Star Trek: Section 31 Movie (2025 Film)

Movie Detail
writer
Bo Yeon Kim
Erika Lippoldt
Director
Olatunde Osunsanmi
Producer
Ted Miller
Genre
Drama
Science fiction
Release Date
January 24, 2025

Star Trek: Section 31 Movie (2025 Film) Summary

A teenage girl named Philippa Georgiou returns home from a fatal competition to become the new Emperor in the Mirror realm, a parallel realm run by the brutal Terran Empire. She tells her family that she made friends with a guy named San and that the two of them beat the other young competitors. Georgiou poisons her family to seize the throne, severing all connections to her former existence. San, who did not murder his own family, is brought by imperial authorities, and Georgiou enslaves him as she takes the throne.
Agents from the covert Starfleet division Section 31 are dispatched to the space station Baraam outside Federation space in the early 24th century Prime Universe. Georgiou plays the role of Baraam proprietress “Madame du Franc” after seeing the Prime Universe and briefly joining Starfleet. Agent Alok Sahar of Section 31 persuades Georgiou to join his team, which consists of Rachel Garrett, a tough Starfleet officer; Quasi, a shapeshifting Chameloid; Zeph, a mechanical exoskeleton user; Melle, an irresistible Deltan; and Fuzz, a microscopic Nanokin who controls a robotic suit that resembles a Vulcan. On Baraam, they apprehend arms dealer Dada Noe, and Georgiou equips the weapon he is selling with a “phase pod” that prevents anyone without one from touching it. Melle is killed by a masked person carrying a phase pod. Georgiou identifies the weapon as the “Godsend” that she had directed to be developed in the Mirror Universe before the invader transports off the station. Its purpose is to obliterate everything in its path.

By disclosing his past, Alok wins Georgiou’s trust. He is originally from the 20th century, and during the Eugenics Wars, a genetically modified warlord named Giri killed his family. Giri then used Alok to carry out crimes in her name. When the two interrogate Dada Noe at a Section 31 safe house, they discover that he is from the Mirror Universe, that he stole the Godsend from a weapons plant, and that he was selling it to the Terran Empire, who intends to utilize a wormhole to invade and conquer the Prime Universe. The Section 31 team thinks one of their own tipped off the masked man when the safe house is wrecked and their ship is destroyed. The others believe Zeph is the mole after he vanishes, but when they discover him dead, the evidence points to Garrett as the murderer. Georgiou concludes that Fuzz planted the evidence after breaking into Zeph’s exoskeleton, forcing him to destroy their communications and ultimately commit suicide.

The group follows San using a trash scow that has been abandoned. As Georgiou and Alok carry San onto his ship, Quasi and Garrett use the tractor beam of the scow to remove his shields. Fuzz leaves the suit to attack the scow when Alok battles his robotic suit. San plans to use the Godsend to wipe out the Prime Universe and establish his empire, which will be run with “righteous mercy” as opposed to Georgiou’s harsh autocracy. The Godsend is unintentionally activated during the battle between the two. Fuzz appears to be killed as Garrett sets up an explosive out of the scow’s trash, which Quasi launches into space. Georgiou prevents San’s attempt to knife him, and he ends up killing himself as she is holding him. Alok and Georgiou make the self-sacrificing decision to pilot San’s ship through the wormhole and guide the Godsend into the Mirror Universe. At the last minute, Quasi takes them off the ship.
The team’s remaining members get together on Baraam three weeks later. Wisp, Fuzz’s wife, who is piloting a similar Vulcan robotic suit and thinks her husband survived the blast, joins them. Section 31 director “Control” gets in touch with the crew on their upcoming mission on Turkana IV.

Star Trek: Section 31 Movie (2025 Film) Production

For the streaming service Paramount+, Olatunde Osunsanmi directed and Craig Sweeny wrote the 2025 American science fiction television movie Star Trek: Section 31. As part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman’s expanded Star Trek Universe, it is the first television movie in the Star Trek franchise and the sixteenth movie overall. The film, a derivative of Star Trek: Discovery, unfolds during the franchise’s ‘forgotten period,’ situated between the movies of Star Trek: The Original Series and the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. It centers on Philippa Georgiou, who must confront her previous transgressions while serving with Section 31, a covert branch of Starfleet charged with defending the United Federation of Planets.

Michelle Yeoh reprises her role from Discovery as Georgiou. In January 2019, it was revealed that Yeoh would be developing a spin-off series; however, the COVID-19 epidemic caused a delay in production. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, another Discovery spin-off series, was therefore given priority. In April 2023, the news that Section 31 would be made into a movie was released. Also starring are Joe Pingue, Humberly González, Kacey Rohl, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Sam Richardson, Omari Hardwick, and James Hiroyuki Liao. From January to March 2024, the film was shot in Toronto, Canada. In collaboration with Secret Hideout, Action This Day!, and Roddenberry Entertainment, CBS Studios produced the movie.
On January 24, 2025, Star Trek: Section 31 debuted on Paramount+. Critics gave it largely bad reviews, and several people thought it was the worst installment in the Star Trek series.

Star Trek: Section 31 Movie (2025 Film) Reviews

Dustin Smith
This film is just a lot of fun. It’s awesome that they’re exposing the criminal underbelly of this universe. Fantastic set and costume design, excellent fight choreography, and stunning space effects. The fact that you Trekies don’t appear to like having fun is one of my problems with the culture. It’s nice to occasionally escape the stuffy Starfleet bridge! My first trek was Nemesis, which is still one of my favorite treks and an amazing movie. You all also detested that one. Haha! Enjoy fresh material as soon as it becomes available. It’s terrible to criticise this film so harshly, especially considering how many opportunities it had to introduce us to new, gritty characters and build up spinoffs and sequels.
Peter Jones
Since the early 1970s, I have been a fan of Star Trek, and over the years, I have liked various aspects of the series more than others. It was wonderful to have something different on so many levels, and I truly enjoyed Section 31. I didn’t think it would be routine, and I was wrong. Far too many Star Trek retreads of the same theme, sometimes with slight variations, are examples of how the show frequently replicates itself. Section 31 is all the better for blowing away the cobwebs and going in a different direction. People in fandoms frequently become angry when they don’t get exactly what they want or expect.
Kitten Orochi
To make the dialogue seem more intelligent than it was, the writers employed quick talking because they lacked the skills necessary for true smart writing. I’m smart; I shouldn’t have to go back and listen to a sentence that’s uninteresting and unoriginal again. Imagine the pace of a gossip girl with half the brains. It was an entirely predictable plot. Before the opening titles have rolled, you are aware of the identity of the “mystery” big evil. In addition to being incredibly predictable, the characters lacked depth. The character arcs are extremely unrealistic and hurried. They all despise her at first because she is a monster, but in the end, they are best friends because of one moment of redemption. Hurry up.
Michael Miller
Galactic Danger, the same old tale, meets the shoddy writing we’ve grown to detest. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Star Trek. I even endured my distaste for Discovery because it was Star Trek. At least Strange New Worlds, thanks to Roddenberry, is at least passably good, if not occasionally ridiculous. It seems as though the writers wrote SECTION 31 in a single week. In the past, this would have been a direct route to VHS. I think it’s lazy to employ the mirror universe. As the authors read through the list, they said things like, “Borg no, we just did them,” “Klingon’s Discovery,” “Romulans can’t Picard use them,” and “Oh, how about the mirror universe?”