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  • Thoughts/Observation as I watch:

    • Where will this stand in the long history of Star Trek gimmick episodes? After all, this is the franchise that gave us "Trials and Tribble-ations", "Take Me Out To The Holosuite", "In a Mirror, Darkly", the OG "Lower Decks", and most recently... "Those Old Scientists". Holy shit, that was just two episodes ago and in between we got the darkest Star Trek thing in years!
    • Uhura having to be the operator sounds like the most stressful thing to do that doesn't involve imminent danger.
    • "Even if it's not fully necessary." That basically sums up every contrivance to get Kirk on board.
    • KORBY ALERT
    • Ah, spatial distortions, the cause and solution to everything.
    • The facial acting as they enter musical-land is priceless.
    • Acapella theme song!
    • "So... that happened."
    • "Quantum uncertainty field". That's some Hitchiker Guide type stuff.
    • Ah, they brought back the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff.
    • I like how they are hanging a lampshade on just how BIZARRE it is that people sing out their biggest secrets and deepest feelings in musicals.
    • Good save, La'An.
    • "Surprisingly beautiful baritone"
    • It could have been worse for the crew. Imagine if Uhura had broadcast opera into it, then they'd ALWAYS be singing.
    • Shaxs would suggest blowing it up by ejecting the warp core.
    • Gratuitous zero-gee is gratuitous.
    • Oh god, singing Klingons.
    • Yeah, the Klingons would also like the "let's just blow it up" plan.
    • Wait were those extras twins?
    • Apparently the improbability field also affects the lighting of the bar.
    • Isn't K'tinga the later type of Klingon ship? Ah, screw it, musical rules.
    • "I don't love rules but I think you're about to break a big one."
    • This totally is going into Temporal Investigations Kirk file.
    • CAROL MARCUS REFERENCE
    • Oh shit, David Marcus reference!
    • "I'm the Ex" standing as if X in a math question is a good bit of workplay.
    • Kind of surprised it took this long to give Celia Rose Gooding a full-on solo.
    • Grammy-Award winning singer!
    • A grand finale. How meta!
    • Boy Band Klingons was not on my bingo card.
    • Lol, playing the TOS theme as a curtain-closer
    • "You sang about lying to me."
    • "Sorry, Earworm."
    • All-and-all, it was a good enough gimmick episode. But it was no "Take Me Out To The Holosuite." ("DEATH TO THE OPPOSITION!")

    • Isn’t K’tinga the later type of Klingon ship?

      The three Klingon vessels that got rekt by V'Ger at the beginning of TMP were K'Tinga class ships. That was less than 20 years after this episode was set. However, the K'Tingas did remain in service well into the 24th century, likely for the same in- and out-of-universe reasons that the Excelsior class did.

  • Touching on the actual character moments for a bit here: the events of this episode do not reflect well on Chapel.

    She'd been hitting on Spock literally since the beginning of the show, and openly pining after him for most of that time. Four episodes ago, she winds up breaking down in tears explaining to an alien telephone receptionist how much she cares about him. Two episodes ago she is extremely distraught when Boimler accidentally lets slip that Spock is famous in the future, and her relationship with him almost certainly will not last. And now, she gets into a three month fellowship that she didn't think she had much of a chance at, doesn't say a word to Spock until she has no other choice, and then busts out a (involuntary, but reflective of genuine emotion) musical number about how "free" she feels. What the hell.

    We already know Chapel has some problems with commitment, but this is a whole 'nother level. Throwing away a relationship she spent most of this show obsessively wishing for, without any apparent consideration for Spock's feelings or non-breakup solutions to spending a couple months apart, is just wild. I'm sure the finale will touch on this with a little more nuance than a musical number was likely to give, but whatever else is said this is not a good look.

    • It doesn't reflect well on her, but it does feel sort of...real, in a way that people can sometimes be shitty in real life. She's tangled herself up emotionally for a long time with someone who for various reasons just isn't going to be a good romantic partner for her, and there's certainly a bit of catharsis in realizing "oh maybe I just can stop trying to make this work and stop feeling bad at how I can't ever seem to make it work". Because the whole Spock thing clearly has been making her miserable, because she loves him but somehow it seems impossible to turn that into a whole emotional relationship. Its just that immediately after that moment, if you really care, you still need to go check on the person you're hurting. I really do hope they get a moment in the next episode to get some actual closure with each other.

      • On top of feeling real, it feels true to the characters that the show has developed over the past two seasons. It's not empathetic of her, but this feels exactly like the Christine we've been shown.

        On top of that, it's a good lead up into the awkward relationship we got in TOS between the characters. Where Chapel seemed to sadly crush on Spock from afar.

      • Late to the watch party, but I agree with this.

        My reading was that Boimler’s slip-up and the knowledge that she wouldn’t be a significant part of Spock’s life (at least viewed from a historical perspective) was what caused Chapel to pull away from Spock, and end up sabotaging the relationship. But tragically - time-travel shenanigans and all that - who’s to say whether or not that’s the way things were always going to happen?

        The opportunity the fellowship provides allows her to envision a positive, worthwhile future for herself, where she is free from the boundaries she’d previously imagined, and can let go of her disappointment that the path she yearned to travel with Spock was one she wasn’t destined for.

    • I interpreted that song very differently. When Boimler spoke with Chapel, she didn't just realize that her and Spock wouldn't be together long term but also realized that Boimler didn't really know her like he knew Spock.

      Spock goes on to do amazing things and every detail of his life is recorded in books that people over a century later will read and, essentially, worship him. Chapel isn't even a cliff note. In her mind, she must feel like she makes no difference and gets down on herself. When she gets the fellowship, it renews her confidence and let's her know that there is a whole universe of possibilities in front of her.

      That was my interpretation of her feelings in the song but I can see others as reading it differently.

    • It was my impression that she was so shitty to him because of Boimler's little slip up. She definitely could have been kinder, but she knows she isn't even a blip in Spock's life. I think she feels she might as well move onto something where she can make an impact and be remembered, like her career. She is probably bitter, and it came out that way as we are all so uninhibited when we spontaneously break into song.

    • It does feel very quick, given how long they spent teasing the two of them together. This was one of my problems with s1 as well, starting off character arcs and then wrapping them up way too soon (M'Benga's daughter, for example).

      • The main thing that bugged me with M'Benga's daughter is that they've basically just retconned how many people understand the way they can use the transporter buffer that was seemingly novel to the TNG folk when they came across Scotty inside of one during Relics. Geordi was all like "what is going on with this transporter" but this season you have Chapel and M'Benga using it as an active stasis system for triage purposes. (Although now that I read what I wrote, that's just like two more people who know it, and using the Klingon war as a way to establish the knowledge is pretty good.)

        Just kind of seems like it would either be more widespread of a use-case in medical scenarios or have some kind of super major drawback in addition to storage capacity like general degradation. Then it would make sense that Scotty pulled another miracle and kept himself from degrading for 100 years.

  • Loved it.

    Some amusing details:

    • For Pike's singing voice, he adopts a kind of Meatloaf/Russell-Crowe-in-Les-Miz style that is exactly the right mixture of masculine and adorable.
    • The build up to the Klingon Boy Band: We know that Klingons love opera, heightened emotions, spontaneous group singing, and choreography (if you're willing to consider martial arts a form of choreography). La'an even explicitly mentions singing old sea shanties which would seem to be an obvious way to translate the Klingons into musical form. So naturally, I was shocked that the Klingons would not immediately assimilate into their new musical reality. I even told my husband, "I can't believe the Klingons would want this to stop!" And when it hit, everything made perfect sense.

  • What the heck, this episode must have taken so much effort like 20+ minutes of singing + music (and the writing of the songs as well), and in a good half of those requires choreographed dancing as well, the a capella version of the intro, and a few orchestra versions in the credits

    I was grinning almost the entire time for this episode, it was just....fun! And it moved the plot along too! (Although you kinda need to with so few episodes in a season)

  • I love Star Trek, and I love musicals. These are two of my favorite things, and I never thought they should mix. When this was announced, I was very skeptical. I have to say, that they pulled it off, and it was AMAZING! The plot was a bit meh and definitely made to shoehorn in the musical, but the singing really did it for me. "How Would That Feel" (La'an's solo) and "Keep Us Connected" (Uhura's solo) were my favorite songs, and I have listened to them so much today. "How Would That Feel" definitely cemented La'an's place as my favorite character.

    • I hated it, because I hate musicals, but I love that it happened. I loved watching it and hated every godamn second.

      Please... no more... but I'm glad this happened and I'm glad people that like musicals seemed to more or less have enjoyed it.

      Just... I'm begging.. no more.

      edit: it was incredibly charming. I still hate it. It's cannon and I wouldn't have it any other way, but I hate it. There is no way I am the only person like this.

    • I agree. As a fellow musical lover (I'm posting from the intermission of a touring Broadway show) the writers clearly understand what the music in musicals is meant to represent. La'an's and Uhura's solo numbers definitely gave some emotional insight into both characters that I feel benefited the show beyond just being decent musical numbers.

      The autotune was painful in a few moments for certain actors but hey, they're not professional singers, and I would have loved a bigger dance number, but I know that's pushing it.

    • Another musical theatre Star Trek fan who finally caught up with the episode. Obviously I loved it. The writers took their cue from "Once More With Feelings" and used the "very special episode" conceit to progress seasonal character arcs (as they did with "Those Old Scientists"). You could tell was the intent even from the "previously on" recap with a bunch of relationship tensions ready to be revealed through song. (The bunnies reference was a nice nod to the Buffy episode.)

      I knew Celia Rose Gooding could sing (although, sadly, she was off when I saw Jagged Little Pill on Broadway), so the actor whose vocal chops surprised me most was Christina Chong. I see from her wikipedia entry that she was actually in the Elton John musical Aida in Berlin, so that makes sense now.

      Maybe my favourite minor running gag was how the characters always heard and acknowledged the backing music - in dialogue or with just a glance. I could go on a pretentious detour on mimetic vs diegetic music, but won't.

      But I wasn't blind to some of the episode's flaws either. The biggest to me was that the songs lacked the craft and polish of really good musical theatre songs, with (for instance) many imperfect rhymes and awkward prosody (putting the stress on the wrong syl-LA-ble of a word). Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a show that I loved, suffered from the same issue.

      A minor complaint is that I didn't think we need the rules of musical theatre to be so explicitly lampshaded by the characters, although La'an treating it as security (and personal, emotional) risk was cute - and in character.

  • I was not optimistic; musicals are definitely not my favorite genre. I was pleasantly surprised.

    This is such an incredibly well done show.

  • So, I'm a good public for this I suppose, since I loved Mamma Mia, and am a real fan of rock/metal operas. And I think this episode is... surprisingly decent?

    I mean, the singing was surprisingly good, even with autotune (I mean, if you ever want to hear a real musical disaster, try Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia ; everyone here is pretty much excellent compared to that), so kudos to crew. The music was uneven : some parts were quite bland/uninspired, but I very much loved the common theme of "I'm ready"(catchy!)/"I'm the X"(lovely!) and the two widely different feelings.

    On the plot side, you can feel they are trying very hard to brush over how nonsensical this musical thing is. And, somehow, I'm glad that not much progress happens here : you can summarize what happens as "La'an tell Kirk about the time-travel event, Spock gets dumped for a study program, Pike have a minor fight. And musical subspace shenanigans.", which will sure come in handy if you're allergic to musicals and (re-)watch the series.

    But yeah, it was fun. The "La'an cut the captains couple argument in the middle of signing", and the boys-band/K-pop klingon were unexpected.

    Overall, I think this episode somewhat suffer the comparison with the Lower Deck crossover. The s02e07 was a real Star trek story : if Lower Deck wasn't a thing, "These old scientists" would still be a decent story, it's the meta element which push it into the land of deep sillyness (even when, like me, you don't really like Lower Decks). "Subspace rhapsody" is... a musical. It's good fun! But I was hoping for a bit more.

  • @ValueSubtracted

    Pretty silly episode. I'm not a fan of musicals, and I was dubious going in, but it was fun. They managed to make it as good as a musical could be for my tastes. I'm happy it was made, and I'm happy to have seen it. That's about the highest praise I could give for something like this.

  • I loved the episode. I’m not a huge fan of American musical theatre, but this really worked for me and my partner.

    The tone was just right and the songs were well matched to the skills and characters. It’s delightful.

    It was also really nice to come to this community and soak up all the positivity. I really needed a place to come like this after watching episodes. As we see it a bit later on CTV Sci-fi Channel in Canada, I can often feel blasted with fan backlash when I check out people’s views after watching.

    Yes, there are a few folks here for whom this isn’t there kind of thing, and they are letting us know. We’ve not however seeing brigading negativity that is cropping up on some other social media. I can appreciate that some want their Trek more dignified and serious, but the ‘worst thing ever’ hyperbole is a bit hard to take when Threshold and Code of Honor exist.

    • I think the main split in the Trek fandom now is how serious a tone people tend to prefer. Most of TNG was professionalism porn, and most of the 90s stuff was generally serious. A lot of people got used to that, and whenever I talk to them about stuff like SNW or LD, their chief complaint is that "the characters act immature and are too quippy". To an extent, I can agree and see the point of view, but on the other hand, I really like it when Trek doesn't take itself too seriously.

      I like to argue that the TOS era was a less mature era of Starfleet in general which causes the familiarity with the bridge crew to be more socially profound as opposed to professionally based. To whit, I remember SNW directly addressing things like this wherein they discuss "General Order 1" being renamed "The Prime Directive" which I feel is evident of a maturing organization.

      Strange New Worlds doesn't take itself seriously unless it has to. It's been great about totally experimenting with the Trek formula to create unique, fun and memorable episodes. The plot devices are straight out of the 70's, with random space anomalies impacting the crew. They modernize the storytelling and keep up the pace, which is always just what the TOS era needed.

  • I don't like musicals... at all. But I really enjoyed this episode. The whole cast is so good. I had a lot of fun watching (and listening to) it.

273 comments