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Talking about their new movie at New York Comic Con 2024, the cast and director of Star Trek: Section 31 admitted that the idea of the Federation having a CIA took some getting used to. Actor Rob Kazinsky, who plays Zeph, revealed that as a fan of Star Trek himself, “When the idea of Section 31 first appeared, I was like ‘Nah.’” The underlying idea of Star Trek, he explained, has always been “a universe where we had moved beyond the need for Section 31. That was the whole point, that we had finally transcended all the things that are holding us down today, and evolved to a point where Section 31 didn’t exist.”

“Then Deep Space Nine happened,” he said, to excited cheers from the audience. “In ‘In the Pale Moonlight,’ Sisko says my favorite line in Star Trek: ‘It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.’” (Note: Rob Kazinsky knows his Star Trek, yo.) “When you expand the universe into something more realistic, the simple truth of the matter is, the Federation can only exist if a Section 31 exists.”

Section 31 is “a different color of the rainbow,” director Olatunde Osunsanmi agreed. “It goes places we haven’t gone before. Huh,” he said, stopping. “’Places we haven’t gone before.”

But Kazinsky underlined that the show very much has a Star Trek point of view. Section 31 moves the idea of a CIA-type organization like this “from being a nefarious organization to humanizing it and actually showing the need for it,” he said. “On the frontier where the Federation doesn’t already exist, there is a need for someone to roll up their sleeves and live in the grey areas.”

Space may be the final frontier, but there's no end to Popverse's love of the Star Trek universe. Hop aboard the starship Enterprise with our Star Trek watch order, explore strange new worlds with our upcoming Star Trek TV shows and movies list, seek out the new life of the franchise, and boldly go where no Star Trek film has ever gone before - with Quentin Tarantino?