‘Star Trek: Section 31’ Makes the Worst Star WARS Stuff Look Almost Good – An LW Ghost Review

Star Trek: Section 31, the new Star Trek show starring Michelle Yeoh, is not just weak, not just bad, but ASTOUNDINGLY awful. And before I continue, let me put forward my credentials:

First, let me state for the record that I LOVE Star Trek (if, by Star Trek you mean, as I do, TOS, the first few OS movies, most of Enterprise, some of Voyager, and a moment or 12 from Next Generation and not the effluvia around since).

“Starfleet: Where fun goes to die”

– Actual Michelle Yeoh dialog, Section 31

Second, let me state for the record that I LOVE Michelle Yeoh (if, by “Michelle Yeoh” you mean the amazingly witty, charming, and deadly martial artist actress perhaps BEST seen in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies jousting with Pierce Brosnan etc. etc. back in 1997)

A group of people beam down in Star Trek: Section 31 – YouTube, Paramount Plus

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Third, and most emphatically…..this thing SUCKS. I mean it sucks in SO many ways it’s hard to list them all.

Script? Awful and pointless and utterly UN-Trek as we know it. Throwing in some races and forms that we like and know won’t do it. At least when the finale (I hope) of Picard got the band back together it was a fun if terminal moment. This gets a band of nobodies with no charm, no wit, no style, and just noisy chatter together in a way that is, well…

“Borrrrrrring!”

-Actual Michelle Yeoh dialog, Section 31

I mean it’s LOUD and CLANGY and NOISILY shot, edited, and designed, that’s for sure. And all in aid of…nada, nothing.

Action? Well, when you do HAVE one of the world’s premiere martial artist actresses as your star (albeit aging and not helped by BADLY showing that in makeup, hair. and wardrobe choices) you’d think at least some good fight scenes featuring her would be winning….but….

“Meh.”

-Actual Michelle Yeoh dialog, Section 31

Putting on my rather expert Director hat here for a moment, when you shoot a scene in cuts, ZOOMS, and slow-mo blurs with endlessly fast-moving shots that I guess you think enhance the action, what they actually do is make it POINTLESS and impossible to follow or appreciate. You destroy the credibility your expert actress has in the field. You make fois gras into chopped liver.

You kill the buzz you are trying to accomplish.

Characters? This thing takes the whole “ragtag bunch of misfits” and goes where no bad movie has gone before. I pity the actors, though I have no idea if they are competent. That’s because what they have to say and do is so utterly nonsensical that you learn in about a minute with each of the principles that there’s zero “there” there and not to bother caring.

Michelle Yeoh in Star Trek: Section 31 – YouTube, Paramount Plus

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I could go into more plot, more scenes, more stuff, but you get the idea. No matter how hard they try to pixiedust this (and I’ve now seen entire pixie articles explaining where this story “fits into” the Trek timeline, and the film itself has endless diagrams and star maps and other optical clutter beyond belief, as if using vaguely familiar fonts would make you buy this as true Trekness) what this amounts to is something not only bad compared to the worst of the pro work, this is bad compared to a lot of fanfic.

I mean REALLY that bad.

That they took a four-episode series and cut it into “The First Star Trek Feature In Years!” for TV/Paramount+ and not big screens is almost irrelevant. Except you can get it over with if you dare to last it out in one night’s binge of bullpucky.

“Vaulting Ambition” — Episode 112 — Pictured: Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou of the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. Photo Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

Section 31 really is as bad as you’ve heard, as bad as you may have feared, and so bad that when I say I watched it so you don’t have to, y’all owe me BIGTIME for saving you from your curiosity. At my age, giving time to something that I’ll never get back is a major sacrifice, after all, but the bottom line is this:

When I say that this movie for Paramount+ Boldly Goes Where No Trek Has Gone Before….that is NOT a good thing. I am, and always will be, your friend…and if nothing else proves it, the fact that I watched this FOR you should.

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