Chapter 31 Turkana IV Reference, explanation

Warning: this article contains mild spoilers for Star Trek: Chapter 31.

At the very end of Olatunde Osunsanmi’s new TV movie Star Trek: Chapter 31, a group of unethical criminals and mercenaries have gone through their main adventure and scouted out a bar/casino in space to drink their luck. They narrowly escape their mission, but are happy to be united through mutual danger. It is established that the survivors of the adventure, led by Empress Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeo), will now become a permanent fixture in Chapter 31, Starfleet’s black ops organization. “Chapter 31” isn’t a pilot episode, but it ends as if it could be, setting up the new cast of characters, their base, and what a potential TV series will look like. At least the filmmakers are teasing a sequel.

Sipping hard liquor and making fun of each other, the film’s anti-heroes get a call from Control (Jamie Lee Curtis), their new boss. Control says her prudence warned her against assigning new missions, but in this case “better judgement” should be ignored. She then asks if any of the Chapter 31 crew have been to a planet called Turkana IV.

This name will make Trekkies come alive. Turkana IV was the planet where Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) grew up. Tasha Yar, of course, was the chief security officer aboard the Enterprise-D during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. A character is known to have been killed by a tar monster at the beginning of the series, when Crosby felt she wasn’t being given enough to do and wanted to do movies instead.

However, Yar often talked about Turkan IV and how terrible it was. It seems that Turkana IV was some kind of failed colonization experiment that ended up being a criminal hell.

It’s not delicate language, but Tasha Yar often noted that Turkana IV was overrun by “rape gangs” who roamed the colony looking for victims to attack. Several flashbacks in the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” show Turkan IV ruined, dark, and scary. It looks like a haunted house. According to Yar’s many descriptions, Turkana IV was supposed to be a sprawling Earth-like colony with its own government. The planet, however, quickly turned into a civil war between the two factions. The parties were named the Coalition and the Alliance, leaving the audience with no idea who their dividing ethos might be. Yar said that both factions had declared the colony independent from the Federation, and the entire planet had descended into lawlessness.

It was a stark contrast to the utopian optimism of Gene Roddenberry. It seems even Federation colonies may fall. Money wasn’t part of Star Trek’s future, but it seems that money — and its relative poverty — has taken hold. Yar talks about how drugs were often used, although drug addiction is almost unknown on the Enterprise. And yes, sex gangs roamed free.

Starfleet sent ships to Turkana IV to try to restore order, but Starfleet officers were not allowed to head down. It was like a prison from Escape from New York, and there was no official contact. In The Next Generation 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 all the cities on the surface of the planet were destroyed, and criminal gangs went underground. Turkana IV has not been mentioned since that episode, and the Federation seems helpless to prevent further descent into violence and crime.

At least we know that escaping Turkan IV is possible. Tasha Yar escaped from the colony at the age of 15, found her way back to civilization and eventually became a Starfleet officer. Tragically, she died in the line of duty.

Of course, Chapter 31 is set in the late 2250s or early 2260s, before the events of the original Star Trek and about a century before the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation. If so, then Turkana IV has not yet fallen and is still in the idealized location (Yar mentioned that the colony’s government did not begin to seriously collapse until the 2330s). Since Turkana IV was still in good shape (presumably) during the events of Chapter 31, there’s every reason to believe that Empress Georgiou and her entourage of misfits went there and did something nefarious to screw up the government for the locals.

Given that the last line of dialogue in Star Trek: Chapter 31 teased that a possible sequel would take place on Turkan IV, there’s every reason to believe that Chapter 31 will be actively responsible for the fall of the colony. It may take decades of decay to achieve what Trekkies saw in Tash Yar’s memories, but the influence of Chapter 31 will certainly be a catalyst. It cements it even more Section 31 as a villainous organizationand one who does not mind killing people and deliberately corrupting governments for his own purposes.

So Chapter 31, Part II is certainly poised to tell a timely story about the corruption of an idealized republic and how the slide to authoritarianism is all too easy in the hands of demagogues. Perhaps Section 31 is the reason Roddenberry’s utopia is impossible in every colony. It would certainly make for a poignant story.