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

At the very end of Olatunde Osunsanmi's new TV movie Star Trek: Section 31, the movie's group of criminals and ethics-optional mercenaries spent their central adventure scouting a space bar/casino to drink in their success. They narrowly escape their mission, but are glad they bonded over their shared danger. It is established that the survivors of the adventure, led by Empress Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeo), will now become a permanent installation in Section 31, Starfleet's black ops organization. "Section 31" isn't a pilot episode, but it ends as one, establishing a new cast of characters, their home base, and what a potential TV series would look like. At the very least, the filmmakers are teasing a sequel.

While drinking strong spirits and playing pranks on each other, the film's antiheroes get a call from Control (Jamie Lee Curtis), their new boss. Control says her better judgment warned her not to assign new missions, but that "better judgment" should be ignored in this case. She then asks if any of the Section 31 crew have been to a planet called Turkana IV.

That name will cause Trekkies to wake up. Turkana IV was the planet where Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) grew up. Tasha Yar, of course, was the Chief Security Officer of the Enterprise-D during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The character was infamously killed by a tar monster at the start of the series, as Crosby felt she wasn't being given enough to do, and wanted to do movies instead.

However, Yar often talked about Turkana IV and how terrible it was. Turkana IV seems to have been some kind of failed colonization experiment that eventually turned into a criminal hell.

It's insensitive language, but Tasha Yar often noted that Turkana IV was overrun by "rape gangs," who stalked the colony looking for victims to attack. Several flashbacks in the episode "Where No Man Has Gone" depict Turkana IV as decaying, shadowy, and scary. It looks like a haunted house. Going by Yar's many descriptions, Turkana IV was supposed to be a sprawling Earth-like colony with its own government. The planet, however, quickly descended into a Civil War between two factions. The sides were named the Coalition and the Alliance, leaving the audience with no sense of what their divisive ethos might be. Yar said that both factions declared the colony independent from the Federation, and the entire planet descended into lawlessness.

This was a sharp contrast to the utopian optimism of Gene Roddenberry. It seems that even the Federation colonies could fall. Money wasn't part of Star Trek's future, but it seems money — and her lack of a sibling — caught on. Yar talks about how drugs were often used, even though substance addiction is hardly known on the Enterprise. And yes, sex gangs roamed freely.

Starfleet sent ships to Turkana IV to try to restore order, but no Starfleet officers were allowed to disembark. It was like the prison from Escape from New York down there and no formal contact was made. In The Next Generation episode "Legacy" (October 29, 1990), the Enterprise-D visited Turkana IV to rescue a small escape pod that had crashed there. Legacy established that all the cities on the planet's surface had been destroyed and that all the criminal gangs had moved underground. There has been no mention of Turkana IV since that episode, and the Federation seems helpless to stop her continued descent into violence and crime.

At the very least, we know that escaping Turkana IV is possible. Tasha Yar escaped the colony at the age of 15, found her way back to civilization and eventually became a Starfleet officer. It is tragic that she was killed in the line of duty.

Of course, Section 31 takes place 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 an idealized place (Yar mentioned that the colony's government began to seriously disintegrate by the 2330s). Since Turkana IV was still in good shape (presumably) during the events of "Section 31", there's every reason to believe that Empress Georgiou and her entourage of ne'er-do-bullaries went there and did something evil to disturb the local population. government.

With the final line of dialogue in Star Trek: Section 31 hinting that the potential sequel will take place on Turkana IV, there's every reason to believe that Section 31 will be actively responsible for the colony's downfall. It may take decades of decay to reach what Trekis saw in Tasha Yar's flashbacks, but the influence of Section 31 will definitely provide the catalyst. This further cements Section 31 as a nefarious organizationand one who doesn't mind killing people and deliberately corrupting governments for his own ends.

So "Part 31, Part II" is certainly well-placed to tell a timely story about the corruption of an otherwise idealized republic and how the slide into authoritarianism is all too easy in the hands of demagogues. Perhaps Section 31 is why Roddenberry's utopia is not possible on every colony. It would certainly make for a poignant story.