Star Trek  - Section 31
                              
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Year: 2025
Rating: 5.0
I can't help but notice that most Star Trek fans squashed this like an unwanted blood-filled mosquito giving it ratings that only a venereal disease would be proud of. I am not really a Star Trek fan - but I am a Michelle Yeoh fan from way back and with that in mind I rated it better than most even while recognizing that it has a script and a group of characters that should have found its way to the incinerator. But Michelle dominates this film and is in nearly every scene. And she has a few decent action sequences. That is good enough for me. I ask for little. In a way considering its history, it is surprising that it even made it to the little screen. From back before covid, it was going to be a TV series - then along came covid, Shang Chi, Everything Everywhere All at Once and other Star Trek productions - so it kept getting pushed back. It had originally been Michelle's idea to create a series for her character, Philippa Georgiou, and finally they decided to just make it this TV film. The way it ends seems to open it to the possibility for other films in the future - but perhaps the near universal turning up of noses put an end to that. I can always take more Michelle. One of these days, she may begin to age and that saddens me a bit but what a remarkable career.  



Like I said, I have not kept up with Star Trek in any comprehensive way. You would have to be a junkie to do so. But I have seen smatterings from a bunch of the series and have an inkling about the background of Philippa Georgiou. Not a nice woman. A very bad woman. Genocide was her game as Empress of the Terran Empire - one of those Multiverse things that I hate so much in the Marvel films. Something happens and she ends up in our universe and her time with Star Trek turns her into a better person - this in Star Trek Discovery I believe. That happened before this film - she has gone down a few pegs - from Empress to the boss of a Star Wars type night club. There is a short preamble though taking us back to how she became Empress. Hunger Games and killing her family. Better than inheritance, I guess. But she seemed so nice before that.



Section 31 of Star Trek come looking for her to help them with a mission. Who came up with this group - a five year old? They try desperately to incorporate Guardians of the Galaxy humor into the dialogue, but it lands like a fat man falling from a platform. Poorly designed and doesn't fit in the film at all. This could have worked if it had taken itself seriously and not created idiot colleagues - a tiny tiny creature in a spaceship inside a man, a seductive female, a dimwitted man ensconced in armor, a creature that can change shape and their leader who was once a psychotic killer. Don't try and be Marvel. And a woman from Star Trek who apparently later captains The Enterprise. It is up to them to save the world. All rubbish for the most part but it is Michelle, so no complaints and only 90-minutes. It actually should have been longer. Though I might be the only person on earth to think so.