Need to watch any Star Trek movies or TV shows before Chapter 31?

By the way, it was written Olatunde Osunsanmi’s New Star Trek: Chapter 31 TV Movie stands almost entirely on its own. There are several references to the Star Trek universe as a whole, but the script (by Craig Sweeney) carefully explains them all. Case in point: Quasi’s character (Sam Richardson) is a chameloid, a shape-shifting species not seen since the character Iman in Star Trek VI: The Unexplored Land. Viewers, however, don’t need to know anything about Iman or Star Trek VI to understand Quasi.

The same with the character of Rachel Garrett (Casey Rolle), a young lieutenant in Starfleet. Tracks know Rachel Garrett as the future captain of the Enterprise-C because we met her in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. The events of “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, however, are not mentioned at all in “Chapter 31”. There is also a Deltan character named Mel (Humberly Gonzalez), but her character and appearance are very clearly explained in the dialogue. You don’t have to know about Deltan’s character Elijah (Persis Humbatta) from Star Trek: The Movie to understand where Mel is coming from.

Other characters in Chapter 31 are completely new to Star Trek. One of the characters, Zeph, is a microscopic organism piloting a human-sized ship played by Robert Kaczynski. The other, Foose (Sven Ruigrok), is just a cybernetic creep from Alita: Battle Angel. Likewise, Alok (Omari Hardwick) is just a man with anger issues. This ragtag group of semi-evil sci-fi superspies would be as good on Star Trek as they are in a gritty late 80s B-movie like The Eliminators. Star Trek newbies will be able to follow Chapter 31 without a problem.

However, there is a brief flashback at the beginning of the film that tells a bit about the main character, Empress Georgiou (Michelle Yeo), and may require homework if the viewer wants her entire backstory. Below are a few episodes of Star Trek: Discovery that would be helpful.

At the beginning of Star Trek: Discovery Yeo played a Starfleet captain named Philip Georgiou, a tough, intelligent and virtuous character in command of the USS Shenzhou. Unfortunately, she was killed in a starship battle with the Vulcans, and it looked like Yo was out of the show. Later, however, the USS Discovery accidentally entered the infamous Star Trek Mirror Universe, where Georgiou was revealed to be the empress of the monstrous Terran Empire. Through various plot twists, this version of Georgiou returned to the main Star Trek universe aboard the Discovery. However, this Georgiou was a mass murderer, sadist and cannibal; she likes to eat human eyeballs.

To fully understand the origins of Georgiou’s Mirror, watch the Discovery episodes The Wolf Within, Ambition in the Vault, and What’s Gone is the Prologue, all from the first season.

Georgiou appeared in 22 episodes of Discovery, but I won’t make you watch them all. However, there was an important two-part episode in the third season of “Discovery” that leads directly to “Chapter 31”. The “Terra Firma” episodes dramatize Georgiou’s semi-redemption. Know that the third season of Discovery takes place almost 1,000 years after the previous season thanks to a time warp. It looks like the time travel is wreaking havoc on Georgiou’s body and she needs to go back in time in a hurry. Fortunately, she gets the chance to not only travel back in time, but also revisit her home dimension. She doesn’t seem to like it all too much this time, though.

Eventually, Philippa meets a mysterious man in 20th-century clothing, Carl (Paul Guilfoyle), on a distant planet who is able to take her back in time and back to her home dimension. Once there, she begins her duties on her tyrannical throne and encounters Mirror versions of the characters she grew to love back in the regular Star Trek universe. However, Georgiou, having grown up and changed a bit since her removal from the Mirror, is not so cruel. She finds herself struggling with the bit of conscience she seems to have grown.

At the end of the redemption arc, Georgiou returns to Karl. He announces that he is actually the Guardian Forever from the original Star Trek series, a demigod who possesses history. Karl offers to send Georgiou back in time to an unspecified location. Georgiou walks through the portal and exits the show. Finally, “Chapter 31” reveals that Georgiou returned to the main Star Trek universe in 2257, finally linking her to existing Star Trek lore.

If anyone likes the character or just likes the idea of ​​seeing Yo as a scenery-chewing villain, then you can check out Chapter 31 and determine if they want to return to Discovery and watch an additional 17 episodes with her character. Then, if someone was really curious, they could even delve into the many Star Trek episodes throughout the franchise that take place in the creepy Mirror Universe. But that’s a level of commitment that the viewer must determine for themselves.

Star Trek: Chapter 31 premieres on January 24, 2025 on Paramount+.