Ever want to see Michelle Yeoh overact? And I mean like Jim Carrey/Will Ferrell level overact? No, you didn’t. Because it means you would actually desire seeing this dreadful spinoff, maybe more than once.
Among the worst things to ooze like pus out of an infected wound in 2025 is Star Trek: Section 31, a film with a stark reminder as to how sci-fi can really suck sometimes. Wiki sez “Section 31 is an autonomous intelligence and defense organization that carries out covert operations for the United Federation of Planets.” This was unclear to me in the film, not that it mattered. This film was fairly awful start to finish not matter how it is understood or misunderstood.
The key force here is Philippa Georgiou (Yeoh), the leader of the Terran Empire who has chosen to lead by running away from her empire and hanging out in a seedy space bar. The Terran Empire is just a bunch of farmers with sadistic ideas of whom shall lead them, so -honestly- I don’t blame her. Georgiou is no saint herself. She rose to power by poisoning all her family. OK, film, you have my attention, but you better have freaking Keyser Söze at the end of this if you’re going to kill loved ones openly and without remorse.
It doesn’t.
Meanwhile, members of Section 31 show up -I kid you not- to show how diverse they are. The whole point of the next hour of film is: “Hey! I’m some crazy alien, too! Look at how our different our team is!” One of these guys is a shapeshifter, one of these guys is a robot, one is … um, a sentient couch, maybe? One of 
these guys is an oil painting, I think. It doesn’t matter. They are on a mission so important that is forgotten the second Michelle Yeoh shows up and starts acting all over the place. You know, sometimes awards and recognition are great for careers, and sometimes … they are not.
The film devolves into a 45-minute “action” sequence, and if you can tell me what’s going on at any given point, you deserve both a prize and an MRI. This is as forgettable as films get. Star Trek: Section 31 is hard to respect on any level. But I can’t help thinking that if the film was willing to show the poisoning of innocent people, why didn’t it just go in that direction? Given the mixed-donut box of idiots among the characters, I’m not sure this material would have worked in any format, but I sure would have liked it better as a slasher film. At least them, characters I hated would be consistently eliminated.
An offshoot of the octopus that is Trek
This tentacle is a pain in the neck
“Michelle Yeoh? Yay!”
“Oh, she sucks. No way!”
Chalk it up to yet another Star Blecch
Rated PG-13, 95 Minutes
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Writer: Craig Sweeney, Be Yeon Kim, Erike LIppoldt
Genre: Failed spinoffs
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: You gotta really, really LOVE Michelle Yeoh
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody with an ounce of taste
