Worth cancelling Paramount+ for… or a good reminder I should have done it months ago. Thanks, clueless Paramount+ executive… you’ve saved me some cash while ruining Star Trek!

I’m a Star Trek fan but not a “go to conventions” or “rewatch a series a dozen times” one. I’ve seen all the episodes prior to Paramount+ but have been on and off again with the Paramount+ shows. I don’t hate all of their Star Trek… Brave New Worlds is good, season 3 of Picard was great fan service, and I get meta chuckles out of the animated Lower Decks. But season 1 & 2 of Picard? Random seasons of Discovery? This is Star Trek made by people who want the show to be cool, bad ass, and as shiny as the JJ Abrams films (which got a lot wrong too). But Trek really isn’t cool or bad ass… or at least it shouldn’t be an over-produced cludge of action cliches.

So Star Trek: Section 31 is a “movie” that’s obviously two episodes of a non-existent tv series glued together. It’s what you get when you hire Michelle Yeoh as a fantastic captain back in season 1 of Discovery and then kill her off because you’re an edgelord writer for Paramount+. You then realize killing off Michelle Yeoh was a stupid idea so you decide she’s now the evil Empress of the Mirror Universe and drag her back into the main Trek universe. But now she’s still an evil, genocidal monster and not the cool character from before. So they just roll with it and now we have this damn movie.

It’s about dragging Yeoh’s character back into Star Trek’s black ops Section 31 so they can go on cool undercover missions. Or, since we’re pretending this isn’t a backdoor pilot, a one-time mission to retrieve a whatsit weapon from the Mirror Universe before it blows up and kills everyone. Introduce in the messiest, most annoying way a crew of cut-ups and goofballs and you wind up with Michelle Yeoh and a bunch of mewling children for a cast. Good job.

Everything is, as is the case with Paramount+ Star Trek, over-produced, over-shiny, over action-packed, and full of the dumbest, cringiest, try-hard dialog possible. Star Trek isn’t a comedy or action series and Paramount+ just doesn’t understand that. It’s supposed to be about smart, capable people thinking their way through problems… and if they have to shoot, they shoot. Granted, Trek hasn’t been that since JJ Abrams took over, but these shows – and this “movie” – is exactly that and it doesn’t work.

This is a painful watch and almost got a half star before I kind of thought a little of the final act was ok as pure, un-Trek-like action. But when your best Star Trek effort is lots of color and noise, maybe we need to bring RIck Berman back… or Brannon Braga. Jesus… who knew I’d take another Threshold episode over this garbage.

But, hey, at least we can all stop arguing what the worst Star Trek film is!

Score; 57