At the very end of Olatunde Osunsanmi's new TV movie "Star Trek: Section 31," the film's scrappy, ragtag group of criminals and ethics-optional mercenaries have gone through their central adventure, and have reconnoitered at a spacebound bar/casino to drink to their success. They barely escaped their mission, but are happy to have bonded over their mutual peril. It's established that the adventure's survivors, led by Empress Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), will now become a permanent installation inside of Section 31, Starfleet's black-ops organization. "Section 31" is not a pilot episode, but it ends as if it might be, 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 sipping on strong spirits and joking around with each other, the film's antiheroes receive a call from Control (Jamie Lee Curtis), their new boss. Control says that her better judgment has warned her away from assigning 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 perk up. Turkana IV was the planet where Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) grew up. Tasha Yar, of course, was the chief security officer on board the Enterprise-D during the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." The character was notoriously killed by a tar monster early in the series, as Crosby felt she wasn't being given enough to do, and wanted to pursue movies instead.
Yar frequently talked about Turkana IV, however, and how terrible it was. It seems that Turkana IV was a failed colonization experiment of some kind that eventually devolved into a criminal hellscape.