Star Trek: Section 31

Seems to be a trend in US shows for dodgy 'Oirish' accents…

Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Carnival Row all used Irish accents to try to denote a particular group.
Wheel of Time had a few Irish cast members at least.

Strangely, Game of Thrones went out of its way not to use it, despite being filmed here and even having Irish cast members put on English accents.

Was especially disappointed with Lenny Henry in Rings of Power. Thought he would have been smart enough to pull them up on that.

Game of Thrones I'm told was originally going to be regional and have all of the North sound like Sean Bean etc. but the young actors couldn't pull it off. Most of the Irish actors went British or neutral except Cunningham who sounded like himself and Jegbefume who put on a sort of African pirate accent.

There's something particularly funny (in a dark way) of having someone like Cara Delevingne from the British aristocracy doing a racist Irish accent.

"Can you Paddify that 10%?"

Maybe they call it Paddy-ing :D

He was definitely trying to do Umbrella Project Robert Sheehan.

Facebook? Yea, I’d guess it isn’t the real one. I’ve been on various Trek Gronps on there and I think I’ve seen at least 3 instances of «Brent Spiner*» joining.

*(Not really him at all)

Between AI and people just being weird, I trust less and less of what I see on Facebook. If she asks me for money though I'll know it's definitely her!

Was this a one off or is there a series.

Saw it and the leapracaun Vulcan was dire. Would have been ok without it.

As far as I know, It was meant to be a pilot for a new TV show. There's a bit in Love Actually where Bill Nighy says, referring to his record "This is sh1t isn't it?", to which his manager says "Yep".

After doing the pilot they decided to release Section 31 as a one off straight-to-video kind of thing.

No it wasn't a pilot it was a full series that never got greenlit. What happened was as soon as Yeoh won her oscar they stuck together the few bits of plot they had to cash in on her.

It’s just Classic Hollywood for them to weigh into star-power like that to greenlight a project. There’s nothing really new about that, they’ve been doing that for the guts of a 100 years, but just because star-power sometimes works in attracting an audience, it doesn’t mean it will always work.

Kurtzman must have chomped immediately at the bit when Yeoh won her award, knowing that in Hollywoodland an Oscar is essentially currency to spend on pitches. So he got his crappy Discovery spin-off approved for a once-off ‘movie’ while sinking an obscene amount of the budget on Yeoh herself.

I’m of some hope (a fleeting hope) that studio heads will eventually take examples like Section 31 and learn that an Oscar winning name is little more than an flashy cash drain if there’s nothing else of value attached to the project.

"I’ve also heard that she was rarely even on set with the other actors due to scheduling difficulties."

In other words. She did not want to be on set with lesser actors than her.

"Scenes together filmed apart with stand-ins then composited in or edited together later."

Is it any wonder it's so bad.

Going the guess it might have been of a case of working around Yeoh since she was the main reason the show was even getting green-lit. As I alluded to earlier in thread, this isn't the best priority to anchor your production on when you could arguably focus a bit on story, directing, casting etc…things that need to be good regardless of Yeoh's addition.

But she's the main draw, which is why her name featured heavily on the marketing and is more than likely the reason why Paramount let Kurtzman make the "TV Movie" after years of getting the long finger on this project.

There's another potential issue too which is the directing. The reason I mention this is because the director for Section 31, Olatunde Osunanmi has mostly just directed Discovery episodes prior to this.

I'm only guessing here, but I can easliy imagine a scenario where Osinanmi might find himself unable or unwilling to give Yeoh direction in scenes. Essentially just set up the shot, roll cameras, let Yeoh ham up the scene any which way she pleases and then cut. He hasn't the clout of a "big-tent" movie director, and might have even been under special direction not to piss off Yeoh at any cost. So beyond reshoots due to script bloopers, the scope for improvement might have been pretty much eliminated.

All of that is just my mind-crayons thinking of ways that Section 31 became the mess it has reported to have been. I still haven't watched it, but it is worth reflecting on in terms of how to not make Trek. Right now the lesson appears to be:

"Don't spend your time trying to make a Trek show, just so you can have a Michelle Yeoh project on your CV…..Alex"

Watched it at the weekend. Managed to make it to the 25 minute mark before I couldn't take it any more and turned it off. To call it dreadful would be a compliment. I felt sorry for the actors having to work with such a dire script. I imagine most of them won't be putting that on their CV. Yeoh performance was incredibly hammy. And reeked of someone just picking up a pay cheque. It's a pity because a show based on Section 31 has potential. But after that debacle I can't see them revisiting that idea for a long time.