Section 31 Is Star Trek's Answer To A Popular Comic Book Movie

Set phasers to spoilers: This article discusses major plot details from "Star Trek: Section 31."

In many ways, "Star Trek" and its universe full of aliens, super-powered beings, the occasional godlike entity (see: Q), and heroic Starfleet officers meant to embody our highest ideals and aspirations isn't too dissimilar from the high-flying world of comic books and superheroes — but "Section 31" puts a unique yet unmistakable spin on that entire notion. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi and writer Craig Sweeny (alongside Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt, both of whom get "Story by" credit) boldly take the franchise where it has only sporadically gone before, centering the story on the devious Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and a spec-ops team of antiheroes brought together by the dark side of Starfleet that few even know exists. With the Federation's comforting rules and regulations merely a distant speck in the emptiness of space, "Section 31" truly gets down and dirty in a far-flung corner of the galaxy. By the time viewers are caught up to speed along with the always-wary Georgiou, the premise of the movie becomes clear ... and so does its most obvious superhero antihero counterpart.

"Section 31" puts a quintessentially "Star Trek" twist on comic book movies like "The Suicide Squad" — er, James Gunn's version as opposed to the disastrous 2016 movie, if that helps. A team of misfits and outcasts assembled together to recruit an outright villain, an irreverent tone and snarky sense of humor dialed up to 11, tons of action with multiple brutal deaths, and curse words flying just as often as phaser blasts? The only piece missing from this puzzle is Michelle Yeoh breaking the fourth wall and asking, "What are we, some kind of Section 31?" (Sorry, sorry, I'm trying to delete that.) Regardless of whether the project's B-movie charms work for Trekkies or not, one thing's absolutely certain: "Section 31" marks the latest instance of "Star Trek" breaking bad.

When it comes to the "Star Trek" franchise, being bad has rarely looked so good. Philippa Georgiou (or, rather, her Mirror Universe counterpart who stuck around for almost the entirety of "Star Trek: Discovery") has always marched to the beat of her own drum, but never has she been let off the chain as much as she is in "Section 31." Fully escaped from Starfleet's tight grip, this version of Georgiou is much more extravagant, self-assured, and downright fun than we've ever seen her before. Okay, yeah, she's grappling with the guilt and trauma of condemning her former adolescent flame San (James Hiroyuki Liao) to a life of servitude and torture in order to become Emperor in the first place ... but she just looks so fabulous while doing so.

That's where the rest of this "Suicide Squad"-like team comes in. Georgiou's past has come back to haunt her in the form of San and his desire to unleash the Emperor's universe-destroying "Godsend" device, but luckily there's a full-fledged team of renegades making sure that never happens. Each member falls into narrative roles that easily fit the folks-on-a-mission template: Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick) is the cool and calm leader, Kacey Rohl's Rachel Garrett is the prim and proper stickler for rules, the fearsome mech Zeph (Rob Kazinsky) is the brawn, tech-savvy Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) is the obnoxious brains, Melle (Humberly González) is the femme fatale, and the shapeshifter Quasi (Sam Richardson) is the jack of all trades.

What separates "Section 31" from your typical ensemble fare, however, is the fact that few of them get along with each other, most of them refuse to play by the rules, and every one of them has their own agendas and secrets. Sure, there's no exact equivalent to Ratcatcher or Polka Dot Man or the kaiju Starro ... but they all end up serving awfully similar functions anyway. Whether this approach works for the fanbase or not, well, that's another story entirely.

Here's the question of the day, to the extent that /Film's Jacob Hall centered his positive "Section 31" review on the idea of what actually makes "Star Trek," well, "Star Trek" in the year of our Lord 2025. To this point, the sci-fi property has never allowed itself to get stuck with just one label and confined to a suffocating box. "The Original Series" alone proved just how malleable this material could be, bouncing from genre to genre in the span of a few episodes faster than the USS Enterprise could warp through space. Since then, every subsequent addition to the canon has only challenged our preconceived notions of what "Trek" can be more and more, from "The Next Generation" daring to jump forward to a time period (mostly) without any familiar faces to "Deep Space Nine" having the audacity to be set on a stationary space station instead of a starship — and, in that regard, "Section 31" is certainly no exception.

Still, it's easy to see how different "Section 31" feels right from the jump. In a recent interview, "Star Trek" creative lead Alex Kurtzman explained that the TV movie was meant to appeal to as broad an audience as possible ... and not just hardcore Trekkies. That goes a long way towards explaining the emphasis on action for the adrenaline junkies out there, the far more irreverent tone, the attempt to create a sense of a "cool factor" (which many critics have argued feels anathema to what "Trek" is at its heart), and the overall parallels to multiple comic book movies in recent vintage.

Ultimately, this "Section 31" experiment likely won't end up redefining the franchise to as much of an extent as dissenters may fear. For one brief moment, however, we were given a glimpse into the most interesting of mirror universes — one where "Trek" let its hair down, strapped on a cocktail dress and a Beretta (or whatever the phaser equivalent would be), and shot first and asked questions later at the first sign of trouble. It's hard to deny that it felt anything less than exhilarating.

"Star Trek: Section 31" is currently streaming on Paramount+.