July 30, 2024

I’m going to start this blog entry by stating it right here at the top: I really enjoy Michelle Yeoh.

Paramount+/CBS/All Access/whatever it’s called these days has released a trailer for “Star Trek: Section 31”, to be released on Paramount+ in 2025. If it wasn’t for the “Star Trek:” in the title and a few mentions of a Vulcan or something else, I would have absolutely no idea this trailer depicts a movie in the “Star Trek” universe.

This feels like some sort of cyberpunk sci-fi cuss mess that does NOTHING to contribute the original vision of “Star Trek”, and that’s when humanity gets beyond itself and into a prosperous, harmonious, future. NOTHING in this trailer invokes hope. Like most things branded as entertainment in the 2020s, this seems to be about strife, anger, and a dystopian future.

Bleh.

I am a Trekker from long before “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. I fairly enjoy “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”. I haven’t been as invested in the franchise since “Star Trek: Voyager” was canceled in the early ’00s and I could never get into “Discovery”. I enjoy “Strange New Worlds” to a degree, mostly because I hope at some point we’ll see Anson Mount shirtless in front of a mirror shaving around his awesome Starfleet sideburns.

“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” is one of my least favorite of the ‘classic’ series because back then it was straying too far from the hopeful future once ever present in the Star Trek universe. That’s where the concept of Section 31 was introduced to the canon, but from what I can tell, this Section 31 is nothing like what was introduced back on DS9.

A few years ago Paramount+/pick your name brought fan films in the Star Trek universe to a complete stop, as they had their own vision of what should be shared in the space going forward.

They should have left it to the fans to make their own films.

I’ll pass.