Summary
The premiere of theStar Trek: Section 31movie is just over a month away. To get fans even more hyped, Paramount+ released a new official trailer this week that reveals a bit more about the first officialStar Trekmovie in eight years.
Section 31features Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh reprising herStar Trek: Discoverycharacter, Phillipa Georgiou. Georgiou and her ragtag crew of Section 31 operatives are tasked with the dirty work that Starfleet Intelligence can’t or won’t handle. The film is set in the “lost generation” of the Trekverse – the years betweenStar Trek: The Original SeriesandStar Trek: The Next Generation.
The studio has dropped some details about Georgiou’s crew, but other than that, details about the plot have been scarce. The new trailer gives fans a bit more information about the threat Georgiou’s team is tasked with handling and teases some interesting callbacks to establishedStar Treklore.
Georgiou Living the Quiet Life?
The trailer starts with a shot of an elaboratespace stationcalled The Baraam. With lounge music playing, a nightclub scene appears. As a singer croons and the camera pans around a hip bar filled with a wide variety of alien lifeforms, one of them tells Georgiou that a patron wants to speak with her.
When Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick) sits down across from her, Georgiou demands, “What are you doing on my space station?”
His answer is basically a variation on the classic “make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
This scene confirms that after Georgiou went through theGuardian of Forever’s portaland ended up wherever she did, she settled down into a relatively quiet life as a nightclub owner. Of course, running an intergalactic bar on a space station isn’t the quietest of lives. On Deep Space Nine, Quark proved that bar owners often have lucrative side hustles that involve barely legal or illegal activities. And knowing Georgiou, she’s definitely got some side action going on, even if she has “settled down” to run a legitimate business.
Back in Action
Of course, Georgiou can’t resist the opportunity to get back into the action, and when Sahar tells her “we’re facing a threat unlike anything Starfleet’s ever seen,” she quickly abandons her swanky establishment to join the team.
The mysterious threat is still unclear. One brief moment in the trailer shows what appears to be an army of humanoids beaming onto a planet. They’re dressed in distinctive red and gold uniforms, holding phase rifles. The uniforms suggest they could be from theTerran Empire, which would make sense given that promos for the movie have heavily focused on the theme of Georgiou atoning for her past sins. This also fits with shots from the previous teaser trailer that showed a younger Georgiou fighting her way to the top of the Terran Empire.
The Mission
The rest of the trailer includes a lot of butt kicking, cool space fights, and snappy one-liners about bending the rules, sticking together, and surviving. It also puts a spotlight on the issue some fans have always had with Section 31 – why does a utopia need a Black Ops division?
In between action scenes, flash the words, “To protect the light, they fight in shadow.”
This has long been the answer the franchise has given for theexistence of Section 31. Maintaining peace and order throughout the galaxy is never as easy as it seems, and it’s rarely maintained through diplomacy alone. To keep the utopian veneer of the Federation from cracking, people have to operate behind the scenes, bend the rules, and take care of the people and organizations who just want to see the world burn.
No one likes to admit this is the way things have to be, but it is. AndStar Trekhas frequently examined how Section 31 can be a force for bad instead of good. But it seems likeStar Trek: Section 31is ready to show fans how the Black Ops organization really doesprotect the Trekverse’s utopian future.
