Star Trek has a long and established tradition of story creation. They've long told morality tales about all sorts of things, ranging from racism to sexism and even the idea of war crimes. It's covered the gamete and done a great job of highlighting the best and worst in humanity.
When it deviates from that established tradition, things usually go sideways. This takes us to the newest offering for the franchise, Star Trek: Section 31. It's the first of its kind, a made-for-streaming series for Paramount+. The first movie to be released since Star Trek: Beyond in 2016. Yet, the concept behind Section 31 is a bit contentious.
It focuses on a group of Star Trek villains, potentially before they were villains. An elite group of spies called Section 31. The clandestine group is known for its torturous and murderous ways, oftentimes hunting down innocent people in witch-hunt-like investigations. They're not the good guys, they don't embody what Starfleet is supposed to, and rooting for them seems like a win for fascism.
Yet, here we are. This isn't a unique concept. A darker, edgier more grittier tone has not worked in the past for Star Trek. Concepts like Discovery and Picard failed because they tried to adhere to a philosophy so different than the norm that fans rejected them. Then of course you have the fact that, much like Lower Decks, Section 31 feels like another entity.
If Lower Decks is Ricky and Morty for Star Trek fans, then Section 31 feels like the marketing for SyFy's Killjoys mixed with the generic formula of the Guardians of the Galaxy film. It's not a great merging of ideas. Made worse by the fact that the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi is promising something 'new' for Star Trek fans.
An idea that has failed before.
Speaking to TrekMovie.com, Osunsanmi said;
"I’m excited for viewers to experience a hard-hitting, action-packed, and emotional journey through a part of the Star Trek Universe that hasn’t been explored before. It’s a new flavor of ice cream, another color of the rainbow that is a fresh fit in this universe. And that crucially, requires no prior knowledge of Star Trek to get into it. You can hop right in, understand everything that’s going on, and go for the ride."
This could backfire incredibly. The film was already supposed to be a show, but budget constraints and the upheaval that Paramount was going through forced a change. From that change came an opportunity, to bust out of the doldrums that the Kelvin Timeline film franchise had locked the studio into.
It's a chance for new movies, new stories and new concepts but that only happens if Section 31 hits with fans, critics, and the studio alike. If the film does well but isn't received well, we know it'll hurt the perception of things. If it's received well but no one sees it, Paramount isn't making another.
So it's a bold and dare we say bad idea to try to do something new at such a pivotal point in the franchise's history. Let's hope it pays off.