Part 31 reveals that Georgiou has been dwelling on the sides of Federation house, working a disreputable bar beneath a pseudonym. She’s pulled again into service when a Part 31 crew beneath the command of increase Alok (Omari Hardwick) wants her assist to search out an extremely damaging weapon. Rounding out the crew is Vulcan (type of, however I gained’t give that away right here) Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), the shapeshifting Quasi (Sam Richardson), the Deltan Melle (Humberly Gonzalez), a mech-suited warrior known as Zeph (Robert Kazinsky), and human and Starfleet true believer Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl).
As that forged listing reveals, Part 31 is fond of constructing references to Trek lore. Garrett, in fact, will turn into the Captain of the Enterprise-C and a significant character within the beloved Subsequent Technology episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” Quasi is a Chameloid, a member of the alien race performed by Iman in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Nation. Alok’s augments tie him to the Eugenics Struggle and Trek large unhealthy Khan Noonien Singh.
However these references solely function floor degree easter eggs, which makes Part 31 extra like a sport of Fortnite with Star Trek skins than a feature-length continuation of the beloved franchise. Actually, Part 31 appears to tug most of its visible inspiration from video video games, with shiny graphics and ostentatious digital camera actions. After the Mirror Universe prologue, we’re handled to a mission abstract delivered on to the viewers, as if we’re gamers preparing for the subsequent degree.
To these with out a lot funding in Star Trek, the online game analogy could not sound so unhealthy. In any case, we’ve had some actually nice online game diversifications these days, with Fallout and The Final of Us. However Part 31 feels extra like final 12 months’s doomed Borderlands film, achieved a lot worse.
Sure, you learn that proper. All the ugly visuals and self-satisfied humor that marred Borderlands seems in Part 31, besides gaudier and louder. The characters converse in lingo that’s gone outdated in 2025, not to mention the far future (“Chaos is my good friend with advantages,” says Garrett as a method of expressing her rising acceptance of dysfunction). Part 31 presents its crew as a band of outcasts who continually squabble, a trope achieved finest most not too long ago by James Gunn in Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad.
However as an alternative of constructing the characters fascinating or likable in any method, screenwriter Craig Sweeny writes everybody as a jerks who insult each other to show their toughness. That doesn’t forestall director Olatunde Osunsanmi (a Discovery veteran, like Sweeny) from treating every toothless one-liner as a Don Rickles-level burn, and reducing to a close-up of the roaster cackling at their very own joke each time.
