Star Trek is at a crossroads. The franchise has seen three series underperform to some degree to kick off the Nu Trek era of the franchise, all while burning through money that Paramount+ will likely no longer be giving to any one show or film ever again. What little success the franchise has had was due to going back to basics, like with Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Both shows fully embrace the classic Star Trek approach to storytelling and to great effect. Even then, however, shows like Prodigy weren't safe as Paramount+ canceled the show after the toy line attached to the series failed to turn enough money. Since then, everything has been lean.
Ever since reports came out that investors and banks wanted returns on investment for streaming services, Paramount+ has been cutting costs across the board, as has Paramount Global. When the money facets turned off, shows had to prove their worth, and shows like Discovery and Lower Decks were quickly canceled.
Concepts like Section 31 went from a multi-season series with a blockbuster-level budget to a single, one-off film that was likely made for half of the money a Star Trek season is likely going for these days.
Now, only Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is left, and considering how poorly Section 31 did, it's fair to say that they're the outlier for the franchise. Not the norm. In fact, the more and more we here about the near-unlimited amounts of money that were given to streaming services to create exclusive content, the more and more come to find out that viewership was rarely ever the driving force for why shows got renewed.
So when shows had to start performing on their own merit, they quickly got canceled. Star Trek wasn't the only show affected, and Paramount+ isn't the only streaming service to cancel popular, but under-performing shows.
The Era of Experimentation is over and the only way forward for a franchise like Star Trek is to stop goofing around and start making content that the core fanbase wants. That means no more musicals, no more fantasy episodes, no more movies about villains, and no more shows that steal concepts and ideas from other, more popular, franchises.
It means going back to basics and making Star Trek for Star Trek fans. Alex Kurtzman has proven to not be able to make that kind of a show or film. Every show or film he's put his name on has failed since the money facets turned off, save for Strange New Worlds. When that's the situation you're in, it's time to look elsewhere for a creative lead.
Hollywood is a very static industry, that rarely moves on from concepts or people unless they're forced to. If this were sports, not only would Kurtzman have long been gone, but the entire Bad Robot/Secret Hideout company would likely be out of business.
Except, that isn't the case, and instead people are still pumping them full of money because, for some reason, no one realizes that things could be better.
The failure of Section 31 should be the last straw. It's so easy to make a good Star Trek series and film, but for some reason, we've gotten some really rough offerings and the only person to blame is Kurtzman. He keeps signing off on these projects and Section 31 is proof he hasn't learned what the Star Trek fandom wants.
After all of this, will he truly ever? Section 31 is a laughably bad film and not even so bad it's entertaining. Just a bad, boring, poorly made dreck. He greenlit it, approved the script, kept it in production after seeing early dailies, and then allowed it to be published onto the platform. If he had a sterling reputation as a creator, sure, give him a pass. Yet, most of the shows he's made prior to Section 31 either range from truly terrible to divisive, save for one or two offerings.
Kurtzman has had over eight years and we've seen what his level of quality is at this point. It's time to move on and find someone who better understands what Star Trek fans want. After all, Star Trek isn't Star Wars. If you don't cater to the Trek fandom, you don't cater to anyone. Eventually, someone will understand that.