By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Star Trek: Section 31 is now available for streaming, and the consensus seems to be that this is extremely bad. If you’re a Star Trek fan, this might worry you, but I have good news.
Despite its title, Star Trek: Section 31 is not part of Star Trek at all. It’s actually part of a completely different on-screen universe.
First, some context. The film is presented as a spin-off centered on a character played by Michelle Yeoh in Star Trek: Discovery. Star Trek: Section 31 was only given the green light after Yeoh won the Best Actress award at the Academy Awards for her performance in the film Multiverse Everything everywhere at the same time.
It’s safe to say that the film was made largely because Primordial wanted to associate its brand with an Oscar-winning actress. This is common practice.
What fans didn’t realize during filming was that they also wanted to transform his Oscar-winning film. Everything everywhere at the same time in a movie franchise. And it’s there Star Trek: Section 31 comes into play because it’s actually a sequel to Michelle Yeoh’s award-winning alternate universe jumping film, not a Star Trek film.
Star Trek: Section 31 is actually part of another franchise
Although the film’s title features the words “Star Trek”, nothing in the film has any connection to Star Trek. None of the production design looks like Trek, the ships don’t look like Trek, and very little of the vernacular, technology, or world-building resembles any form of Star Trek we’ve seen before.
Article 31 plays out like a generic, poorly written heist film until the film’s final moments, when its true origin is revealed with the appearance of Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis starred alongside Yeoh in Everything everywhere at the same time. At the end of Section 31, she is revealed to be the secret leader of Section 31, Michelle Yeoh’s boss, and the orchestrator of everything.
His interaction with Yeoh’s character is more like a scene from Everything everywhere at the same time than Star Trek, and that’s because it is.
Or at least I choose to believe that.
Everything everywhere at the same time is a film about infinite alternate universes. Generally having nothing to do with Star Trek and everything to do with this movie, Article 31 is cemented as taking place in the Everything everywhere at the same time multiverse, not in the Star Trek universe.
Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou Character Is Just Another Version of Her in Multiple Universes Everything everywhere character. Jamie Lee Curtis is one of the few constants the character has with her as she travels through the multiverse in this film. So of course she’s there too.
It’s already a spin-off of non-Canon hardware
The fact that section 31 is apparently a spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery, And Star Trek: Discovery is also not part of Star Trek. Or at least not part of the main Star Trek timeline.
In the series finale, Star Trek: Lower Decks reconnected Discovery to take away place in an alternate universe. We now know that the universe is the same as the one in which Everything Everywhere All At Once takes place, and it has nothing to do with Star Trek.
Let me delude myself. After suffering Article 31it’s the only way I’ll be able to enjoy Star Trek again.
