Star Trek's Ambitious New Movie Has Changed Radically Since Conception
It’s almost time to visit Section 31.
When the direct-to-streaming movie Star Trek: Section 31 hits Paramount+ in January, it will represent the end of a very long road. It all started with a bonus scene at the end of Discovery Season 1, in which the Mirror version of Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) was recruited into Starfleet’s spy division, Section 31. In 2019, Georgiou returned as a full-on operative in Discovery Season 2, and it was quickly announced that she would be given her own spinoff series, Section 31.
That series never materialized. Instead, after Georgiou stepped through the Guardian of Forever and back into the past in Discovery Season 3, the fate of the darker, off-beat Trek spinoff was unclear. Now, after several behind-the-scenes changes, that series is a one-off streaming movie. And the director of that movie, Olatunde Osunsanmi, has just spoken about the very long journey from 2019 to today.
In a conversation with SFX, Osunsanmi said, “I would say the only two things that are the same from the original series pilot to the movie that we’ve got now is that there is a character named Alok and Philippa Georgiou.”
Originally conceived of and written by Discovery writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt, the final iteration of Section 31 comes from a screenplay by Craig Sweeney. According to Osunsanmi, Sweeney has “Been in the middle of that [for] the whole process.” Sweeney is the final writer on Section 31, but he was aware of all the different iterations.
So, while several scripts have existed over the past five years, we likely won’t get a glimpse of those various parallel realities. Osunsanmi hasn’t exactly spelled out what was different about the previous iterations of Section 31, but it’s safe to assume that a TV series would’ve existed in a different time frame. As it stands, the new movie takes place in the early 24th century, putting it well after the era of The Original Series, Strange New Worlds, and the first two seasons of Discovery, but before the time of The Next Generation.
Because the machinations of Section 31 are virtually unknown in the TNG era, there’s every reason to believe that the movie’s events will be somewhat self-contained. While it’s interesting that Georgiou traveled from the Mirror 23rd century to the Prime 32nd century, and now back to the 24th century, none of those details may end up mattering. Osunsanmi and others have teased that this is a unique entry point into the Star Trek universe, one that may not play out how anyone expects.
“I think where we ended up was wonderful because we would never have gotten here if it weren't for that journey,” Osunsanmi said of the previous iterations of Section 31. “Sometimes you just got to go on the journey in order to arrive at the place that you arrive at.”
