Star Trek: Everything We Know About Section 31 (The Movie)

10. The Longest Trek

Star Trek: Section 31, the 'Long Trek,' began life a long while ago. As Alex Kurtzman told Vanity Fair, before Star Trek: Discovery had even hit screens in 2017, Michelle Yeoh had approached him about a spin-off for her character Philippa Georgiou. Kurtzman added, "With Michelle Yeoh, it's very hard to say no".

First devised as its own series, Section 31 was pretty much in the works ever since. The official announcement of Section 31's "standalone" status came in January 2019 via Variety. Scriptwriting had already begun, and in January 2020, the GWW revealed that filming was due to start in May, for release sometime after the end of Discovery's third season. Then, the end of days.

"[The schedule] got thrown completely into whack because of COVID," Kurtzman noted during a 2021 Producers Guild panel. Star Trek's boss remained optimistic about the future of the Georgiou spin-off — one foreshadowed by sending the ex-emperor back in time via Carl in the Terra Firma two-parter.

But time was the operative word. Section 31, the series, remained in perpetual "development" right until it was given movie status in April 2023. After all, with her star on a meteoric trek upwards, Yeoh couldn't be in all places at the same moment, could she now?