10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)

3. The Dialogue

There's a fine line that has to be walked when one includes contemporary dialogue in a period-specific script. When one is writing about the past, one is locked into the speech patterns of the time (with an exhaustive list of exceptions, we know!)

When one is writing about the future, there is far more freedom in what the writer can do. However, including very contemporary language is...hazardous. In Section 31, some moments of dialogue jump off the page, through the screen, and belt the viewer around the head. 

'Mecha Boom Boom.''Chaos is my friends with benefits.''Your momma IV.'

Oh dear. 

Including comedic lines is nothing new to Star Trek, nor should the franchise ever actively avoid comedy in general. There are many examples of how the long-running property has melded comedy and the contemporary, yet still maintained that feeling of timelessness. 

Section 31 does its utmost to lock the dialogue, and therefore the events of the film, in the early 2020s - battering the audience with colloquialisms that seem far more concerned with sounding 'hip' than eliciting a genuine laugh. Comedy has every place in the future. Can the same be said for some of the ultra-generationally specific references?