Section 31 looks so familiar

Olatunde Osunsanmi's new TV movie Star Trek: Episode 31 is oddly retro, reminiscent of delightful 80s B-movies like Peter Manoujan's low-budget time-travel lark The Eliminator. The main character is Empress Philippa Giorgi (Michelle Yeoh), the genocidal tyrant of the Mirror Universe, and she is recruited to Section 31. A Starfleet black ops organization with no ethics who carry out dangerous secret missions.

However, the cast of the film is rounded off by a rogues gallery of various aliens and specialists, each brought in to aid the Empress in her important mission to retrieve the doomsday device. There is shapeshifter Quasi (Sam Richardson)a not-so-bright cyborg named Fuzz (Sven Ruigrok), a microscopic organism named Zeph who commands a human-sized robot (Robert Kazinsky), a particularly seductive Deltan named Melle (Humberley Gonzalez), and Rachel Garrett (Casey Rolle). ), a Starfleet officer who is there to make sure killing is kept to a minimum.

Also present is Alok Sahar, acting as the Section 31 go-between who contacted Georgiou in the first place. Aloka is tough, quiet, and suggests that the execution of Section 31 may give the Empress a chance to atone for some of her many, many crimes. In short, he is a company man.

Alok is played by Omari Hardwick, an actor from Georgia who has been working professionally in film and TV since the early 2000s. He has also been involved in theater projects throughout Los Angeles for many years and occasionally participates in poetry slams. Hardwick has also appeared in many high-profile feature films, working with many well-known directors along the way. He even starred in the best movie of 2018, so you've probably seen his face before.

Hardwick began his film career with a little-known 2002 indie film called Circles, but soon after broke into the mainstream with the 2005 hit comedy Beauty Shop starring Queen Latifah. His intensity and flexibility as an actor immediately landed him in a number of other major studio projects, including the military thriller The Guardian and the Dwayne Johnson vehicle Gridiron Gang, both released in 2006. Then in 2008, he was cast as Commander Hugs in Spike Lee's war epic Miracle at St. Anne's.

Alternatively, some might recognize Hardwick from his role as a rough-and-tumble cop in the violent superhero riff on Kick-Ass, or from his sidekick in the 2010 version of The A-Team, in which he played Chopshop Jay. Hardwick also worked with Tyler Perry on the 2010 drama For Colored Girls, which earned him a Black Reel Award nomination. Indeed, Hardwick has been prolific for quite some time now, appearing in several films and TV shows each year. In 2018 alone, Hardwick starred in the rom-com Nobody's Fool, starred in and executive produced the romantic drama A Boy. A Girl. A Dream, and was a collaborator in Iraq. War veteran drama “Sgt. Will Gardner.” On top of that, he played the mysterious Mr. ______ in Boots Raley's surreal masterpiece Sorry to Bother You (a movie that required him to wear a bowler hat and eyepatch, as seen above).

Just prior to “Section 31,” Hardwick starred in the Jennifer Lopez vehicle “The Mother” and worked with Zack Snyder. the zombie action-horror mishmash “Army of the Dead.” He's really been around. On television, Hardwicke might also be recognized from his starring role in the short-lived 2006 series Saved or all 20 episodes of Dark Blue. He's even been in music videos for Ruff Endz, Floetry, Nasty C, Estelle and Jay-Z, and has recorded his own singles with artists like 50 Cent.

Most notably, Hardwick played James “Ghost” St. Patrick, the main character of the six-season Starz television series The Force (which ran from 2014 to 2020). And this is not even his whole career. If Hardwick looks familiar, it's because he's been pretty much everywhere over the past 20 years. “Star Trek” is just another feather in his cap.

“Star Trek: Section 31” will begin streaming on January 24, 2025 on Paramount+.