The New Star Trek Movie Will Finally Explore a Missing Part of Enterprise Lore

The Enterprise-C has returned! Again!

According to a Variety report about the future of the Star Trek franchise, the upcoming Section 31 movie will feature Kacey Rohl as a “young” Rachel Garrett, presumably before she became the captain of the Enterprise-C. It’s a surprising but exciting turn of events, to be sure, since Garrett has only appeared in a single episode of Star Trek, leaving much of her history yet to be explored. In fact, digging into more of Garrett’s story would be a way to unlock a piece of Star Trek captain lore that’s long been missing despite the Enterprise-C’s introduction over 30 years ago.

Fans first met an older Garrett (Tricia O’Neil) and the Enterprise-C in the season three Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” When that episode aired in February 1990, the arrival of the Enterprise-C addressed a question that had lingered since the show’s premiere three years earlier. Obviously, The Original Series took place on the USS Enterprise, which was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock and replaced by the Enterprise-A at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

The TNG premiere “Encounter at Farpoint,” which is set almost a century after The Original Series, introduced the Enterprise-D. But what about the Enterprise-B and -C? The answer for the former came in Generations, which begins with the Enterprise-B’s troubled maiden voyage, and would go on to live in non-canonical stories outside of movies and television.

But “Yesterday’s Enterprise” tells a much richer onscreen story about the Enterprise-C. Destroyed 20 years before the episode’s setting, the Enterprise-C goes through a time distortion and arrives in a changed future. In the original timeline, the -C was destroyed while attempting to rescue a Klingon outpost. When the time shift prevents the -C from completing its mission in the past, the future changes and the Federation is suddenly in the midst of a protracted war against the Klingons. In this reality, the Enterprise-D is a battleship, led by an embittered Picard and his military-focused crew, including Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar.

Directed by David Carson and based on a story by Trent Christopher Ganino & Eric A. Stillwell, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” serves as a proper send-off for Tasha Yar, an original crew member who died an ignoble death at the “hands” of a blob monster in the season one episode “Skin of Evil.” Yar, and the crew of the Enterprise-C, choose to send the time-displaced ship back into the past and complete its deadly mission, sacrificing themselves to prevent the Federation/Klingon war from ever happening.

It’s a glorious episode, one of the best in the series, and a fitting end for Yar. However, Garrett puts in a great showing as a model Starfleet Captain too, embodying the courage and selflessness that marks the best captains. Even though she suffers a surprisingly gnarly death before her ship can go back to the past and complete its mission, Garrett remains a compelling figure from Star Trek lore.

Garrett later got a nod in Star Trek: Picard, which revealed her statue stood on M’talas Prime. But that’s all we currently know about Garrett, unless you count the non-canonical Lost Era novels The Art of the Impossible and Well of Souls, which flesh out her character. In canon, though, Garrett remains a compelling mystery.

As she demonstrated on the series Hannibal, Rohl knows a thing or two about portraying under-explored fan-favorites. On that Bryan Fuller-created adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novels, Rohl played Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of Garret Jacob Hobbs aka the Minnesota Shrike, a serial killer only mentioned in passing in Harris’ books.

Coincidentally, in Section 31, Rohl’s Rachel Garrett will appear alongside another Fuller creation: Philippa Georgiou, played by Michelle Yeoh. As the original creator of Discovery, Fuller introduced Georgiou as Michael Burnham’s commanding officer, who dies in the Battle of the Binary Stars, only for her Mirror Universe equivalent to arrive and take her place.

The Mirror version of Yeoh’s Georgiou will be the main character of the upcoming Section 31 movie, which focuses on the secret (and, frankly, overused) intelligence wing of Starfleet. While she traveled to the 32nd Century with the USS Discovery at the end of that show’s third season, Georgiou’s body began to suffer from traveling across dimensions and timelines. She was forced to return to her previous time, presumably to resume work with Section 31.

Georgiou’s experience moving across timelines and dimensions might explain Garrett’s role in Section 31. After all, Garrett did also cross timelines and dimensions in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” and while she died before the effects of the journey could set in, that information would be of interest to Section 31.

However Section 31 plans to handle Garrett, her inclusion will finally shed some more light on the most mysterious of Enterprise eras. Where even the Enterprise-B lived on in non-canonical novels, comics, and video games, the Enterprise-C exists only to die. Perhaps, Section 31 and Rohl’s Rachel Garrett will give fans more to love about this doomed ship, and make sure that history never forgets the name Enterprise.

Star Trek: Section 31 is slated to release in 2025.