rating: ****
the story: Georgiou is recruited by Section 31 all over again.
the review: My X (Twitter) feed is full of abject hate for Section 31, so it seems more important to just go ahead and review it here now than to rest on the hiatus the Companion has been on in recent years. It doesn't deserve the hate. It deserves very much the opposite.
When Michelle Yeoh's Georgiou was killed off at the beginning of Discovery, a lot of fans were surprised. Few enough of them seemed all that interested when she returned, via her Mirror Universe counterpart, later that first season. Maybe it's because you kind of had to be a fan of both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise (which, aside from me, seems somewhat impossible) to appreciate the Mirror Universe beyond its "Mirror, Mirror" introduction in the original series at that point, but this was a big deal for the series, and for the franchise. In fact, the rest of that season took place in the Mirror Universe, and somehow Mirror Georgiou ended up sticking around, including being recruited by Section 31 and ultimately winning a trip back home (kind of) via the Guardian of Forever later in the series.
Now, the biggest hiccup anyone might have with Section 31 is how she happens to find herself at the exact moment in time as her archnemesis. Probably Carl's doing (the Guardian).
The movie opens with Mirror Georgiou's secret origin, how she became emperor in the first place, via an extremely logical explanation of how things worked there, and even the kind of life one might expect there (one twit on X suggested that home Mirror Georgiou returns to was hardly what they thought the Terran Empire would look like...but what else would you really expect? aside from the twit watching anything but the opening seconds?). We learn she had to make a series of brutal decisions, only the last two of which we witness, including what to do with her competitor, and lover.
Then we catch up with her in her present, which is about halfway between The Undiscovered Country and Next Generation, which can also be determined in the life of Enterprise-C captain Rachel Garrett, the youthful career of which we catch up with here. Mirror Georgiou is leading an assumed identity until Section 31 bursts through the anonymity. We meet the crew of misfits (and what a fun bunch they are!), and plunge into the mission.
It's worth pausing here to relish all the franchise lore we're getting to feast on. First of course Mirror Georgiou herself, whom regular viewers of Discovery got to experience as close to redeeming herself as such a figure could enjoy. (Section 31 itself exists to finish the job as completely as forgiving fans will allow.) After "Mirror, Mirror," Deep Space Nine caught up with the Mirror Universe in a series of episodes throughout its seven season run (second through final seasons, almost a visit a season), from how far the Terrans fell to how they finally pick themselves up again. Enterprise, in its final season, explains the crucial decision that shifted Earth's fate to Empire (First Contact, but with Cochrane shooting the Vulcans). Section 31, in part, fills in the remaining gap, how it wasn't as simple as Mirror Spock being the one man to make a difference. The rest of the dominoes had to fall, too, and that's what we see play out here.
There's also, of course, Section 31 itself, another gift of Deep Space Nine, the black ops Federation organization that also popped up in Enterprise and even Star Trek Into Darkness, and then finally Discovery, where Mirror Georgiou first signs up (up until realizing the timeline wouldn't square, I still hoped to see Ash Tyler pop up one more time). A lot of fans still cling to the idea that Star Trek, and Starfleet and the Federation by extension, should only focus on the hopeful ideals of humanity's perfect future, but that was never the case even in the original series, where Spock could be subjected to bigotry on a regular basis (up to and including McCoy's banter). Anyway, Deep Space Nine was my favorite series in the '90s, and so anything that keeps its legacy alive is welcomed by me, and Section 31 is easily its most visible legacy. Playing someone like Rachel Garrett off of that (the other nice thing, beyond a Tyler cameo, would've been seeing her in the classic uniform, which spanned Wrath of Khan through Picard's days at the Academy).
(A seeming throwaway background for another character additionally finally, finally satisfactorily explains the Eugenics Wars.)
The storytelling in Section 31 is highly engrossing, beyond what most of the current era has achieved, possibly because it's forced to be so self-contained. There's the suggestion this was supposed to be a series, and that this was only going to be the pilot; if so it's the best pilot Star Trek ever managed.
In giving Mirror Georgiou so much material, including how effectively layered its big reveals are, it satisfies on levels most of the theatrical movies never could, a truly accomplished ending and showdown with the villain, someone who really matters to the hero. (In contrast to pretty much every other Star Trek fan, I favor Into Darkness over Wrath of Khan in how it handles our genetic superman as something other than a random force of nature Kirk bumps into twice. The only other time it's really this perfect is First Contact, in which we learn of the Borg Queen's existence and how much it means for Picard to settle with her, apart from all other considerations.)
I really don't know how else to try and sell the achievement of it, and besides, emphasize how fun the side characters are. There's a lot here just to reflect how much closer Section 31 is to our reality, and much better use of some of the types the franchise has been using in recent years...At this point Section 31 is actually the best thing to emerge from the modern era, excepting Strange New Worlds' current highwater mark, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow."
criteria analysis:
- franchise - Outlined sufficiently in review.
- series - If accepted as part of Discovery continuity, explains itself.
- character - Mirror Georgiou takes her place among the great characters in franchise lore.
- essential - For any number of reasons, Star Trek is now effectively incomplete without Section 31.
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