I don’t think I’ve ever been less enthusiastic about the premise for a Star Trek project than I am about this one. Even the funny cartoon.
Although I love Michelle Yeoh and would happily watch more of her in Trek, even as the former Emperor, the concept of a Section 31 Series just turns me off completely. I’ve talked at great length before about my issues with Section 31 as a concept so I won’t repeat it all here. I’ll just sum it up by saying that Section 31 goes beyond ‘utopias are unrealistic’. DS9 did that, challenge the utopia, and it did it well, maintaining the core values of Star Trek while allowing a dose of reality to mix with the idealism. In that world one man making big claims is forgivable. But Section 31 as a real, widespread branch of Intelligence operating with Starfleet Command’s tacit approval? That’s a game changer. It says that Star Trek’s base ideal that we can be better than we are, and that we can live by our principles, is nothing more than a naïve lie. It plays into some of the nastiest of political ideas, and makes me very uncomfortable in this fictional property.
My more narrative based issue with Section 31 is that it has become shorthand for ‘cool’ in the Trekverse. Everything remotely secret or intelligence led has become “section 31” for extra cool points. It’s become cartoonish in its overuse, which not only dulls the narrative and moral impact of what they actually do – torture, genocide, kidnap, assassination - and with each appearance more brazen than the last becomes harder to accept as a clandestine organisation. It would be as though the Russians arrived in Salisbury wearing KGB flak jackets and carrying a case marked TOP SECRET NOVICHOK.
