Star Trek: Section 31

I can see this movie being passable if it'd just been a standalone movie not attached to the Star Trek brand. It still wouldn't have been good, but a lot of the problems with it wouldn't have stood out as much. It would have just been another generic straight-to-streaming slop movie.

As it is, this sucked. It didn't do anything interesting with the setting, it didn't have a story that could only be told in a Star Trek setting, and it didn't even do all that much with Section 31 as an idea. I'm glad this was never a full season of TV, as was originally planned, because eight hours of this would have been a nightmare.

The nicest thing I can say about this is that at least it's short. 95 minutes is a good length for what this was. At least nobody felt the need to drag it out to two hours, which happens too often with movies nowadays.

I've just wasted 1:35:12 of my time watching something that should not be graced with the Star Trek name. The Section 31 of DS9 and Discovery has been camped up and made into a laughing stock. The plot was at best, paper thin and predictable. The characters were woefully shallow. The whole thing has sullied the Star Trek franchise and cast a dark shadow over the excellent series like Discovery, DS9, OST, and TNG. Who's ever idea this was needs to publish an apology to those of us who grew up with James T Kirk and watched every series through to Michael Burnham.

What makes matters worse is I sat through this train wreck until the end. The only thing I can hop that there are no plans for a sequel.

This isn't just the worst Star Trek Movie; it is also the worst Star Trek based show in the Star Trek Universe.

The story is weak, the acting is terrible, there aren't enough expletives to express how poor the overall satisfaction rating is.

I'm genuinely trying to not include any spoilers in this review, there's also a part of me that wants to, just to spare you (dear reader) the pain of having to endure what I just did, which was this tragedy.

Having said all that, if you have absolutely nothing to do; and I mean absolutely nothing, then why not put this on whilst you ebd up playing on your phone instead.

As a massive Star Trek fan, I am deeply disappointed by the continued involvement of Olatunde Osunsanmi in directing Star Trek projects. His work on Discovery fundamentally missed what makes Star Trek special, and now he is repeating those same disastrous choices with Section 31. Even with a talented cast, he has dragged the franchise down with juvenile, uninspired ideas that already failed in Discovery.

This feels like a betrayal of what Star Trek stands for. Osunsanmi has managed to do the exact opposite of what Jon Favreau accomplished with Star Wars-instead of revitalising the franchise, he has dragged it into mediocrity. The result is not just a disappointment, but an embarrassment to the legacy of Star Trek.

The only reason to call this a Star Trek movie is because they mention Starfleet several times. The cartoonish characters actually belong on Lower Decks, not in this mess. The story is rushed, the peril ridiculous and you get no time to process anything. Every alien species is brand new, with no chance for character development, other than their simplistic special abilities.

Michelle Yeoh is always good as Philippe Georgiou, but not as the lead character. She needs a moral foil to her narcissistic anrrogance and that's completely missing without someone like Michael Burnham.

This is obviously a pilot for a series that never happened... and that's a good thing. They need to stick with Starfleet stories.