Critic Reviews

As intended, "Section 31" is the Michelle Yeoh show, and she wears Georgiou like a spiky, vampy, blood-soaked glove at this point. Either you enjoy watching Yeoh strut and kick and smirk through action scenes, or you have no taste.

Overall, Star Trek: Section 31 can best be described as a fun time. And if it sometimes feels a bit hollow, well, not every Star Trek story has to have profound commentary on what it means to be human.

By trying to make Star Trek: Section 31 everything regular Star Trek isn’t, Osunsanmi and Sweeney fulfill the show’s promise to boldly go where no one has gone before. But its one-and-done story concludes without the plot itself ending up anywhere particularly unexpected.

Even Discovery fans will have to admit this spin-off is just simply a weakly told story. The characters are contrived and even a talent like Michelle Yeoh can’t save it.

This superficially diverting tangent is too convoluted and tonally wobbly to leave a lasting impression.

No one can fault the cast for giving it what might be seen as a decent shot, but if Star Trek: Section 31 leaves you with one thing, it’s that the final frontier, which is future spinoffs, might be best left alone.

[Yeoh] has such a commanding and darkly amusing screen presence that the pedestrian film can almost, but not quite, be forgiven for letting her down so completely.

Star Trek: Section 31 doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a serious exploration of the criminal underbelly, a camp throwback to the noughties, or a tonally off combination of the two? Whatever it is, it doesn't work half as well as it should.

While it's always a pleasure to see Yeoh kick butt and take names among the stars, Section 31 wastes her talents as well as its own premise on a middling heist movie devoid of anything that might actually identify it as a Star Trek movie.

"Section 31,” bravely directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, is a dog’s dinner of head-snapping reversals and explanatory dialogue — a movie with little on its mind but mayhem.