It’s been nearly a decade since the release of the last theatrical Star Trek film, but in that time, Star Trek has returned to television in a big way, launching five new series with more to come. Now, while Paramount Pictures continues to drag its feet on a follow-up to Star Trek Beyond, their TV counterparts are kicking off what they hope will be a new tradition of direct-to-streaming features.
First on their slate is Star Trek: Section 31, a spy-fi action flick in which Academy Award-winner Michelle Yeoh reprises her role as the somewhat-reformed tyrannical Emperor Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery. The film sees Georgiou rejoin the United Federation of Planets’ shady black ops agency, marking the first time that Section 31 will feature as the protagonists of a Star Trek story rather than a villain or obstacle.
How exactly did Section 31 mutate from the Federation’s Illuminati to its Impossible Mission Force? For our answer, we’ll have to dig into decades of behind-the-scenes intrigue and centuries of Star Trek continuity.
Section 31 was Deep Space Nine’s scariest villain
In the utopian future of Star Trek, Section 31 is a grim anomaly. Creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision of humanity has evolved beyond greed and bigotry, allowing our species to band together and join a thriving interstellar community of diverse civilizations. Humanity is now a bastion of compassion, honor, and wide-eyed curiosity, the smiling face of the United Federation of Planets, whose Starfleet is sworn to peacefully explore the galaxy and protect its citizens from aggressors. But while the Federation may have risen above the evils of hatred or exploitation, sometimes evil stems from pure, unchecked pragmatism.
In the 1998 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Inquisition, Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) becomes the target of an investigation by Deputy Director Luther Sloan (William Sadler). Though he poses as an official from Starfleet’s internal affairs, Sloan is actually a representative of a secret society that has been embedded in the highest echelons of the Federation since its inception. This organization, Section 31, answers to no one. It’s not recognized or acknowledged by any legal authority. Section 31 intervenes in galactic politics and defense, then covers their tracks so that no one ever knows they were involved.
In future episodes, we learn the extent of Section 31’s capabilities and the extremes to which they’ll go to protect what they view as the Federation’s best interests. In their most deadly plot, they attempt to end the Federation’s war with the Dominion by killing an entire species with a genetically engineered virus.
Beyond their capabilities, Section 31 was intriguing because the audience learned practically nothing about them. In their first appearance, there’s no evidence to even indicate that Section 31 is a real organization rather than an invention of Sloan’s. Even once future episodes confirm its existence, Sloan and his two underlings — who may only be holographic illusions — are the only agents we ever see. Further, when their genocidal plans are revealed, the desperate leaders of the Federation decide to let them get away with it rather than risk losing the Dominion War. Bashir and the crew of Deep Space 9 put a stop to it, but the question remains — Could the Federation really be righteous if it was willing to let someone do such dirty deeds on their behalf?
As originally conceived by DS9 showrunner Ira Steven Behr, Section 31 was a deep-state boogeyman, more akin to the mythical Men in Black than any state-sanctioned intelligence bureau. Never a true believer in Roddenberry’s optimistic future, Behr posited that there was a sinister secret behind the 24th-century utopia. “Maybe [sic] there’s someone watching over [Earth] and doing the nasty stuff that no one wants to think about,” explained Behr in the exhaustive Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion by Terry J. Erdmann. “Of course, it’s a very complicated issue… and those kinds of covert operations are usually wrong!”
This notion proved unpopular with a vocal segment of Star Trek fans that felt the very existence of Section 31 deeply undercut the overall message of Star Trek, that human beings can find and maintain peace through radical tolerance and cooperation rather than force or coercion. Section 31 was unquestionably framed as evil, but if they were protecting the Federation from the shadows all along, then the audience and their Starfleet heroes would have to acknowledge them as necessary. Deep Space Nine excelled at muddying the moral certainty of the Star Trek universe, but after its conclusion in 1999, many Trekkies hoped that the concept of Section 31 would be put to bed.
Discovery made Section 31 legitimate but not benevolent
Not only did Section 31 continue to appear in Star Trek works after Deep Space Nine, but it’s grown into the series’ most revisited invention. Section 31’s origins as a secret cabal that predates the Federation would be confirmed in the 2005 prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, and they would become a major antagonist in the 2013 feature film Star Trek Into Darkness. Though in an alternate timeline from Trek TV, Into Darkness linked Section 31 even more closely with Starfleet, revealing Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) as a member of the secret agency and giving them their own powerful vessel, Vengeance.
Shortly thereafter, Into Darkness co-writer and producer Alex Kurtzman would become the guiding hand behind Star Trek’s relaunch on streaming television, and it wouldn’t be long before Section 31 reared its head on the new series Star Trek: Discovery. In Discovery’s second season, Section 31 is depicted not as an unacknowledged deep state entity but as an explicit division of Starfleet, complete with their own spooky black starships and black Starfleet badges.
In the 2019 episode Saints of Imperfection, Section 31 Agent Leland (Alan van Sprang) condescends to Starfleet Captain Pike (Anson Mount), suggesting that Starfleet’s moral righteousness is only made possible by Section 31’s moral compromises. S31 once again plays an antagonistic role on Discovery, but rather than the organization itself being the villain, the story’s true big bad is an artificial intelligence that they created to guide their tactical decisions. The season ends on an optimistic note that teases the reformation of Section 31 into something more benevolent.
The reframing of Section 31 seems reflective of changing cultural attitudes around state intelligence in the early 21st century. Deep Space Nine ran concurrently with The X-Files, a massive hit show about deep, sinister conspiracies concocted by opaque government entities. Into Darkness was released 15 years after Section 31’s debut and was, in part, a commentary on America’s reflexively violent response to the September 11th attacks. By the time Discovery came along, the idea that Starfleet would necessarily have a dark mirror was barely shocking.
Star Trek, if you choose to accept it
There has been no canonical explanation of how Section 31 went from being a shadowy, operating entity within Starfleet to a rogue nation, whose existence is a closely guarded secret within a century. Behind the scenes, however, it seems clear that Section 31’s rehabilitation was in the interest of clearing a path for Trek’s own answer to Mission: Impossible. The idea for the Discovery spin-off was first suggested by Michelle Yeoh herself before Discovery premiered, and her Section 31 series was announced in January 2019, ahead of Season 2’s debut.
At the time, executive producer Alex Kurtzman indicated that Section 31 would be an exciting but complex spy drama, owing not only to the spectacle-fueled Mission: Impossible films but also to the murky and messy intrigue of Killing Eve. COVID put the brakes on the new show’s planned 2020 production schedule, after which the project kept being kicked down the road and continually retooled until it eventually became the 2025 TV movie.
In a recent interview with TrekMovie, Osunsanmi said that Section 31 will live up to Star Trek’s lofty ideals and that the film is “fun” and “a joy,” which certainly sounds like a departure from the series Kurtzman initially described, which would have been run by Discovery producers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt. Osunsanmi told SFX Magazine that the movie, whose screenplay is credited to Craig Sweeny, is six drafts descended from Kim and Lippoldt’s TV scripts and that “the two stories are completely unrecognizable.”
Promotional material for the film indicates a wacky, colorful romp in the Guardians of the Galaxy vein, without a hint of the titular agency’s villainous origins. Can this new action-adventure take on Section 31 add enough fun to compensate for all the complexity that’s been removed? We’ll get our answer on January 24th.
Star Trek: Section 31 is now streaming on Paramount+.
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