I Watched Star Trek: Section 31 On Paramount+, And There's One Glaring Plot Issue That Still Annoys Me

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Section 31 are ahead!

Roughly eight and a half years after the release of Star Trek Beyond, there’s finally a new Star Trek movie to watch, albeit not one playing in theaters. Star Trek: Section 31 is now available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription, and it sees Michelle Yeoh reprising the Mirror Universe version of Philippa Georgiou, whom she previously played in the first three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. Section 31 has been met with mostly negative critical reception, and our own Mick Joest talked earlier this week about how he thought it was a mistake to market the movie mainly to general audiences rather than hardcore Trek fans. I agree with him, and that also segues nicely into a glaring plot issue that’s been annoying me ever since I watched Section 31.

Where We Left Off With Philippa Georgiou In Star Trek: Discovery

Before I get into this big issue, here's a quick Star Trek: Discovery recap. The first two seasons took place about a decade before the events of The Original Series, and at the end of Season 1, she was forcibly brought into the Prime Universe by Michael Burnham. With her Prime counterpart dead, Mirror Georgiou assumed her identity and became an operative for Section 31, and by the end of Season 2, she was aboard the USS Discovery when it traveled nearly a millennium into the future.

The Discovery crew ended up in 3189, and for a time, it seemed like Philippa Georgiou would just make a new life for herself in that era just like the show’s other characters. But in a twist of bad luck, the combination of that massive jump forward in time and the increasing distance between the Prime and Mirror Universes resulted in Georgiou’s molecules rapidly deteriorating. If she remained in 3189, she’d die.

Fortunately, she met the Guardian of Forever on Dannus V, and he decided to send her back to a time where both universes were closer together after she passed his test. However, we never learn in Discovery what specific time period this is, i.e. would she be returned to roughly the period as when Season 2 took place or something different.

Section 31 Completely Ignores How Much Time Has Passed For Georgiou

Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 took place from 2258-2259, while Star Trek: Section 31 is set around 2324. In other words, the Guardian of Forever dropped Georgiou off nearly 70 years after the events of Season 2. Now that’s all fine and good, but here’s the problem: the movie in no way addresses that long gap in time.

When Omari Hardwick’s Alok found Georgiou to recruit her for the movie’s mission, he spoke to her as if she’d been off the grid for a few years at most, but that’s not what happened at all. One moment she was active several years before James T. Kirk took over captaining the Enterprise from Christopher Pike, and the next she’s resurfaced during Star Trek’s “Lost Era,” I.e. the period between The Undiscovered Country and The Next Generation; a time when Rachel Garrett, whose older self was seen on TNG, is working with Section 31.

I wouldn’t expect a casual Star Trek fan or someone unfamiliar with the franchise to catch this wile watching Section 31, but I immediately picked up on this, and it continues to bother me. It’s part of the larger, aforementioned problem with the movie that it distances itself from Star Trek: Discovery as much as possible. This didn’t need to be a big thing; in fact, I think a mention about how Philippa Georgiou was active in one time period and then popped back up nearly three-fourths of a century later and not having aged would have added to the character’s allure. More importantly, the time traveling aspect could have easily been addressed without getting too deep into the weeds with Trek lore.

This is far from the biggest problem with Star Trek: Section 31, but it’s the one that continues to linger in my mind whenever I come across something concerning this movie. Fortunately, it doesn’t diminish my interest in the upcoming Star Trek TV shows, with Strange New Worlds Season 3 next on that slate.