Warning: this text incorporates gentle spoilers for “Star Trek: Part 31.”
On the very finish of Olatunde Osunsanmi’s new TV film “Star Trek: Part 31,” the movie’s scrappy, ragtag group of criminals and ethics-optional mercenaries have gone by means of their central journey, and have reconnoitered at a spacebound bar/on line casino to drink to their success. They barely escaped their mission, however are comfortable to have bonded over their mutual peril. It is established that the journey’s survivors, led by Empress Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), will now develop into a everlasting set up within Part 31, Starfleet’s black-ops group. “Part 31” is just not a pilot episode, but it surely ends as if it could be, establishing a brand new solid of characters, their dwelling base, and what a possible TV sequence would seem like. On the very least, the filmmakers are teasing a sequel.
Whereas sipping on sturdy spirits and joking round with one another, the movie’s antiheroes obtain a name from Management (Jamie Lee Curtis), their new boss. Management says that her higher judgment has warned her away from assigning new missions, however that “higher judgment” must be ignored on this case. She then asks if any of the Part 31 crew have been to a planet known as Turkana IV.
That title will trigger Trekkies to perk up. Turkana IV was the planet the place Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) grew up. Tasha Yar, after all, was the chief safety officer on board the Enterprise-D in the course of the first season of “Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology.” The character was notoriously killed by a tar monster early within the sequence, as Crosby felt she wasn’t being given sufficient to do, and wished to pursue motion pictures as a substitute.
Yar ceaselessly talked about Turkana IV, nevertheless, and the way horrible it was. Plainly Turkana IV was a failed colonization experiment of some type that finally devolved right into a legal hellscape.
Turkana IV was a failed experiment
It is indelicate language, however Tasha Yar ceaselessly famous that Turkana IV was overrun by “rape gangs,” who stalked the colony in search of victims to assault. A number of flashbacks within the episode “The place No One Has Gone Earlier than” present Turkana IV as crumbling, shadowy, and scary. It seems to be like a haunted home. Going by Yar’s many descriptions, Turkana IV was meant to be a widespread Earth-like colony with its personal authorities. The planet, nevertheless, shortly devolved into Civil Conflict between two factions. The perimeters had been known as the Coalition and the Alliance, leaving audiences with no sense as to who their dividing ethos could be. Yar mentioned that each factions declared the colony impartial of the Federation, and the entire planet devolved into lawlessness.
This was a stark distinction to Gene Roddenberry’s utopian optimism. Plainly even Federation colonies may fall. Cash wasn’t part of the way forward for “Star Trek,” however plainly cash — and its sibling poverty — took maintain. Yar talks about how medication had been ceaselessly used, though on the Enterprise, they barely learn about substance habit. And sure, intercourse gangs roamed free.
Starfleet despatched ships to Turkana IV to attempt to re-establish order, however no Starfleet officers had been allowed to beam down. It was just like the jail from “Escape from New York” down there, and no formal contact had been made. Within the “Subsequent Technology” episode “Legacy” (October 29, 1990), the Enterprise-D visited Turkana IV to rescue a small escape pod that had crash-landed there. “Legacy” established that the cities on the planet’s floor had all been destroyed and that the legal gangs had all moved underground. There was no point out of Turkana IV since that episode, and the Federation appears helpless to forestall its continued descent into violence and criminality.
Did Part 31 trigger Turkana IV to fall?
On the very least, we all know escape from Turkana IV is feasible. Tasha Yar fled the colony on the age of 15, discovered her approach again to civilization, and finally grew to become a Starfleet officer. It is tragic that she was killed within the line of responsibility.
After all, “Part 31” takes place within the late 2250s or early 2260s, earlier than the occasions of the unique “Star Trek,” and a few century earlier than the occasions of “Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology.” If that is the case, then Turkana IV hasn’t fallen but, and remains to be in an idealized place (Yar talked about that the colony’s authorities did not start breaking down in earnest till the 2330s). As a result of Turkana IV was nonetheless in fine condition (presumably) in the course of the occasions of “Part 31,” there’s each cause to consider that Empress Georgiou and her retinue of ne’er-do-wells went there and did one thing depraved to foul up the native authorities.
On condition that the ultimate line of dialogue in “Star Trek: Part 31” teased that the potential sequel would happen on Turkana IV, there’s each cause to consider that Part 31 might be actively answerable for the colony falling. It would take a number of many years of decay to succeed in what Trekkies noticed in Tasha Yar’s flashbacks, however Part 31’s affect will certainly present the catalyst. This additional cements Part 31 as a villainous group, and one that does not thoughts killing folks and intentionally corrupting governments for their very own ends.
“Part 31 Half II” is, then, actually properly poised to inform a salient a well timed story in regards to the corruption of an in any other case idealized republic, and the way backsliding into authoritarianism is all too simple within the fingers of demagogues. Maybe Part 31 is the explanation why Roddenberry’s utopia is not attainable on each colony. It could actually make for a poignant story.