Trailer offers first peek at the next Star Trek movie

The official Star Trek YouTube channel has released a trailer for Star Trek: Section 31.

This is the next Star Trek film, the first since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, and it stars Michelle Yeoh as Emperor Philippa Georgiou.

Oscar-winner Yeoh has already played this character, of course. She was one of the key characters (and villains) of the Star Trek: Discovery TV series.

She was the mirror universe counterpart to a Starfleet captain. And despite being a savage dictator of the Terrans in her own universe, she becomes part of Section 31, Starfleet’s covert take on the special forces.

The trailer appears to juggle with the dual identities of Georgiou as a bad-ass and as, well, just a bit of a baddie.

“Tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, she also must face the sins of her past,” says the official blurb.

This film won’t come to cinemas. It’s coming to Paramount+ as an original streaming movie. As such, it’s not going to have the big budget of the last run of Star Trek films, topped off by Star Trek Into Darkness’s $190 million budget.

We’re also not sensing too much of a Star Trek vibe from this latest teaser. However, it may be the only Star Trek film we get to see for some time.

Star Trek 4, the follow-up to Star Trek Beyond, has been in production limbo for years.

Talking at the ACE Superhero Comic Con, Chris Pine suggested a big-budget Star Trek movie just doesn’t make sense, that a smaller scale is the way forward.

“I think we just make a much smaller film that’s more story-driven, more character-based, there’s less shit exploding, and maybe do it that way,” he said.

Smaller budgets are the order of the day at the moment. We recently heard the scale of the Bioshock movie has been dramatically scaled back following Netflix belt-tightening. And Apple has announced plans to cut down how much it spends on content too.

And if you're not bothered about the movie side of Star Trek at all, you might want to check out the new teaser trailer for Strange New Worlds Season 3 instead.

We see the crew turned into Vulcans, using a serum. Plenty of silliness ahead, then.

Season 3 of Strange New Worlds is due out in 2025, while Star Wars: Section 31 is planned for early 2025.

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