To protect the light, they fight in shadow.
Due to its placement in the continuity, this page contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery seasons 1-3.
Star Trek: Section 31 is a sci-fi spy movie part of the Star Trek franchise, specifically a spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery. It stars Michelle Yeoh, reprising her role as former Terran Emperor turned Federation black ops agent Philippa Georgiou.
Announced in 2019 as a series, delays from Yeoh's busy schedule and the COVID-19 Pandemic put it in Development Hell until it eventually premiered on January 24, 2025 on Paramount+.
After being written out of Star Trek: Discovery, Georgiou has been hanging out in the 23rd? 24th?note century, running some kind of luxury space hotel. Section 31 shows up to intercept an arms dealer, and when Georgiou immediately makes them, they decide to just bring her in on the plan. And this is not the ruthless Sinister Spy Agency that may or may not officially existnote — this is a motley crew of Bunny Ears Lawyers working together to protect the Federation, with a token amount of Starfleet oversight.
Philippa signs on as much for self-preservation as anything else, but soon discovers is that the danger is much greater than anticipated... and is somehow connected to her own past in the Terran Empire.
Starfleet does not officially confirm or deny that Star Trek: Section 31 has examples of the following tropes:
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: While discussing the Godsend, Quasi and Zeph get into an argument over whether Georgiou said “god send” or “god's end”.
- Actually a Doombot: While fighting Fuzz, Alok stabs him in the forehead only for the latter to announce he isn't even in there and his body has been on autopilot the whole time.
- Aliens of London: Fuzz is a tiny alien creature piloting a robotic Vulcan body…and speaks with a pronounced Irish accent. And when his wife shows up piloting an identical body, she has a Southern accent.
- Ambiguous Time Period: The given stardate for the main plot would technically place it before the Original Series, which would line up with Georgiou returning right after she “left” the 23rd Century — but the presence of Rachel Garrett, Alok's age and remarks about how the Terran Empire has run out of resources indicate this is taking place in the early 24th Century. Except San is there too, with no explanation for looking the same age as Georgiou despite being roughly 120 years old. Huh??
- And the Adventure Continues: The film ends with the remaining characters receiving a new mission.
- Backup Twin: An unusual version of this at the end: Fuzz shows up, except it's actually his wife piloting an identical body (they apparently keep a few spares on hand) looking to join the team and get revenge on him.
- Call-Forward: This movie reveals that as of the early 24th century the Terran Empire was in a particularly weakened state due to exhausted resources and adhered to an ideology of "righteous mercy", calling to mind what Intendant Kira will tell her Prime Universe counterpart several decades later about Mirror Spock's reforms and its fall to the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance.
- Rachel Garrett's aspirations to become a Starfleet captain are brought up a couple of times. As we know, she is destined to eventually become Captain of the USS Enterprise-C. By the end of the film, she's been promoted to Lt. Commander, taking one major step towards that goal.
- Celebrity Cameo: Jamie Lee Curtis makes a surprise appearance at the end as Section 31's apparent leader, Control.
- Character Tic: Georgiou is constantly tapping, flourishing, and staring at her fingernails. She also touches her face a lot so that her fingernails are in the shot.
- Clothing Combat: Georgiou makes effective use of her huge, flowing sleeves in early fight scenes, and uses a fabric belt to climb back onto a flying platform when she's thrown off.
- Cradling Your Kill: Georgiou does this with her former lover San after being forced to kill him in self-defense.
- Creepy Doll: The Droom doll Garrett finds on the garbage scow. Maybe the Droom find the way its head revolves cute. Maybe they even find the fact its programmed phrases apparently include a gleeful "We're all gonna die!" cute.
- Cyborg: More prominent than usual for Star Treknote .
- Dada Noe has extensive cybernetic modifications, including a personal forcefield.
- Zeph has a cybernetic exoskeleton which he considers a part of his own body, as he apparently suffers from “mecha body dysmorphia”.
- It's unclear how much Fuzz counts as a cyborg, but the bodies he pilots are shown to have extensive interior modifications to allow him to control them.
- Control, the team's handler, also turns out to be one of these when they appear. It might be a holdover or Call-Back to the original Control on DSC inhabiting and modifying host bodies through its own nanites.
- Dark Action Girl: Georgiou is ruthless and the best fighter in the film.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Georgiou, who murdered her entire family to become Emperor, enslaved the boy she loved for 30-odd years after mutilating his face, and built a Doomsday Device.
- Alok lived through the Eugenics Wars, watched his friends and family die, and then his Augment overlord “tore [him] apart” and turned him into an Augment and sent him out to commit atrocities.
- Deadly Game: To pick a new emperor, the Terran Empire forces teenagers to compete in a series of deadly games, with the winner being immediately anointed emperor.
- Denser and Wackier: Despite its Downer Beginning and focus on morally gray protagonists, the film has a noticeable lighter tone than other installments of Star Trek, focusing more on action, zany comedy, and modern quips.
- Divine Intervention: Not in the movie itself, but in the setup. The Guardian of Forever, which might as well be a god, sent Georgiou to this time period in the Discovery episode “Terra Firma, Part Two” after putting her through an extensive test of character. Presumably, it didn't just spin a roulette wheel and chuck her into the timestream at random. The film begins with a mangled partial quote from Aeschylus about fate forging swords ahead of time, which seems to imply that the Guardian sent her to that specific time period because she would be uniquely suited to dealing with the Godsend.
- Doomsday Device: The Godsend, an ornate polygon that destroys “an entire quadrant”, spreading from planet to planet “like a virus” according to Georgiou. She says she had it built as a “taking you all with me” failsafe if she was ever deposed, though given that “deposing” in the Empire usually means “assassination” and the Godsend requires biometric confirmation to detonate, perhaps she was fudging a bit. The scientists who built it all killed themselves as soon as it was complete.
- Downer Beginning: The opening of the film is about how Georgiou became a Self-Made Orphan.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being a loyal citizen of the Terran Empire, San is unable to murder his own family, and he makes it clear the reason for his suicide is because he believes Georgiou crossed a line by building the Godsend. Subverted by the reveal he faked his death, and is planning to use the Godsend to conquer the Federation just to spite her.
- Explosive Breeder: Fuzz says his wife is about to lay 190,000 eggs.
- Fictional Disability: Zeph has “mecha body dysmorphia”, which causes him to regard his exoskeleton as a part of his physical body. He gets very upset when someone refers to it as equipment, or otherwise implies in any way it is not part of him.
- Fish out of Temporal Water:
- Georgiou, though it isn't really addressed, has been displaced about 70 years from her own time period, and into a completely different universe to boot (with a brief detour 800 years into the future)
- Alok is from the 20th century, making him technically over 300 years old (though he says he spent most of that time “asleep”, presumably as a Human Popsicle).
- Homage: The dystopian Terran system for selecting an emperor involves taking a bunch of teenagers and forcing them to compete in deadly games until only one remains and receives a grand prize, with our protagonist teaming up with a romantic interest even knowing that only one can win. This is all lifted straight from The Hunger Games.
- I Die Free: One possible motive for San's suicide after a lifetime of slavery, with Georgiou even screaming at him that she forbids him to die. Averted ultimately, he was just Faking the Dead.
- Informed Attribute: The film and its marketing expound at length about how Section 31 operates outside the laws and morals of the Federation, but we don't see them do anything all that illegal or even amoral, beyond punching Dada Noe a couple times during an interrogation and going outside Federation space in violation of a peace treaty. Perhaps they were on their best behavior because of their Starfleet babysitter.
- Intangibility: Used to great effect by Georgiou to steal an important case. While fighting an opponent who is also intangible on the same “frequency” (and thus able to hit her), she simply switches the device off and his arms pass right through her. Just like the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase," they inexplicably don't phase through the floor.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Georgiou has done this a lot. Besides the Self-Made Orphan thing (and killing her adoptive daughter on Discovery), she also ends up killing San when he has her on the floor, trying to drive a sword through her head.
- Logo Joke: The Paramount and Star Trek logos appear in a reflected form.
- Made a Slave: This is San's fate after he and Georgiou both survived the Deadly Game to become Emperor; she killed her family and he couldn't, thus she got the throne and he was forced to be her slave forever
- Mobile-Suit Human: Fuzz is a "nanokin", a new species of nanoscopic creature that could pilot a lifelike "machine" suit called a conveyance. It's unclear if the Vulcan is a cadaver, a clone, or some kind of Meat-Sack Robot, as it doesn't really seem to be “alive” and Fuzz can put it on “autopilot” when he's not inside, but it is a “bootleg” model acquired on the black market. He makes no attempt to act remotely Vulcan, however.
- Morton's Fork: For the families of the top two candidates for the Empire. The winning candidate is the one who murders their own family; the losing candidate's family gets killed by the Empire. Either way, it is bad for the families.
- Multiversal Conqueror: The Terran Empire is running out of resources and is planning to use the Godsend to conquer the Prime Universe.
- Not So Above It All: Garrett starts off absolutely disapproving of all these people and Section 31 in general. Over the course of the movie, Georgiou shifts from mocking her for being a typical uptight Lawful Good Starfleeter to saying she's secretly a "chaos goblin" which is why Starfleet assigned her to this mission. Garrett eventually embraces this role to an extent.
- Not So Extinct: Georgiou's concierge, Virgil, appears to be a Cheron native. As far as anyone knew, the last of their race was shown dying in The Original Series episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". It's possible that they finally got over their prejudices, or at least enough not to completely kill themselves off, or others of their kind survived by some means.
- Older Than They Look:
- San is roughly Georgiou's age, and thus would've been born near the beginning of the 23rd century. But Rachel Garrett was born around the beginning of the 24th century, and appears to be about twenty years old or so, which would make him approximately 120 (he certainly doesn't look it, but Star Trek is filled with time travel and bootleg youth serums so it's not impossible). Unless the film is set in the 23rd century, then the inverse would be true, making Garrett retroactively much older than she looks in “Yesterday's Enterprise”.
- Born in the 20th Century, Alok around 350 years old — but not physically, as he spent most of that time in stasis.
- Georgiou is physically in her early sixties but (if the film is set in the 24th century) was born over 100 years before the it takes place due to Time Travel.
- Our Wormholes Are Different: in an unusual example for the Terran universe (which is usually limited to transporter mishaps or experimental spore drives), an “ion storm alignment” somehow creates a Negative Space Wedgie allowing travel between the Prime Timeline and the Mirror Universe. At least until Georgiou blows it up with the Godsend.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The trailer puts a lot of emphasis on this and Alok's motley squad certainly fits the bill:
- Melle, a Deltan who uses her Living Aphrodisiac powers for espionage rather than take the usual Vow of Celibacy.
- Fuzz, a Vulcan who doesn't act remotely Vulcan … because he's actually a flea-sized alien piloting some kind of dummy body.
- Zeph, a Dumb Jock in a Powered Armor exoskeleton which he regards as part of his own body.
- Quasi, a shapeshifter with decision paralysis.
- Georgiou, though not an official team member, is a deposed emperor from another universe.
- Alok himself is an Augment from the 20th century.
- And, as the Token Good Teammate, we have Lt. Rachel Garrett, a couple decades prior to becoming captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise-C.
- Revision:
- During an episode of DS9, when describing the fall of the Terran Empire, Intendant Kira attributed the weakened state that made it vulnerable to conquest by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance entirely to the reforms implemented by Mirror Spock to turn it into a more peaceful and less aggressive regime. Without outright contradicting that, this film puts a different spin on the Empire's situation:
- The film reveals that despite Mirror Spock's reforms, the Terran Empire actually survived well into the early 24th century, and its weakened state may have had more to do with lack of resources than with them becoming a less violent society.
- This film aimplies that Mirror Spock's societal reforms may have taken the form of redirecting the Terrans' aggression away from social Darwinism and towards an ideology of "righteous mercy", rather than doing away with it altogether.
- In this film, it's stated that the Terran Empire had a fleet waiting on the other side of the wormhole. Depending on how much of the Empire's overall strength the fleet consisted of, and on how badly the Godsend damaged it, this could certainly have been another step in the Empire's decline.
- The TOS episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" established that the natives of the planet Cheron had become extinct as a result of a planetary-scale war between its two racial factions, with Bele and Lokai being the last remaining members of that species, in the process of killing each other. Without contradicting what was shown in that episode, Virgil's existence here implies that at least some other members of that species managed to leave Cheron before the war reached its end, meaning they’re only functionally extinct.
- During an episode of DS9, when describing the fall of the Terran Empire, Intendant Kira attributed the weakened state that made it vulnerable to conquest by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance entirely to the reforms implemented by Mirror Spock to turn it into a more peaceful and less aggressive regime. Without outright contradicting that, this film puts a different spin on the Empire's situation:
- Saved by Canon: Thanks to an episode of TNG, we know Garrett is going to survive no matter what happens.
- Self-Made Orphan: Not surprisingly for the Terrans, an entire race afflicted with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, Georgiou has to kill her parents and little brother to become the Emperor.
- Series Continuity Error:
- The story clearly takes place in the early 24th century, but a caption establishes the stardate as 1292.4 — except the stardates for the Original Series, which takes place in the prior century, start at 1312. There's also the matter of another character being several decades younger than he should be, but Star Trek is so full of time travel, bootleg alien youth serums and weird phenomena that it's not impossible.
- It was repeatedly stated on Discovery that Terrans are extremely light-sensitive compared to their Prime Universe counterparts, which turned out to be why (Mirror-)Lorca kept his ready room darkened and used eye medication. The early scenes from Georgiou's past on Terra take place in open sunlight, which appears to be just as bright as it would be on the Prime-Universe Earth, and none of the characters seem adversely affected by this.
- Zigzagged with Alok, a survivor of the Eugenics Wars who subsequently became an Augment himself, mentions being from the 20th century. While this is in line with the original chronology for the Eugenics Wars, it is inconsistent with the revised timeline established in more recent stories in which the Eugenics Wars occurred at some point in the 21st century. That said, there are two thing that don't outright mark this as an error... 1) it was only said he was born in 1970 and not what kind of augmentation that was given to him by Giri the Marked, two considering how flexible time is (As seen with Q death in season 2 of Picard yet a 'younger' version messing with his son in said series season 3), one must consider the fact that the events of SNW may not have happened yet in a temporal sense.
- Shout-Out: Two of Fuzz's hatchlings are named Trip and Trip 2.
- Stupid Evil: The Terran Empire has always been this way, but San & Dada's plan gets special mention. Why bring the Godsend all the way into another universe just to sell it back to people from your own universe? Why meet up to exchange it at a hotel run by the one person guaranteed to recognize it? And furthermore, if planning to conquer the prime universe, why use the Godsend to do it when it would destroy all the planets they're planning to colonize? San explains he desperately wanted to see Georgiou fail but is still needlessly complicating his evil plans.
- Super-Strength: Alok is an Augment, though he wasn't born as one and seemingly lacks their usual desire to rule. This is foreshadowed when he punches someone across a room and Georgiou asks if he's really human.
- Token Good Teammate: Officially this is Garrett's role, as their Starfleet liaison, ensuring “nobody commits murder.” Much ado is made by her teammates over what a goody-two-shoes she supposedly is, except the rest of the team don't even do anything all that evil, aside from punching an arms dealer in the face to make him talk.
- Too Dumb to Live: Melle tries to use her pheromone powers on someone wearing a full face mask. It works about as well as you'd expect and gets her vaporized for her trouble.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Georgiou and Alok remind Noe of her full title: Her Most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo'noS, Regina Andor Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponia Centaurius.Noe: Cool. Does it come with fries? [laughs]
[She punches him in the face.]
Noe: Ah! Okay. - The Voice: Alok's Section 31 handler, who first gives them the mission to track Philippa down, is a mysterious voice named “Control” — presumably not the same omnicidal AI that tried to kill everyone in the mid-23rd century on Star Trek: Discovery. Subverted when Control makes an appearance at the end via hologram, as nope, it's Jamie Lee Curtis!
- Wager Slave: Son is forced to become Georgiou's slave for coming in second place in the Terran Empire's Deadly Game for selecting emperor.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: When Fuzz believes he is about to die, he begins reciting the names of his and his wife Wisp's as-yet-unhatched offspring. Some have similar names to their parents but others include Cowpox, Tonsillilitis, Influenzina, and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever.