Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)

The anvil of justice is planted firm, and fate who makes the sword does the forging in advance. The words of truth are simple. — Aeschylus

Starfleet — where fun goes to die. — Philippa Georgiou

Star Trek is one of my favorite TV series. All of 'em. There’s not a dud in the bunch. Whenever* (*this has never happened) people ask me if there are any Trek series I dislike, I sing:

I love every Star Trek that I see
From Deep Space Nine to Discov-ery

So: writing out my thoughts about Star Trek: Section 31 is a little like reviewing chocolate cake: bring in on, and more portions, please. You have been warned. That said:

Our first glimpse of Philippa Georgiou (the always-magnificent Michelle Yeoh) in the Star Trek Universe was in the teaser of the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The captain of the USS Shenzhou, Georgiou walks (or treks?) across a desert form a visual symbol — the Starfleet delta — in the sand to see her and series protagonist Michael Burnham safely home. She is guru and mother-figure to Burnham, beloved by her crew, much-decorated and spoken of in the same breaths of admiration as Archer, April, and Pike. It’s one of my favorite openings to a Star Trek series, which hints at most admirable traits of a Starfleet office: leader, mentor, helper, pathfinder, a beacon of hope and promise. By the time the opening credits rolled around, I was eager for more adventures of Captain Philippa Georgiou.

This is not that Philippa Georgiou.


This is Emperor Georgiou: the cruel, conniving, omnipotent dictator of the Terran Empire in Trek‘s much-used (occasionally overused?) Mirror Universe, later brought into the Discovery series as an uneasy ally to Burnham and Discovery, willing to do the dirty work a Starfleet officer wouldn’t. Making her the protagonist of a Trek movie is a risky venture. This is, after all, the Georgiou who destroyed planets, enslaved civilizations, and served up Saru for dinner. The writers of Discovery gave her something of a redemption arc which continued as the series catapulted itself into the 32nd century, far beyond the historical scope of any other Trek show; she’s eventually sent backwards in time by the now humanoid Guardian of Forever, and that’s where we find her at the beginning of this movie, running a morally grey space station somewhere in between the end of the original Kirk’n’ Spock Star Trek and The Next Generation (the device of Philippa Georgiou being “temporally incompatible” with the 32nd century is mentioned, brushed past quickly and without much comment in Section 31, which is vital to its effectiveness: the more you already know about Star Trek the better, but if you don’t care, it’s okay to just ignore it).

Georgiou’s recruited by Alok (Omari Hardwick), an agent of Section 31, the hush-hush dark ops section of Starfleet introduced in Deep Space Nine. S31 balances on a slim narrative edge of “whoa, these guys betray everything that Starfleet stands fo!r” and “well, somebody’s gotta do these dangerous clandestine assignments to preserve freedom.” The latter is definitely this movie’s take on the section, and Georgiou joins Alok’s motley crew of dodgy specialists to pull off a grand heist of a dangerous weapon.


Once the plot gets rolling, it’s a fairly rote heist-and-chase story, so the appeal here is the characters: mix’em all together into a Mission: Impossible style exotic cocktail and let’em bubble. They’re introduced in an inventive highlight where Georgiou uses a Sherlock Scan to detect and identify them inside a crowded cantina. Joining Alok and Georgiou are Quasi (Sam Richardson). a shape-changing Chameloid (see: Iman in Star Trek IV); Zeph (Robert Kazinsky), a cyborg dubbed a “Swiss Army Knife” by Georgiou; Melle (Humberly Gonzalez), an enticing Deltan (see: Persis Khambatta in The Motion Picture), who make us obsessed with bald-headed woman all over again; Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), straight-laced Starfleet officer and future Enterprise captain (see: “Yesterday’s Enterprise”); and Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), a Vulcan with startlingly obvious emotions (see: Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave). Not everybody, of course, gets out alive.


This is unashamedly a darker Star Trek (even Paramount+’s opening “starship makes a flyby in the shape of the Starfleet Delta” is accompanied by ominous music) and is specifically designed to eschew the Trek house look with new designs of space stations (Georgiou’s home base is a gorgeous intertwined spiral construction), non-Starfleet spaceships (although not until the second hour; the first several acts remain teasingly on the ground), and fabulous costumes, especially for the women, most specifically for Yeoh). There’s no real groundbreaking advances made here in cinematography, although it at least avoids the usual blue and orange color palette — by lighting the movie in golds and dark blues. Still, the fight sequences are fun and you can usually tell what’s going on even in darkly lit scenes, although it seems a shame to waste the natural agile talent of Yeoh by chopping her fight scenes up into furiously edited second-long segments.


Yeoh is of course the stand-out here, having a grand time as always, with a performance just delightfully short of pure ham, always one step ahead of the rest of the galaxy. Your mileage may vary on how much you can forget or forgive her character’s backstory of killing trillions in the Mirror Universe, but a genocide or two aside, she’s just a delight. There are some nifty (CGI) special effects, an inventive battle sequence where Georgiou fights a phase-shifted mercenary through walls and floors, a whole lotta technobabble about a bio-superweapon that makes the Genesis Device look like a class-1 phaser...you know, the little one. This galaxy-threatening weapon has, naturally, Star Trek’s usual Terrible Untold Past™, and there’s clever late-act shenanigans using the sci-fi physics of a garbage scow – Quark (the Richard Benjamin one, not the Ferengi one) never had it so good. And in the end, the universe is saved by Star Trek’s version of a Furby, a weapon given no absolutely Chekhov (or Chekov) warning. Still, it’s all done with such a light touch it’s pretty forgivable.

So the big question is, of course: will you like it? Wellllll, I did, a lot. But as mentioned earlier on, I’m a sucker for just about everything set in the Star Trek Universe, and despite some creaky dialogue and clichéd plot coupons, Section 31 was a lot of thrilling fun, and it’s a great vehicle for the always-delightful Michelle Yeoh to continue the story of one of Trek’s most interesting women.

But is it Star Trek? There’s no boldly going, there’s no strange new worlds...but to me, the beauty and the truth of Trek is all contained in that goofy little third-season pendant Gene Roddenberry forced on Leonard Nimoy in order to sell trinkets through his mail-order store: the IDIC. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, amirite, folks? Trek shows need not, should not always be Starfleet crews braving the far reaches of the universe searching for strangely lighted Paramount backlot worlds and oddly rubber-foreheaed aliens. Different genres of Star Trek — mysteries, thrillers, romances, comedies — give life to and enrich the past impressive nearly sixty years of mythos and legend. Section 31, like Lower Decks and Prodigy — two series I enjoyed immensely — is something different. That’s always a breath of fresh air in this galaxy.


And if it features a star as charismatic as Michelle Yeoh playing one of the least likely heroes in the Star Trek Universe — well, that’s a brave new world as well.

Star Trek: Section 31 is directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and written by Craig Sweeny. It runs on the Paramount+ streaming network beginning January 24.

Boo, Scream Venture! Venture Bros. Panel @ New York Comic Con 2012

The Venture Bros. is hands down my favorite animated television show ever. if i stop to think about it, it could be my favorite animated anything. it could also be my favorite television show, animated or not (though some stiff competition in recent years has put that into question). OK, just maybe The Venture Bros. is in fact my favorite ongoing anything. I know at least one point in time when I bestowed it with that distinction.

My love and admiration for this mainstay of the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block stems from its sharp retro style, often hilarious gallows humor, witty barbed exchanges between characters, and a foot planted firmly in the culture of geekdom and otherwise outsider culture throughout (don’t be surprised to find obscure Marvel super villain references within a few moments of namedropping Lydia Lunch, Jim “Foetus,” and the New York City ‘80s No Wave scene). Speaking of Foetus, he is the reason I got into the show as early as I did. I’m sure I would’ve gotten there eventually. But it’s funny to think that initially it had nothing to do with animation, movies, the visual medium at all. It was knowledge that the show’s opening credit theme and background music was to be done by Jim Thirwell, man behind long running industrial music persona, Foetus, a small offering of obscure but impeccably moody soundtrack scores, and more composition-based projects Steroid Maximus and Manorexia (themselves filled with staunch and suspenseful soundtrack-esque pieces). After watching a few episodes of the first season, it was apparent that Thirwell’s tendencies to give nods to Italian soundtracks and space age music of years gone by would be a perfect match for a warped take on very flawed ‘70s era adventurer hero types. Johnny Quest was the primary reference point, but weighed down with psychoses, neuroses, and a very stunted ambition. 

 

This teaming of the show’s two-man creator-writer-design team Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer (whose back and forth repartee surely informs the many quarrelsome duos that populate the show) with Jim Thirwell on the background sounds have remained a constant throughout the series’ slowly but carefully assembled four seasons. Yet, so much about it has evolved. The somewhat one-note (even if hysterically funny) riff on super scientist boy adventurers - plural to include both the adolescent namesake brothers and their former adventurer now (struggling) super scientist father - living a less than glamorous and oft failure-tinged life has developed in exciting and unexpected ways.  

Ongoing jokes, like the boys’ homeschooling via computerized beds that load them subconsciously with information as they sleep, take on real life-like ramifications. In later seasons, we witness them struggle to relate to peers and love interests as a result of their sheltered upbringing. Characters and their relations to one another have also become that much more fleshed out.  Brock, at first a punchline embodiment of invincible killing machine aggression and unsatiated sexual bravado, has come to face a crisis of purpose. This puts him in the predicament of choosing between staying to look after the boys, who have come to depend on him and look up to him as a role model, and seeking a more fulfilling path.  

Then there are the supporting characters. Orpheus, the melodramatic mystic based loosely on the Dr. Strange archetype must come to grips with the fact his goth daughter Trianna is outgrowing her father’s sheltering grasp and leaning toward getting to know her estranged mother and her beau -- a younger necromancer whose flair brings Orpheus’ inferiority complex to the forefront.  I cannot leave out Billy and Pete White, my favorite largely ineffectual supporting characters who were nearly written off the show after the first season. The hydrocephalic former quiz boy master surgeon and the former college radio dj internet expert albino, respectively, have developed a storied history and faced tests of their loyalty to one another. It reveals an interesting chemistry of resentment and committed attachment between the two, who’d previously appeared primarily for comic relief. With all this to say, I wonder how I’ve managed to avoid writing about the Ventures before??  With some very long stretches between seasons (mind you, it is a show that has been on a limited budget and for much of its early years had an uncertain future), last year’s NYCC was the first of their appearances I’d seen since being in full swing here at Unseen. And that was a bit of a nonevent. They’d just cemented their place as a reliable big draw at the event, packing in the IGN Theater, but there was really not much to promote. Their achievements thus far were numerous. Most recent highlights included completion of season 4, which was long enough to be split in half. And of course, its hour long finale, which wrapped up several storylines, leaving the future wide open to possibilities.   

This year’s IGN Theater  presentation had a renewed sense of purpose: promoting the upcoming Halloween special --- which, it is interesting to note, was not designed specifically for Halloween. Rather, it’s a spooky episode from the upcoming season, which Jackson and Doc decided to drop on us in advance of the highly anticipated full season 5, which will be brought to us in the more distant future (some time in early 2013 was the projected timing for its kick off). Lucky fans in attendance would get a glimpse at both the special and the fifth season.  

This year’s presentation came with no lack of panache. To the right of the podium were some talk show style couches. With no moderator necessary, the suave princes of Venture would play hosts to the hit ‘70’s talk show they’d just invented “Let’s Smoking.” An introduction showing off Doc Hammer’s editing techniques promised guests Michael Sinterniklaas (voice of Dean Venture), Paul Boocock (voice of Doctor Venture, Sr.) and rock band Air Supply. One of the three did not show up.  I’ll leave it to you to determine which one.   

Between puffs on electronic cigarettes and sips of Fresca, (and plenty of references to both in another instance of the pair’s always amusing, always ‘on’ banter) they and their guests segued into clips from the Halloween special and an episode from the new season. This was followed by an action packed “sizzle reel,” which amazingly, only comprised of a few of the next season’s episodes.  

So...what’s in store?  

Hank, Dean, and new pal/half brother Dermot up to some late night mischief (re: the Halloween special), and noteworthy is the fact that Dean is sporting a fresh new hairstyle; flashbacks to the classic Team Venture on their way to a celebrity wedding; Brainulo; Captain Sunshine; 21 aka Gary, still in peak physical condition and not henching for the Monarch; a triumphant Moppet moment; and a stunning 3-dimensional Sphinx base in flight.  Stunning displays like the one shown here make it clear why the show takes so much time to bring to fruition.  

I can only imagine that the Ventures + Halloween equals universal appeal for any comics/movie fan. For those not already initiated I suggest you check it out. If that whets your appetite for more, if you have a few months to watch seasons 1 - 4 in preparation for the big fifth season.  

A Very Venture Halloween airs at 11:30 this Sunday, October 28, on Adult Swim/Cartoon Network. (See the trailer below)  



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