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Star Trek: Section 31 – Second Time Lucky?

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Prodigy, and potentially minor spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31.

Second time lucky?

Paramount will certainly be hoping so, because this is the second time they’ve tried to get Star Trek: Section 31 off the ground! Originally envisioned as a television series, this latest announcement is something new for the Star Trek franchise: Section 31 will come directly to Paramount+ as a kind of “TV movie.” Reading between the lines, I think we can expect a lower budget than a full theatrical film, but perhaps a higher budget than would be afforded to a miniseries or a couple of episodes of a regular show.

If Section 31 proves to be a success with this format, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other Star Trek projects created in the same mould. As I said last year when discussing Short Treks, there’s a lot of potential in one-off stories – and with the sets having already been built for the likes of Picard and Strange New Worlds, there could also be a relatively low cost of entry, too.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves!

Off the back of Michelle Yeoh’s success at the Oscars and Golden Globes, her star has risen significantly. It’s a coup for Paramount to have won her back, there’s no two ways about it. Yeoh could have chosen to pursue other projects – she will have had no shortage of offers after Everything Everywhere All At Once took the world by storm – so it’s significant for both Paramount and the Star Trek franchise that she’s been convinced to come back.

With Michelle Yeoh at the helm, there’s potential for Section 31 to pick up a lot more interest and attention than it otherwise might’ve done – and that can only be a positive thing! We’ve talked before about how Star Trek needs to win over new viewers, and how the franchise needs to get new fans through the door. A project like Section 31 could be a gateway into Star Trek for legions of new viewers – at least some of whom will stick around. The potential for the franchise and the fandom to grow is significant – and growth is the only way to ensure that Star Trek will continue to be produced.

Paramount hopes this project will bring in a large audience…

Over the past couple of years I’ve talked about Section 31 a handful of times here on the website, and my overriding thought has been this: Paramount screwed this up. By announcing the project far too early, and at a time when fans were just about to get excited for the return of Captain Pike, Section 31 was dead on arrival. And it was such a shame, because by the time the groundwork had been properly laid for the project in Discovery’s third season, it was something I’d come around to.

This revival is, let’s be honest here, driven almost entirely by Michelle Yeoh’s success and Paramount’s wish to capitalise on it. I don’t think there’s much of a creative or artistic side to it – this is a commercial decision. As was the decision to dump the original Section 31 concept into development hell. In that case, Paramount saw the appetite for a Pike spin-off and prioritised that idea ahead of Section 31. This time, the board has seen the success Michelle Yeoh has had and has pulled out all the stops to bring her back to Star Trek.

Michelle Yeoh at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards.

But by the time Georgiou departed Discovery in the two-part episode Terra Firma, she’d undergone a significant shift in her characterisation – and was finally ready to take the lead in Section 31. If only Paramount had announced the project at that stage instead of two years earlier!

A TV movie feels like a good compromise for a franchise that’s in danger of burning out. With Starfleet Academy having just been announced as a new series, and growing calls for a Picard spin-off, I’m not sure that another series would’ve been the right call, especially with the Star Trek franchise continuing to have different eras and timelines on the go simultaneously. A TV movie could certainly lead to something more – either in the form of a sequel or a series – if it proves to be a huge hit. But for now at least, this feels like a surprisingly good call from a corporation that has made very few of those over the last few years.

Michelle Yeoh during production on *Discovery’*s first season/

The story that Section 31 will tell is going to be kept under wraps for a long time – and we might not see it until 2025 or even 2026. It’s my hope that Section 31 won’t feel like a re-hash of some of Star Trek’s recent “the whole galaxy is in danger!!!” stories that have been prevalent in Discovery, Picard, and even Prodigy in recent years. The writers need to find a way to take advantage of the secretive organisation to tell a different kind of story – a kind of black ops/spy thriller that might best be summed up as “Star Trek does James Bond.”

Besides Michelle Yeoh, there are other Discovery alumni who could potentially join the cast – though no announcements have been made at this stage. Shazad Latif, who played Ash Tyler in Discovery’s first and second seasons, is perhaps the most likely candidate, and I’d be interested to see what might’ve become of Tyler after his run-ins with Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery!

Could *Section 31* bring back Ash Tyler?

There’s also the potential for Section 31 to cross over in some way with Strange New Worlds, with the TV movie potentially debuting the same year as that show’s third season. The end of Discovery’s second season certainly implied that Captain Pike was aware of Georgiou’s true identity, and bringing him into the story could make for the kind of team-up event that Star Trek really ought to consider doing more of. If Section 31 were to aim for a 2026 release, coinciding with the Star Trek franchise’s 60th anniversary, it could even be billed as an anniversary event.

There’s been far more of a positive reception to the announcement of Section 31 in 2023 than there was to its premature announcement more than four years ago, and that’s good news. The project feels much more solid this time around, and is almost certain to get off the ground and escape the gravitational pull of development hell. Partly that’s thanks to Michelle Yeoh’s newfound stature as an award winner – but it’s also, at least in part, thanks to the development of her character across Season 2 and especially Season 3 of Discovery. The more grounded, nuanced, and dare I say more human presentation of Georgiou toward the end of her tenure on Discovery is what has made her into the kind of antihero that fans can root for.

Star Trek will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary in 2026.

So I can now say I’m genuinely looking forward to Section 31… even though I have no idea when it will be set, who it might include, or what kind of story it will aim to tell! As a standalone Star Trek project it represents a genuinely different format that the franchise hasn’t really attempted before – albeit one that could, perhaps, lead to a more traditional series if it proves a runaway success.

There’s a lot more potential in Section 31 today than there was when its original announcement in early 2019 flopped and failed to get off the ground, and I think you can see that in the positive reaction both within the Star Trek fan community and outside of it. Michelle Yeoh brings a star power to Star Trek that’s unprecedented, at least in the franchise’s modern incarnation, and the effect of that should be to bring more eyes to Star Trek – and to Paramount Plus – than it’s seen in a long time. It may not be an exaggeration in the years ahead to say that Section 31 shored up Star Trek and set the stage for its future success.

Until then, I hope you’ll stay tuned here on Trekking with Dennis! As and when we get more news about Section 31, details about the cast, teasers and trailers, and the like, I’ll do my best to discuss and analyse it all. And when Section 31 is ready, you can expect a full review, too!

Star Trek: Section 31 will premiere on Paramount Plus in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries and territories where the platform is available at an unknown future date. Further international distribution has not been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Section 31, Discovery, and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Paramount isn’t making this easy…

Mon 20.06.22Dennis

Paramount+ will officially arrive in just a couple of days’ time here in the UK, and there are a lot of questions over its viability as well as its short- and longer-term prospects. The fact that the UK is currently experiencing some of the worst economic issues of the past forty-plus years is going to have a massive impact, and that’s not Paramount’s fault nor is it something that the corporation could have done anything to avoid. But it’s far from the only issue that looks certain to affect the new streaming platform… and practically all of the other problems we’re going to talk about are Paramount’s fault.

In early 2021 I wrote an article here on the website titled The ad campaign for Paramount+ has been surprisingly strong. In that piece I took a look at some of the advertisements that had been created in the run-up to the US launch of Paramount+, some of which featured the likes of Anson Mount and Sir Patrick Stewart. Paramount (which was still known as ViacomCBS at that time) even spent an insane amount of money to advertise during the Super Bowl in 2021 – and Super Bowl adverts are the most sought-after and expensive in the United States.

Sir Patrick Stewart in one of the American Paramount+ adverts that were shown in 2021.

I complimented Paramount at the time for not only the scale of the advertising campaign – which appeared to be pretty extensive over in the United States – but also for the content of some of the ads. The aforementioned Super Bowl commercial played the song Sweet Victory from SpongeBob SquarePants (as a Nickelodeon production, Paramount owns SpongeBob) and that was a masterstroke!

But with the launch of Paramount+ mere hours away, it’s hugely disappointing to have seen nothing of the sort here in the UK.

If Paramount+ is to stand a chance in a hugely competitive streaming market during the worst cost-of-living situation in decades, at the very least there should’ve been adverts for the service somewhere. Paramount+ is launching years behind its competitors, so if viewers are to be expected to take the plunge and part with our cash, Paramount needed to step up weeks ago and do something – anything – to sell it to us.

Paramount+ made a splash at the Super Bowl last year.

Star Trek’s use of social media is awful, I don’t think anyone would dispute that. And in a broader sense, Paramount hasn’t got to grips with social media in the same way as some of the other big entertainment companies. So it’s no surprise to me to have seen practically nothing from any of the official accounts – even the official Paramount+ UK Twitter account has only half-heartedly tweeted out a couple of messages “counting down” to the platform’s launch. There’s been radio silence elsewhere (though I have to credit some particularly dedicated Star Trek fans for doing the job of Paramount’s marketing team for them!)

This is purely anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but no one I’ve spoken to has seen any promotional material or advertising for Paramount+ either. I have several friends and neighbours who are subscribed to Sky TV – a well-known satellite television provider here in the UK – and they have likewise seen or heard nothing about the impending arrival of Paramount+. Why does that matter? Well, Sky TV and Paramount+ have teamed up to offer subscribers to certain package deals access to Paramount+ at no additional cost. I would have expected Sky TV subscribers to have seen something – an advert, a reminder… anything at all, really – with Paramount+ so close to its official launch.

Paramount+ has some kind of deal with Sky TV in the UK.

Perhaps Paramount has already given up on the UK, at least for 2022. Knowing how bad the economic outlook is, and looking at how big streaming platforms like Netflix have been losing subscribers may have caused some in the Paramount boardroom to hit the panic button. As a result, a large-scale advertising campaign – something that costs a lot of money no matter how you do it – may have been taken off the table. Paramount may simply be content to get the biggest fans of its biggest franchises on day one, and save the advertising push for a future date when the cost-of-living crisis and inflation have settled down somewhat.

That’s my generous assessment. Now for the less-generous possibility: this is just the latest in a long line of decisions that show how Paramount doesn’t actually value non-American consumers nor the marketplace outside of the United States. The board may see the international launch of Paramount+ not as an exciting opportunity to bring in profit, but as a tiresome chore that must be completed in order to shore up their share of the domestic American market. In order to make Paramount+ look like a good investment, a safe long-term subscription, and a genuine competitor to the likes of Disney+ and Netflix (which, incidentally, it is not), they took the decision to roll out Paramount+ internationally. They did so not because they care one iota about viewership outside of the United States, nor even really to turn a huge profit, but simply to make Paramount+ look better to investors.

The advertising slogan for Paramount+ in the United States.

We’ve talked at length here on the website about the absolutely disgusting corporate attitude present at Paramount, an attitude that says “America First!” with Trumpian gusto. The Paramount board clearly and demonstrably does not care about non-American fans, viewers, or the marketplace in the wider world, and the state of Paramount+ when it lands in the UK this week is yet another testament to that. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which has broadcast seven episodes at time of writing, will arrive in the UK not with all seven episodes available, but with just three. The recently remastered 4K version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture – which was literally created exclusively for Paramount+ and has never been available or broadcast here in the UK – will likewise be unavailable when the streaming service arrives. The Halo series that I recently reviewed has already concluded its first season – but again, only three out of nine episodes will be available to UK subscribers this week.

Paramount has made a conscious choice to make its streaming service worse in the UK – with less content available – than it is in the United States. The corporation and its leadership continues to double-down on this selfish “America First” attitude, so in a way I shouldn’t be surprised that they can’t be bothered to launch even the most basic of advertising campaigns to promote Paramount+. That doesn’t make the situation any less disappointing, though… and this short-sightedness will have serious long-term consequences for the platform’s viability.

As things sit right now, I would wager that most folks in the UK are completely unaware of Paramount+. Some super-fans of franchises like Halo or Star Trek may have heard of it through the course of pursuing their fandom, but your average viewer knows nothing about an American-only streaming service. In order to simply raise awareness of the existence of Paramount+, some kind of advertising campaign was necessary. There needed to be television ads, cinema ads, radio ads, ads and promoted posts on social media, banners on websites, and perhaps some kind of “stunt” akin to SpongeBob at the Super Bowl to get people talking. Paramount has done none of that, and the result is now predictable: the service will land on the 22nd of June to absolutely dire subscriber numbers.

Obviously it costs money to advertise on television, in cinemas, online, and so on. But Paramount has had an ace in the hole that they could’ve taken advantage of: the advertisements and promotional material that they put together for the platform’s American launch. Those ads, as I noted when I took a look at them last year, were pretty good – and with a small amount of work they could’ve been repurposed for the UK market. Paramount would’ve still had to pay to air those ads, of course, but they wouldn’t have had the expense of creating them from scratch.

Anson Mount appeared as Captain Pike for the American ad campaign.

Here in the UK, Paramount has a significant media presence already. Their biggest property is free-to-air broadcaster Channel 5, but they own a number of other channels both on Freeview and cable/satellite such as 5Star, Nickelodeon, MTV, and the Horror Channel. At the very least you’d think there’d be a significant advertising presence on Paramount-owned channels in the days leading up to the launch of Paramount+. Doing so would be relatively inexpensive as Paramount wouldn’t have to pay itself to advertise on its own channels! But again, at least as far as I’ve seen, there’s been nothing – or next to nothing – to promote Paramount+ on any of these channels.

Paramount has recently announced plans to market Paramount+ “throughout the summer,” including setting up some in-person events in London, and that’s a positive noise from the corporation. But the time to get people excited for a new streaming platform is really in the days and weeks leading up to its launch – now is the time to have been pushing and seriously trying to sell people on Paramount+ as being the next “must-have” streaming service in their lives. Doing so slowly over the course of the summer isn’t bad… but it may be too late.

As a Star Trek fan (and a casual fan of other Paramount properties), I’m invested in the success of Paramount+. I want it to succeed and be profitable – including here in the UK – because that seems like the best way to guarantee the future of Star Trek and other franchises. I don’t want to see Paramount+ crash and burn – despite the insulting moves the corporation has made and its appalling attitude towards people like me – because that could very well mean the end of the Star Trek franchise. So I want to see a successful, profitable Paramount+ that brings in loads of subscribers. There are some great shows that either are or will be on Paramount+ that have genuine potential to blow up and become huge successes.

But the question is, does Paramount want that? Does the corporation see this international rollout as a glorious opportunity… or is it a torrid chore? Do they care about viewers outside of the United States… or is this merely an expensive exercise in branding? Does Paramount have a genuine ambition to compete against the likes of Netflix, Disney+, and UK television broadcasters… or has the board already resigned itself to lacklustre subscriber numbers for at least the rest of this year?

I wish I knew the answers, and I wish I understood why there’s been so little fanfare for Paramount+ with the service now only a couple of days away from its launch. But one thing is certain: Paramount has done everything in its power to make this launch as difficult and low-key as possible.

Paramount+ will be available in the UK from the 22nd of June 2022 as either a standalone subscription or as part of a Sky TV package. All franchises and properties discussed above – including Paramount+ – are the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.