I was so excited because this movie is based on two rich sources of Star Trek lore, Emperor Philippa Georgiou, and Section 31. What a let down. This movie is an insult to Star Trek fans everywhere. It fails at every level.

What a load of rubbish. I can't believe that someone at Paramount said, "yes, this is worth airing". What an embarrassment!

Well I think it’s hats off to all on-screen here who must have to stand around for ages in their CGI suits waiting for the computer to insert them, hologram-style, into the artificially created scenarios that dog this drivel from start to finish. And if the title of empress was good enough for Catherine the Great and Victoria, then why not for “Philippa Georgiou” (Michelle Yeoh)? Anyway, she’s been driven from her dimension and forced to join the elite division of “Starfleet” that’s been concocted to keep us all safe from problems that were usually initiated by that self same exploratory/interfering body in the first place. So quickly we encounter our first and biggest problem here, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the original or subsequent “Star Trek” philosophies. The adventure is straight out of a book of “Stargate” storyline rejects and Yeoh simply hasn’t enough to get her teeth into. The story, for what it’s worth, sees this supposedly top secret operation randomly hook up in the pub to discuss whatever problems they have in the timeline they had just arrived from, or gone to, or that they were expecting an invasion to come from, or that maybe the erstwhile captain of the “USS Discovery” was hiding after supposedly getting the chop on her imperial order in. They’ve also got to track down the epitome of doomsday weapons that makes the “Red Matter” seem as dangerous as the “Winnie the Pooh’s” pot of honey and all of this whilst under the gaze of an Irish fellow from Vulcan (Sven Ruygrok) who at least has some cheeky dialogue and the odd go at what passes for sarcasm from this woefully verbose script. There is also very little actual action to follow here, with almost all of the adventure coming in the last fifteen minutes and not really worth the wait at that. I like my sci-fi, but just because the machines can make it look good is no reason to make it if you don’t invest in the writing or the characters and just try to substitute that with oft-seen whizzy visuals and a score that like the film itself was desperate to get something of the original Alexander Courage onto screen, but never quite dared! Paramount+ has been something of a disappointment all along but this takes it more into the realms of Amazon Prime than Optimus.

Michelle Yeoh is a brilliant actor and I loved her character in Star Trek: Discovery so maybe I had too high expectations for this movie. The special effects were amazing but that is standard these days. The story was solid (sadly lacking in other movies these days) and it was funny. But having been blown away by the fast action, humor and well thought out plots of Discovery I was expecting more. But still a good movie!