“Section 31” Made Because “‘Star Trek’ Is Dying”

A few weeks back Paramount+ released “Section 31,” a direct-to-streaming movie which saw Michelle Yeoh reprise her “Star Trek: Discovery” character and lead a new team on a heist of a dangerous object.

The result was disastrous. One of the most panned films of the year (though fared better with critics than recent flops “The Electric State” and “O’Dessa”), the title was widely rejected for not really resembling “Star Trek” in any way beyond some references.

That was a deliberate creative choice on the part of the producers, it seems, according to one of the film’s stars. Rob Kazinsky, who played the exosuit-wearing Zeph in the film, is a true “Star Trek” fan and an interview he did with Trek Nation a few weeks ago is going around again the past few days in which he discusses concerns over the franchise’s fate.

He says he was initially wondering why are they doing such a project and was hesitant to sign on, until the producers explained the change up was necessary because the franchise itself is dying:

“When I got this job I was like… why are they doing a ‘Section 31’ movie? It’s going to going to be hated from the get-go, no one’s going to want to watch a ‘Section 31’ movie, and we’re doing a TV budget movie… this isn’t going to be what people want.

Then I spoke to Alex [Kurtzman, producer] and I spoke to Olatunde [Osunsanmi, director] and they explained to me that ‘Star Trek’ is dying. I don’t know if people know that. I was talking about ‘Star Trek’ at my gym. I’m a boxer and I train with a lot of kids and none of them knew what ‘Star Trek’ was.

Can you imagine that? I mean just conceive of that for a second. I would say ‘Star Trek’ and they were like ‘Star Wars?’ I’m like ‘no Star Trek’ and they were like ‘um I think I’ve heard of it’. Now that was pretty upsetting for me.

Star Trek’s fan base has never been enormous it’s always been small and Incredibly passionate group, it’s never compared to the Harry Potter fan groups or the Star Wars fan groups it’s never had hundreds of millions of fans around the world. Its always been a dedicated group, and that dedicated group is aging and we are really we are going to lose ‘Star Trek’ if we don’t bring in new fans, new eyes and new ways of getting people to love the things that we love.”

He adds that trying to get kids to watch TNG isn’t likely as those first two seasons production values were so much lower than from the third season onwards, while the original series is “just not going to happen”. What brought him onboard “Section 31” was how the team explained the new film to him:

“Once I’d heard this I was 100% behind this movie. [It] was you have to make different flavors of ‘Star Trek’ for a different time you have to try and bring in new people as you that’s what ‘Starfleet Academy’ is going to be about. That’s what Section 31’s about. I’m sorry to say it, it wasn’t made for people that love ‘Star Trek’ it was made to make people want to learn more about ‘Star Trek’ that was the idea – it was for it to bring in new eyes, new people and then introduce them to that world.”

The results didn’t pay off. Nielsen says the film was watched for 170 million minutes during the week ending January 26th, debuting in eighth on the company’s list of top streaming films for the week. The overall negative response has raised obvious questions as to whether any further streaming “Star Trek” films will be made.

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