Spoilers STAR TREK: SECTION 31 - Grading & Discussion

[James Cole]

S31 is best watched at midnight after being up for at least 16 hours. Either you fall asleep, or you're too tired to properly nitpick the thing so it just unfolds frame after frame.

It’s a tragedy, we could have gotten the long requested HD remasters of Deep Space Nine and Voyager and probably at least 1 streaming season of some other show for this films budget.

Most rumors place the budget for S31 in the $80 million range. Now, much like TMP, it's having to eat the development costs of a tv series that didn't happen. And Yeoh's fee was apparently around $12 million.

And, for a floor... live action NuTrek episodes tend to come in at $8-10 million. S31 had the shooting days for four episodes. It also had much more extensive effects than your average NuTrek episode. So I think the lowest reasonable budget would be around $50 million.

$60 million would easily remaster in HD all of DS9 and VGR. So it seems fair to weigh the opportunity costs of where Paramount invests money into Star Trek. Luckily remastering DS9 and VGR is low hanging fruit for when Paramount+ wants to scale up content on the cheap. Peacock went to that well with redone episodes of THE OFFICE with all the deleted scenes put back in to get people to subscribe.

P+ did after all fund the 4K remaster of the TMP director's edition.

I think you’re right. But I also don’t think this would have worked better as a 10 episode series. I could see an argument for how it would have been worse.

The middle section of the movie, where they’re stuck on the planet, and people are trying to figure out who’s the mole. I could just in my head see how that was originally intended to be 2 or 3 episodes of the characters running around in circles that would have been frustrating as hell.

It's kinda hilarious they included the midseason bottle episode in their mashup. They did say they took the Terran arms dealer guy with the headgear from like episode 4. So their first season pitch probably was a mystery box bioweapon that when you opened it the invasion from the Terran Empire and San were inside.

I have never seen a TrekBBS poll with more than half the results ranking a Trek project overall nearly so low. Even the most divisive series and movies.

S31 might be the odd case where it's an easily accessible one shot so people are checking it out more from curiosity than anything, especially with its quasi-movie status. The primarily Berman era fans weren't going to like it anyway, but it also seems to have displeased the SNW fans and most(?) DISCOVERY fans. S31 just doesn't have a sizable constituency within Kurtzman's overall Star Trek pie.

Will be interesting to see if the DISCOVERY constituency by and large moves over to SFA, or if that one suffers a large drop off as well.

 

[Yistaan]

And Yeoh's fee was apparently around $12 million.

It's mainly for her name recognition and Oscar status. For comparison I heard John Boyega and Daisy Ridley each got around $500,000 for the Force Awakens (it might actually be less than that). And that was for a theatrical Star Wars release expected to be a hit all around the world, not a made for tv movie that most people won't watch.

 

[fireproof78]

Will be interesting to see if the DISCOVERY constituency by and large moves over to SFA, of if that one suffers a large drop off as well.

According to the Internet nobody wants an Academy series so drop off is expected. No doubt it will be less because the negative perception.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Can you blame them? The awful Guardians of the Galaxy making millions showed that it is what they want. But it only works when certain franchises do it seemingly.

Not just certain franchises, but certain creators who know what they're doing, working with people who utilise their strengths instead of hacking up their films in post production.

Rotten Tomatoes:

• Guardians of the Galaxy - 92% critics, 92% users. Fresh!
• Suicide Squad - 26% critics, 58% users. Rotten.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - 85% critics, 87% users. Fresh!
• The Suicide Squad - 90% critics, 82% users. Fresh!
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - 82% critics, 94% users. Fresh!

One of these movies wasn't made by James Gunn.

 

[The Wormhole]

My primary concern since the project was initially announced (originally as a spin-off series that thankfully simply became a streaming film): The continued, fundamental misunderstanding of Section 31 that stemmed from the early seasons of Discovery.

Instead of a covert shadow organization that quietly pulled the strings from behind the scenes under the guise of "protecting the Federation," Section 31 is now instead a flashy black ops in plain sight, complete with eye-rolling black Starfleet insignia.

Even if you put aside the absurdity of a Starfleet officer overseeing a Section 31 operation (again, misunderstanding the concept),

It is an annoying aspect of the modern era in that they keep using Section 31 is circumstances where it would make far more sense to use Starfleet Intelligence. Hell, people who only watch the modern shows might not even be aware Starfleet Intelligence even exists.

We can date it by Rachel Garrett's age. It's roughly around 2330. 2325 isn't out of the question. She was 44 in 2344 when she died.

We don't know how old the character was when she died.

You can't always go by the actor's age.

Indeed, and for what it's worth the novels actually have Garrett in her fifties at the time of her death.

 

[fireproof78]

Hell, people who only watch the modern shows might not even be aware Starfleet Intelligence even exists.

Pike references them.

Not that it matters since any intelligence operations are handled by non qualified main characters anyway.

 

[Firebird]

So now the Eugenics Wars are in the 1990s again? I guess they now take place in two different decades and both are correct because of temporal agents.

This movie still sucks. Tried rewatching a little more, and it barely improved.

Like many things in this movie, it’s sloppy detail and world-building that should’ve been caught in revisions.

 

[Tuskin38]

I would point out that none of the characters in the movie wore any identifying markings.

Closest would be Garrett with her probably standard issue phaser.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Not that it matters since any intelligence operations are handled by non qualified main characters anyway.

The fact that main characters get called in to do spy business implies that they are qualified.

 

[fireproof78]

The fact that main characters get called in to do spy business implies that they are qualified.

Which is absurd.

 

[Firebird]

It is an annoying aspect of the modern era in that they keep using Section 31 is circumstances where it would make far more sense to use Starfleet Intelligence. Hell, people who only watch the modern shows might not even be aware Starfleet Intelligence even exists.

I tie this in to modern Hollywood being obsessed with the nebulous “black ops” in all of these super-macho pew-pew actioners. It makes it sound cooler to them, even though it makes no logical sense.

 

[fireproof78]

I tie this in to modern Hollywood being obsessed with the nebulous “black ops” in all of these super-macho pew-pew actioners. It makes it sound cooler to them, even though it makes no logical sense.

That's been shows for years.

 

[Lord Garth]

Will be interesting to see if the DISCOVERY constituency by and large moves over to SFA, of if that one suffers a large drop off as well.

I'll watch a bit of it when it drops. Maybe binge the rest at the end of the season. I'm not planning on getting into active discussion again like the way I did from 2017-2024 with DSC or PIC. I did that with two series, but I don't have it in me for a third. I said the same thing when SNW started. I don't have it in me for SFA either. That's done.

For a while I've said that's been my plan, S31 or not. To quote Worf in "The Way of the Warrior": "Those were good years, but now it is time for me to move on."

 

[Fateor]

I'm confused, it's somewhere around 2330 and the Empire is still a thing?

Didn't the Alliance destroy it in the 2290s?

Or is this just confirming that this is all a non-prime timeline?

 

[Michael]

If I get banned for this …

Seems like you were fully aware that discussing stuff from TNZ was a no-no. This is in violation of the fourth rule of TNZ. And after consulting with the staff we’ve decided to give you a warning for this. Don’t post or link to stuff from TNZ again. Comments to PM.

I would have copied and pasted or quoted from my original post in TNZ, but I think that is still against board rules?

Or, you know, why not just be like a normal person and post what you wrote there here, without any referral to TNZ whatsoever?

 

[Citiprime]

It's kinda hilarious they included the midseason bottle episode in their mashup. They did say they took the Terran arms dealer guy with the headgear from like episode 4. So their first season pitch probably was a mystery box bioweapon that when you opened it the invasion from the Terran Empire and San were inside.

If you stretch out the movie to fit 10 episodes, it follows the basic formula for Discovery.

• Serialized story centered around a threat to the galaxy as we know it.
• The action is focused on the main lead, and every other character is a satellite around her.
• The action sequences care about visuals more than logic (e.g., the hover platform sequence has an impossibly long hallway that makes as much sense as Discovery's impossibly long turbolifts).
• The story begins as a mystery box that eventually devolves into some sort of personal connection to the star character's love life and family.

And "filler" is right. There's not enough story for this to be spread across 10 episodes. I think this struggles to work over 90+ minutes. I found the middle act to still be mostly a waste of time, where people do dumb things to make the plot stretch, or they have a genetically engineered character and the lead who's supposed to be a smart woman get lured into bad decisions. (e.g., When Zef goes missing, how does it make sense that Garrett murdered him, or does it remain an interesting mystery for the audience, if Garrett is shown with other characters at every point they're searching for him?)

 

[Lord Garth]

S31 is best watched at midnight after being up for at least 16 hours. Either you fall asleep, or you're too tired to properly nitpick the thing so it just unfolds frame after frame.

Thanks to not being able to sleep much the "night" before because of my bad foot, that's actually what ended up happening!

 

[James Cole]

Didn't the Alliance destroy it in the 2290s?

That might just be a carry over from David Mack's excellent Sorrows of Empire.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I would point out that none of the characters in the movie wore any identifying markings.

Closest would be Garrett with her probably standard issue phaser.

Fair. My comment about the badges was a reference to how Section 31 was portrayed on Discovery, which this film's understanding of the organization directly builds upon.

 

[James Cole]

One thing S31 shows is that Kurtzman never let's a pitch he likes go.

Imagine if the people that noted S31 to death got their hands on a Khan on Ceti Alpha V TV movie / miniseries? If the podcast still happens, at least we're much more likely to get Nick Meyer's vision for it, as the stakes / money invested in it would be much lower. And audio only avoids the very visual recasting of Khan or other visual discontinuities.