Star Trek Rumor: Section 31 a long ways from happening

Many Star Trek fans are excited over the idea of getting a Section 31 series after rumors of a spinoff started around the time of Star Trek: Discovery’s second season. The series would feature Michelle Yeoh’s Phillipa Georgiou from said series and would feature her working inside the secretive Starfleet agency.

While Section 31 has long been an idea fans had hoped to get its own series in some form over the years, it finally got some real steam over the last few years, especially with then-CBS, now-ViacomCBS wanting to expand the Star Trek legacy even more on their streaming services.

With Paramount+ needing all the original content it can get, as long as it’s viable financially, expect new Star Trek series quite often going forward. After all, the service already has three series airing on the service and two more set to debut this year.

That could be why the Section 31 series is currently in limbo at the moment. From Gizmodo;

"According to Alex Kurtzman and Paramount+ programming chief Julie McNamara, the proposed Section 31 spinoff show featuring Michelle Yeoh’s Phillipa Georgiou character from Star Trek: Discovery is still “conversations,” and will now only happen when one of the five current Star Trek projects—Discovery, Prodigy, Lower Decks, Picard, and Strange New Worlds—is over. [Variety]"

That may not be too long, however. Discovery is filming a fourth season already but a proposed fifth season, which was supposed to film concurrently with the fourth, was postponed. This may be due to the pandemic but it might also be an edict by the new joint heads of ViacomCBS’s streaming service Paramount+. They may want to see how the series does on the service. After all, the first three seasons did nothing to help Paramount+’s predecessor, CBS All Access.

Not only that but Lower Decks only got a two-season order at launch, a standard move for the former CBS when it came to its streaming properties. With how mixed the reactions were to season one and the fact they already canceled the Twilight Zone revival, stands to reason that unless Lower Decks greatly improves in season two, it could get the ax as well.

Lastly, there’s Picard, which has long been rumored to be a series that isn’t supposed to last long. Many believe that it’s only getting two seasons but that’s only supposed to get two seasons. If that’s the case then Section 31 could easily replace that. It’s also possible that Picard series star Patrick Stewart wants a third season and could easily get it. Things are in a constant state of flux right now.