Star Trek Star Is "Terrified" Of How Section 31 Will Be Received Admitting It's "Not The Trek People Want"
Early signs point to big trouble for the Paramount+ streaming movie, Section 31, as actor Robert Kazinsky says he’s “terrified” of fans, and it might not feel like Star Trek.
Alex Kurtzman has turned Star Trek into something completely unrecognizable from its previous form. With Star Trek: Discovery, Lower Decks, and Picard, fans don’t see any optimistic future of human exceptionalism seeking out new life and new civilizations. The shows explore strange, new genders more than they explore strange new worlds.
As a result, ratings for Discovery proved to be very low, resulting in its cancelation after a fifth season, even though they had planned to go seven. Despite this, the powers that be at Star Trek are taking Michell Yeoh’s mirror universe character from Discovery and giving her a film with Section 31.
The trailer promised a dark, gritty Star Trek, which we’ve seen before and fans have rejected. Most fans don’t want to see Section 31 explored outside of Deep Space 9, and its presentation failed to resonate with viewers.
The Paramount+ official trailer has 2.2 million views but only 3.5K likes as of this writing, with a whopping 16K dislikes. That’s a 4.5x factor of dislikes to likes and very little engagement at all, considering how many views it has.
The creators even seem to be bracing for a flop as actor Robert Kazinsky, who plays a character named Zeph in the film, is now speaking out about how this is likely not to resonate with Trek fans. "I'm terrified of how it's going to be received, because it's not the Trek people want,” Kazinsky told SFX magazine.
If it’s not what “Trek people” want, one wonders why they’re going forward with the film and what executives at Paramount are thinking.
Kazinsky indeed has outlined exactly why it’s not what characters want, speaking at New York Comic-Con this year about his Zeph character, “I play Zeph in Section 31 and I am entirely unfit for Starfleet, but I don’t really make up my own mind. I just do whatever he tells me to do, whether it’s good, bad, great, ugly, nice, it doesn’t matter. I’ll smash whatever he points me at. I’ll break whatever he points me at.”
His characterization of Zeph is a far cry from anything one might recognize as Starfleet or Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry would be horrified at seeing lead characters in a Trek show with traits like the above, and Star Trek fans already clearly feel similarly.
Oddly enough, Kazinsky seems to know exactly what Trek fans want. He elaborated, "The Trek that people want, the Trek that we all want, is just 1,000 more episodes of [The Next Generation]. Everyone's always furious that they're not getting more TNG, whilst at the same time, when TNG came out, everybody hated it.”
While he is right about the style of show that people want out of Star Trek, he’s incorrect in his assertion about The Next Generation. The show was so successful that they immediately greenlit another spinoff, Deep Space 9, while the show was on the air. They also took the series to feature films, and Paramount considered the show a cash cow at the time, as even with only advertising revenue, TNG was bringing in $50 million a year from TV spots.
Instead of replicating what was successful and doing honor to Star Trek with a show with similar themes, Alex Kurtzman has taken it in the direction of generic, dark sci-fi, which turned off fans.
Kazinsky then said, "So this is going to come along and it's not going to feel like any Trek that they've ever seen. My fear was that it might not feel like Trek at all. So for you to tell me that it still feels like Trek whilst being a completely different flavour of Trek, that encourages me. In 10 years time, we'll look back, and we'll love every single one of these Treks."
Despite his optimism for the future, it doesn’t appear to be the case as IMDB reviews for Discovery are negative about the show, and fans universally condemn Picard’s first two seasons while enjoying the third, which actually brought back some of the feel of The Next Generation, even if imperfectly.
An insider told Fandom Pulse that at a recent screening for Section 31, it made the person who saw it “physically ill it was so bad.” He elaborated that it was “campy and stupid,” and the screener couldn’t sit through 10 minutes of the film.
All of this points to Section 31 bombing for Paramount+, which leads fans to wonder how much longer Alex Kurtzman’s vision of Star Trek will last.
What do you think of Kazinsky’s comments on the Section 31 movie? Leave a comment and let us know.
For a great alternative to modern Star Trek, with sci-fi spy thriller action, read The Stars Entwined on Amazon!
Oh god...that trailer, it's like Balenciaga meets Star Trek...Trekenciaga
As long as there are no finger wagging in your face sociopolitical lessons on what an audience should think or believe I will check it out, but I am not hopeful. Cool villains and slick lines can get tiresome real quick.