Culture on My Mind
Section 31
January 13, 2025

This time around, I’m thinking about something new in Star Trek that I’m not really excited about.

I started watching Star Trek in the mid-‘80s when my parents wanted to show me their science fiction. Throughout the years, Star Trek has become one of the cornerstones of my philosophy and life.

The Gene Roddenberry school of Trek described a utopian United Federation of Planets where members upheld strong morals on a quest for self-enlightenment and exploration. While the Federation and Starfleet skirted the edges every so often, they usually embodied what was right and just.

That philosophy still exists in Trek, but Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took a different approach by showing us life on the frontier, deconstructing the status quo and challenging the concepts of utopia and paradise by (as inspired by British screenwriter and playwright Harold Pinter) looking for “weasels under the coffee table.”

Through its history, Trek has explored corruption in the ranks, usually with “Badmirals” – admirals doing questionable things to defend their visions of the Federation’s security. Some of the greatest hits: Fleet Admiral Cartwright spearheaded a conspiracy to drive the desperate Klingon Empire to its knees; Rear Admiral Norah Satie led a paranoid witch hunt in “The Drumhead”; Admiral Mark Jameson supplied weapons to both sides of a war in violation of the Prime Directive; Rear Admiral Erik Pressman violated the Treaty of Algernon by developing a cloaking device for Starfleet; Vice Admiral Toddman threatened the lives of the DS9 crew to protect the Cardassian-Romulan fleet when they tried to destroy the Founders; Vice Admiral Dougherty nearly committed genocide to find a fountain of youth; and Admiral Leyton tried to stage a military coup on Earth by faking a Dominion invasion.

It evolved into the 1998 introduction of Section 31 in Deep Space Nine’s “Inquisition”. A secret branch of Starfleet Intelligence, their existence has been part of the Federation charter since the government’s foundation. To paraphrase the introduction to the tie-in novels, Section 31 is a self-appointed protector of the Federation’s interests, answerable to no one while they act in the shadows.

That’s precisely why I cannot stand Section 31. It flies in the face of what the Federation (and by extension, Star Trek) stands for. While they are more transparent and accepted in the Discovery and Lower Decks eras, their actions are a black mark on the Federation’s moral standing.

I mean, they tried to end the Dominion War by committing genocide and destroying the Founders. Genocide isn’t something that our captains would embrace. We’re talking about literal war crimes committed by villains literally wearing black and sneering at the protagonists.

As Jaime Babb wrote in “‘A Critical Division of Starfleet Intelligence’: Section 31 and the Normalization of the Security State” on Reactor: “I do wish that DS9 had put its weasels away once it was done with them! Instead, they were allowed to escape into the basement of the franchise and breed down there.“

To wit, instead of exposing and dismantling this supposedly secret society of obvious villains, the franchise has embraced it across Enterprise, several novels, Into Darkness, Discovery, Lower Decks, and Picard. In that last title, it’s apparent that Starfleet has pretty much legitimized and accepted 31’s goals and methods. It has embraced the security state status quo, suggesting that torture and genocide are okay as long as the good guys are doing it.

Riding this wave of apparent popularity, the franchise is releasing a television movie focused on S31 and Philippa Georgiou (played by Michelle Yeoh).

The backstory is complicated, but the short version is Georgiou was a captain on Discovery who died. Later on, we find out that her Mirror Universe counterpart is the Terran emperor, and she seeks asylum in the prime (normal) universe. Eventually, she encounters the Guardian of Forever and gets a second chance to make a difference. While her story is interesting, however, the advertising for the Section 31 film is not. That is what bothers me.

The teaser, from July 27, 2024:

The trailer, from December 7, 2024:

Both the teaser and the trailer focus on action and the spectacle, but neither divulge any real hint of the story. I would expect some indication of the story beats from the trailer, and added to how Section 31 has been portrayed, the lack of plot concerns me.

Star Trek has had success with Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy. Discovery was also quite successful, though sometimes dodgy on the story front, but Picard was really rough. That’s almost an understatement of my opinion: Season Two was nonsensical and Season Three was focused more on action and nostalgia hits than actually boldly going anywhere.

These trailers focus on action and nostalgia – Rachel Garrett (“Yesterday’s Enterprise”) and a Cheron alien (“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”) are prominent – and that makes me worry that this film will be more Picard Season Three and less exploration of the human condition like we expect from Star Trek.

Ideally, a film about Section 31 would do some shady super secret squirrel ops stuff, but also discuss the points above. Especially considering that a future Enterprise captain is among the dramatis personae. This film can’t be all about glorifying war crimes as though they’re sexy and acceptable with the franchise’s ethos. It needs to balance exploration of the human condition with the action and nostalgia.

I’m not convinced that it will.

I hope I’m wrong. I’ll be tuning in on January 24th to see what the film has to offer. I have been on board with ninety percent of what has come since Discovery revived the franchise in 2017. But neither Section 31 nor Section 31 excite me.

As a fan of Star Trek for nearly forty years, that’s a sad thing to consider in this era of strange new worlds and new stories in the universe.

Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.

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