We Now Know Exactly When Michelle Yeoh’s Star Trek Movie is Taking Place
Section 31 will feature at least one captain of a starship called Enterprise.
Michelle Yeoh is back in the Final Frontier. As the duplicitous Mirror Universe character Philippa Georgiou, Yeoh starred in three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, but later in 2024 she’ll return in her own movie — Section 31. Named for the clandestine espionage organization within Starfleet, Section 31 has just been described as a “spy thriller” by a new article in Variety. We’ve also got a new image of Yeoh as Georgiou, seemingly integrating someone with some very cyberpunk-looking gear. But the big news for Trek fans is something even bigger. It seems like we finally know when exactly Section 31 will be set.
Here’s why the revelation of a very specific Starfleet captain reveals roughly where we can expect Section 31 to take place.
Section 31 will feature an Enterprise captain
Kacey Rohl in 2019. In Section 31, she’ll be the first person to play Rachel Garrett since Tricia O’Neil originated the role in 1990’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
As reported by Adam B. Vary for Variety, the character of Rachel Garrett will appear in Section 31 and be played by actress Kacey Rohl. In the larger Trek canon, Rachel Garrett is famous for being the captain of the USS Enterprise-C which was destroyed fighting the Romulans in the year 2344. At that point, Captain Garrett (as played by Tricia O'Neil) was a woman in her mid-forties. But, in Section 31 it seems we’ll be meeting “...a young Rachel Garrett.”
This one detail all but confirms that at least one aspect of the storyline for Section 31 will have to take place sometime before 2344, likely in the 2320s or 2330s. Which, believe it or not, is a largely undocumented and unexplored period of the larger Star Trek timeline.
A 24th-century TNG prequel
Captain Garrett’s time on the Enterprise-C is largely untold. But what happened before that is even hazier.
Because Section 31 features a younger version of Rachel Garrett, this means that at least part of the movie will be a full-on prequel to the era of The Next Generation. And, interestingly, this period of Trek history, from roughly the end of the TOS-era movies, to the start of TNG is a roughly 70 year-gap. The Undiscovered Country and the first part of Generations take place in 2293. The first TNG episode takes place in 2364. During this gap, a lot of Trek history happens, including the Federation’s war with the Cardassians, the finalization of peace with the Klingons, and Jean-Luc Picard’s tenure as Captain on the USS Stargazer.
But if Section 31 takes place in the 2320s, even some of those events are still in the future. If you take a hardcore deep-dive onto the ever-reliable Star Trek wiki, Memory Alpha, you’ll find that there are almost no notable events in the 2320s at all, other than Jean-Luc Picard starting his studies at Starfleet Academy. When Georgiou was sent back in time in Discovery Season 31 by the Guardian of Forever, we were told that it would be close to a time period in which the Prime Universe and Mirror Universes had yet to fully drift apart.
Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) steps into the Guardian of Forever in Discovery Season 3.
And yet, by putting Georgiou in the early 24th century, the new movie will likely sport a lot of retro Star Trek aesthetics. We know Starfleet officers were still rocking the “monster maroon” uniforms first introduced in The Wrath of Khan, and Strange New Worlds Season 1 even gave us a taste of what a modern redesign of those uniforms might look like. Plus, if this movie is filling in the backstory of Rache Garrett, this means the show will not only be a prequel for The Next Generation but also the origin story of an underrated Enterprise captain!
As of this writing, Section 31 is a stand-alone movie starring Michelle Yeoh. But, with this cut into the timeline of Trek, one can’t help but wonder if there’s not room for even more adventures in this very specific slice of Trek history.
