WHY WE LIKE IT: Rachet Garrett!
WHY WE DON'T: Everything else.
REVIEW: When we last saw Emperor Georgiou, she was going through the Guardian of Forever for an era unknown, which was going to be the time frame for her Section 31 show. But right away, the stardate makes no sense (during the early Discovery era, so her own time, but absurd if Rachel Garrett is a member of the cast - Yesterday's Enterprise can't be more than 30 years after this and is 2344, 17 years before the start of TNG, so early 24th Century as opposed to Disco's mid-2250s - so okay, I've been told Disco's stardates don't follow, as a joke about TOS's, but that if you use the TNG system, it will give you 2324, or 20 years before Captain Garrett is killed). Sorry about that aside... While I've found the fix for it. This is just one among many niggling points - a random alien from Charon (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield), technology that seems askew of the Trek universe, full-body cyborgs... It just felt like someone remixed the Trekverse without doing any research, but just using their vestigial memories of the show (kind of like Abrams and the Kelvin timeline). But these are really minor problems, considering.
I'm really not opposed to a Mission: Impossible series set in Star Trek, not at all. I love that franchise in its many forms. And if you're going to do Section 31 as a series, there are worse ways to go (the fascist shadow enforcers, for example). But this movie misses the mark by trying much too hard to be Guardians of the Galaxy instead. A group of ne'er-do-wells with super-powers or extreme fighting ability is right out of the James Gunn playbook (some of them die because this is also Suicide Squad), but James Gunn isn't actually on staff. The humor, action and special effects just seem so forced to me. The Vulcan with a Scottish accent and emotions because he's being piloted by a tiny germ alien. The guy who's a walking mecha suit. Not so much cool or funny as they are obnoxious. (Well, one turns traitor and the other one dies, so we wouldn't have put up with them for a whole series... had it gone to series.)
I suppose we should talk about that because it does explain some of the problems. This was meant to be a series, or at least a mini-series (3 parts, like there are 3 chapters?), and, probably because Michelle Yeoh became too bankable after Everything, Everywhere, it was turned into a simple telefilm. One does get the sense that this would have played it out more slowly - the mystery of the mole, for example - and perhaps more effectively. Here, we're just jumping from "good bit" to "good bit" with as little suspense as possible. Characters fulfill their "arcs" at record speed and you hardly have time to care. Somehow, it still ends like a failed pilot, with the surviving members clinking glasses and looking forward to more adventures, with "Control" showing up in the - surprise! (unless you recognized her voice in the opening narration) - person of Jamie Lee Curtis. It all feels a little pointless. They might have thought to do more if the film had been a success. It really hasn't, and didn't deserve to be.
NuTrek once again gives us a universe-ending threat in the form of the Godsend, a quadrant-bomb ordered by Emperor Georgiou when she was on the other side. Its creator, a former friend/love survives to be the villain in this piece, trying to open a portal to the Mirror Universe so it can invade, etc. It's fine. I'm not going to say there are some cool fight scenes, neat tech, and explosive moments, but "chasing the MacGuffin" is a lazy plot device. More interesting are the flashbacks to Georgiou's youth, though isn't it really weird that the Emperor is chosen among teenagers competing from across the Empire? I thought it was supposed to be all coups and stuff. Regardless, the direction and editing are genuinely terrible, which makes S31 fail even on an objective, non-Trek basis.
As far as Section 31's potential as a series, their ship is an ugly garbage scow (spoiled in that Paramount intro thing, so a foregone conclusion), though hopefully that wouldn't be a mainstay. The club station looks beautiful, so I'm sure a better ship would have come along. I've never been a big fan of Disco's Mirror Universe characters because they've been so loathsome, and hanging a series on Emperor Georgiou, WITHOUT Burnham's humanizing influence, was already a dodgy proposition. As it turns out, Yeoh camps it up a lot more than usual and it's possibly her worst performance in anything ever. Alok Sahar - an Augment, because, of course, it's got to be about the toys we can't normally play with - is a strong presence (a Bloodsport, you might say) and works fine. Quasi the Chameloid is no Odo, but kind of the comic relief of a group with a lot of comic relief already. Somebody else driving the Vulcan, so we don't know much there. Really, it's Rachel Garrett, a pretty cool character and the only one with a conscience in the group, who we would have liked to watch mature and become the future captain of the Enterprise. But I feel like that's the only thing we're giving up by abandoning the story here.
LESSON: Sometimes, you need to cut your losses and leave a project unfinished.
REWATCHABILITY - Low: So yeah, I really hated it. Mileage may vary, but it never even took me to quarter-impulse.
Comments