Captain Picard would not approve. Luckily, he isn’t around yet to comment on “Star Trek: Section 31,” the 14th film in the franchise and the first to be made for streaming. Set in 2333 — in the so-called Lost Era between the original movies and Picard’s series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” — this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink movie is stuffed with so many neurotic mutants and hidden motives that even the unflappable Jean-Luc would struggle to keep them straight.
Pity the poor viewer, then. Centering on an extravagantly coifed and costumed Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, the onetime ruthless ruler of a dehydrated parallel universe, the action veers from camp to cartoon and back again. A brief prologue reveals Georgiou’s heinous past behavior; now she’s among the Federation’s most wanted, and Starfleet’s Section 31, a black ops spy agency, has 24 hours to find her and neutralize a new, unspecified threat.
And find her they do, running a nightclub in a space station far, far away from Federation oversight. It’s immediately clear, though, that Georgiou needs little more than platform boots and a Nosferatu manicure to best her enemies — even the ones, like certain Section 31 operatives, who alter their look more often than Chappell Roan. Among these is a nasty little microbe encased in a Vulcan exoskeleton, histrionically played by Sven Ruygrok with an inexplicable Irish accent. (This one gave me flashbacks to Dr. Who’s naked Daleks) There’s also a nervous shape-shifter (the likable Sam Richardson from “Veep”), a so-called human augment (Omari Hardwick) and a body-modification addict (Rob Kazinsky) whose illegal mechanical add-ons have turned him into a walking scrap yard.
The film might, for instance, have usefully interrogated why the supposedly ultravirtuous and idealistic Federation is running what appears to be a death squad.
“Starfleet does not do assassinations,” announces Lt. Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), the Section’s uptight science officer and (as fans of “The Next Generation” know) a future starship captain. Sadly, that’s a moral gauntlet that writers of the sequel (promised by a major celebrity in this film’s coda) will have to pick up. As Picard would say, “Make it so.”
Star Trek: Section 31
Rated PG-13 for neurotic aliens and a nostril invasion. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. On Paramount+.
