There’s just one week left to go until Star Trek: Section 31 arrives on the 2025 movies schedule and reunites fans who have a Paramount+ subscription with Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou, the former leader of the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe. However, there was a time when Section 31 was intended to be on the slate of upcoming Star Trek TV shows. In fact, director Olatunde Osunsanmi shared that the Section 31 TV series actually made it pretty far along in the development process before the creative pivot.
Had things gone according to the original plan, Osunsanmi was going to direct the Section 31 pilot, having already contributed to the franchise helming various episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, which paved the way for this spinoff. In an interview with EW, Osunsanmi said the following about how things shaped up when the Section 31 TV series was happening:
We actually prepped and had a concept meeting on the pilot of Section 31 while we were finishing and shooting the finale of Disco season 2. So we essentially had two parallel shows happening at the same time.
For those who need a refresher or haven’t watched Star Trek: Discovery, the Season 2 finale saw the crew of the title ship, including Philippa Georgiou, traveling over 900 years into the future. However, Georgiou didn’t stay long, as the combination of her traveling so far forward in time and hailing from another universe meant that her molecules were too far from their origin. This was slowly killing her, but the Guardian of Forever opened a portal to send her back to an earlier time period in the Prime Universe. That’s where we’ll find her when Section 31 begins, albeit several decades ahead of when Discovery’s first two seasons took place, as evidenced by the presence of Rachel Garrett, the future captain of the Enterprise-C.
I’d be lying if I said didn’t want to see how Section 31 turned out as a TV series, especially if it included other Discovery characters to join Philippa Georgiou, like Shazad Latif’s Ash Tyler. Alas, that version of the project eventually went by the wayside when writer Craig Sweeney drafted another pilot script treatment. Then the COVID-19 pandemic further complicated plans, and by early 2023, it was decided to make Section 31 as a movie instead, although its production was delayed by the two Hollywood strikes.
Olatunde Osunsanmi credited the “relentless” Star Trek franchise overseer Alex Kurtzman, Aaron Baiers (the president of TV at Kurtzman’s production company, Secret Hideout) and Michelle Yeoh for Section 31 ultimately being made, saying:
I can't believe that we actually are on the verge of releasing it to the world after all of that.
We’ll see how the final product turned out when Star Trek: Section 31 is released on January 24, with Michelle Yeoh being joined onscreen by Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl, Sam Richardson, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Humbly Gonzalez and James Hiroyuki Liao. Following its release, the Trek franchise will continue with Strange New Worlds Season 3 premiering sometime on the 2025 TV schedule.
