Kurtzman: SECTION 31 Will Be Georgiou's "Unforgiven," Writers Room Assembled for STAR TREK Spin-Off • TrekCore.com

It’s been nearly a year since CBS announced they were exploring a Michelle Yeoh-led spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery, set to center around Section 31 agent Phillipa Georgiou and the shadowy organization she joined after being pulled from the Mirror Universe.

For some time we’ve heard from the Star Trek franchise leadership team at Secret Hideout that production on the Section 31 show is supposed to start after the conclusion of filming on Discovery Season 3, but the actual status of preproduction has been a bit nebulous — until today, when in a new interview with Vanity Fair, franchise boss Alex Kurtzman and CBS All Access executive vice president of original content Julie McNamara spoke about the standing of this upcoming show.

Reiterating comments from earlier this year, Kurtzman noted that spin-off star Michelle Yeoh had actual begun to push for a Georgiou series before Star Trek: Discovery even hit the air back in late 2017, and while he admitted it was “very hard to say no” the to mega-star, the thought had to wait until Discovery established itself with fans first.

Full credit goes to Michelle Yeoh for coming to me and saying in [‘Discovery’] Season One, before we even launched, “I want to do a spin off of my character!” With Michelle Yeoh, it’s very hard to say no.

This was like a year before ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ came out and we had not launched ‘Discovery’ yet. No one had seen it. So I was like, let’s have one show that hopefully people like and we can talk about it.

Once ‘Discovery’ happened, I brought it to Julie and she immediately said, great, let’s develop it.

The announcement of the Section 31 show’s existence was made last January, and while there have been comments made in various interviews since that a pilot story treatment was in the works from showrunners Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt — both part of the Discovery writing staff since Season 1 — today’s interview is the first time we’ve heard that a writers room has been put together for full script development.

CBS All Access’ Julie McNamara offered comments on that front:

We are very excited about the ‘Section 31’ show and Michelle Yeoh is excited to do it. She is in the current season of ‘Discovery’ so she’s working on that right now but we have scripts getting written, and Alex has a writer’s room.

We love what we’ve heard so far. It’s yet another tonality of ‘Trek.’ As Alex has mapped it all out, each show has its own unique sort of voice and vision.

Back in April, Yeoh told Newsweek that Section 31 would be “more fun — less intense and more fun-driven. Visiting more planets. Going around rescuing people in our own way,” and Kurtzman shared his own thoughts on how the show is shaping up.

Erica [Lippoldt] and Bo Yeon [Kim], two writers on our ‘Discovery’ staff, started writing a pilot and it’s really different. It occupies an area of the ‘Trek’ universe that’s never really been explored geographically.

It has a new mythology to it, which is very interesting. And it puts Michelle’s character to the test in a lot of ways that ‘Discovery’ can’t. In some ways it will be her ‘Unforgiven,’ I would say.

Unforgiven, of course, is the classic 1992 Clint Eastwood film in which a former outlaw, now living in retirement, who must return to action to stop a pair of dangerous criminals.

While there are still plenty of questions about the show yet to be answered — including when it is set to take place, given that Georgiou was along for the ride when the Discovery shot 900+ years into the future in the Discovery season finale.

Additional casting, or any clear timeframe on when the Section 31 show may arrive for viewers, has not yet been announced — but when more specifics are finally revealed, you can be sure we’ll bring you all the details.