STAR TREK: SECTION 31 (2025)
Emperor Philippa Georgiou joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, and must face the sins of her past.

Emperor Philippa Georgiou joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, and must face the sins of her past.
This current era of Star Trek has been frustrating for longtime fans of the nearly 60-year-old franchise. JJ Abrams’s Star Trek (2009) reboot was a highly entertaining way to relaunch Gene Roddenberry’s brainchild for a new generation weaned more on action-packed Star Wars movies, but it still remembered that Trek’s success is rooted in the friendly interplay of characters working together for the common good. Sadly, its two sequels were met with negativity and then apathy.
The franchise duly returned to its TV roots with Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024), which melded film-quality VFX with serialised storytelling, to waning interest over a downward-sliding five-season run. But it was popular enough to birth a plethora of other shows—Star Trek: Picard (2020–23), which brought Patrick Stewart back from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) but only found its footing with a full cast reunion story in its final season; the 2D-animated Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020–24), which many fans enjoy but I dislike modern comedy sensibilities being applied to the franchise; Star Trek: Prodigy, a divisive 3D-animated series aimed at kids which got cancelled but was later resurrected by Netflix; and my favourite, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is the only modern show to focus on old-fashioned episodic storytelling with a likeable group of relatable characters.
Star Trek: Section 31 itself began life as another TV spin-off focusing on Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), a character also introduced in Discovery as the mentor of its protagonist, First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who was revealed to be her evil doppelgänger from the famous ‘Mirror Universe’.
The writer-producer most responsible for recent Star Trek, Alex Kurtzman, is drawn to the dark underbelly of the franchise, as most of his projects have explored more pessimistic ideas, or given characters a morally greyer outlook on life. There are caveats, but the extensive focus on the Mirror Universe (which was once just an occasional excuse for a silly episode of cosplay, where Trek cast members got to wear black leather and grow goatees), plus the idea to create an entire show based on Section 31, offers plenty of evidence that those in charge aren’t enamoured by Roddenberry’s optimistic vision of humanity’s future. And that’s an ongoing shame, as most 21st-century sci-fi offers a downbeat vision and Star Trek would stand apart if they embraced its core ideals.
Conceptually, Section 31 has its roots in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–99), the once-notorious “dark” spin-off that now feels positively cuddly by this century’s standards. It was nevertheless a show where the utopian ideals of Starfleet locked horns with less civilised species on the edge of Federation space, eventually becoming the focal point for a large-scale war that created opportunities for grittier human stories Trek didn’t traditionally tackle with the same depth, seriousness, and extensiveness. Section 31 was revealed to be a secret Starfleet organisation; essentially a black ops CIA-style outfit, full of agents who did the dirty work nobody knew was happening so people could live in a galaxy that felt relatively safe and comfortable.
Here, the idea is that Philippa Georgiou joined Section 31 after disembarking the USS Discovery, although it took so long to develop the show that the producers decided to instead turn it into a straight-to-streaming movie on Paramount+. It perhaps didn’t help that Michelle Yeoh suddenly became the recipient of a ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), so signing her up to a multi-year deal on a streaming TV series might not have been something she’d embrace as warmly as she might have five years ago. And with the well-documented problems getting a new Star Trek film off the ground, someone maybe thought it would be an easy win to parlay this idea into a “movie” that didn’t have to fight for survival at the theatrical box office.
Sadly, Star Trek: Section 31 is a crushing disappointment in almost every respect. The opening scene makes a misguided decision to introduce Georgiou during a flashback to her younger days (played by Miku Martineau), where she wins a contest to become the Terran Empire’s new leader by callously poisoning her entire family. Something her lover and rival San (James Huang) was unable to do. It was already difficult to like Georgiou in Discovery, as she was written like a sardonic antihero who didn’t play by the rules… but such a cutesy way of portraying her rubbed up against the knowledge this Georgiou was a sickminded fascist who slaughtered millions. Her character’s arc of turning over a new leaf was always hard for me to swallow, despite Yeoh’s charisma and efforts. So making her the lead “hero” of a Star Trek movie is another issue for Section 31 at large, so reminding us of how evil she once was isn’t the best move! It only makes you like San more, who eventually becomes the “villain” of this particular story (now played by James Hiroyuki Liao).
Section 31 “mastermind” Alok (Omari Hardwick) is assigned to recruit Georgiou back into the secret agency, to help them prevent a doomsday weapon called the Godsend from being used to cause a lethal chain reaction of destruction across the quadrant. She eventually agrees once it becomes clear the gizmo is something she ordered the creation and destruction of in the Mirror Universe, which has somehow found its way into this new reality.
And so she meets Alok’s motley crew as her new comrades: a shape-shifting Chameloid called Quasi (Sam Richardson); a gruff Englishman who permanently wears an exo-skeleton suit called Zeph (Robert Kazinsky); an emotional Vulcan called Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) who’s eventually revealed to be a Men in Black-style robot controlled by a microbial lifeform inside; a sexually promiscuous Deltan woman called Melle (Humberly González); and haughty Starfleet officer Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), whom Trekkers will know one day becomes captain of the USS Enterprise-C.
The positives of Section 31 mostly involve some of the imagination and weirdness at play. Most of the cast in recent shows have been human, so it’s enjoyable to see a lot more aliens front-and-centre here. And the idea of a microscopic alien puppeteering a laughing Irish-accented Vulcan around is bonkers in a fun way. The other characters effectively pull from established lore— Quasi is part of the shape-changing species seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1989), while Melle’s progenitor was bald Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) —but they’re an enjoyably quirky bunch you definitely wouldn’t see in Starfleet. And there are some engaging sci-fi ideas, like an extended fight sequence around a space station where two combatants are “phased” out of sync with each other physically.
As a so-called movie, director Olatunde Osunsanmi comes from a TV background (Falling Skies, Star Trek: Discovery), and Star Trek: Section 31 never escapes feeling like a feature-length TV pilot. The project started life as a small-screen idea, so it feels like they hastily condensed a season’s worth of planned narrative into 95 minutes. And that means the story is a brutally simple hunt for a MacGuffin with an emphasis on action over pausing to let us get to know these people better.
While I still don’t like the idea of a Section 31-focused show in principle, a miniseries might have worked better in terms of letting us get to know everyone better. The cast isn’t too bad and I’d have liked to see more of them under better circumstances. But this film wouldn’t play well on the big screen (as decent as the VFX are throughout) because it feels small and limited. And if you’re a newcomer with no prior knowledge of Philippa Georgiou, I’m not sure if the early exposition dump about her tyrannical backstory is quite enough to see you through. What’s always worked about Star Trek films is the mainstream audience’s grasp of the idea a crew will investigate aliens and spacial anomalies aboard a spaceship in the future, so you can be dropped into any of them and they all work well enough. Section 31 requires added homework and knowledge, so I strongly doubt anyone but existing fans will even be watching. Beam it up.
USA | 2025 | 95 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
director: Olatunde Osunsanmi.
writer: Craig Sweeny (story by Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt; based on ‘Star Trek’ by Gene Roddenberry).
starring: Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky, Kacey Rohl, Sven Ruygrok, James Hiroyuki Liao, Humberly González & Joe Pingue.