Part 31 Is a Mediocre Motion Film, and an Even Worse Star Trek One

There have now been 14 Star Trek films over the past 50 years and but the franchise has at all times had a little bit of a popularity of cinematic battle on the large display screen. From the filmic continuations of the unique present all the best way to the Kelvin Timeline reboots, Star Trek has at all times been dogged with the query of simply the way you adapt a TV sequence that prides itself on talky diplomacy and conferences of scientific minds right into a blockbuster medium that warrants the spectacle of sci-fi motion. Can Star Trek nonetheless be Star Trek in such an setting? This week with the arrival of Section 31 on Paramount+, one other query is boldly requested as a substitute: what if a Star Trek film was neither occupied with being a Star Trek film and even being a very attention-grabbing motion one?

Part 31 took an extended highway from being one of many first teased TV spinoffs of Star Trek‘s streaming period after Discovery‘s first season, earlier than vanishing into the shadows and re-emerging years later as a film car for now-Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh, a bumpy journey keenly felt all through its practically two-hour runtime. Starring Yeoh as her Discovery character Philipa Georgiou—the previous Emperor of Trek‘s alternate mirror universe, re-examined and redeemed partly over her time within the present earlier than being despatched off to occasions unknown to stay a brand new life—the film follows Georgiou as she is compelled to cross paths with brokers of the titular black ops spy organization first launched in Deep House 9, and supplied a spot on a harmful mission out past the fringes of Federation area with ties to her bloody previous.

That workforce is made up of an eclectic mixture of characters—led by the straight-laced Alok (Omari Hardwick); his proper hand man and strongarm, the mechsuit-wearing Zeph (Rob Kazinsky); shapeshifting workforce genius Quasi (Sam Richardson); Deltan operative Melle (Humberly Gonzalez); wild card Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok); and their Starfleet oversight Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl, taking part in a youthful model of Tricia O’Neill’s captain of the Enterprise-C from Subsequent Technology‘s “Yesterday’s Enterprise”) who, alongside Yeoh, get to then spend the subsequent few hours working, taking pictures, and snarking their means via a galaxy-threatening plot. And that basically is the vibe of Part 31: it’s rather less James Bond, and just a little extra Guardians of the Galaxy, if the latter sequence forgot to keep up any sense of the sincerity underpinning its oddball humor. This could be fantastic, have been it not a Star Trek film titled Part 31—which it’s, so it’s not fantastic, and we’ll dig into why later. However as a Star Trek film titled Part 31, it trades any inquisitiveness about its world and the organization it’s named for to as a substitute enshroud itself in a slick, however finally hole sci-fi aesthetic.

Part 31 deeply needs to evoke to its viewers that its heroes are cool, what they’re doing is cool, and even that the best way that they’re all atypical for what we’d anticipate of Star Trek heroes, they’re all of the extra cooler for being so. Garrett, as the only real official Starfleet officer amongst them, has to straddle this line of workforce stick-in-the-mud—”Starfleet is right here to verify nobody commits homicide,” she snaps throughout her introductory scene—whereas additionally being suitably kooky sufficient to be one of many gang, which feels emblematic of one of many movie’s basic failings. It’s so , determined even, in speaking its quirky tone that it forgets to ask something remotely attention-grabbing about its premise, or the loaded intent behind its title as a film about Part 31 and its place in Star Trek‘s universe.

Not as soon as does the movie have interaction with the controversial legacy of Part 31 in Star Trek historical past, nor does it ever actually present its heroes treading a sort of ethical line that will make them something apart from unabashed heroes: essentially the most that’s introduced to the viewers to trace that’s that that is an unsanctioned-by-design entity is merely that the workforce’s mission is ready exterior the boundaries of Federation area, as if Star Trek hasn’t despatched its common heroes throughout the boarder numerous occasions earlier than. Part 31 acts as if all that is daring and new for the franchise, whereas on the identical time ignoring the truth of what may have made it at the very least apparently so: analyzing what individuals who stay and breathe Part 31 truly consider the group and its place throughout the Federation, and what the price of defending a utopia from destruction would possibly enact on somebody eagerly keen to bend these beliefs.

If Star Trek is a sequence that prides itself on eager about large concepts and asking large questions, Part 31 is obsessive about the small, as a result of it’s simpler to crack an abrasive joke than it’s to reckon with the advanced concepts behind its namesake that the sequence has explored prior to now. All this would possibly sound like lambasting Part 31 for being a film that it isn’t, and maybe was by no means going to be, nevertheless it displays an absence of curiosity felt all through the movie. Its characters are threadbare past being introduced as quirky and enjoyable in a surface-level capability—regardless of how good the supporting solid are, anchored round a enjoyable, however equally scant efficiency by Michelle Yeoh, as Georgiou will get the majority of the movie’s character work. It ticks off a sequence of spy-fi style tropes, from betrayals to subterfuge and interrogation, however in method that’s much less about truly taking part in with these tropes in Star Trek‘s setting and extra to easily level at them because it ticks them off Its pacing is awkward and jarring, transferring from one second to the subsequent fast sufficient to by no means let the movie sit with its characters or the stakes of the plot to have something significant to convey.

This lack of curiosity would possibly at the very least be barely extra forgivable if Part 31 was on the very least an excellent motion film, nevertheless it sadly flounders there too. The handful of motion sequences all through have some attention-grabbing concepts, and sure, Yeoh will get to thrill in all of these sequences—there’s excessive kicks galore, at the same time as a few of them drag out just a little longer than they’re essentially welcome. However these attention-grabbing concepts are ceaselessly undermined by lacklustre cinematography and modifying that always obscures the impression of that motion, leaving them hole.

All that is to say that this isn’t a case of Part 31 being totally different to what’s anticipated of Star Trek, and subsequently dangerous due to that. As an alternative, it’s merely a film that struggles to convey any sort of significant id for itself, all whereas ignoring the one it may set up with the broader Star Trek franchise, no matter whether or not or not it finally stood in distinction or in resemblance to it. A film that is available in just below two hours most likely shouldn’t really feel like a slog, however Part 31 does, with neither the spectacle to dazzle audiences away from its anaemic character work, nor the thematic meat on its bones for them to take a seat and chew on. As an alternative, beneath its skin-deep quirkiness, the one factor hiding within the shadows right here isn’t a secretive, morally-compromised spy group: it’s only a fairly boring film milling about there as a substitute.

Star Trek: Part 31 begins streaming on Paramount+ this Friday, January 24.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to anticipate the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and every part you must learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.