Star Trek: Section 31

Writer:

Craig Sweeny

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Director:

Olatunde Osunsanmi

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Release Date:

2025

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Section 31, the most critically panned Star Trek movie ever made. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had a good run, but it's finally been dethroned. In fact, its review scores haves been giving Borderlands and Rebel Moon a run for their money, and I'm kind of not mad about that.

I've been biased against the movie from the day it was announced, because I strongly dislike the idea that Section 31 is necessary for Star Trek's utopian Federation to exist. Though I keep hearing that the film's actually about a team of fun misfits on a tame Mission: Impossible adventure, and I guess that's certainly one thing you can do with the dark conspiracy corrupting Starfleet's soul.

The film has already disappointed me by not having the bold magenta and yellow logo from the trailer. I didn't particularly love it, but it looked better than this.

Anyway, I'm going to share some of my thoughts underneath screencaps and I promise you this won't drag on for five pages like my Phantom Menace review. It will contain SPOILERS however, for this and earlier Trek stories featuring Georgiou and Section 31.

Star Trek: Discovery 5-10: Life, Itself (Quick Review)

Episode:

65

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Writer:

Kyle Jarrow & Michelle Paradise

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Director:

Olatunde Osunsanmi

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Air Date:

30-May-2024

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing Life, Itself - the very last episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The series that kicked the Kurtzman era of Star Trek shows has reached its end of its voyage... a bit sooner than expected. Discovery kind of got cancelled, but they were at least allowed to shoot some extra scenes to properly wrap it up, so I do have some closure to look forward to.

Life, Itself is a member of a very exclusive club, and not just because its a Star Trek series finale. If you disqualify titles starting with 'A ' or 'The ', this is only the third time that a Trek show has had three consecutive episodes that start with the same letter. That's trivia so trivial that you won't find it anywhere else!

(If you're curious, the episodes are: Eye of the Needle, Ex Post Facto and Emanations in Voyager's first season, Sleeping Dogs, Shadows of P'Jem and Shuttlepod One in Enterprise's first season, and now we've got Labyrinths, Lagrange Point and Life, Itself.)

This review is going to include SPOILERS for a bunch of Star Trek stories from across the timeline.

Star Trek: Discovery 5-01: Red Directive (Quick Review)

Episode:

56

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Writer:

Michelle Paradise

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Director:

Olatunde Osunsanmi

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Air Date:

04-Apr-2024

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching some Star Trek!

Hey, remember Star Trek: Discovery? It was the first Star Trek spin-off of the modern era and lasted four seasons before completely disappearing in March 2022. It's been gone so long that Paramount has released 71 episodes of Star Trek in the meantime, split between five different series. That includes half of Lower Decks and Prodigy, most of Picard and the entirety of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

But after a two-year absence, Discovery is back for its final season! They didn't know it was going to be its final year when they were filming it and they probably would've liked it to go on for longer, but the series has had a good run. It didn't hit the traditional seven seasons, but it did run from 2017 to 2024, which matches Star Trek: The Next Generation's run of 1987 to 1994. And when it ends it'll have 65 episodes, which may turn out to be the best we'll get from a series during this era.

I've had my issues with Discovery in the past, but I do have my hopes up for this final year. Like I hope it doesn't have that unpleasant blue tint to it, and I hope characters start talking more like regular people (or regular Star Trek people at least). I also hope it's more about boldly going to new worlds rather than being traumatised by what happened on them.

Alright, this is going to be my review of season 5, episode 1, Red Directive, by showrunner Michelle Paradise. There will be SPOILERS beyond this point.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-13: What's Past is Prologue (Quick Review)

Episode:

13

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Writer:

Ted Sullivan

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Air Date:

28-Jan-2018

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Discovery season one's antepenultimate episode What's Past is Prologue. Wait, hang on, Trek already had a story called Past Prologue! It was the second episode of Deep Space Nine. Though now that I think about it the first episode of DS9 stole its name from a Next Gen story called The Emissary, so it's only fair.

The title comes from The Tempest, which means this is the second Discovery episode in a row to take its name from a line in a Shakespeare play. The phrase 'vaulting ambition' appears in Macbeth, and is spoken by a character trying to talk himself out of committing regicide, while in The Tempest 'what's past is prologue' is said by a character talking someone else into it. So I'm spotting a bit of a theme there. I don't know if that was deliberate though, as this one's by a different writer.

With this Ted Sullivan becomes part of the elite group of writers who've written more than one episode, and Olatunde Osunsanmi becomes the only director so far to return. So if you were ever curious about what would happen if the writer of the episode with the shortest title (Lethe) teamed up with the director of the episode with the longest title (The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry), now you know: they made an episode with the most average length title. Organise the episodes by the length of their name and you'll find this in the exact centre of the list; it's spooky is what it is. I thought both of their previous stories were decent enough though, so no warning signs there. In fact, I've actually been pretty hyped for this one, mostly because the title maybe possibly hints that we're getting some backstory and explanations at last.

This is going to be one of my relatively quick reviews, meaning I won't be going through the episode scene by scene, but you'll still find massive SPOILERS for this story and the ones that preceded it below. In fact, I'll throw in some spoilers for other Trek series like Deep Space Nine for you as well, plus Return of the Jedi and Alice in Wonderland.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-04: The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry (Quick Review)

Episode:

4

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Writer:

Jesse Alexander & Aron Eli Coleite

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Air Date:

08-Oct-2017

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Discovery's fourth episode, The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry... holy shit that's a long episode title.

In fact, at 38 letters it's the second longest episode title in all of Star Trek after The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky! It kicks the crap out of Doctor Who's recent The Pyramid at the End of the World with its pathetic 28 letters.

The episode was written and directed by a bunch of people I've never heard of, so instead of filling space with what I think about them, I'm going to get straight to the part where I say that this is going to be a really rushed scruffy review without the long recap I usually do. It'll still have SPOILERS for this episode, but I'll probably not be spoiling much else.