One of the best things about having Michelle Yeoh kicking around in the background of the current Star Trek franchises is the amount of fun she's having in her part; her character, Philippa Georgiou, is a bit hard to explain—she's basically a retired pirate empress from an alternate universe, now slumming it in the mainstream Trek reality—but the important parts are that she loves to talk shit and hit people, usually while looking fabulous in the process. Georgiou being front and center has always been a big part of the appeal of upcoming Star Trek direct-to-streaming movie Section 31, and, wouldn't you know it, the new trailer for the movie makes it clear that half of the reason to watch it is to see Yeoh having a blast.
The rest of that appeal is rooted in the film's titular organization, an off-the-books espionage organization that does the Federation's dirty work so everybody else can have a nice utopia. (The organization was originally created for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, natch.) To that end, a Section 31 operative (Omari Hardwick) recruits Georgiou to stop… well, some kind of bad space thingie. (The trailer's going for vibes and energy, not plot.) To get the job done, the pair will have to recruit a bunch of unsavory types who are not Sam Richardson with crazy alien eyes, and also one who is Sam Richardson with crazy alien eyes, which, if we're being honest, is kind of the part we got fixated on. (Don't blame us; Detroiters finally just went back on Netflix, and we're currently mid-re-binge!)
Anyway, the whole thing looks pretty fun, in an "action movie set in Star Trek" kind of way. The film clearly knows you're here to watch Yeoh be a badass and leans into it; also, something explodes like every five seconds. Section 31 lands on Paramount+ on January 23.
