Ron: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Stereo Geeks, and the first of 2025. We’re reviewing the new Star Trek film, Star Trek: Section 31. I’m Ron.
Mon: And I’m Mon.
Mon: Star Trek: Section 31 is currently streaming on Paramount+, so we’ll break this review up into two parts - part one is the general background and our thoughts about the film. Part two is spoiler territory. We’ll let you know when the spoilers are coming.
Background
Mon: Previously, on Star Trek. Section 31 has been in the making for… Kahless knows how long. I don’t think the studio knew just how popular Michelle Yeoh was going to be as Philippa Georgiou, and especially as Emperor Georgiou. But Yeoh was a tour de force, and we all wanted more of her.
Mon: After a four-year hiatus from the Star Trek universe, Yeoh is finally back as Emperor Georgiou in this seemingly stand-alone film.
Ron: But maybe not standalone? Dare we hope for more?
Mon: Who knows. Section 31 sees the return of Emperor Georgiou, now disguised as the head of a recreational facility outside Federation space. She’s suddenly pulled into action by Section 31. Can she be trusted to join this dangerous mission? Will she fight alongside a crew she doesn’t even know? And, will her past, once again, return to bite her?
Ron: Along the way, we meet her new crew members from Section 31. And they’re certainly an eclectic group. Led by Omari Hardwick’s Alok Sahar, a man with a lot of demons, there’s also the Starfleet plant, Rachel Garrett, a familiar name to fans, played by Kacey Rohl. Then there’s Quasi, played humorously by Sam Richardson, mech-head Zeph, played by Robert Kazinsky. Fuzz, played by Sven Ruygrok, is a… well, you’ll find out. And finally there’s Melle, a Deltan, played by Humberly González. The crew are held together by Sahar’s firm hand and determination, because without him, they’d either all get killed or be at each other’s throats. Let’s just say, Section 31 doesn’t get the pick of the best in the galaxy. But it does make for an entertaining watch.
Non-spoiler review
Mon: So what are our general feelings about Section 31?
Ron: I came here to watch Michelle Yeoh kick butt, and kick butt, she did. So, I got my money’s worth. I love Georgiou, the good and the bad versions, so being able to see her again was a delight. I still miss Star Trek: Discovery so spending some time with Michael Burnham’s mentor/mother figure was a joy.
Mon: I enjoyed the film. The production design and aesthetics gave it a 90s/early noughties sci-fi film vibe, which I seriously loved. It also felt closer to the look and feel of the last season of Star Trek: Discovery, which was a nice connection to Georgiou’s origins.
Ron: I loved the production design. Loved the sets, the costumes, the character designs. It felt like I was seeing more of the Star Trek universe and its people than just Starfleet.
Mon: Now, did I love the film? No. Is it spectacular and memorable? Also no. Is it bad? Definitely not. It’s a middling entry in the Star Trek pantheon. Yeoh and Georgiou deserve better - something more crisp, and exciting. Less exposition, more character dynamics and political machinations. It’s fun, and funny. But there’s simply not enough time to fill out the story.
Ron: Bit harsh. I had fun watching the film. I know Section 31 is already being panned but considering it’s got a female lead and people of colour, I’m going to take the bad reviews with a pinch of salt. It’s not the best film but it’s enjoyable and visually, it was a treat.
Mon: Ugh, these people and their racism. Stay out of Star Trek if you can’t handle equality. Section 31 isn’t a terrible film. It’s a fun, little romp. And, considering the world we live in right now, a fun, little romp is desperately needed.
Ron: Now, Apparently Section 31 was slated to be a series. But when Yeoh won the best actor award for Everything Everywhere All At Once, it was reimagined as a film.
Mon: I mean, that makes sense. Let the Oscar-winner headline a franchise film. But, uh, that plan makes no sense if you just drop it surreptitiously, with little to no marketing, on a streaming platform that most countries can’t even access! Paramount made the wrong move here.
Ron: When I heard Section 31 was going to be a film, I was preparing to put my snow boots on and head to the cinema. But it’s not playing in theatres, which is massively unfair to Yeoh and the whole cast. Why, when we have a diverse cast of characters, is the Star Trek film dropped on Paramount+?
Mon: I can’t even.
Ron: In my opinion, Star Trek is always stronger as a series. Among the films, both the Prime and Kelvin timelines, the only one that really stands out as a good film is First Contact. I enjoyed Section 31, but I think it would’ve been better as a series.
Mon: I’m with you there. Star Trek needs the breathing space of a series. You feel the constraints of 100 minutes with Section 31 - we don’t get to settle in with the characters, and end up with a lot of exposition. So much stuff is added to the lore, and I want more of that. If there’s a major criticism of Section 31, it’s that we don’t get enough. Another criticism is that some of the editing, especially in the climactic fight scene, could have been tighter and clearer.
Ron: I’d also say that my only faults with Section 31 could have been rectified by making it a series. There were key character moments that were compressed because of the 1 hour 40 minute runtime. In a series, we would have at least 8-10 episodes to see them come to those conclusions about themselves.
Mon: I totally agree with you.
Mon: Let’s chat about the characters.
I loved hanging out with Georgiou, and watching her being devious, and cunning. I liked that the film closes the loop on what happened to Georgiou after Star Trek: Discovery. She hasn’t lost her edge, but she’s itching for more. Georgiou is still a bit naughty, and terribly full of it. I’m glad the filmmakers didn’t try to soften her sharp edges or make it about her path to redemption. Yeoh slips into the character of Georgiou like she fits into these superb costumes. She was made to play Georgiou.
Of the new characters, Hardwick’s Alok Sahar is my favourite. You need at least one silent, brooding type with a dark past to reel you in. But Sahar’s backstory also helps him connect to Georgiou.
Ron: Obviously, we were going to love Georgiou. But aside from her, I liked the new characters. Hardwick and Yeoh had a ton of chemistry – from the get-go, you can tell that they’re in sync because of the lives they’ve led. Every captain needs a commander, and Hardwick was perfect as Yeoh’s first officer. I would love to see more of his character.
Mon: I found Robert Kazinsky as Zeph a quintessential dimwit, and we got the right amount of that in this film.
Ron: Agreed. Zeph was used well, not too much or he’d get irritating, but just enough for viewers to get attached.
Mon: I wasn’t the biggest fan of Sven Ruygrok as Fuzz. Of all the performances, I felt his was the weakest - he was hamming it up.
Ron: Fuzz made me think of the stock comic characters of 80s and 90s sci-fi films. Really out there with the humour and expressions. Gratingly in your face. Considering how large a role Fuzz has, it needed a stronger performance. I think Ruygrok got a bit lost in the accent.
Ron: It’s weird how new Trek likes actors playing multiple roles with different accents, isn’t it? Santiago Cabrera played multiple characters with different accents, and apparently people didn’t like that. I thought they were fun. Now people don’t like Fuzz and his accents. Maybe Star Trek should let people just use their regular accents.
Mon: Ruygrok’s Fuzz reminded me of Santiago, but like he was trying too hard to emulate Santiago, and failing at it. Disappointing.
Ron: Richardson’s Quasi was the comic relief but he also has necessary skills for the team. I got really strong Neelix vibes from him. Like there’s so much more to this character’s past than we’ve seen.
Mon: Yes, I kept wondering why I dug Quasi so much. I mean Richardson is awesome, and I have enjoyed his performances in everything I’ve seen of him, but his take on Quasi, yep, the Neelix vibes certainly helped.
Mon: I’m curious to hear what you thought of Kacey Rohl as Rachel Garrett. I thought we were in for some kind ingenue-type character, and was about to roll my eyes. She’s inconsistently written in this film, but she was fun to watch.
Ron: I didn’t get ingenue from her, but I did get the misfit vibe, and that’s eventually what the film leaned into. Her character development comes through exposition though, which was a drawback for her. Garrett is the stick-in-the-mud Starfleet officer who’s thrown into chaos – if we’d got a series, we could have seen her learn how to embrace the non-Starfleet way of working a problem.
Mon: Fair points.
Spoiler-filled review
Ron: Shall we warp into some spoilers now?
Mon: Ok, so the film starts off in spectacular fashion - young Georgiou returns to her family after fighting out a battle royale. She has to make one last sacrifice - to kill her family. I saw it coming, but it was still so sad. And it gets worse, because she then has to enslave her fellow competitor, and romantic partner, San. What a beginning. Were you worried this was going to turn out to be a love story?
Ron: Not really. The moment young Georgiou, played by Miku Martineau, makes the decision to murder her entire family, I knew we were going to get something different. I didn’t think San’s chances of surviving were high after that. But I was wrong there. Georgiou doesn’t kill him – she does worse. She not only physically hurts him but emotionally, she pulls the rug out from under him. James Huang plays young San and does a solid job of showing that deep betrayal. He really thought Georgiou could love people more than power. Only Michael Burnham brought Georgiou around to that!
Mon: I’m glad they didn’t turn it into a romance, or worse, something silly like Georgiou having a secret family, or some such.
Ron: Indeed. I didn’t think they’d go that route because we’ve already seen Georgiou embrace two versions of her foster daughter. In the Terran Empire, Burnham was going to be her heir, and in the Prime timeline, Burnham became the realest thing to an actual daughter.
Mon: Older San, played by James Hiroyuki Liao, has a relatively small role, despite being an integral part of the story. My takeaway about San is that he’s lost his humanity (in the Prime universe sense of the term) because he watched Georgiou lose hers. The story - and again, in a series, we’d have been able to flesh this out - was less about Georgiou finding herself, and more about righting one wrong. That being San heading towards dictatorship.
Ron: A series would have given us more time with San, and we could have seen how he goes from hating everything Georgiou has become to following in her footsteps. Georgiou learns the hard way that there’s no such thing as a benevolent dictator. But San truly seems to believe that he can be one because he doesn’t want power the way Georgiou did. Of course, he’s completely wrong. His first act is literally to destroy billions of lives. But Georgiou and San come from a universe that knows only violence. Obviously, they can’t see any better way to be. Unlike San, though, Georgiou did get a new perspective by living on Discovery.
Mon: I wish they’d threaded that theme in more. We get a brief sense of the film’s theme through Sahar, who talks about being turned into an Augment and being made to do horrible things by his master, Giri the Marked, who eventually died. Georgiou comments that Giri was lucky she died and didn’t have to grow a conscious. Love that. So much character development in that one line. We needed more.
Mon: Maybe I wanted more commentary on Georgiou’s past as a dictator, and San’s wish to be a ‘benevolent dictator’ because of the current state of the world. That’s what Star Trek is about, reflecting reality and making it better.
Ron: I would have loved more about humans being monsters, as well. That whole idea of ruling for the betterment of people, but it’s one person’s way or the highway. I mean, we watched this film the week that the US presidential inauguration happened. So many people in our neighbouring country voted for someone they think will be a benevolent dictator. There is no such thing. Violence begets violence. It always has and always will.
Mon: Yasss! That kind of reflection was needed. We got some of that commentary on Discovery, but Section 31 would have been a great vehicle to explore that concept.
Ron: If it had been a series, we would have got much more.
Mon: Thoughts on plot? Too simple, too convoluted? It didn’t feel overly Star Trek to me, which I genuinely don’t mind. Nice to have something a little different. But the 100-minute run time was burdened with a lot - introduce all these new characters, their backstories, Easter eggs, Georgiou and her past, and a plot line. I liked the overall plot, but it needed more layers.
Ron: The plot itself felt like Star Trek but the execution felt more like quintessential Hollywood sci-fi. There wasn’t much technobabble, which makes the film accessible for new audiences, but hey, I love technobabble. Tell me all about the EPS manifolds and the annular confinement beam.
Mon: I liked that there’s a bunch of mysteries at the centre of the story. Who’s the baddie, what’s the MacGuffin. Who’s the mole? I really enjoyed the ‘can’t trust anyone’ angle.
Ron: There’s also multiple baddies. And in general, you can’t trust anyone. I like that you’re worried about getting attached to people but you also can’t help it. Maybe I’m saying that because Sahar comes through unscathed and I really like him.
Mon: Yes. Sahar was really cool.
Ron: There is a scene that I want to discuss with you. It’s the final fight between Georgiou and San. He’s close to killing Georgiou and right at the end, she manages to kick the sword away. But it flies back and slices San’s neck, killing him. Do you think that was intentional?
Mon: Nope, not at all. That was not the best edited scene, and it was a too-neat way to wrap up the fight and the story.
Ron: The reason I ask is because apparently, people read it as intentional and can’t understand why Georgiou said she didn’t want this to happen.
Mon: People… have lost the ability to read between the lines. Maybe the editing didn’t help, but it was obviously an accident. Georgiou was up against it, she was in pain from a sword trying to impale her, she lashed out, and San got hurt. Read the context clues, folks. Sheesh!
Ron: Exactly! I read it as an accident, as well. Georgiou was trying to save herself, and she accidentally killed the man she had once loved. Maybe she believed they could have loved each other again.
Mon: It’s a double whammy of sadness for her - losing San and losing any future with San. A very classic, old-fashioned way to end a story. It’s also the universe’s way to make Georgiou pay for her crimes.
Ron: For me, this scene actually worked very well to show how much Georgiou has grown, because she actively doesn’t want to kill him. Everyone keeps teasing her about being such a murderer, but she’s a new person now. We saw that when she was last on Discovery. Her redemption doesn’t erase her crimes or her violent legacy, but it does show that if the Terran Emperor, of all people, can find her humanity, anyone can. We live in hope for our very real world.
Mon: We keep talking about Georgiou, which I guess is a sign the film did her justice as the lead. I was worried she’d become a passenger in her own film.
Ron: Wow, you are always worried about that. Remember how you felt the same way about Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse?
Mon: We’ve been burned before!
Ron: True, true. But Section 31 is Georgiou’s film, with plenty of memorable moments with the other characters.
Mon: Plenty? There were some highlights. Hardwick’s coolness and pathos, that was great. Loved his chemistry with Yeoh. It wasn’t electric, but it was smooth.
Ron: Yes, I’ve got to go back to Sahar here, especially when he was talking about monsters and people. And I absolutely loved the chemistry between him and Georgiou. I like that it’s not romantic, they don’t go there in this film. But it could very well be.
Mon: There’s certainly something going on between Georgiou and Sahar at the end, though.
Ron: Almost like a Janeway-Chakotay thing – never real but always felt. Really feeling the Voyager vibes from this film.
Mon: Yeah. I get that.
Ron: But the mole scene. Quasi absolutely losing his mind accusing everyone. That was incredible. Richardson played it so well. I was doubting everyone including Quasi!
Mon: Absolutely brilliant work. Threw us off kilter.
Ron: The mole subplot worked well for me. Because, until Georgiou figured it out, I really was suspecting anyone and everyone. We knew the only person who wouldn’t be the mole was Georgiou herself. But everyone else was fair game. And there were so many breadcrumbs! Loved it.
Mon: Now, I may be in the minority here, but I was hoping for some glimpse, or mention, or connection to Ash Tyler. Last we saw of him, he was inducted into Section 31. I wish they’d brought Shazad Latif back as the leader, or maybe even for one scene.
Ron: Oh, I 100% wanted Ash Tyler back! But I guess he’s on a different mission with Section 31? When I first heard about this show, now film, I thought it would be about Georgiou and Ash, and a couple of new folks. I was totally expecting them to bond over their love for Michael Burnham. But alas, it is not to be.
Mon: Sad face.
Ron: Despite the lack of Ash Tyler, talking about this film is actually making me like it even more than when I watched it. And the teaser ending gives viewers hope for a sequel. Of course, after what went down with The Acolyte last year, I’m going to accept that this is the last we’ll see of these characters.
Mon: We won’t get a sequel. We need to make peace with that. But the story will continue - be it in our imaginations, or within the pages of books. Yeoh is most likely too busy to continue in the franchise. Section 31 felt like it needed to be done because the studio had said they’d do it.
Ron: Ah yes, contractual commitments.
Mon: I’m glad we got the film, but don’t hope for more, not on screen anyway.
Ron: Where are my Star Trek fanfiction writers at? Get to work, people!
Mon: Well, we enjoyed Section 31. It’s not perfect but it was definitely entertaining. What did you think of the film? Are you hoping for a sequel? Until next time!