🎬 Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)

Star Trek: Section 31 is a 2025 American science fiction television film directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and written by Craig Sweeny for Paramount+. It marks the first made-for-streaming film in the Star Trek franchise and the fourteenth Star Trek film overall. The project originated as a planned spin-off series from Star Trek: Discovery, with Michelle Yeoh set to reprise her role as the charismatic and morally complex Philippa Georgiou, the former Emperor of the Mirror Universe's Terran Empire who finds herself working with the Federation's shadowy black-ops division.

The film is set in the franchise's so-called 'lost era,' the period between the events of the original Star Trek films and the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This timeframe has been relatively unexplored on screen, giving the filmmakers a wide canvas to depict the clandestine activities of Section 31, an organization first introduced in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as an unsanctioned, autonomous intelligence and defense agency operating outside normal Starfleet protocols.

Development on the series was first announced in January 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant delays. As Paramount+ and executive producer Alex Kurtzman reshuffled their Star Trek slate, priority shifted to the Discovery spin-off Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which follows Captain Pike and the pre-Kirk Enterprise. Section 31 was subsequently redeveloped from an ongoing series into a single feature-length film, a decision announced in April 2023. The cast expanded to include Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky, Kacey Rohl, and several others as new operatives within the secretive organization.

As a spin-off of Discovery, which itself is a prequel to the original Star Trek series, Section 31 inherits a rich and complex legacy stretching back to Gene Roddenberry's 1966 creation. The film represents a significant tonal departure for the franchise, leaning into espionage thriller territory and centering on a protagonist whose moral compass is far more ambiguous than the typical Starfleet captain. It explores the darker corners of the utopian Federation, asking what compromises are made in the shadows to preserve the light.