Section 31

NOMADIC PICK · FOR COMPLETISTSYeoh is fun, but critics were unkind.
US RELEASE
24 January 2025
UK RELEASE
24 January 2025
RUNTIME
95 minutes
DIRECTED BY
Olatunde Osunsanmi
MUSIC
Jeff Russo
FIRST STARDATE
Unconfirmed

WRITTEN BYScreenplay by Craig Sweeny; story by Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt

PRODUCED BYTed Miller

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

Former Terran Emperor Philippa Georgiou is pulled out of hiding by Starfleet's secret intelligence service to recover a doomsday weapon, one with a direct link to her own bloody past.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSISHIDE SYNOPSIS

In the mirror universe, a young Philippa Georgiou survives a brutal contest for the Terran throne, then poisons her own family to claim it. Her rival San, who cannot bring himself to do the same, is scarred and enslaved.

Decades later, in the early 24th century of the prime universe, Georgiou is running a nightclub on the remote space station Baraam under an assumed name. Alok Sahar, a Section 31 agent, arrives with his covert team: Quasi, a shapeshifting Chameloid; Zeph, who works inside a mechanical exoskeleton; Melle, a Deltan; Fuzz, a tiny Nanokin who pilots a Vulcan-shaped body; and Rachel Garrett, a young Starfleet officer. They need Georgiou because arms dealer Dada Noe is about to sell the Godsend, a world-destroying weapon she ordered built as Emperor. The heist goes wrong when a masked figure kills Melle and escapes with the device. Alok, a survivor of the Eugenics Wars who lost his family to a genetically enhanced warlord, distrusts Georgiou, while Noe reveals that the weapon is meant to open the way for a Terran invasion through a wormhole. When Zeph is found dead and the evidence points to Garrett, Georgiou works out that Fuzz is the traitor. The masked thief turns out to be San, who survived and now plans to remake the universe under his own rule. In the final battle Quasi and Garrett break through his defences, Georgiou and Alok board his ship and the Godsend is triggered. Garrett and Quasi use an improvised explosive to dispose of Fuzz, and San, defeated, takes his own life. Georgiou and Alok fly the armed weapon through the wormhole into the mirror universe, ready to die, but are beamed out at the last moment. Three weeks later the team reassembles, joined by Fuzz's wife Wisp, and their boss, Control, hints at a new mission on Turkana IV.

BEHIND THE CAMERA

Section 31 began life as a television series, confirmed by CBS All Access in January 2019 with Discovery writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt developing it. The pandemic delayed it, and Michelle Yeoh's Oscar-winning success in Everything Everywhere All at Once made a long series commitment harder, so Alex Kurtzman reworked it as a streaming film, announced in April 2023. Craig Sweeny wrote the screenplay. It was shot at Pinewood Toronto Studios between January and March 2024, under the working title Dovercourt, and director Olatunde Osunsanmi had the cast study films such as the Mission: Impossible series and Crimson Tide. Reviews were overwhelmingly negative, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 23 per cent.

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. 01It is set in the so-called lost era between the original series films and The Next Generation, in 2324.
  2. 02Jamie Lee Curtis makes a cameo as Control, the head of Section 31.
  3. 03IDW Publishing released a tie-in comic, Star Trek: Section 31: Emperor Born, in February 2025.
  4. 04Michelle Yeoh, an Oscar winner for Everything Everywhere All at Once, reprises Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery.

CONNECTIONS

  • Kacey Rohl plays a young Rachel Garrett, the future captain of the Enterprise-C, played by Tricia O'Neil in The Next Generation episode “Yesterday's Enterprise” (1990).
  • Michelle Yeoh first played Georgiou in Discovery's premiere, “The Vulcan Hello” (2017). The mirror universe began in the original series episode “Mirror, Mirror” (1967).
  • Turkana IV, hinted at as the team's next mission, is Tasha Yar's troubled home world, visited in The Next Generation episode “Legacy” (1990).

AWARDS

Primetime Creative Arts Emmy nomination (sound editing); NAACP Image Award for directing; five Golden Raspberry nominations

SOURCES WE CHECKED