star trek subspace rhapsody who sang

The Best Singers In Star Trek's Subspace Rhapsody, Ranked From Uhura To Worst

Season 2 of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is almost over and it didn't miss a chance to leave its mark on "Star Trek" history. The ninth and penultimate episode, "Subspace Rhapsody," is the first "Star Trek" musical episode. Like any good musical, it opens with a group number, branches off into solos, and then reunites the cast for a grand finale.

But wait, you might ask, how does the show justify such an odd premise? "Strange New Worlds" is the show that, back in season 1's "The Elysian Kingdom," turned the Enterprise crew into characters out of a child's fairy tale. A musical episode is well within the show's tonal range and ability to excuse.

At the start of the episode, the Enterprise is investigating a "naturally-occurring subspace fold" — Starfleet hopes the fold can be harnessed to enable faster communication. When Uhura and Spock send a song into it hoping for a response, it responds by altering probability to turn the Enterprise into a reflection of a musical universe. Long story short? The cosmic phenomenon of the week is making the Enterprise act like they're in a musical, so just go with it.

Every cast member, main and recurring, gets at least one moment singing. Musical episodes on TV will always put a cast out of their elements; they signed up to act, not sing and dance. How do the respective musical talents of the cast of "Strange New Worlds" compare?

1. Ensign Nyota Uhura

Taking the crown as best singer on the Enterprise is Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding). As the ship's communications officer and polyglot, it's only natural that's she also skilled in song. The final solo of the episode, "Keep Us Connected," is hers. It's basically a musical recap of her character arc; she sings about how she's been alone since her family's death. That is, until she came to the Enterprise and found friends who had faith in her.

Even before "Subspace Rhapsody," Uhura was canonically a good singer. In "Star Trek: The Original Series" episode "Charlie X," she sings for the rest of the crew. Nichelle Nichols' singing was high energy but her voice was soft and melodic like a lullaby. Gooding, on the other hand, goes loud. Once Uhura has the engine room to herself, she belts her heart out, singing at the top of her lungs, yet stays perfectly in tune with the strumming instrumentals. 

Gooding is not just an actor, they're a Broadway star too; they first broke out from the 2018-2020 runs of the rock musical "Jagged Little Pill." That theatrical spirit hasn't left Gooding; while singing as Uhura, they animate their body and project their voice like a stage performer. The results are enrapturing.

2. Lieutenant La'an Noonien Singh

La'an Noonien Singh, the Enterprise's uptight security chief, is played by Christina Chong. On top of her acting, Chong is a singer with the solos "Twin Flames," "No Blame," and "Can't Show Love" to her name. Surprise, surprise — the other trained musician among the cast gets second place as the show's best singer.

After spotting Una (Rebecca Romijn) and Jim Kirk (Paul Wesley) hitting it off, La'an retreats to her quarters and breaks out into a solo ballad, scored to a sad piano melody. La'an is usually rather stoic and closed off from others. Her song, "How Would That Feel," from the isolated setting to the lyrics, is all about that. She asks herself if she should "change her paradigm" and open herself up to others — but in turn, if she could manage to "fly blind" in her life.

The blocking reflects the song's theme of self-reflection — there's a shot of La'an standing in front of a mirror and then out a window. Most of the shots, though, are still close-ups of her as she sings. Rather than a theater star, Chong feels like someone most used to singing in place before a fixed microphone. It works, though, thanks to her expressive face (that she finally gets to put to full use) and how she keeps hitting higher and higher notes as the song goes on.

3. Lieutenant Commander Spock

Spock (Ethan Peck) has always shown some musical inclinations, even back during "The Original Series." He plays a Vulcan lute in his spare time; this season revealed that it was prescribed to him as a coping method for his emotions. We've never seen Spock singing along as he plucks the lute's strings, but "Subspace Rhapsody" reveals that isn't due to lack of talent.

Spock is the first crew member to break out into song during the first group number, "Status Report." Seeing an emotionally-restrained Vulcan singing underlines the surreality of the musical; normally, Spock would be the least likely to express himself so overtly.

He gets a solo later in the episode, right before Uhura's: "I'm The X." The title's meaning is twofold. For one, Spock is the ship's science officer, so he's always trying to solve the unknown like an equation. It's also a pun on how Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) has chosen her career over continuing their relationship. Spock's feelings of betrayal tie the meanings together; he's decided that giving over to his emotions yielded disastrous consequences so he will return to cold analysis.

"I'm The X" is one of the calmest heartbreak songs I've ever heard. Underscored by a dour electronic tune, Peck maintains a strong and even timbre while moving his face as little as possible; Spock's shields haven't dropped even under these circumstances. Yet somehow, you can still feel the rawness in his voice.

4. Captain Christopher Pike

A plot point in "Subspace Rhapsody" is that the musical behavior is causing the Enterprise crew to reveal information they'd rather keep secret. Captain Pike (Anson Mount) gets the worst of it. His partner Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) calls after the music plague spreads to her own ship. She and Pike get caught in a duet where they have "A Private Conversation" about the relationship, their frustrations with one another laid bare for the Enterprise bridge crew to see. 

The one thing that isn't embarrassing? Pike's singing ability. Scrofano is a capable scene partner, but Mount steals the scene for himself with a smooth, mellifluous baritone — exactly the kind of voice you'd picture coming out of his handsome face.  

Since "A Private Conversation" is the most comedic of the setlist, it has a playful orchestral tune, like something out of "Peter and the Wolf." Tragically, it's cut short when La'an disconnects the transmission. We do get to hear a bit more of Pike singing in supporting parts during "Status Report" and "We Are One." Pike might've been uncomfortable singing, but I was eating it up.

5. Commander Una Chin-Riley and 6. Lieutenant James T. Kirk

Back in episode 6, "Lost In Translation," it was revealed that Kirk (Paul Wesley) has been promoted to First Officer of his current ship, The USS Farragut. So, he spends some time on the Enterprise shadowing Una (Rebecca Romijn), an experienced First Officer. Their duet, "Connect To Your Truth," is about this new mentor-student relationship; Una explains how to best be a starship second-in-command.

Naturally, Commander Chin-Riley takes the lead in the duet. "Connect To Your Truth" boasts some of the most complex lyrics and creative rhyming schemes in the song's tracklist; from the wordplay to the flighty mood it often feels like a "Star Trek" themed "Mary Poppins" song. The nature of the song also evokes "My Fair Lady" (or rather, "My Fair First Officer"). Romijn understands how to handle this, drawing out some of her line deliveries even if her singing voice doesn't quite escape the confines of her normal one. Wesley handles himself just fine but definitely cedes the spotlight to his costar.

Romijn must have been eager to sing; she  was  a Music major before becoming an actress and model. Thus, Una also gets a solo — "Keeping Secrets" — a follow-up to La'an's "How Would That Feel" as the Commander advises her younger friend. Una confesses that "in another life, [she] could see herself on a stage." By enthusiasm alone, I could see her getting there.

7. Nurse Christine Chapel

Back in "Charades," Nurse Christine Chapel had been rejected from a scientific fellowship. In "Subspace Rhapsody," she's applied to another one and gets it — but that means she'll have to leave the Enterprise. Spock confronts her about it while she's toasting to her success and the number makes it clear where her priorities are. "I'm Ready" is all about how Christine's been working so hard to get to the top of the scientific field; she can't even bother paying attention to Spock, so focused on her own dreams and ambitions.

The music is a poppy dance song, with everyone in the bar joining in and swaying back and forth; only Christine's voice is clearly audible but there's some background vocal harmonizing too. "I'm Ready" has the most extras and complex choreography of any "Subspace Rhapsody" sequence. Some of those extras take turns carrying Christine around as she dances around the room, climbing onto the bar and some tables along the way.

Sadly, the most underwhelming part of the scene is Jess Bush's own singing. From my own ear, it sounded like her voice had been auto-filtered. It might have been a creative choice, whether to have her voice match the upbeat mood of the song or to show that Christine's not her usual, more reserved self. I'm not convinced it was the right one, though.

8. Lieutenant Erica Ortegas and 9. Dr. Joseph M'Benga

Musical TV episodes always reveal which cast members are comfortable/capable with singing and which aren't. Those in the latter category for "Strange New Worlds" appear to have been Melissa Navia (Erica Ortegas) and Babs Olusanmokun (Dr. M'Benga). Neither one gets a solo song, whether due to runtime constraints, the actors' disinterest, or something else altogether. As a result, it's hard to judge these two against their castmates.

Both Ortegas and M'Benga do sing during the group numbers. M'Benga's parts in both songs feature him harmonizing with Chapel (they both work in Sick Bay, after all), so it's especially hard to get a read on his own voice.

Ortegas, though, does get a brief solo as part of "Status Report." The song features a bridge of the Enterprise Bridge crew describing their stations on ready; Ortegas does so for the ship's helm. Navia's voice sounded good, to the point where I'm puzzled why they didn't give Ortegas more material . She's generally a comic relief character, so a funny song would fit her like a glove. Maybe "Strange New Worlds" season 3 will have to feature "Subspace Rhapsody II" to give Ortegas a moment at the mic.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' musical episode (and the real singers on the Enterprise crew)

After 'Subspace Rhapsody,' we dive into how musical each cast member of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is.

At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, the Star Trek Universe panel announced that Paramount+ 's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would receive a musical episode. Luckily the wait was only a few weeks to watch 'Subspace Rhapsody.'

In season 2, episode 9, Uhura and Spock are experimenting on a quantum probability field. A freak accident causes the people onboard the U.S.S. Enterprise to reveal their innermost feelings in song. Though only the starship seems to be afflicted by the musical disorder, it has the potential to spread across the galaxy. So, they must work fast to contain it.

'Subspace Rhapsody' is a fun diversion from your conventional episode that still maintains the core of what Star Trek is. Each cast member does an admirable job, and you would think everyone has some musical talent. That made us curious about which actors had prior experience and which were out of their comfort zones. Here's a brief musical history of the actors of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike)

Anson Mount has spread his acting career throughout television, film, and theater. In theater, he always performed in plays and never had the chance to share his voice in a prior musical. In an interview with Collider promoting the series Hell on Wheels, the interviewer asked whether he sings. The actor responded, "A little bit. Mostly people pay me not to sing, but I could learn."

After becoming Captain Pike in Star Trek: Discovery, Mount shared during a panel at the Great Philadelphia Comic Con in 2019 that he had a singing part in the second episode of season two entitled 'New Eden.' When the crew meets with human inhabitants of a distant planet, his character sings an old church hymn, 'Let Us Break Bread Together.' The actor even asked for a voice teacher for the part. But for story reasons, the scene was eventually cut. He would have to wait until 'Subspace Rhapsody' for others to see him finally sing on Star Trek.

Celia Rose Gooding (Nyota Uhura)

Celia Rose Gooding is a big reason Uhura plays a significant role in 'Subspace Rhapsody.' They are a talented singer who broke out as Mary Frances 'Frankie' Healy in the rock and roll musical Jagged Little Pill. They earned a Grammy award and a Tony nomination for the performance. They studied dance at the Alvin Alley Institute in New York City and majored in musical theater at Pace University before dropping out due to Jagged Little Pill obligations.

Melissa Navia (Erica Ortegas)

Helmsman Erica Ortegas is one of the breakout characters of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds due to Melissa Navia. In addition to acting, she is a writer and stand-up comedian. No wonder she hits Ortegas's one-liners and zingers. She grew up as a musical theater kid. In an interview with IRK Magazine , she mentions one of her earliest leading roles was as Peter Pan when she was younger. Despite many adult projects not needing song and dance, Navia still looks right at home in the musical episode.

Ethan Peck (Lieutenant Spock)

Entertainment runs in Ethan Peck's family as his grandfather and father were both actors. It's no surprise that he began his career as a child actor with his early roles, including parts in the made-for-TV movie Marshal Law and Passport to Paris, which starred the Olsen twins. Though none of his prior projects required any musical talent, he did appear in the music video for 'I Want You to Want Me' by KSM. The video was for the television series 10 Things I Hate About You. Peck also studied classical cello for six years when he was younger.

Christina Chong (La'an Noonien-Singh)

Christina Chong started dancing at the age of four. She initially studied at the Sutcliffe School of Dance in Longridge, England, then attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theater Arts in London beginning at 14. After graduating from the academy, she received a role in the musical Aida, which featured songs from Elton John and Tim Rice. An injury shortened her musical theater career, so she turned to acting. Chong proves she still has it in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' musical episode.

Carol Kane (Pelia)

The newest main addition to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is Chief Engineer Pelia. Her actress, Carol Kane, has a long career in entertainment as an actor. She has also received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for the film Hester Street and earned two Oscar awards for her work on the sitcom Taxi. But did you know she has musical experience as well? She played Madame Morrible in Wicked during the first national tour and later on Broadway. For someone who is most known for her comedy, Kane is a sneaky musical ringer for "Subspace Rhapsody."

Jess Bush (Nurse Christine Chapel)

Jess Bush's first television appearance was as a contestant on the seventh season of Australia's Next Top Model. She later pursued acting in the Australian soap opera Home and Away and having a recurring role in the drama series Playing for Keeps. Playing Nurse Chapel on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is her first international role. She might not be a singer, but she has other talents. She is a visual artist who has been selling her work since age 19, and she even designed some of the jewelry her character wears in the series.

Babs Olusanmokun (Doctor Joseph M'Benga)

The one crew member who isn't a slight bit amused with all the musical shenanigans is Doctor M'Benga. Compared to the other characters, he seems to sing the least. Looking through Babs Olusanmokun's filmography and history, there don't appear to be any roles that called for musical ability. That's okay because we saw one of his other talents front and center in the previous episode 'Under the Cloak of War." Olusanmokun utilized his championship Brazilian Jui-Jitsu skills in a sparring scene with Ambassador Dak'Rah.

Rebecca Romijn (Una Chin Riley/Number One)

Rebecca Romijn was first known as a supermodel before she transitioned into acting. She had geek cred even before Star Trek. Her first film role was as the mutant Mystique in the X-Men films of the '00s. Romijn has also dabbled in singing. She covered the Prince song 'Darling Nikki' for the 2005 album Electro Goth Tribute to Prince and featured on 'Color Me Love' on RuPaul's eighth studio album Realness. More recently, as cohost of The Real Love Boat, she sang the iconic theme song of the '80s show, which the reality romance television series is based on during the opening credits alongside her real-life husband, Jerry O'Connell.

Paul Wesley (Lieutenant James T. Kirk)

Before he was Lieutenant Kirk in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Paul Wesley is probably best known for his role as Stefan Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries. Due to the popularity of the series, he was a regular on the convention circuit featuring in many panels. You can search for videos of the various panels and find where the actor sings, including a viral video where he and The Vampire Diaries co-star Ian Somerhalder rap Vanila Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby.' However, these instances are all for fun to entertain the attendees in the audience. You'll have to dive deep into his filmography to find a role where he professionally sang. In the season 2, episode 11 of the legal drama Shark entitled 'Shaun of the Dead,' Wesley plays the lead singer of a rock band. There is a scene where the character performs onstage at a bar, and you can hear Wesley sing a few lines.

For more on Star Trek and how to understand it all, we have a comprehensive Star Trek watch guide .

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Did The Actors Actually Sing In The Musical Episode?

From "Riverdale" to "My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," musical numbers in television shows have become more commonplace than ever. "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" was the next to attempt such a feat, and to great success. In an episode aptly named "Subspace Rhapsody," the crew of the Enterprise encounters an anomaly that ultimately causes a rip in space-time. Naturally, this results in an alternate reality where everyone bursts into song.

The plan for this musical episode stretches back as far as Season 1 of "Star Trek: Picard" and finally comes to fruition near the end of Season 2 of "Strange New Worlds." The cast is full of talented singers, some of whom are musicians in their own right. Christina Chong, who plays La'an Noonien-Singh , debuted one of her singles, entitled "Twin Flames," in a previous episode. Before she played Uhura, Celia Rose Gooding earned a Tony nomination for the Broadway show "Jagged Little Pill." 

One of the biggest surprises, however, comes from Ethan Peck, who plays a younger Spock in the series. Showrunner Akiva Goldsman was shocked to learn of the actor's talents, on top of his prowess as the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer. "Our composer played with all of them to see what their range was, and we wrote for them. I mean, I didn't know Ethan could sing ..." Goldsman relayed to Variety . "Which is, by the way, kind of what happens when you watch the episode. You're like, 'Wait, Spock is singing now?'"

Star Trek is no stranger to out-of-the-box thinking

Star Trek has the virtue of throwing its characters into surprising situations, and this isn't even the first time that "Strange New Worlds" has done this. Earlier in Season 2, Jonathan Frakes directed the "Lower Decks" crossover episode. The animated series originally hails from CBS and stars Jack Quaid as Ensign Brad Boimler. He and Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) are given the live-action treatment in "Strange New Worlds," which does not hold back. This is an apt precursor to the musical episode, which pulls out all the stops. 

During the final moments of the episode, the fearsome Klingons have their own musical sequence that is more than surprising. The creatives behind the series did two versions of the song, unsure of which would play best. "We did an operatic [musical number] which was also great because the Klingons have a history with that. And it was also good," executive producer Henry Alonso Myers reflected to Variety. However, the song in the episode won out, and the Klingons do their version of a pop boy band. Myers continued, "The boy band took you by surprise. It was not what you thought was going to happen. I'm delighted by it." 

The episode cultivates humorous moments such as these and heartbreaking songs that hammer home themes of loneliness, making it as well-rounded as any musical on screen.

Subspace Rhapsody (soundtrack)

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It quickly rose to the top of the iTunes charts for "Top Albums". [1]

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Track listing [ ], external link [ ].

• "Subspace Rhapsody" playlist  at YouTube

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Subspace Rhapsody” Soundtrack and Musical Influences

Here's a list of every song in Star Trek: Strange New World's musical episode "Subspace Rhapsody" and what influenced the soundtrack!

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This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds article contains spoilers.

Star Trek has always had a habit of taking unlikely detours into other genres, whether it was Kirk and Spock dressing like gangsters in the TOS episode “A Piece of the Action” or the powerful Deep Spine Nine period piece “Far Beyond the Stars.” But with its most recent episode, Strange New Worlds takes the franchise in the most unexpected direction.

Directed by Dermott Downs, “ Subspace Rhapsody ” finds the Enterprise crew breaking into song after discovering an anomaly at the edge of the Alpha Quadrant. The episode gives Uhura actor Celia Rose Gooding a chance to show off the pipes that landed them a role in Jagged Little Pill: The Musical on Broadway , and also featured a Klingon hip-hop number that recalls Han Solo’s lowest moment .

As shocking as the episode was for Trekkies, “Subspace Rhapsody” benefited from a steady hand at the helm, thanks to Downs’ previous experience working with musicals. The mind behind the “ Duet ” episode of The Flash , which saw Supergirl and Flash forced to sing to battle the Music Meister, Downs knows how to make normally straight-laced heroes burst into song.

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Although he knew the risks of such a stylistic divergence for Strange New Worlds , Downs told Comicbook.com that he drew from familiar influences. For Pike’s argument with Captain Batel, Downs designed “kind of [a] country duet that goes sideways in front of the whole crew.” The Klingon hip-hop moment came about after shooting a version without dancing but Downs decided that it didn’t work. “You want it to be something outrageous,” he explained, arguing that only an act that filled Klingons with dishonor would “help us propel to this final conquering of the anomaly.”

The most complex of the numbers involved Nurse Chapel’s excitement over a career opportunity, even at the cost of her relationship with Spock, which overtakes her in a crowded mess hall. “There were so many elements and interactive elements to that, that that probably had the most full-blown rehearsals, just so everybody would be prepared on the day and you’re not trusting someone’s going to catch you, and on the day they don’t,” said Downs.

But the most interesting of the numbers featured La’an ‘s heartbreak at seeing Kirk , who does not know about the romance the two shared in an alternate reality. After watching Kirk and Una perform a playful duet, La’an retreats to her room for an intimate song, one that includes insert shots of the life she and Kirk could have had. “I know it probably has a music video feel, but I was going for something much more like Terrence Malick and emotional,” contended Downs, referencing the vulnerability in movies such as Tree of Life and Days of Heaven .

Initially, however, Downs planned to take a bigger approach. “Originally, that breakout moment, we were talking about doing something like  The Sound of Music ,” he revealed. “[B]ut it just became too huge and out of step with the episode and it would’ve been fun to go completely opposite of outer space.”

Of course, “Subspace Rhapsody” ends up delivering much more than a worthwhile musical. It pushes the story forward for several characters, while revealing some interesting backstory for Kirk by bringing back Carol Marcus , who you might know best from The Wrath of Khan . It’s an impressive amount of ground to cover for the Star Trek series, especially when doing it in song and dance!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Subspace Rhapsody” Soundtrack

As space-bound as “Subspace Rhapsody” is, you can enjoy the music here on Earth. On Aug. 4, the “Subspace Rhapsody” official cast recording will be available to purchase, which includes the following tracks:

• Star Trek Strange New Worlds Main Title (Subspace Rhapsody Version)
• Status Report
• Connect to Your Truth
• How Would That Feel
• Private Conversation
• Keeping Secrets
• Keep Us Connected
• Subspace Rhapsody End Credit Medley

You can listen to the full soundtrack of the episode below:

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Joe George | @jageorgeii

Joe George’s writing has appeared at Slate, Polygon, Tor.com, and elsewhere!

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‘Star Trek’ made its first ever musical episode, but was it any good? Our writers discuss

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This article contains spoilers for “Subspace Rhapsody,” the ninth episode of Season 2 of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .”

On Thursday, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” (Paramount+) debuted “Subspace Rhapsody,” which has been announced as the first musical episode in the franchise . (Some will, of course, remember Spock strumming on a Vulcan lute and Uhura singing in the original series or Data’s rendition of “Blue Skies” at Will and Deanna’s wedding in “Star Trek: Nemesis.”)

Whether or not one views this as an insult to or a delightful expansion of the series, it has become, if not quite de rigueur, not unusual for a comedy or drama or even a soap opera to get its inner “Rent” on. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was perhaps the most ballyhooed show to take this step toward Broadway, but all sorts of series have danced into the footlights: “Fringe,” “Psych,” “Xena: Warrior Princess,” “Futurama,” “One Life to Live,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Community,” “Transparent” and more.

Entertainment and arts reporter Ashley Lee, who knows a lot about musicals but little about “Star Trek,” and television critic Robert Lloyd, who knows quite a bit about “Star Trek” and less about musicals (at least any written after 1970), got together to discuss the episode.

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Ashley Lee: Because I love musical theater, I’m always intrigued when TV shows take the risk to make a musical episode. The task of creating original songs for the screen is already tricky enough, especially in a way that invites along the show’s weekly audience and still moves its stories forward. And then there’s the task of asking the actors to perform them, whether or not they’ve ever sung or danced onscreen before. It’s an episodic experiment that, over the years, only some shows have gotten right.

I admittedly put on the musical episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” with low expectations because, outside of “Little Shop of Horrors,” putting sci-fi to song hasn’t historically been so harmonious (R.I.P., “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”). Even though I had no prior connection to any of these characters, I found “Subspace Rhapsody” to be a pleasant surprise.

I loved how the songs, written by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce of the ’90s alt-rock band Letters to Cleo, poked enough fun at the oddity of suddenly breaking out into song without insulting the TV tradition. And I found it hilarious that the episode, directed by Dermott Downs and written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, deemed “confessing highly personal, emotional information” a legitimate security threat. (When you think about it, such can definitely be true in the real world!)

I’m surprised that, after all these years, this is the first ever “Star Trek” musical episode. Robert, as a longtime fan of the franchise, were you open to the idea?

Robert Lloyd: In sci-fi fandom, any unusual step is bound to raise some hackles. But as a TV critic since before flat screens, I have seen at least a few of these “special musical episodes” mounted in otherwise nonmusical series. I suspect the impetus came not from viewer demand but from the producers or the writers, who are always looking for something new to entertain the audience and, not incidentally, themselves and was seized upon happily by cast members, many of whom will have had backgrounds in or at least a love of musical theater, even if only from their high school production of “Guys and Dolls” (which I mention because it was produced at my high school — not with me).

History shows there’s no sort of show more likely than another to take on this challenge, but of all the “Star Trek” series, “Strange New Worlds” is perhaps the one most amenable to it. It’s got a strong vein of humor, and, as a highly episodic show, it’s subject to — in fact, embraces — tonal shifts from week to week. This season has been particularly … goofy? Two weeks prior to “Subspace Rhapsody,” they aired a crossover with the animated spinoff “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” in which cartoon characters became flesh and fleshly characters cartoons.

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I thought it was smart to give the musical element of the show a “scientific” rationale — if the usual “Trek” technobabble — with the Enterprise overwhelmed by feedback from a substance fault into which, on the inspiration of Carol Kane’s Pelia, they sent a playlist in an attempt to communicate musically.

And it’s quite appropriate for a season full of romantic subplots, including Ethan Peck’s Spock — who, you must know, is more about logic than feeling — having a thing with Jess Bush’s Nurse Chapel, and security chief Noonien-Singh’s (Christina Chong) awkward reunion with a young James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley), who doesn’t recall their relationship from an alternative timeline. (That bit may have made no sense to you, Ash.) Appropriately, the story makes it clear that heightened emotion is what causes the characters to sing — which is, of course, the underlying rationale of music theater.

All else aside, how did the music strike you? It was odd that although the music they fed into the fault was the “Great American Songbook” — the standards of early to mid-20th century popular song, often written for musicals — none of the songs in the episode were actually modeled on that tradition. Not much in the way of Jerome Kern or Rodgers and Hart there. It all sounded post-Andrew Lloyd Webber to me.

Lee: Haha, you’re right! While I did appreciate the use of Cole Porter’s show tune “Anything Goes” as a very literal cue to the audience of the storytelling “rules” ahead, many of the tunes were more contemporary than Golden Age. The one that’s most “vintage” in style was the sweet duet “Connect to Your Truth,” when Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) shared key leadership advice with Lt. Kirk.

Regarding the romances, I admittedly became deeply invested in these will-they-won’t-theys by the end of their musical numbers. I particularly loved La’an Noonien-Singh‘s song “How Would That Feel,” about contemplating vulnerability; it was like an introspective, angsty version of “Company’s” “Being Alive” in the musical style of “Wicked” (and is a promising preview of her music — Chong just released a debut EP). And the stark differences in genre between Spock’s brooding electropop ballad “I’m the X” and Nurse Chapel’s Amy Winehouse-esque fellowship celebration “I’m Ready” definitely maximized the tension amid their miscommunication.

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Beyond those, the opening number titled “Status Report” was so strong — a perfect example of musicalizing a familiar routine of the world (think “Opening Up” from “Waitress” or “Good Morning Baltimore” from “Hairspray”) — and the choral, orchestral rendition of the show’s main title was a delight. Also, the double meaning of communications officer Nyota Uhura’s anthem “Keep Us Connected” was very satisfying and, in my opinion, only scratched the surface of Celia Rose Gooding’s vocal abilities (she earned a Tony nomination for her performance in “Jagged Little Pill”).

If “Star Trek” ever officially makes the leap to the stage, I imagine these three songs in particular would transfer well. (Though if so, I’m gonna need a full expansion of that brief interlude of autotuned, rapping Klingons.) Bravo to Hanley and Polce for writing all the music and lyrics of this episode; while many have attempted it over the years, only a few pop stars and rockers have successfully walked the tightrope of writing effective and entertaining stage musicals (e.g., Cyndi Lauper, David Byrne and Elton John).

Overall, did you enjoy “Subspace Rhapsody”? Was the first musical episode of the franchise worth the wait?

Lloyd: I can’t say I was waiting for it, but I certainly enjoyed it. I’m all about nutty “Star Trek,” going back to “The Trouble With Tribbles,” and also found it a really effective way to embody the emotional crises being faced by “Strange New Worlds’” eminently likable characters. Certainly, the cast bursting into song (and the occasional dance), with music dropping in from … somewhere, is no more nonsensical than about, oh, a hundred things that have happened to the various starship crews over nearly six decades.

But let me ask you, did it make you liable to keep watching the series? (No judgment.)

Lee: Robert, these subplots were so genuinely compelling, even when concisely moved forward in song, that I’ll likely start this series from the beginning and continue on past this episode. Plus, I’m so intrigued by Lt. Kirk and Noonien-Singh’s romance in that alternate timeline!

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Ashley Lee is a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she writes about theater, movies, television and the bustling intersection of the stage and the screen. An alum of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute and Poynter’s Power of Diverse Voices, she leads workshops on arts journalism at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. She was previously a New York-based editor at the Hollywood Reporter and has written for the Washington Post, Backstage and American Theatre, among others. She is currently working remotely alongside her dog, Oliver.

Robert Lloyd has been a Los Angeles Times television critic since 2003.

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How Strange New Worlds pulled off the first-ever Star Trek musical episode

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Throwing an hour of light comedy into the middle of a 10-episode arc with galactic-level stakes could derail an entire season, but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds dances gracefully from week to week between courtroom drama, time-travel romance, and its latest wild swing: a musical episode.

In “Subspace Rhapsody,” the crew of the USS Enterprise encounters a strange cosmic phenomenon that induces them to break into song and reveal their innermost feelings. The episode features 10 original songs by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce (of Letters to Cleo fame) and highlights the vocal talents of the cast, including Tony nominee and Grammy winner Celia Rose Gooding and singer-songwriter Christina Chong.

Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman, who heads up the franchise at Paramount, has been teasing the possibility of a Star Trek musical since 2020. But at the time, his only venue for bizarre genre experiments was Star Trek: Short Treks , a short subject anthology series that filled the gaps between Discovery and Picard . Short Treks eventually became the launchpad for Strange New Worlds , whose tone has proven equally elastic. After the warm reception to its first season, which contained everything from a screwball body-swap comedy to a grim political drama involving child sacrifice, it was time to set phasers to “sing.”

According to the episode’s director, Dermott Downs, Chong was the cast member who pushed the hardest for a musical episode. Chong, whose debut EP Twin Flames is also out this week, confesses in her Spotify bio that her screen acting career began as a way to raise her profile as a singer and stage actor. “Subspace Rhapsody” would seem to be an important landmark in her career, as she features heavily on the soundtrack, including the solo ballad “How Would That Feel?”

(Chong is unavailable for comment due to the conditions of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, as is the rest of the cast and the episode’s writers, Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff. Songwriters Kay Hanley and Tom Polce also could not be reached via Paramount publicity.)

Indeed, one of the interesting challenges of producing a musical episode of an established television show is tailoring the music to suit the talents of the existing cast. Who’s a belter? Who’s a crooner? Who’s funny? Who might not be comfortable singing at all? The tools at hand impact not only the distribution of the songs, but the shape of the story. The narrative and emotional weight of a musical has to fall on the shoulders of the cast members most prepared to carry it.

So, it’s no surprise that, while “Subspace Rhapsody” gives nearly every regular cast member an opportunity to show off, the heart of the story is Ensign Nyota Uhura, portrayed by Celia Rose Gooding. Gooding’s performance as Frankie in Jagged Little Pill , a Broadway jukebox musical featuring the songs of Alanis Morissette, garnered them a Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, as well as a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album (shared with the rest of the cast). Gooding sings the episode’s 11 o’clock number, “Keep Us Connected,” an undeniable earworm that showcases their impressive vocal range and power. Gooding’s Broadway bona fides bring a level of legitimacy to “Subspace Rhapsody” that’s lacking even in top-tier TV musical episodes like Buffy ’s “Once More, With Feeling” and Community ’s “Regional Holiday Music.”

This also isn’t Downs’ first crack at a musical episode, as he also helmed “Duet,” a crossover between The Flash and Supergirl that reunited former Glee castmates Grant Gustin, Melissa Benoist, and Darren Criss. Downs used this experience, as well as his long resume as a music video cinematographer, to secure the “Subspace Rhapsody” gig from the list of episodes in development for Strange New Worlds ’ second season. Combined with his fondness for the original Star Trek , the possibility of working on Trek’s first musical episode was too exciting to pass up, despite the obvious risks.

“There was a great potential to jump the shark,” says Downs, “because if you’re this grounded show, how are you going to do a musical in outer space? And to their credit, they crafted a great story. Once you understand the anomaly and how music pushes forward all of these interior feelings through song, then you have the potential for so many different kinds of songs.”

However, the prospect of singing for the viewing audience was not immediately appealing to every cast member, a fact that is lampshaded within the framework of the episode. Much of the Enterprise crew fears the subspace anomaly’s ability to make them spill their guts through song. Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) is afraid of getting into an argument with his girlfriend, Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano), and the pair ends up airing out their relationship issues on the bridge. (This song is, appropriately, entitled “A Private Conversation.”) Mount’s singing role is simpler than his castmates’ on a technical level, but leverages his comedic talents and awkward, boy-next-door charm.

“He crushed it,” says Downs. “It was like a country ballad gone wrong.”

Babs Olusanmokun, who portrays the multifaceted Dr. Joseph M’Benga, sings the bare minimum in the episode, and his character makes a point to tell his shipmates (and the viewer) that he does not sing . For his part, Downs cannot comment on any studio magic that may or may not have been employed to make the less seasoned vocalists in the cast more tuneful, but a listener with an ear for autotune will definitely detect some pitch correction.

Downs says that Ethan Peck, who portrays the young Lieutenant Spock , was among the more apprehensive cast members, but if anything, this becomes an asset to his performance in the episode. Spock has spent this season actively exploring his human feelings, even entering into a romantic relationship with Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush). Spock’s solo “I’m the X” sees Spock retreating into his shell, and the actor’s shyness feeds into the character’s conflict. Peck’s performance of the song, which was written for his smooth baritone, was the production’s most pleasant surprise. The temp track of the song that the crew worked with (until Peck recorded his version over a weekend, like the rest of the cast) featured a bigger, more conventionally Broadway vocal, but Peck performs it in character — superficially steady, but with strong emotional undercurrents just below the surface.

On a character level, however, the musical format might be most revelatory for Rebecca Romijn’s Commander Una Chin-Riley, aka Number One. Una began the series as a very guarded person harboring a secret that could end her career. Even as far back as her appearance in the 2019 Short Treks episode “Q&A,” her advice to new arrival Spock was to “keep your ‘freaky’ to yourself,” in this case referring to her love for Gilbert and Sullivan ( inherited from Romijn herself ). Since then, her much more consequential secrets have been revealed, and she finds herself unburdened, and uses the opportunity presented by the musical anomaly to encourage her mentees to do the same. Una’s songs, “Connect to Your Truth”’ and “Keeping Secrets,” see her offering advice to rising first officer James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) and her protege La’an (Chong), respectively, about the futility of withholding your full self from others.

“Subspace Rhapsody” concludes with an ensemble number about the crew’s common purpose and fellowship — an appropriate sentiment not only for a musical episode but for Strange New Worlds . Star Trek has always been about friendship and cooperation, but no previous incarnation (save, perhaps, for Deep Space Nine ) has granted each member of the cast such even amounts of attention and importance, from Captain Pike to Ensign Uhura. Previous Trek series could perhaps have sustained a musical episode (Ronald D. Moore even pitched one for DS9 back in the ’90s). For a series sold to fans as a return to “old-school Star Trek,” Strange New Worlds has taken some wild creative risks. While the show has resumed its time-tested episodic “problem of the week” format, its writers and producers have used this structure to experiment in ways that its sister shows, Discovery and Picard , could never have gotten away with. As corny as it might be, on Strange New Worlds it feels particularly appropriate to close a story with the entire crew singing about their trust in each other, in perfect harmony.

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“In a weird way, that made it better.”

Behind-The-Scenes On The Star Trek Musical

From the director to the choreographer, to showrunners, writers, and actors — it was all hands on deck for “Subspace Rhapsody.”

Strange New Worlds’ showrunners always knew Season 2 Episode 9 was going to be big. They just didn’t know it was going to be this big.

“It was planned that all the arcs would come to a head in Episode 9,” co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman tells Inverse . “Then we decided it would also be a musical and, in a weird way, that made it better. We had obligations to these character stories. And they were gonna sing it!”

Perhaps the biggest surprise of “Subspace Rhapsody,” is just how crucial the episode is not just for the overall story of Strange New Worlds Season 2, but for Trek canon more broadly. This fun episode full of singing and dancing isn’t just a one-off, it’s an essential piece in the Strange New Worlds journey. This is still a prequel series, technically, but, when it comes to addressing the rest of Trek canon, co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers tells Inverse the show is never “trying to jump into the thing that’s it’s gonna be,” which was especially true of the musical.

“We try to imagine the person who is still living through the moment,” Myers adds.

But how did Strange New Worlds pull that off? Inverse spoke to both showrunners, director Dermott Downs, and choreographer Roberto Campanella to find out. Spoilers ahead.

Choreographer Roberto Campanella with the cast of Strange New Worlds .

Defying Anti-Gravity

“For me, I wanted to know what Episode 8 was,” Roberto Campanella says. “I wanted to know the cast more than anything. I wanted to know their characters.”

Campanella is an Oscar-winning choreographer perhaps best known for his work on What We Do In The Shadows and The Shape of Water . But despite his deep knowledge of dance, he maintains that everything about “Subspace Rhapsody” was designed to make sense within the Trek world and not to be constantly winking to other musicals.

“I guess there’s one moment, a tribute to West Side Story when the dancers run toward the camera in the finale,” Campanella admits. “But other than that, I wasn’t trying to reference anything. I let my experience dictate where we were going, physically.”

Campanella also largely credits the cast of Strange New Worlds with making sure the story was told through the music. “They know who they are better than anybody else. They were always open to collaborate. Always. I love this cast.”

Don’t jump the space shark

“They’re running a great ship over there.”

The director of the episode, Dermott Downs — who previously directed The Flash musical episode “Duet” in 2017 — points out the SNW cast kept the episode “grounded,” and although it was the next-to-last episode filmed in Season 2, that the cast “worked weekends,” and put in extra rehearsals to get everything just right. Downs credits some of this energy boost to timing.

“You would think they'd be pretty exhausted,” Downs says, “but Season 1 just started airing when I was at the end of my prep [in 2022]. So they were very fueled by the positive response of Season 1 when we started filming.” Downs makes it clear that everybody sang their hearts out, both on set and in laying down the tracks. “Yes, they all sang,” Downs confirms. “When I came on, there were pre-recorded temp tracks, but I was excited to hear their versions because I knew the cast was gonna bring their own nuance and emotions to the songs.”

Downs also stresses he didn’t want the episode to “jump the shark,” and that keeping everything grounded in the reality and canon of Star Trek itself was very important. “The anomaly hits the ship and the music becomes a kind of virus. It’s a great plot device. They express what they can’t normally say.”

Although The Original Series never did a musical episode, the idea of a weird space virus causing people to express their innermost feelings is very reminiscent of the 1966 episode “The Naked Time,” perhaps better known as “The One Where Sulu Is Shirtless With a Sword and Spock Cries A Lot.” Star Trek canon clearly allows for this kind of thing. But, we now know that a “musical reality” is a part of the Star Trek multiverse.

George Takei as Sulu, swinging a sword in “The Naked Time.”

Downs also points out that almost nothing was cut from the final version of the episode, which runs at 62 minutes. If you count the brief Klingon dance number — featuring the promised return of Bruce Horak as the Klingon captain — there are technically 10 unique songs in “Subspace Rhapsody.” In other words, it’s a supersized episode for good reason. (Note: speaking to Variety , the showrunners mentioned another version of the Klingon song that was “operatic.” It’s unclear if that alternate version was ever filmed or recorded.)

“I’ve done so much episodic TV and that hour becomes really like 42 minutes,” Downs says. “This wasn’t like that. There’s very little that changed. And that starts with the writers’ room. They’re running a great ship over there.”

Star Trek canon shockwaves

Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and Kirk (Paul Wesley) in "Subspace Rhapsody."

While “Subspace Rhapsody,” brought Season 2 SNW plot arcs to a crossroads — most notably Spock and Chapel’s relationship, Uhura’s emerging independence, and Pike and Batel’s feelings for each other — it also dove deep into some Captain Kirk canon . While La’an had a relationship with a Kirk from an alternate dimension in Episode 3, she learns she can’t have a relationship with Prime Kirk, because he’s currently in a relationship with someone named “Carol,” and this person is pregnant!

Longtime fans know this is Carol Marcus, Kirk’s ex from The Wrath of Khan and mother of David Marcus, their son. The Wrath of Khan takes place in 2285, and Strange New Worlds is happening in 2260 at this point. So, if David is born in 2260 or 2261, that makes him either 24 or 25 in The Wrath , which is just about right. Chronologically, this all matches up with the existing canon, but it probably does change our perception of canon a bit, at least in terms of our feelings about present-tense Kirk.

“Everyone knows this happened,” Myers says. “The opportunity that we thought we had was, this is a part of Kirk that you've never seen and it happened, and we have a chance to explore it.”

Neither Goldsman nor Myers can reveal if we’ll actually see Carol Marcus or baby David in Season 3, but they do stress that Strange New Worlds is always trying to make characters like Kirk seem real to today’s audience.

“This is how people live,” Myers says.

That said, both showrunners are always open to fan theories, specifically the canon-changing implications of the way the episode ends...

Does the ending of “Subspace Rhapsody” create the TOS theme music?

Jess Bush as Nurse Chapel in "Subspace Rhapsody."

In the end, the Enterprise crew has to break the “improbability field” of the musical reality, by putting on a show-stopping number, encouraged by the one and only Uhura. But, after this song concludes, the outro music we hear is very clearly the 1960s Alexander Courage theme song of the classic show. All the other songs in “Subspace Rhapsody” were written by Tom Polce and Kay Hanley, but that outro music is 100 percent retro. So if the Polce-Hanley songs clearly exist in-universe, does that mean the theme to Star Trek: The Orignal Series just became in-universe canon because of this episode?

“That hurts my brain too much!” Akiva Goldsman says, laughing. “Pain precludes me from answering that. Maybe?”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 9, “Subspace Rhapsody” streams on Paramount+. The album itself is now on Apple and Spotify.

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Inside the ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Musical Episode — ‘Picard’ Almost Got There First

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There have certainly been musical moments in “Star Trek” before: Uhura sang while Spock played his lyre in “The Original Series”; Data and Picard duet to Gilbert and Sullivan in “Insurrection”; James Darren played a holographic nightclub singer on “Deep Space Nine.” But it took “Strange New Worlds,” the critically revered Paramount+ series nearing the end of its second season, to stage an entire musical episode.

The emotional clarity that drives suddenly “breaking into song” was actually an ideal fit for wrapping up most of the characters’ recent storylines, showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers said to IndieWire in a new interview. “The thing that made it a comfortable fit is that it’s still essentially a ‘Star Trek’ episode, and not just a ‘Star Trek’ episode but the ‘Star Trek’ episode that needed to be the ‘episode nine’ of our [10 episode] season. We need resolution in order to get us into episode 10, which in this case, Henry was going to write part one of a two-parter.”

The episode, directed by Dermott Downs, also has a very clear in-universe reason for existing: a subspace rift has altered reality so that people can only communicate through singing when they’re feeling intense emotion — the kind of climactic emotions involved in season-long storylines being resolved. “Fundamentally, I’d be game to make every episode nine a musical,” Goldsman said, “because it’s a great way of getting right to the heart of the issues the characters are bringing into the show and to resolve it in a really emotional way.”

The cast encompasses a wide range of singing skill levels from the professional vocalist polish of Chong, Gooding, and Rebecca Romijn (who plays First Officer Una Chin-Riley) to Mount, whose most notable on-screen singing was in a car with Britney Spears in 2002’s “Crossroads” (but who brings an admirable rocker-y growl to some of his musical moments in “Subspace Rhapsody”). Vocal lessons were provided over one to two months to anybody who wanted them, as was the option to re-record once the final mix was in place. Most of the actors had spent so much time in prep, including putting in extra hours on the weekends, that many stayed with their on-set recordings. “The surprising thing was that everyone had worked so hard, they were pretty happy with what they came up with at that point,” Myers said.

Staging a musical episode requires a greatly expanded pre-production timeline and Myers started making calls to prospective songwriters six months in advance of the shoot, landing quickly on Tom Polce and Kay Hanley. The process from there had to be profoundly iterative, with Polce and Hanley sending multiple versions of each song to the episode’s writers, Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, to make sure that they fit with what they wanted for the characters.

The thing that’s especially remarkable about “Subspace Rhapsody” is that it’s the immediate follow-up to the darkest episode in the series to date, “Under the Cloak of War,” in which Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) seeks a fight with a Klingon defector, kills him, then covers it up (with Nurse Chapel helping the cover-up). “There’s a moment in ‘Subspace Rhapsody’ [during the song about people dealing with the things they’re holding onto] where you pass his face and you really see him, he looks at Chapel and they share this look that feels like it comes from that episode,” said Myers. “But we also wanted it to feel like its own thing because this is its own episode with its own tone.”

“We spent a lot of time talking about trying to bring back all the feelings of ‘Star Trek,'” Myers said. “A lot of those [like ‘Take Me Out to the Holosuite’] were ones that really spoke to me. I know that they spoke to Akiva as well, which was just that ‘Star Trek’ changes every week and tries different things. The baseball episode is one of my favorites. It’s shockingly good. It’s like shocking how good it is today. We really wanted to come at it like that. ‘Star Trek’ can be different every week. It’s something that we both missed is what I can say because we’re really delighted to be able to bring that kind of idea back.”

“Subspace Rhapsody” is definitely the culmination of that idea. And though the “Star Trek” of old had 26 episodes to take a chance on a big swing like a musical episode, Goldsman notes that the 10-episode format allows for greater resources to be applied as well as time for production that would never be possible with 26 episodes: “There would certainly not have been time to do it anywhere near as thoroughly.”

The funny thing is that there was one other possible opportunity for a musical episode in the streaming era of “Star Trek.”

“We were like, ‘Yes, call him!'”

“Then two days later we were like, ‘What happened?'”

“Michael went, ‘He didn’t call me back.'”

“Subspace Rhapsody,” the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” musical episode is now streaming on Paramount+. The Season 2 finale will stream August 10.

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Let’s Rank the Songs of ‘Strange New Worlds’ Musical Episode, ‘Subspace Rhapsody’

At last, the Star Trek: Strange New World s musical episode is here! TMS’ Lauren Coates has us covered with a review of “Subspace Rhapsody” as a whole, but I’m here to talk specifically about the music . After all, a musical is judged by how likely you are to keep singing and listening to the songs long after the show is over. At least, that’s how I rate musicals.

So, how does the music stack up? Allow me to provide a humble ranking of the songs from “Subspace Rhapsody” from least to most awesome. Feel free to disagree with me about the order in the comments!

10. “ How Would That Feel ” – La’an Noonien-Singh (performed by Christina Chong)

Sadly, my least favorite song was performed by one of the characters I was most looking forward to hearing from.

La’an’s going through a lot: she traveled through time, she’s not supposed to talk about it, and she had romantic feelings for a version of Kirk who is now dead. She’s also one of the more guarded members of the crew, due to her harrowing experience with the Gorn and the assumptions people make from her last name. I was sure we wouldn’t hear from La’an for a while, but when we did, it would be meaningful .

Instead, we got a La’an song way too early, singing feelings I’m not convinced she’d sing, even on her own. Especially since she had the self-control not to sing when revealing her actual strong feelings to Kirk later in the episode. Imagine how much more powerful Kirk’s rejection would’ve been if it followed a heartbreakingly honest musical confession. Instead, we were served an emotionally incoherent, lyrically generic ballad way too early in the episode.

9. “ Keeping Secrets ” – Una Chin-Riley (performed by Rebecca Romijn)

Una Chin-Riley is another character who’s way more fascinating than the songs she was given. Unfortunately, Una’s two numbers in the episode are among the weakest. “Keeping Secrets” is the weaker of the two, as Una commiserates with La’an by comparing her unrequited love of Kirk to … her own battle to keep her identity a secret to avoid persecution? Una, all secrets are not equal. And in this context, Number One doesn’t know the timey-wimey reasons why La’an’s feelings for Kirk are so complicated. So, the fact that her approach is this serious in this song makes little sense.

I’d be able to forgive that if the music or lyrics were more interesting, but like “How Would That Feel,” this was another plodding, generic ballad during which I found myself checking my phone.

8. “ Connect to Your Truth ” – Una Chin-Riley and James T. Kirk (performed by Rebecca Romijn and Paul Wesley)

“Connect to Your Truth” was a stronger song for Number One, not only because it was a fun callback to her love of Gilbert & Sullivan—which she expressed in the Short Treks episode “Q&A” —but because it was a duet with a James T. Kirk who is not yet a captain. This allowed Una to give Kirk advice on how to be a better leader by staying true to who you are and connecting to your crew through vulnerability.

Also, this song was fun , which goes a long way. While this song is only slightly better than the first two songs on this list (and it’s probably the cheesiest song in the episode), both Romijn and Wesley seemed to be having a great time singing it. The song also makes sense on a character level as well as thematically.

7. “Main Title (“Subspace Rhapsody” Version)” – composed by Jeff Russo

I love when a themed episode of a TV show goes to the trouble of creating something different for the opening title sequence. SNW already did this once with a Lower Decks -inspired opening for “Those Old Scientists.” For “Subspace Rhapsody,” composer Jeff Russo orchestrated a boppy, choral version of the opening theme that will give you chills.

Hearing this version in the trailer truly got me excited about watching the episode! Literally the only reason for its “low” placement on this list is that it’s an instrumental and not really a “song,” but it needed to be on here!

6. “ Private Conversation ” – Christopher Pike and Marie Batel (performed by Anson Mount and Melanie Scrofano)

“Private Conversation” is a fun and hilariously awkward moment between two characters who are still trying to figure out what their romantic relationship looks like long distance.

Before any of the singing starts, we know that Pike and Batel have been discussing taking a vacation together. As Batel shares her preferred destination, it’s clear that Pike isn’t into it. But rather than being upfront about it, he deflects. Then, despite being so not thrilled about the singing, Pike is forced to reveal how he feels in song when Uhura patches a call from Batel to him on the bridge.

Hearing them both absolutely hate that they’re being compelled to sing while also having an awkward lovers’ squabble in front of subordinate crew members was an absolute delight.

5. “ Status Report ” – Enterprise Crew (performed by the SNW Cast)

“Status Report” understood the assignment, and is a perfect opening number for a Star Trek musical. It manages to sound very Trek (technobabble and all), while also sounding like a true musical number. Every cast member takes part in the number in a way that is true to their character. The song is a perfect, fun, and funny introduction to the unique nature of the problem: there’s nothing technically “wrong” on the ship, and yet there’s something very, very wrong on the ship.

I mean, just look at Pike’s face above. He really, really hates that this is happening, and I love it so much .

4. “ I’m the X ” – Spock (performed by Ethan Peck)

This darker, angrier reprise to Nurse Chapel’s song (which is slightly higher up on the list) is not only a perfect song for Spock at this point in his life, but it marks the beginning of the more stoic Spock that we (and Boimler) will come to know in the future. Freshly dumped by his fiancée, Spock learns that the woman he basically left her for has no qualms about leaving him to take a fellowship. So Spock decides that the only way to handle this is to put away emotions entirely . Oh, Spock. You adorable stupid jerk.

And leave it to Spock to sing a song about emotions and romantic relationships that uses math as a metaphor. I mean, it’s no “ The Math of Love Triangles ” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , but it is more accurate about math.

3. “ I’m Ready ” – Christine Chapel (performed by Jess Bush)

Thankfully, not all the women of the cast got sub-par songs to work with. “I’m Ready” has the distinction of being the only song in the episode that truly works both as a song for Chapel (in the context of the story) and as a completely standalone song that I cannot wait to hear someone crush at karaoke.

It’s also a great song musically and has a fun, flirtatious energy. Not flirty as in “with a person,” but flirting with the possibilities of life. And I love that the song subverts TOS Chapel, whom we see pining after Spock all the time. “I’m Ready” gives us a Christine who has feelings for Spock, but is more in love with her own future. Like Billie Eilish .

2. “ We Are One ” – Enterprise Crew (performed by the SNW Cast)

“Subspace Rhapsody” came out of the gate strong with a solid opening number, and it ended strong with a finale as optimistic as Star Trek is at its best. Of course the solution was going to be that we need more voices singing . Of course the solution was going to come from Uhura, Trek’s Queen of Communication. And of course, Uhura was going to highlight that music isn’t just about expressing one’s bad or secret feelings, it’s about expressing the good ones too!

She rightfully points out that cultures throughout history have used songs to celebrate and engage in communal activities, and she reminds the Enterprise crew that they are always at their best when they work together. “We Are One” ended the episode on a joyful note that made me proud to be a Trekkie.

1. “ Keep Us Connected ” – Nyota Uhura (performed by Celia Rose Gooding)

The clear standout of the episode is Uhura’s passionate ballad, “Keep Us Connected.” This song is an emotional roller coaster, and it was the one song in the episode that made me cry.

First, it honored a Trek legacy character whose contributions can never be praised enough. Second, it was deeply personal for Uhura, charting her journey from experiencing the death of her family at a young age to making a career out of bringing people together, giving her a depth that she’s rarely been given elsewhere. And third, because this song resonates on the same level as Encanto ‘s “Surface Pressure,” relatable to every woman who’s ever felt the pressure of, and recognized the strength required for, the invisible labor in which they so often engage in to care for others.

And Gooding performs the song brilliantly. They have an amazing voice, and while it took the entire cast to make me feel this strongly during the opener and the finale, Gooding was the only cast member able to elicit this level of emotion all on their own. I loved that what started as a song of grief and self-pity turned into Uhura recognizing that her ability to help others communicate is a gift. And in recognizing this gift, they arrive at the solution that saves the Enterprise from being a forever musical.

I will be listening to this song on a loop all weekend. You can, too, as the soundtrack for “Subspace Rhapsody” is available wherever you stream music.

(featured image: Paramount+)

How ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Brought Its Delightful Musical Episode to Life: ‘You’re Like, Wait, Spock Is Singing Now?!’

By Adam B. Vary

Adam B. Vary

Senior Entertainment Writer

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SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses plot — and musical! — developments in Season 2, Episode 9 of “ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ,” currently streaming on Paramount+.

Since premiering in 2022, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” has already embraced body-swapping comedy, storybook fantasy and a crossover episode with the animated series “Star Trek: Lower Decks.” So perhaps it’s not surprising that for the penultimate episode for Season 2 of “Strange New Worlds,” executive producers Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman would mount the first-ever full-on musical episode in “Trek” history.

Popular on Variety

As Myers and Goldsman explain to Variety , “Subspace Rhapsody” was the result of more than six months of intense work by the cast and crew, as the songs were built around the actors’ respective vocal abilities by composers Kay Hanley (Letters to Cleo) and Tom Polce (Letters to Cleo, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), in partnership with writers Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff. 

The showrunners also revealed which performance ultimately did not make the episode, and what to make of Kirk’s allusion to an it’s-complicated relationship with a woman named Carol.

How did the idea for this episode first arise?

Akiva Goldsman: The truth is it goes all the way back to Season 1 of “Star Trek: Picard.” We were sitting on set and [co-showrunner Michael] Chabon and I were talking about a musical [episode], and Chabon goes, “I know Lin-Manuel Miranda.” [Actor] Michelle Hurd was there and she was like, “Oh my God, call him!” And so then, like, three days later, Michael came in. And we said, “Did you call him?” And he goes, “Yeah, he didn’t call me back.” And so died the musical idea for that series. 

I love musicals, but know nothing about them. And then it turns out my partner Henry has done this before, and well. And so what a fucking delight! I mean, I had no idea what we were biting off. Henry clearly did.

So how did it finally happen for “Strange New Worlds”?

Myers: The idea for it came when were pitching what Season 2 should be. I remember, Bill [Wolkoff], one of our writers had a crazy idea, and we were like, ‘Well, that’s interesting, let’s try that!’ I did a bunch of musicals on “The Magicians,” and I did one on “Ugly Betty.” And so I just knew what a giant pain it would be — I mean, how difficult it was. I started making calls probably about six months before production.

Goldsman: We were lucky enough to suddenly have a cohort that knew how to do all these things, and they were collaborative. It was built around story and theme, and it was tailored to the vocal ranges of the particular actors. We ended up with an absurdly good cast on “Strange New Worlds.” Like, it makes no sense whatsoever. Usually, there’s a dud in the bunch. It was as if they all secretly had been coveting the idea of a musical their entire lives. So it was really good fortune how much everybody liked doing it.

There are so many threads in this episode that originated much earlier in the season: Spock and Chapel’s break-up, La’an’s feelings for Kirk, Uhura’s feelings of isolation. How did you build this episode’s the story around them?

Goldsman: We don’t break them episodically. We break the season first, so we know what our 10 episodes are — in terms of character development, really. We’re a hybridized object. We are episodic, fundamentally, in terms of plot, but serialized in terms of character arc. So we knew what the characters had to go through in the episode and that was connected to where they had come from and where they were going.

What was the most important thing for you to get right?

That was all that I came in pushing. And then everyone else jumped in and actually did it. We had someone to teach the people to sing. We had someone to teach them how to dance. The actual shooting of it, weirdly, was not as hard as you’d think, but only because it has months and months of work to lead up to it.

How much of that was happening in parallel with production and all the other episodes?

Myers: All of it! A lot of our cast were walking around set, shooting previous episodes, looking at what they were going to be singing, playing with each other. They would come in on the weekend and work on the dancing. 

How did you bridge the songs and the story?

Myers: We had broken an early concept of what the story would be, which we then shared with our composer and lyricist, and they would send it back to us and then we would give them thoughts. The two writers who wrote the episode were deeply involved in that. We were trying to make sure that all of the stuff that they were coming up with linked with what we were coming up with. They wanted the show to feel like the show, and we wanted the show to feel like a musical. So we kind of found this great place in the middle.

So, for example, who was the person who realized Spock could sing about being both Chapel’s ex and the x variable in an emotional equation?

Myers: I think that came from our composer and our lyricist. Usually, we’d say, “Here’s the emotional thing that’s supposed to happen. We know the beginning. And we know the end.” Because these are story scenes. It can’t be just a song that describes everything you know. This has to be a scene that reveals something. So we knew what was generally supposed to happen. And then we were like, “Now that you have that, go have fun. Come back to us when you have something.”

Celia Rose Gooding, Rebecca Romijn and Christina Chong are all singers, but did you know that the rest of the cast could sing as well?

Goldsman: No! Our composer played with all of them to see what their range was, and we wrote for them. I mean, I didn’t know Ethan could sing until I went, “Holy fuck, Ethan can sing!” Which is, by the way, kind of what happens when you watch the episode. You’re like, “Wait, Spock is singing now?”

Are there any musical areas that you explored that ultimately didn’t make it into the episode?

Goldsman: Well, we had one fantastic moment of contention, which we won. There’s two versions of the Klingons at the end.

Myers: And we did them both because we were like, we’ll try out everything. The other version is great, too. But this was the one that really kind of, you know, knocked us out. That’s why we wanted it.

What we see are the Klingons performing like they’re in a pop boy band, but you shot another genre with them as well?

Myers: We did an operatic one which was also great because the Klingons have a history with that. And it was also good. 

Myers: The boy band took you by surprise. It was not what you thought was going to happen. I’m delighted by it.

At one point, Kirk tells La’an that he’s in a complicated relationship with a woman named Carol, who is pregnant with his son — which “Trek” fans know is Dr. Carol Marcus, who first appears with Kirk’s grown son David in 1982’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Would that suggest we’ll meet Carol in Season 3 of “Strange New Worlds”?

Goldsman: I think what we can say is the conversation about James T. Kirk’s love life is not over.

Myers: There’s a lot of known history about his love life, and this part had never really been explored. So we thought, what an opportunity. That’s really what we try to do on the show: None of these things that we know about happening later are known to the people in it.

I will ask the very nerdy question: Did you do the math as far as when Kirk’s son is supposed to have been born vis-a-vis the timeline of the show?

Goldsman: Oh, we always do the math. Anytime we can make canon work, we do. I mean, we’ll body English around it now and then for the sake of a story. But fundamentally, we really try to adhere.

So would you do another musical episode? 

Goldsman: In a heartbeat. 

Myers: Absolutely. But now that’s a high bar. It has to earn itself and be purposeful and feel like a great thing to do. But we loved it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 2: Tracklist Revealed for Musical Episode

The entire crew of the USS Enterprise is set to sing their hearts out on Paramount+ this week.

The Big Picture

• Strange New Worlds is venturing into new territory with Star Trek 's first-ever musical episode, titled "Subspace Rhapsody."
• The upcoming musical episode features eleven tracks from various artists and includes the vocal talents of Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, and more.
• "Subspace Rhapsody" will premiere on Paramount+ on August 3.

A Star Trek: Strange New Worlds musical episode is something fans never expected to fall into their laps, and now it's right around the corner! Set to air on August 3, the second season's ninth episode will mark the franchise's first foray into the musical realm. While widely considered a risky move — given the show's sci-fi, drama, and adventure aspects — Season 2's bold exploration of comedic elements has only added extra layers to the show's complex premise. Of course, while some are skeptical about Strange New Worlds delving into the musical route, we only have to trust the creatives behind the series , who are currently on strike for better wages and working conditions , to provide a triumphant musical episode. In order to give audiences a look at what to expect from Episode 9, Apple Music (via Screenrant ) has unveiled the track titles from the upcoming episode, including all the USS Enterprise crew involved in the musical production.

Serving as the first musical episode in the entire Star Trek franchise , the upcoming " Subspace Rhapsody " episode is something unexpected. But considering Strange New Worlds ' previous Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover , a musical episode is not a big surprise, although greatly unpredicted. The album, titled Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 - Subspace Rhapsody (Original Series Soundtrack) , features eleven tracks from various artists, with music and lyrics from lyrics by Letters To Cleo 's Kay Hanley and Tom Polce , featuring the vocal talents of Anson Mount (Christopher Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Una Chin-Riley), Christina Chong (La'an Noonien-Singh), Celia Rose Gooding (Nyota Uhura) and more.

The songs included in the tracklist are as follows: "Star Trek Strange New Worlds Main Title (Subspace Rhapsody Version)," "Status Report," "Connect To Your Truth," "How Would That Feel," "Private Conversation," "Keeping Secrets," "I'm Ready," "I'm the X," "Keep Us Connected," "We Are One," and "Subspace Rhapsody End Credit Medley."

Strange New Worlds ’ Episodic Structure Lends Itself to Almost Any Genre, Including Musical

A musical may seem like an outrageous concept for the popular franchise, but Strange New Worlds ' episodic format allowed the show's creators to experiment with a range of creative choices. After exploring different genres, from comedy and sci-fi to horror and drama, musical is the next genre the team behind the show will be dipping their toes into.

Aboard the USS Enterprise, Captain Pike (Mount) and the rest of the crew continue their galactic explorations in Season 2. The series stars also include Ethan Peck as Spock, Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas, Carol Kane as Pelia, Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M'Benga, and Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk.

"Subspace Rhapsody" airs on Paramount+ on August 3. You can watch the teaser for the episode below.

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Of course Star Trek looked to Buffy for its big musical: 'That was our bar'

Co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers tell EW how they pulled off "Subspace Rhapsody" on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 9, "Subspace Rhapsody."

When it comes to musical episodes of television, few have done it better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer . The producers behind Star Trek had that pop culture event on the brain when they set out to make the sci-fi franchise's first-ever music-fueled extravaganza on Strange New Worlds season 2.

"That's one of the best made ones," series co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers tells EW of 2001's "Once More, With Feeling," in which Sarah Michelle Gellar 's supernatural warrior faces a demon of song and dance. "It was done very well. It's really smart and thoughtful. It has big heart. The only thing I will say that I distinctly thought differently was that they wrote their own music, and I knew that that was a little more than we could handle. But that was kind of like, let's challenge ourselves to be as good as the best of this [genre]. That was our bar."

As time went on, Myers realized they actually could write their own music, with help from Letters to Cleo rockers Kay Hanley and Tom Polce, who crafted the songs. "Subspace Rhapsody," the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 (now streaming on Paramount+), sees the likes of Captain Pike ( Anson Mount ), Number One ( Rebecca Romijn ), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Spock (Ethan Peck), and the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise breaking out into musical numbers after an encounter with a quantum probability field. They all find themselves operating by the rules of a parallel reality in which everyone sings all the time, which causes problems for anyone trying to hide their emotions, including La'an (Christina Chong) and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush). The problem gets bigger when it starts spreading to other spaceships.

"I'm a huge fan of musicals, but had no idea what it took to actually make one," says Akiva Goldsman, the other co-showrunner on Strange New Worlds . Myers had worked on musical episodes of Ugly Betty and The Magicians , but Goldsman was coming in fresh. "When we started on season 2, a small voice, like a gremlin kept going, 'Music. Musical. Musical.' And Henry kept going, 'Not yet. Not yet. Not yet,'" he continues. "We were going back and forth on the story, and we sort of knew where the character arcs were. Then, to our delight and terror, the idea of what we needed to do emotionally in episode 9 and the idea of a musical went hand in hand."

With a script written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, the producers got to work on "Subspace Rhapsody" about six months ahead of filming, Myers estimates. Goldsman likes to say, "This episode happened in large part before it happened," meaning most of the execution went into prep, including dance rehearsals and singing lessons. Director Dermott Downs also wanted to shoot the episode like a musical, which means the shots are "a little more wide and you really see people doing things, you're not in their faces all the time," Myers explains. "It was a lot of work from a lot of people, but the one thing I remember waking up and thinking was that everyone will expect this to be silly. We should surprise them and have it be gut-wrenching and emotional."

Some of that can be credited to Gooding. It was clear to everyone from the start of the show that their Uhura actress had some pipes. An early episode of Strange New Worlds season 1 saw her singing out tones to activate a piece of alien tech. So, it's no surprise that the actress is the one to get the musical's big power ballad, "Keep Us Connected." "What we do like to do is write to our cast," Goldsman remarks. "It suddenly became clear that a lot of the folks who we work with had musical theater in their backgrounds or real musical training. The universe was conspiring to get us to throw down in that way."

Peck was less confident about pulling this off, Myers notes: "I don't think Ethan thought that he could do it, and he surprised everyone by having this crazy deep voice, the baritone, that was kind of beautiful."

Now that it's all come together, it almost feels like a miracle that it even happened. Goldsman looks back to when the news of what would become "Subspace Rhapsody" came up during the closed-door meetings with the other showrunners from across the active Star Trek series. "All I remember was people being like, 'Okay, sure,'" he recalls. "This is basically the tenor of all the [meetings], which is somebody will say a bunch of stuff and then somebody else will go, 'Wow, that sounds cool.' Subtext: 'Please don't f--- it up.'"

Goldman adds, "We were like, 'If we're gonna do this, we gotta do this.'" And so they did.

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Related content:

• Star Trek is getting its first-ever musical episode
• How Star Trek brought the 'chaos bomb' of Lower Decks to Strange New Worlds
• Star Trek: Lower Decks stars enter the world of live action in first look at Strange New Worlds crossover

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'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' showrunners reveal origins of that historic (and epic) musical episode

Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers discuss the making of Episode 9, 'Subspace Rhapsody.'

Most "Trek" fans went into Thursday night's musical episode of " Star Trek: Strange New Worlds " with a bit of trepidation, half-expecting some cringe moments to unfold as the director, cinematographer, writers, composers and actors tried to pull off something that had never been attempted in the noble franchise's 57-year history.

But cosmic tumblers aligned amid the improbable song-and-dance reality of a rare subspace fold and season 2's penultimate episode "Subspace Rhapsody" nailed it on every level. The U.S.S. Enterprise crew (and any starship in the vicinity) were stricken with sudden impulses to belt out their inner-most emotions and, due to the show's palpable cast chemistry , it worked brilliantly!

Watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount Plus: Get a one month free trial  

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This infectious musical episode, written by Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff and directed by Dermott Downs, with original songs composed by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce, was injected with many memorable tunes, incredible vocal performances, and a stylish charm that requires repeat viewing just to soak up all the Broadway-like emotion. 

Executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers spoke to Variety in an interview that gives viewers a behind-the-scenes peek at what went into making "Subspace Rhapsody," and how the idea for a full-on musical episode first emerged.

 "The truth is it goes all the way back to Season 1 of 'Star Trek: Picard.'" Goldsman told Variety. "We were sitting on set and [co-showrunner Michael] Chabon and I were talking about a musical [episode], and Chabon goes, 'I know Lin-Manuel Miranda.' [Actor] Michelle Hurd was there and she was like, 'Oh my God, call him!' And so then, like, three days later, Michael came in. And we said, 'Did you call him?' And he goes, 'Yeah, he didn’t call me back.' And so died the musical idea for that series. 

"I love musicals, but know nothing about them. And then it turns out my partner Henry has done this before, and well. And so what a f***ing delight! I mean, I had no idea what we were biting off. Henry clearly did."

Myers added his recollections on the genesis of the moving "Subspace Rhapsody.” 

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"The idea for it came when were pitching what Season 2 should be," he noted. "I remember, Bill [Wolkoff], one of our writers had a crazy idea, and we were like, 'Well, that's interesting, let's try that!' I did a bunch of musicals on 'The Magicians,' and I did one on 'Ugly Betty.' And so I just knew what a giant pain it would be — I mean, how difficult it was. I started making calls probably about six months before production."

Goldsman recalls how fortunate the production was to have a professional cohort who had the experience to transform a standard episode into a joyous chapter of sci-fi television overflowing with compelling songs.

"It was built around story and theme, and it was tailored to the vocal ranges of the particular actors," he added. "We ended up with an absurdly good cast on "Strange New Worlds." Like, it makes no sense whatsoever. Usually, there's a dud in the bunch. It was as if they all secretly had been coveting the idea of a musical their entire lives. So it was really good fortune how much everybody liked doing it."

Making sure that the tone of the episode was more melancholy than humorous was something that kept Myers awake in the wee hours of the morning.

"The only middle of the night thing I remember having about this was waking up and thinking, 'This shouldn't be a funny episode. This should be an episode that breaks your heart and makes you want to cry.' That's what people won’t expect from this. They'll come in thinking it's going to be funny. And I was like, 'No, no, no. These have to have moments, they have to be about real character things.'

"We had someone to teach the people to sing. We had someone to teach them how to dance. The actual shooting of it, weirdly, was not as hard as you'd think, but only because it has months and months of work to lead up to it."

The executive producers were well aware of the proficient pipes of Celia Rose Gooding, Rebecca Romijn and Christina Chong, but nobody expected Ethan Peck to deliver the goods in such a striking fashion.

"Our composer played with all of them to see what their range was, and we wrote for them," said Goldsman. "I mean, I didn't know Ethan could sing until I went, 'Holy f***, Ethan can sing!' Which is, by the way, kind of what happens when you watch the episode. You're like, 'Wait, Spock is singing now?'"

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’" season 2 finale airs Aug. 10 on Paramount Plus .

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Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

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• kev72 I don't know anyone who liked this episode. I was ultra cringe. Yes some of them are very talented but really it felt like an audition for Bollywood. Reply
• Classical Motion We all love it here at our place. Reply
• Classical Motion Especially the Klingons. Reply

Classical Motion said: We all love it here at our place.

• Classical Motion Does a poll change your opinion? Never has mine. Have you ever made a decision using a pole? That's like picking a choice of stupids. A pole is a direct assault on critical thinking. What are they teaching these days? Reply

Classical Motion said: Does a poll change your opinion? Never has mine. Have you ever made a decision using a pole? That's like picking a choice of stupids. A pole is a direct assault on critical thinking. What are they teaching these days?

• View All 7 Comments

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‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Musical Episode ‘Subspace Rhapsody’ Soundtrack Album Details

Here’s the album track list:

1. Star Trek Strange New Worlds Main Title (Subspace Rhapsody Version) – Jeff Russo (1:51) 2. Status Report – Anson Mount, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Melissa Navia, Celia Rose Gooding, Babs Olusanmokun, Paul Wesley & Carol Kane (2:56) 3. Connect to Your Truth – Rebecca Romijn & Paul Wesley (1:51) 4. How Would That Feel – Christina Chong (4:25) 5. Private Conversation – Anson Mount & Melanie Scrofano (1:29) 6. Keeping Secrets – Rebecca Romijn (4:11) 7. I’m Ready – Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia & Dan Jeannotte (2:37) 8. I’m the X – Ethan Peck (2:25) 9. Keep Us Connected – Celia Rose Gooding (4:30) 10. We Are One – Anson Mount, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Melissa Navia, Celia Rose Gooding, Babs Olusanmokun, Dan Jeannotte, Paul Wesley & Carol Kane (4:17) 11. Subspace Rhapsody End Credit Medley (1:38)

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10 tv show characters who didn’t deserve their fates, fbi season 6's update on maggie's future is a huge relief for season 7 (& the next 3 years).

Warning: This Article Contains Possible SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 9 - "Subspace Rhapsody"

• "Subspace Rhapsody" is the first musical episode in the Star Trek franchise, a bold and risky move that fits the fluid nature of Strange New Worlds' episodic structure.
• The talented cast of Strange New Worlds, including Grammy winner Celia Rose Gooding and EP-releasing Christina Chong, will showcase their singing abilities in "Subspace Rhapsody".
• Despite initial skepticism, Strange New Worlds has defied expectations throughout season 2, giving ample reason to believe that the musical episode will be a triumph for the series.

The song list for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds musical episode has been released on Apple Music. Directed by Dermot Downs, written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, with choreography by Roberto Campanella, and music and lyrics by Letters To Cleo's Kay Hanley and Tom Polce, "Subspace Rhapsody" is the first musical episode in the Star Trek franchise. And yes, the entire cast of Strange New Worlds will sing in the episode.

Ahead of the release of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' musical episode , the song list is now available on Apple Music. Titled "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 - Subspace Rhapsody (Original Series Soundtrack)" by various artists, the list of the 11 tracks in the musical contains the song titles, the performers, and the length of the tracks. Heed a SPOILER warning for the track titles and performers:

Strange New Worlds' Musical Is A Star Trek First

Strange New Worlds ' musical, "Subspace Rhapsody," is perhaps the biggest creative risk season 2 is taking, and it's a bold first for the overall Star Trek franchise. A musical episode was proposed in the 1990s by producer Ronald D. Moore, but it was shot down as not fitting that era of Star Trek. However, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' episodic structure is designed for the series to fluidly shift genres, and after mastering action, sci-fi, horror, and even comedy, a musical episode was a challenge the cast and creatives of the series were prepared to meet.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds boasts an immensely talented cast capable of handling a musical episode. Celia Rose Gooding is a Grammy winner for Jagged Little Pill, and Christina Chong is releasing an EP of original music. But the entire cast of Strange New Worlds , including Carol Kane as Commander Pelia and Paul Wesley as Lieutenant James T. Kirk are singing in the episode, which will be something to behold. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has defied skepticism throughout season 2, and there's ample reason to believe the musical, "Subspace Rhapsody," with be a triumph for the series.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

Source: Apple Music

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Bosses Explain How They Made the Musical Episode Work for Star Trek

And which cast member surprised them the most with their musical talents

Carol Kane, Christina Chong, and Ethan Peck, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 9 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , "Subspace Rhapsody." Read at your own risk!]

Song. The Final Frontier.

With "Subspace Rhapsody," the ninth episode of the second season of the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , the venerable sci-fi franchise really did boldly go someplace it hasn't gone before in its 57-year history: a musical episode. 

No, Kirk doesn't show up singing "Rocket Man," nor does Spock warble through "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" – this wasn't an in-joke, parody, holodeck-generated retro rationale or even a scene-specific one-off performance like Data crooning "Blue Skies": It was a real-deal, full-blown musical episode filled with Pike, Number One, Uhura, La'an and the rest of the crew baring their souls in song, thanks to a clever bit of sci-fi logic.

Showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers opened hailing frequencies with TV Guide for a peak behind the scenes of how the tried-and-true concept of the musical episode was tailor-made to suit Star Trek's uniquely specific genre, and how long-simmering ongoing plotlines were pushed significantly forward. And they reveal that, as hotly as the Strange New Worlds  fanbase has been anticipating the episode, no one was more excited by the prospect than the cast – even those actors who didn't think they could carry a tune.

We know that musical episodes tend to work out pretty well on many types of shows, but Star Trek is always its own unique beast. Tell me about the decision-making process that you went through to realize, "It's going to work in the framework of our show."

Henry Alonso Myers: I think musicals are much harder to do than people probably realize. They seem very light, they seem like they're easygoing, and what they actually are is tons and tons and tons of planning. Akiva has always wanted to do a musical on the show, and I had done some musicals on some other shows, so I had a little experience producing this. So we spent a lot of time trying to make sure, "How do we do this now on the show as something that felt like Star Trek?" 

We basically knew that you couldn't just do an easygoing Episode 17. "Well, maybe we'll get away with a couple of songs and that's it." We needed to do something that we hoped would be good because people who love musicals will love it, but people who love Star Trek – It was absolutely crucial that it also be an episode of Star Trek and that we should do both, because that had not been done. And there are many reasons it hadn't been done, but the main one, I think, is that it's just really, really, really hard! When you're doing 22 episodes in a season, you often don't have enough time to do all the things that are required to actually put a musical in place.

There were certainly ways to figure out a science fiction conceit to get you into that musical mode, but you also baked in these stories that had been percolating throughout the entire season, in an episode that you could have just decided "We're just going to keep everything self-contained, so if the fans want to put this in a little corner by itself..." But no, this is very important to the progression of the characters throughout the season. Tell me about finding that sweet spot.

Akiva Goldsman: Well, although yes, I know what you mean when you say we could have done something self-contained, we also couldn't , because our character arcs are serialized and Episode 9 is a very significant episode when you are building character arcs that will end in Episode 10. So actually, our first obligation was to service the character stories and the musical became a wonderful opportunity to do that. But if we couldn't have done that musically, we wouldn't have done it as Episode 9.

Inside the Making of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Musical Episode

Tell me about landing on the right style of music to use, both throughout the episode – songs that were going to fit together – and also that spoke to each character's musical expression.

Myers: Well, it's interesting: when we were breaking the story, we knew what the story would tell for each one of them. We had an idea of what we were trying to get at. The important thing to us was to give the musical a premise that would reveal something to the audience, so that it was an actual scene. It was a scene that started in a different place from where it began. But I do remember when we were having this big discussion in the room, I remember Akiva bringing a lot of, "Oh, we should talk about this kind of musical. We should talk about that kind of musical," as we were talking about the specific types that we wanted people to try. 

But it ultimately came down to Tom [Polce], our composer. When we brought him on board, we had a sense of the story and we handed it to him and we sent him to set to meet everyone and get a sense of what their abilities are and really try to design each song in such a way that it's something that each actor could really respond to and do well.

That was the goal, because the big surprise was that pretty much everyone had a version of singing in them that they could do, and some were extremely experienced and some weren't, but they all brought it and it just required they worked a lot. They worked on weekends. They worked when they were on set between shoots. They worked on everything. They took classes. It was really an all-hands-on-deck. They came in and really spent a lot of time making sure that they could do the thing that we asked them to do well, and they more than exceeded it. They really rose to the occasion.

You certainly had people in the cast who were already known for their musical ability. As you went to those who maybe weren't so well known for that, can you share anything anecdotally about actors finding their confidence level? Were they nervous, but excited? Did they have to be assured that they wouldn't look silly or feel awkward throughout the process? How did it play out with some of the individual cast members?

Myers: Well, Ethan [Peck] was someone who I think did not think of himself as a singer, and then surprised everyone by having this great deep voice that none of us even realized that he had. He had an incredible ability, but part of that was about having what we had with everyone, which was having them work with someone who could help teach them to sing or make sure that the singing was coming out in the right way or they would come out in a way that comforted them. 

And a lot of that was just about Tom would design the songs based on their ability, but he wouldn't ask them to go much farther than they could, but they all wanted to try farther than we expected. That was the broad strokes.

Bruce Horak, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

As the cast and crew got more and more excited, tell me a little bit about what that set was like during shooting and what the mood and the buzz was and how it was different from the average – if there is such a thing – episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .

Myers: They all got so much happier! They were all happy to begin with, but I'd never seen them so happy to do this. I've never seen them have such a strong reaction to the script and they had learned all of the songs at that point.

Akiva, I know that you are a Day One Trek fan through and through, know the franchise chapter and verse, and there's something about this episode that really does fit with some of the lighter episodes going back to the original series. Were you the guy saying, "Yes, this is going to work," because of how it worked back then?

Goldsman: Well, I think we both were. I think Henry and I both were very sure that this was something that Star Trek could do and do well, that Star Trek is extraordinarily versatile when it comes to genre, as long as you hold emotional truth of the characters in hand. I think that people took a risk, people who weren't us, in order to close their eyes, grit their teeth and say, "Yeah, sure it'll work." 

Having said that, we are gifted this incredible cast and there seems to be nothing they can't do. I think there's clearly a Cirque du Soleil episode coming next season – not really! – because we have yet to find the corner of performance that they can't inhabit. So it was really our good luck to have them and our blind faith, my absolutely ignorant desire and Henry's deeply experienced willingness, to get this thing on its feet that all conspired to make it work.

I feel Star Trek fans have always been incredibly appreciative of good music, thanks to the great scores that have been part of the franchise throughout its history. What are you looking forward to seeing in the fans' reaction to the music?

Goldsman: You said something really important here, which is, "The music is good." It's good music . We all have stories we can tell you about how it went from "a thing we were working on" to "a thing we were listening to," and that doesn't happen. In fact, it's typically the opposite, especially…I can't really speak to music per se, but after you make a TV show, you kind of never want to see it again. And so the fact that we all continue to fill our lives with this, I have watched it more times than any other episode. I have dragged people in who don't know anything about Star Trek to watch it and people who do, and I can imagine singalongs with Bouncing Balls. 

It's a trip, and I think that if that's the way we feel about it, and that's typically our measuring stick, because Henry and I are Star Trek fans, if we dig it in our Star Trek selves, then the people like us should hopefully dig it too. And we dig this a lot.

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+.

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Recap/Review: Anything Goes In ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Musical “Subspace Rhapsody”

| August 3, 2023 | By: Anthony Pascale 325 comments so far

“Subspace Rhapsody”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 9 – Debuted Thursday, August 3, 2023 Written by Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff; with original songs by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce Directed by Dermott Downs

Strange New Worlds makes Star Trek history with an engaging episode that turns out to be more than just a musical.

I may be an ensign, but none of this works without me.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

 “We appear to be singing.”

The Enterprise is at the edge of the Alpha Quadrant studying a subspace fold Spock thinks can triple communication speed. His experiment is tying up the computer, so Uhura has to go old school, channeling her inner Ernestine to keep the ship connected. Elsewhere, we see Pike and Captain Batel arguing over their upcoming vacation and La’an struggling to keep her cool as she welcomes James T. Kirk, who’s beaming on board for some first officer training with Una. In sickbay, Chapel finally gets some good news with an acceptance letter to a prestigious fellowship with Dr. Roger Korby that is going to take her off the ship for a while… and away from Spock. Oblivious to this impending separation, the Vulcan is having trouble figuring out how to tap into the hypothesized super-communication capability of this subspace fold. He sees merit in a suggestion from Pelia to try using music, since the fundamental harmonics might work within the fold’s different laws of physics. Uhura is inspired by the idea and chooses a classic Cole Porter song for the experiment. The musical signal sent into the fold results in a pulse of energy that ripples through the ship, so Pike demands a status report. Spock complies, reporting that all systems are stable… except he is singing, and soon enough, others across the ship are doing the same: Pike gets updates from everyone on how “all is okay” – but in song, along with some nice harmonies. Even the captain joins in asking the question on all of our minds… “But why are we singing?” Cue the new choral opening credits, we are in for a musical journey.

So that happened, and Captain Pike wants answers about why there are musical outbreaks across his ship. Spock explains that sending the song into the fold has created a “quantum improbability field” and they are now tethered to the fold and a new “musical reality.” Got that? The analogy of the week is this reality has torn open like a zipper and the plan is to zip it back up by teching a lot of tech. While Spock and Uhura are tasked for finding the right frequency, Una and Kirk start connecting the shields and Heisenberg compensators to the deflector dish, as if this was just another Star Trek episode. But soon enough they start talking about command styles, and here comes the music again as Una has some advice for young Kirk in a jaunty tune about connecting to his truth and to his crew, as she has decided to move away from her more distant style. Others watch bemused as Kirk and Una ballroom dance down a corridor, but La’an is concerned and goes off to her quarters to launch into her own little torch song over her James T. Kirk, dead in another timeline, and how maybe it’s time (or is it?) for her to let go of her strict control and find some of her own happiness and freedom. Once her impressive solo is done, the security officer makes a beeline to the captain to reveal that the songs people sing are disclosing highly personal emotional information. This isn’t just an amusing musical interlude, it’s a security threat.

When I’m captain, I’m going to have the chief engineer do this dirty work.

 “This musical reality wants us to sing.”

Worried by La’an’s information, Pike is happy to find the various teams are ready to unzip this reality, and Una fires the rejiggered deflector beam at the fold to “collapse the musical reality back into our quantum state.” Sounds good, but the fold has other ideas, responding with a new, bigger energy surge. Things get even worse when the USS Cayuga hails and Captain Batel wants to “have a private conversation in a more discreet location about our canceled vacation.” Uh oh, now she’s singing too, and Pike joins her in a very awkward viewscreen duet that thankfully gets shut down when La’an closes the link. Now the improbability field has spread throughout Federation space; singing has infected 12 ships so far and Admiral April (a beautiful baritone, BTW) is pissed. Uhura posits that things are actually following the rules of musicals, so songs are being triggered by emotion and what’s most pressing on people’s minds. An exasperated Pike has a simple solution, which he can’t believe Spock agrees is worth considering: Shoot photon torpedoes at the fold. Just to be sure, La’an and Kirk are tasked to capture some particles to test. The security officer confides in Una that it isn’t a good idea for her to be around Kirk inside this musical reality… for “temporal” reasons. Number One gets the hint, but the first officer has some advice for her old friend… and here we go again. Una goes downtempo to sing-share how she spent her life keeping secrets, imploring her friend to not do the same. She also turns off the gravity for some inexplicable musical reason.

La’an and Kirk get to work transporting particles and she tries to open up to this Jim, but they are interrupted by an explosion. Spock’s experiment revealed the photon torpedo plan would only make things worse—a lot worse. Speaking of bad news, an incoming message from Klingon General Garkog makes it clear they have been hit by the improbability field too and it has caused “dishonor,” so stay out of their way. They are coming to blow up the fold, which will end up destroying the Federation and half the Empire, but just trying telling that to the Klingons. Pike needs a Plan C fast. Uhura wants to capture data from the moment a song begins so she takes Spock to the port galley, where he sees Christine celebrating landing that fellowship. So yeah, this should do it. He awkwardly asks why she didn’t tell him the good news and Nyota is ready with the tricorder as it’s time for Nurse Chapel’s big number. Christine joyously sings how she is “ready” to see her dreams come true, the whole bar lifts her up (literally) as she shares how for her the sky is the limit and if that means she has to leave a certain Vulcan behind, so be it. Ouch, dumped by dance number.

My girlfriend finally has a first name!

“We’re connected as a crew…”

Back to La’an: As she and Kirk analyze K’Tinga battle tactics, she gets the jump on the musical reality, spilling the time travel beans about falling in love with a Jim from another reality. That Kirk could see the version of her she wishes she could be, but he’s gone. Lt. Kirk isn’t the same, but she kind of likes the way he looks at her too—but before things progress, he drops the bomb that canon dictates for him to have a pregnant girlfriend around this time. So much for this pair, but she did avoid breaking into song. In engineering, Spock is analyzing musical data and scrutinizing Christine’s in particular, triggering his own sad song. The Vulcan has done the calculus and sees he is the variable, deciding he will no longer be solving for human emotions. Singing ceased, a disheartened Spock exits engineering and leaves Uhura alone to find the pattern that will get them out of this mess. This is the musical number we have been waiting for as she goes full Grammy-winning Broadway star, belting out her journey from the pain of loss to her loneliness to working her way through to her new path. She may have started alone but now she is the communications officer, she keeps everyone connected… and on the Enterprise, she is never alone. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Uhura has figured it out and briefs the captain on how each musical moment caused spikes in the field, with a boost for moments with multiple singers. To shatter the field, it’s going to take a lot more singers. Pike tells her she is the one who can motivate everyone to share an emotion together. No pressure! The coms officer opens hailing frequencies to talk to the crew, breaking through the chaos and refocusing them to come together to fight for their lives. Soon enough, one by one, others begin to sing and dance their way through the ship… yes, it’s the big finale number. Together this crew sees their purpose as they function better all together, and it’s working. Uhura’s field boosting meter climbs, but it’s still not enough voices so Pike opens a channel to General Garkog as his bridge boy band to drop some K-Pop beats (that’s K for Klingon, get it?). The Klingons plus one last push on the Enterprise bridge does it; the fold bursts and the musical reality returns to the songbooks. La’an and Una take a moment over drinks to think about what they just learned. Pike and Batel come to a romantic dinner accord, but their vacation will have to wait as she has a new priority one assignment. Uhura takes us out with a final log, reporting things are back to normal across all affected ships, Klingons included. But she leaves us humming an earworm, and a nice end credits medley as this one-of-a-kind musical journey comes to a close.

Young man there’s a place you can go…

More than an anomaly

Well this is it, the swingiest of the “big swings” of season 2. Singing is nothing new in Star Trek, starting with Uhura’s song and DS9 even had a resident crooner , but a full-on musical episode with 10 original songs is on a whole new level. “Subspace Rhapsody” will surely be a matter of taste, with fans of musicals mostly likely to relish it. But even those (like this reviewer) who are not necessarily fans of the genre can be impressed by the enormous effort that went into this episode with superb levels of coordination between script and songs, choreography, and performance, especially from the professional singers in the cast like Celia Rose Gooding and Christina Chong. Analyzing “Subpace Rhapsody” as a musical will be left to TrekMovie’s musical-loving Laurie Ulster below, but behind the music, this was still a strong Star Trek episode that brought fascinating twists to familiar beats but also tied into the emotional throughlines of the second season.

Creating a musical episode has been a stated goal of executive producer Alex Kurtzman for years, yet there was still a welcome level of logic to keep the story within the rules of the Star Trek universe. From eddies to tears to ruptures, subspace anomalies have been the gift that keeps on giving to the franchise, so it makes sense to build this episode around a “subspace fold” which created the “musical reality.” And for a show that usually likes to avoid engineering solutions, Uhura’s Giga Electronvolt scale and “We need melodies and harmonies with tone ratios that achieve both algorithmic and logarithmic balance on a mass scale” fits right in with some of the franchise’s best technobabble, however, the logic only holds together at a surface level. While the explanation of the musical reality was better than a handwave, the logic falls apart upon scrutiny, but this isn’t the kind of episode where that really matters.

When I meet Khan, he isn’t going to believe this.

Even with the unique musical execution, this episode still had a nice affinity with the broader sub-genre of episodes featuring crews acting out of character, like TNG’s “The Naked Now” to DS9’s “Fascination.” The internal logic of where the music, lyrics, harmonies, and choreography were coming from might have worked better if there was some identified entity manipulating things, like the way the Hirogen transformed the Voyager crew into characters from a World War II movie in “The Killing Game.” However, that would actually give up the key that makes this episode hold together. Each of these songs was deeply rooted in long-developed character arcs, and even acted as a bit of a season resolution with some emotional breakthroughs, from Una and La’an learning to let go of their secrets and control to Christine embracing her ambition and agency, and especially Uhura finding her true calling on the Enterprise. That being said the impact of the various songs was still mixed and perhaps the most emotional scene of the episode (with La’an opening up to Kirk) had no singing at all.

The singing and the dancing certainly kept this bottle episode on the lighter side, and this was buoyed by some welcome humor, with Anson Mount’s Pike again delivering the best subtle comic beats. But there were still some clear stakes set up with a ticking clock and the threat posed by the Klingons. It was a delight to see Hemmer actor Bruce Horak return again in season 2, this time as Klingon General Garkog where he and his boy band bridge crew resolved their arc with humor as they danced their way into the finale number, outrageous gold uniforms and all. Looking closely at what actually happened during some of these songs shows how this episode was a big pivot point for many of the characters, like putting Spock back on a path to logic. Pike and Batel’s romance resolution coming right before her priority one assignment almost certainly sets up the stakes for the finale, possibly even setting up something tragic. The episode even found time to tie into some key bits of canon for some characters, including Kirk mentioning Carol Marcus and her pregnancy (with his son David) and Christine’s coming fellowship with (future fiancé) Roger Korby. Musicals may not be my cup of tea, but there was still enough humor, plot, and character going on to maintain interest. And even someone who has never seen an episode of Glee can be moved by some of the performances here, especially Uhura’s “Keep Us Connected” and the grand “We Are One” finale, both of which beautifully embody the themes of Star Trek.

Remember when you thought forced roleplaying Lord of the Rings was weird?

A most confounding thing, I appear to be singing…

Analysis by Laurie Ulster

I’m not an expert on musicals, but I am definitely a fan of good ones and this fits the bill. The songs come in a variety of styles and tempos, evoking memories of big moments in familiar musicals but with their own unique twists, and the theme of the episode—difficulty communicating—is echoed for La’an, Una, Spock, Uhura, Pike, and Chapel as they reveal their innermost thoughts in song.

Things start off with humor and confusion when Spock starts singing his status report and when the rest of the crew joins in with musical updates on phaser banks and inertial dampers, it’s fun to imagine the Strange New Worlds fan who doesn’t keep up on industry news and had no idea what was coming. But as we move forward into the episode, the humor remains but songs get personal and revealing, taking each character on a journey they may not have been aware of until the tunes came pouring out. Every song moves each character forward in ways spoken dialogue never could, making this work as a perfect penultimate episode as the season: They will take their revelations forward into whatever comes next.

Being red shirts, none of these officers will be seen again

Whether you want to sing along about deflector shields or deepest emotional truths, you’ll find yourself hearing these tunes in your head and wanting to snap up the soundtrack. The songs are beautifully written, with engaging, clever, lyrics woven into musical highs and lows that feel both familiar unpredictable at the same time—no easy task. When Celia Rose Gooding belts out the solo we’ve been waiting for, one can’t help but think about how Nichelle Nichols would’ve felt had she been able to see it. I believe she would have wept for joy seeing how her legacy as both a talented singer and an expert communications officer has come to take its place in the much-deserved spotlight; I teared up thinking about it on my first viewing and felt the exultation in my soul as the song reached its height.

As a musical, it succeeds on every level. The “science” of the story never quite makes sense, but the consequences of each character’s journey are as real as it gets. With its clever and often ebullient choreography (both in dance numbers and camera moves) and catchy tunes, this episode has quickly become one of my most rewatchable favorites.

Will you do the Enterprise Fandango!

Final thoughts

“Subspace Rhapsody” will surely go down as one of the most talked about episodes in the franchise. Musical lovers will rejoice while others will file it away as silly or even corny. Yet the sheer artistry and audaciousness make it worth watching, at least once. While it is a jarring tonal shift from last week’s dark episode, it still fits well within the season, providing a key pivot point heading into next week’s season finale. And maybe this is one of those episodes that benefits from avoiding overthinking analysis, so this time, just sit back and enjoy the show… and sing along if you are so inclined.

Gold is the new black

• Begins with communications officers log, Stardate 2398.3.
• This is director Dermott Downs’ first time with Star Trek, bringing his experience of directing a musical crossover of The Flash and Supergirl, “ Duet .”
• The comment about people becoming bunnies is a reference to one of the songs in the   Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode.
• With a runtime of 62:34, this is the second-longest episode of the series, just 12 seconds shorter than the season 1 finale
• After appearing multiple times through both seasons, Captain Batel finally gets a first name: Marie.
• Number One’s love of Gilbert and Sullivan was first revealed in the Short Treks episode “Q&A.”
• Starfleet ships affected by the musical reality include Lexington, Republic, Potemkin, Cayuga, Hood, and Kongo. Klingon ships include Forcas and Harlak.
• Spock was dispatched to handle bloodwine diplomacy with the Klingons, something he learned in the season premiere.
• The soundtrack for this episode is already available online .

I’m never going to tell Bones this happened.

More to come

Every Friday, the TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek podcast covers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe and discusses the latest episode. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Pocket Casts ,  Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.

Season 2 episodes drop weekly on Thursdays on  Paramount+ in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Season 2 is also available on SkyShowtime elsewhere in Europe. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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I think this episode is SNW’s “Naked Time”…. a sci-fi plot to reveal who these people are to us and to each other.

I’m not a musical fan, but I think they did it in a Star Trek-y way. Bravo!

Great observation re: The Naked Time. I think that aspect worked as well.

I didn’t get to see this episode until today, because of being out of town visiting an ill parent.

I mostly adored the episode, but I hated, hated, HATED the idea that TOS Spock restrains his emotions because Chapel broke his heart. I really, REALLY want Spock to follow Vulcan custom in restraining his emotions because he believes in the philosophy or because he believes that those ultra-strong Vulcan emotions can be dangerous to others. Having him be Chapel’s bitter and self-protective ex is just such a terrible thing to do to a character who’s always been a huge role model for ethical behavior.

I also thought that the finale should have been inspired by the CAPTAIN of the ship and not by the communications officer. It’s true that Gooding is a much better singer than Mount, but they could have had Mount give an inspiring speech — we know Mount excels at that — and have the crew break into song in response.

Aside from those two things — one major and one minor — I was hugely impressed by how much creativity, talent, and work went into this episode. Aside from the Spock problem, I was delighted during the whole thing.

Am I the only one picking up a vibe that Captain Batel may not survive the season finale?

That’s definitely the vibe I get, as well. I think, as with Spock/Chapel/T’Pring, this show is rearranging the deck chairs to get Pike to fall back in love with Vina as the love of his life.

I’m getting a vibe that many of the characters are in for a tragic end:

– Pike, for obvious reasons – Batel, as stated above – Chapel; it may not be tragic, but she’s going to leave the ship for Korby, and her relationship with Spock lasted all of three weeks – M’Benga, for reasons set out last week – La’an, whose romance with Kirk is clearly doomed to fail – Una, who never appeared elsewhere in the franchise

M’Benga served under Kirk in TOS didn’t he? When Bones was CMO.

Well, perhaps I was speaking too metaphorically. In M’Benga’s case I meant that he gets demoted, if not temporarily drummed out of Starfleet.

Aaaaah ok, I see what you mean!

But there still is Dr. Piper before McCoy.

Doesn’t mean Number one wasn’t around…. She just wanted mention in the TOS: the fact she was famous in the 24th Century, gives facts to reason she went on after the Enterprise

If there’s one criticism I think we should collectively drop, it’s “this person or that situation” wasn’t mentioned. It’s just the way these things go.

Una not appearing anywhere else doesn’t necessarily mean that she is in for a tragic end. She might go on to have a distinguished career we just haven’t heard of. She’s clearly notable since Boimler idolises her!

I picked that up in the trailers when they showed the shot of her on the planet with the huge Gorn ship in the sky.

Ok.. this worked and worked well. It is a lot of fun. I’m a little shocked at that. Kudos to whoever they brought in to write and compose the music, they did a great job, as did the cast. I thought they were trying to hard to bring in the scientific explanation part to all this. In my opinion, they should’ve dialed that back and just gone with it. The Klingon performance was easily my favorite part.

I particularly agree to the Klingon performance part. It would have been better (and perhaps even more funnier) to break some more of their stoic interior to show more of the K(lingon)-fun side.

The music and songs were 👌👌

So, my approach to this episode was to view it as a stand-alone, out-of-canon, alternative take on Star Trek — not unlike the BACK TO THE FUTURE musical on Broadway and the West End. In-universe, the premise is patently absurd, up there with transforming people into salamanders (“Threshold”) or amphibians (“Genesis”); I tend to excise those gems from the Trek historical record, too, and that’s what I’m doing here.

I admit I’m getting tired of having to do this twice in one season, and the prevalence of lighthearted comedy more broadly is absolutely souring me on the whole series, which is becoming Roger Moore’s Trek.

But within that context, “Subspace Rhapsody” was mostly enjoyable fun, if not a runaway hit. None of the numbers struck me as the next “Memory” from CATS or “Last Night of the World” from MISS SAIGON. But they were more earwormy than the aforementioned BACK TO THE FUTURE, which — with the exception of “This One’s for the Dreamers” was starkly devoid of earworms. I need to listen to the soundtrack to firm up my opinion, but the numbers with La’an and Kirk, Uhura’s solo, and Chapel in the bar were memorable. Celia Rose-Gooding and Jess Bush were the best singers; Ethan Peck was far and away the worst. (Listening to him was grating.)

One disappointment was that all the numbers were too peppy, the lyrics somewhat banal. The writers lately seem intent on lecturing us about how noble Starfleet is; they need to be *showing* us, not telling us. None of the musical numbers were in a minor key.

In particular, I was hoping they would adapt La’an’s theme, which we heard in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” and again in “Lost in Translation” into a one of the musical numbers; they kept tantalizing us with the prospect, but never followed through. The theme is beautiful, right up there with Ilia’s theme from TMP, and putting lyrics to it might have had “Frozen” written all over it. That was a real missed opportunity.

I was also hoping we might finally hear the TOS theme put to Rodddenberry’s infamous lyrics, or even “A Star Beyond Time” (the lyrical version of Ilia’s theme) in the opening credits. No such luck. Similarly, the teaser gave me some hope we might get a creative new rendition of “Anything Goes”; as things stood, Spielberg has nothing to worry about.

Part of the problem is that — at the risk of channeling Tom Cruise’s exhortations to lure us back to cinemas — musicals are best enjoyed onstage, in a theater, with an audience. The communal experience is part of the attraction. I tried unsuccessfully to score tickets to HAMILTON in New York in 2019, and I ended up watching it on Disney+ during the pandemic. It’s just not the same watching a musical on television, or for that matter on celluloid. I think this is part of the reason CATS (the movie) was so widely reviled; you just don’t capture the same magic that you do seeing it in the West End, with all the posters advertising it on the Tube on the way to the theater (and I’ll freely admit this is why I like the West End more than Broadway!).

I’ll see how it fares on a rewatch — the plot itself was dull — but the real legacy will be whether the soundtrack is worth adding to one’s iTunes playlist.

Contrary to what some are saying, Ethan Peck’s singing voice is more than acceptable. In fact, he carries a tune rather well. I was especially touched by his voice and the lyrics on the song he sang about losing Christine (“… the Ex”). He sang the song with just the right amount of disappointment and pathos.

Just listened to Ethan Peck singing: I totally understand that someone can personally find a voice grating (don’t play me a Phil Collins ballad…), but I liked it and objectively he had great vocal control jumping between higher and lower registers and knowing where to employ vibrato or not. I would just kinda hope that Spock choses to abandon exploring emotions after an intense and nuanced exploration of the topic in-series, not just because he got dumped :D. I’d just think Spock being the thinker he is might not reduce such a decision to only one factor. Feels a bit simplistic. But well, maybe sometimes things are simple like that.

Klingon boy band for the win.

Perhaps VOY (or was it ENT?) had it right all along: all Star Trek needs was more boy bands. :)

Yes! I was not denied Bruce Horak after all! I love this.

Where was he? A Klingon perhaps?

Yes he was a Klingon

I like Horak and did NOT recognize him as the Klingon captain. I like how they’re using him as their version of Vaughn Armstrong or Jeffrey Combs or Kenneth Mitchell, casting him over and over in new and various roles.

I hope they keep using him over and over like those three. I’d really like that.

100% want Horak to be the new Combs

I do too for gay reasons

those are perfectly good reasons

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Yes! If I can’t have him as my favourite Aenar engineer, I will absolutely take him as an R&B singing Klingon

Right. We couldn’t have him as engineer. Elderly actresses need work, too!

Easily the best episode of the season.

In pure of raw entertainment? I think you’re right. If I’m honest, as much as I despise the canonical problems of Season 2 Episode 3, I think it’s my favorite episode of this entire series, let alone this season.

I thought Subspace Rhapsody was great, but Ad Astra Per Aspera was pure Trek and the best of the season, perhaps best SNW episode to date. I loved Those Old Scientists , too.

No, M’Benga ep and lower desk crossover were the best this season

This was such a beautiful episode!

“Ok, now that Pike is gone, who should we make captain of the Enterprise?” “How about James Kirk? He practically lives there already.”

When Kirk was saying to La’an about how he never stays in one place, I couldn’t help but think that.

Yeah. He’s showing up WAY too much. And it’s really feeling forced.

I just wish they would make Sam Kirk a main character so that is the Kirk connection.

Prime Kirk has shown up twice. That’s not that much.

I haven’t seen Prime Kirk once. But three Kirk appearances is too much. It still feels forced.

Don’t poke the ML31 Prime Universe bear!

He’s shown up twice in this reality. Lost In Translation and Subspace Rhapsody.

Both times it was this SNW timeline Kirk. Not prime Kirk.

Remember… Episode 2.3 said this is all an alternate timeline.

I don’t remember. Certainly that episode occurred in a different timeline with Kirk from yet a third timeline. Could you please indicate who said what as I’d like to go back and see it. Thanks.

Thorny is correct. ML31 is trolling you. He insists that everyone follow his head canon about SNW’s timeline.

If you are going to speak on my behalf I would appreciate it if you would be accurate.

This is not “head canon”. I never was one of those who considered the show an alternate time line from the start. Many here did as it was the only way they could reconcile the obvious inconsistencies. I only started going along with the alternate thing once the show itself admitted it was.

Please cease misrepresenting me.

That episode was in a different timeline because it was a part of this show and the entire show is occurring in a different timeline. The episode confirmed it in very rock solid fashion. Not only were there so very many inconsistencies already but the episode showed more. No Eugenics wars? Khan a child in the 2020’s? And for those who still didn’t believe their eyes they had the Romulan character actually spell everything out of those who still weren’t picking up on it. She said the Eugenics wars were supposed to happen in 1992. But in that timeline they didn’t. It’s towards the end. Very hard to miss.

All that was confirmed is that the Eugenics War is supposed to have happened later now. It also isn’t clear “when” this change took place. Enterprise discussed the Eugenics War being in the 1990s a few episodes after the temporal war ended, but Voyager showed a war-free 90s before we even heard of the temporal war.

It doesn’t matter “when” a change took place. The fact is it did. Which places SNW squarely in an alternative timeline at the very least. An outright reboot at most. It’s confirmed to be an alternate.

The Voyager episode was in LA. How many bombings of LA took place in WWI or II? It’s very likely, like the other WW’s, there were no battles in N America. Life went on there very likely as usual.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. We’ve seen multiple time travel episodes that have changed things in the past, perhaps subtly, but changes nonetheless. If every change results in an alternate timeline, we haven’t been in the “prime timeline” for decades.

I know I brought up Sisko becoming Gabrielle Bell, and you dismissed at such a minor change that the timeline “fixed” itself… how could the timeline, a nebulous construct that has no agency, somehow fix itself That wasn’t even the biggest change DS9 made. Trials and Tribbleations straight up changes events that we saw in TOS – with DS9 characters taking the place of random extras seen in the Trouble with Tribbles.

VOY is probably the biggest culprit when it comes to time travel shenanigans. Voyager went back to 1996, and there was very much not a Eugenics war going on. In Timeless, Chakotay and Kim drastically change the timeline by saving Voyager from crashing on a planet and killing everyone. Using your logic, the prime timeline is actually the timeline in which Voyager was destroyed. Then you can move on to End Game, in which the timeline is again drastically changed, this time by Janeway going back in time and not only getting Voyager home decades earlier, but being instrumental in the near destruction of the Borg. The crazy thing, the previous timeline where Voyager eventually makes it home decades later isn’t even apart of the prime timeline, as it’s a part of the timeline created by the events from Timeless.

Alternatively, you could look at it as such: as long as certain events happen, the timeline will stay intact. And, in the case of SNW, it may not necessarily matter when the Eugenics war took place, as long as it takes place prior to (or even concurrently with) WWIII, and before first contact with the Vulcans, the Trek timeline will stay intact. Basically, WWIII was the catalyst for humanity to change and reach out to the stars. The rough dates for the war are from 2026 to 2053, first contact with Vulcans occurred in 2063. So there’s a massive period of time for events to happen in such a way to lead up Zephram Cochrane’s warp test happening on April 5, 2063.

Tine changes that do not radically affect things, like Christopher knowing his kid would go to Saturn, don’t make major changes as far as Trek lore is concerned. But if you want to get technical then yes, all those tiny changes that affect next to nothing can indeed be considered alternate timelines. However Trek has never considered them as such. They have been “fixed”. The Voyager example is poor. There is nothing to suggest there were no Eugenics Wars going on in some far off place on the other side of the planet.

And yes, one can argue that Endgame was indeed an alternate as well. That one does have merit. The difference is nearly nothing about what happened in that original timeline was shown on any Trek show anywhere. As far as Trek is concerned the one we followed is the Prime. But I give you that situation is not as straight forward so good call on that one.

The difference here is that Kahn & the Eugenics Wars have been firmly established in Trek lore. In both a show and a feature film. That date is prime. Moving something so established only to cover mistakes made in your own show I just can’t count as “preserving the time line”. Something that huge in history just can’t be blown off and still think everything works out with minimal changes.

I don’t know where you got the idea that WWIII was the catalyst that changed humanity. Honestly everything regarding that is a bit murky and not all that clear as it was never really addressed in any show or movie. In fact, while not outright said it was implied on TOS that the Eugenics Wars & WWIII were possibly one in the same. Until TNG’s pilot episode.

Let me ask you this… Since the First Contact date seems so important to you suppose the Romulan went back to 2063 to screw with that and there was no First Contact until say 2083. Would you still think everything on SNW was prime?

“The difference is nearly nothing about what happened in that original timeline was shown on any Trek show anywhere.”

This is a great point actually and again a big problem with prequels versus sequels. It’s true Voyager altered the timeline multiple times and you can very much argue they are living in an altered timeline. The big difference is though Voyager was changing events we haven’t seen yet . We have no idea what the future was suppose to look like until they showed us in an episode. But it didn’t matter regardless because we knew it was there to be changed. That was the story, ie, how will they change it to keep the timeline we care about in tact. Those events had no bearing on the overall story because it’s stuff we didn’t know about until literally when it was presented in the episode. That’s not the same thing.

In his case, A. the Eugenics war happened well in the past and B. It’s an event that has been pounded into us for over 50 years now. It’s the core of both canon history but the show’s history as well. So when you alter that, it’s a big deal . And then when you alter it literally centuries in the past as well, of course it’s going to create other issues because it’s altering a story line that takes place before the other shows even existed. In Voyager’s case, being a sequel show and the last sequel show for nearly 2 decades it didn’t cause any issues to other shows because there was nothing else ahead of it at the time. They could’ve kept all that alternate history if they wanted and no one would’ve blinked because from our POV the future is still being written just the same.

But this also shows why there were so many reset buttons in Star Trek. I know people got sick of them, me included but it was done so people wouldn’t look at every time travel story as being part of an alternate timeline. It would’ve been confusing. And back then Star Trek was more episodic so they wanted people to feel whatever was changed it didn’t effect anything you saw last week or will in the next season.

But when you change something soooo far in the past and you make it clear time DIDN’T reset itself in this case, then you are creating bigger problems down the line. People can certainly argue SNW isn’t in a altered timeline, but guys it’s very simple, is Space Seed and TWOK still considered canon or not? Because if it is and Kirk and Spock still encountered Khan and thinks he still came from Earth in 1996 when just a few years prior we were told he came much later, then one of these is obviously not the case anymore. So either ONE of them is now operating in an altered tilmeline, but they both can’t be true.

And I’m going to assume for most fans it would be considered blasphemy to consider SS and TWOK as the ‘alternate’ history now.

That was pretty much what I was getting at with the ENDGAME scenario. At least one person got it. :)

I know this is why you don’t want prequels. But I still say while more difficult to navigate prequels can still be done and done well. You just need people who not only can write compelling stories but also are familiar with the source material to keep things in line.

That’s certainly part of it, but the main issue is I just generally prefer to go forward in a story, not backwards, especially in something like Star Trek. But of course I agree when they are done right, then I can easily be persuaded to like them. I loved Better Call Saul for example and love it as much as Breaking Bad.

As for Star Trek we have three prequels leading into TOS and I don’t think any of them did a great job leading into it although ironically Enterprise seem to been the best, but it was a century away from that show and not a few years like DIS and SNW was so it had more leeway.

I mean, ML31, I get what you’re saying. Khan in Space Seed citing 1992 seems incompatible with Khan child in 2022. But come on… this is shadowy temporal war time travel voodoo. What did that very same Romulan say? Time is like a “black box”? “So many people have tried to influence these events, you know, to delay them or stop them… And it’s almost as if time itself is pushing back, and events reinsert themselves…”?

But a more basic issue is La’an herself (when does she think her ancestor Khan lived?), or even Starfleet and Federation, if you prefer. If Khan/Eugenics Wars are a part of history, how is it that Prime and SNW-alternate timelines align at all? Why are we checking on exact dates for Pike’s command, and Enterprise voyages, and Talosians… ? Pike is going to have a similar career on a similar starship in a similar political setting and then die in an identical way at the same time in Prime and SNW-alternate, even though World War-level history was irrevocably changed 250 years prior?!

All I am saying is that while on the surface it seems like history changed, there can be many explanations. Time travel is … well… fiction. For example, consider this: the events of Tom/Tom/Tom episode THEMSELVES occur in an alternate timeline. La’an from Prime and Kirk from Alternate together jump to Another Alternate past. Events there are not Prime, once La’an’s mission succeeds, she is returned to Prime. Or of course, consider the agent at the end of the episode, who’s entire job is to repair the timeline–like Terminator 2 or that cool Seven of Nine chronoton frequency time travel episode, the nature of (fictional) time travel is such that they can keep going back in time until they get it right. (And the agent even says “Those events were never supposed to happen”!).

Your interpretation is valid. But, it’s not “Spock is Vulcan” level of establishment. We can quite easily still be in Prime. That’s a very valid view also.

Stop gatekeeping.

So to you “gatekeeping” is accepting what is actually being shown in the episodes?

Sorry. it’s not.

Gatekeeping is when you insist everyone must believe what you believe. What happened on screen DOES NOT indicate an alternative timeline. That is something you have chosen to take from it, and that’s fine, but stop pushing that belief on everyone else.

So if I believe that Spock is a Vulcan but someone else says he’s Andorian it is out of line to say he is actually Vulcan?

🙄. That’s really they only response I can give you inane comparison/question.

So with that response I can only take that to mean that it is NOT gatekeeping to say to someone who believes that Spock is an Andorian that he is really a Vulcan. Therefore, no. I am not gatekeeping at all and you just opted to not admit it.

*sigh* I’ve learned at my age that certain arguments are simply not worth my time and energy, and this is one of them.

I was fully expecting to really dislike this episode and it completely proved me wrong. It was a great character exploration and really revealed a lot about the motivation of the crew. I loved the end hearing the classis TOS ending theme.

Well done to the cast and crew! LLAP🖖👏👏👍

In my humble opinion, Ethan Peck’s singing was just as good as several of the others; his song of rejection by Christine was most touching, and worth repeat listening several times over!

Peck was decent, but I do think there was a little more Autotune applied for him than for, say Bush or Romijn.

Agreed! A smart, touching, enjoyable romp on the ol’ gal, Enterprise.

Loving this season and the series, *thank you* cast & crew 👍

This episode was one of the most silliest/corniest/bizarre episodes of Trek i have ever watched.

To me it’s right up there with DS9’s Move Along Home in terms of corny lol and viewing this episode as a full on comedy makes it much better imo.

Personally i was laughing through the episode with just how silly i thought it was.

I’m fine with musical episodes (A TV show called Sanctuary had a musical episode named Fugue that was good and Buffy’s Once More With Feeling was great) and if it was just the characters singing it would’ve been better.

But with all the dancing i felt like i was watching a dancing competition show like Strictly Come Dancing but more corny lol.

Criticisms aside it was way better then i thought going in and it was clear the actors enjoyed themselves.

Don’t get me wrong i appreciate SNW doing something new in Live Action Trek but sadly this episode just isn’t for me. I’m sure others will enjoy it and more power to them.

Strange that you liked BtVS’s Once More With Feeling but not this, since they are very similar. And that had quite a bit of dancing, too, including the Xander and Anya number.

Big “Once More With Feeling” fan here. My perspective on why I felt this was well done but, for me, isn’t on the same level: each song in OMWF was a stand-alone hit. And they all had different vibes and styles, yet held an interconnected theme between them — even literally, towards the end, as the elements from the different songs blended together towards the climax with Sweet. (I love that Buffy and friends actually lost against him. Their unearthed misery his reward.)

I felt none of that depth and weight with this episode.

Yes, each SNW cast member belted their numbers out well, and they worked in the current story themes well enough, but it all just felt fairly… generic? Chapel’s brutal, throaty kick to Spock’s naive heart and the angry Klingon crew’s brief, but hilarious number being the only real stand-outs for me.

The rest just felt kind of by-the-numbers. Competent, well performed, but generally uninspiring.

Of course, I may discover a fondness for it on rewatches. I’m open to that. And, of course, the impact of this on each viewer will vary, and that’s absolutely fair.

OMWF is an extremely high bar. That this even approaches that bar is something I’ll happily give it credit for.

I’m chasing ST:SNW, eager to hold it in a warm embrace and let it’s science fiction narrative wash over me, to add subsidy to my intellect and embellishment to my sense of wonder. But SNW runs from me, always remaining just out of reach. Just when I feel I am catching up, getting close, then……it surges away from me again, darting to the left and to the right and to this way and to that. Like an over-possessive spurned lover I cry out “come back to me, be what I want you to be, love me like I have loved you….”, and in response it titters flippantly, mockingly, and then performs an impossible loop, now behind me to kick my posterior and to send me sprawling face-first into the indignity of the parched and dusty earth. And there, lying in a pool of sticky mud formed by my own tears, weeping, mewling, I understand finally, that when you truly have loved something, you need to let it go……..

Yep. To me, this was the nail in the coffin to all Trek pre-Secret Hideout. It’s over. This is “Star Trek” now, even if it’s nothing close to what I think should be allowed to use that name. I really had high hopes with SNW season 1. I was willing to maintain some level of hope with season 2, but now that’s gone. Picard season 3 will probably be the last thing that ever feels like the Trek I knew and loved. I’m willing to accep that SNW, Discovery, and whatever comes next is for a new generation. But I honestly just don’t think the jump between TOS and TNG was anywhere close to as jarring as this.

For all those who gave up after TNG premiered, who were dyed-in-the-wool TOS fans who just couldn’t accept the change, I think I finally understand their pain.

The difference is when TNG came along it wasn’t a change. It was further down the line. It didn’t undo anything TOS did. Some may not have liked the time shift… I was one of them. I wanted to go forward from the feature film time. But this feels like they are just making their own version of Trek. I give them credit… I thought they wanted to “overwrite” older Trek but they have since made it clear it isn’t. That it’s a brand new KU like timeline. So at least there’s that.

TNG season 1 is a huge tonal change from TOS, with unlikable characters and Roddenberry’s absurd rules like “no conflicted characters” that didn’t exist in the 60s. This was gradually corrected in seasons 2 and 3.

If you mean different in that the characters are acting different with a slightly different set of behavioral rules, then sure. But I would argue that while this was Roddenberry throwing more of his personal view into the show it was still reasonable in that humanity would have certainly had some perspectives change over 80 years. But it still didn’t undo anything established from TOS. It really built on that.

I’m just curious, but have you liked any episodes in season 1 or 2?

Yes, I actually liked most of season 1. Season 2 had a few that I’ve enjoyed, but have to take them as not part of canon (and even on some levels just plain not “Star Trek”) to enjoy them. Ad Astra per Aspera, Lost in Translation, and Under the Cloak of War had some good elements. I even liked Charades, but I had to suspend my disbelief when it came to how I really believe Spock would handle being fully human. But I can’t say I really just loved any of these in season 2, and there’s certainly more I don’t have to watch ever again. It just doesn’t feel like Star Trek to me anymore. I’ll watch the final episode and see where that leaves things. But if this season is any indication as to the approach to the potential season 3, I know I won’t be looking forward to it.

Ok fair enough! And I actually don’t disagree much with your assessment. Yeah I too thought season 1 was a lot stronger overall. For me that was the strongest first season of any Trek show since Voyager’s first season. I loved 8 out of the 10 episodes and that’s even including the canon issues I had with them. But I don’t include canon when I rate the episodes, just the quality of the stories themselves.

With season 2, I think I like it more than you do, but even for me, I really only loved 3 of the episodes so far. I don’t hate the others, just not as impressed with them (but episode 4 is my lowest rated easily). I still think season 2 is good overall but a big step down from season 1.

I guess the honeymoon is over. ;)

There are about 6 good episodes in each season. there are some episodes, like this one, that are clearly filler episodes in a 20-episode season arc, but not in 10. This was as disappointing as the episode in season 1 with the sets decorated as a castle…I can’t remember the name. No, strike that, this was annoying.

Yes, I like Season 1 just fine. The writing was perhaps a little blasé, but the sets are gorgeous and I really do like every one of the actors and the parts they play. Season two though, not so flash for me, the only two episodes I thought were fairly good were the one’s where Spock was humanised and the one about Uhura communicating with the Nebula lifeforms. Also kind of liked the planet episode where everyone forgets. The rest of the episodes though have disappointed me somewhat, I think it is because the writing has in my opinion been too simplistic, all gravy but little meat. I see a lot of people gushing over every episode of SNW though, so I can be thankful that SNG is mainly hitting it’s target audience. Unfortunately the idiosyncrasies of my receptiveness now lay on the periphery of the target rather than in the centre.

“ all gravy but little meat” yes, from the little I’ve seen, like broad strokes of drama, maybe a bit generic (unrequited love, superfighter during war background etc.), not too complicated or nuanced. That what you mean?

Yes, I think that is it, the actors in the show are all fantastic, but it is like they are being served comic book dialog by the writers. Or like a stone that spends all the time skipping over the water while suffering none of the drama of being submerged for a time. Or like cotton candy, put it in your mouth and marvel at the taste, but it melts away before reaching the stomach and leaves you still hungry. This show has a great cast, the background musical arrangements are quite good, the design of the ship is simply stunning in my opinion, and the show is bright and colourful. I just don’t think some of the writers are up to task, it’s like they are naive and barely know the bare basics of the human condition, and little about continuity and science fiction in general, and so write accordingly. I do think a part of the problem is the short yearly episode run – it may encourage “hit and run” types of writing, whereas a 26 episode season like in days of old would perhaps force the showrunner to implement a deeper narrative for each of the characters.

There are a lot of interesting comments there and I can concur with much of that assessment. Thumbs up.

Wow interesting points. For the record, I like the show more than you but I do 100% agree about the dialogue writing though. They do come off as a lot less professional and too contemporary at times. I have made the same complaints about LDS as well which is way way way worse, but I guess others excuse it more for being a comedy.

And yes having just 10 episodes the bad or ‘filler’ episodes stands out way more. But that said I still think SNW has much less of a problem with this than shows like DIS and PIC does IMO. And I think the episodic nature of the show really helps that too and probably a big reason why the classic shows have aged so well because you have so many episodes and can just easily skip the bad ones.

Funnily enough, I don’t agree about LDS :-) The dialogue may be informal, but behind the outwardly loud and colourful surface, in my opinion the writing on LDS is often more subtle or interesting than on SNW (though I recommend watching at 90% speed ;). I think Lower Decks had some quite intelligent stuff, some of it in the interpersonal field: Like when Mariner learned that sometimes true freedom is to do a thing you realise is right for yourself IN SPITE of your adversaries telling you to do exactly this, when your instinct would be to act contrary to them (in the episode where she fights herself on the holodeck). Sometimes there’s also a joke behind a joke to discover in LDS. And to this day, I think that LDS transports the vibe of the fantasy trek space-ship my cousins and I had as kids, bigheaded captain included :-). I still have my cousin’s drawing of a fantasy space ship labeled “Edge Of The Known Space Map”. Guess what the new LDS trailer started with: “At The Edge Of The Universe…” Hehe.

Not only the dialogue, but the plotting: Maybe SNW is the popcorn/blockbuster version of a Trek series, with some daily soap (love triangles etc.) and a healthy dose of teenage romantic fanfiction thrown in? Well I don’t mind so much that SNW does not succeed in catching my interest, because I enjoy Lower Decks a lot, so maybe to each their own in the new Trek universe.

Ok, thanks for the response! :)

We don’t really disagree that much. As I said in the other post, I agree season one was much stronger overall but still like season two. But I only love three episodes at this point which was the trial episode, Charades and TOS. The others were mostly fine, including this episode but not amazing either. And I agree the writing is definitely the culprit per usual.

But it does seem like the majority of fans like season 2 as much as season 1 or at least close to it. Looking at the IMDB ratings at least, the episodes in season 1 is a little stronger than season 2 but not much. And every episode in season 2 averages over 7 at least minus this episode so far. In other words there is no big gap in the ratings between both seasons even if season one is rated a little higher.

But that has zero to do with personal taste of course and this board seems to have bigger problems with season two when you look at the nearly high praise most of season one got here.

Make personal note — mushrooms combined with Vodka not a great mix.

Someone should set your deeply poetic comment to music. Kunstlied or opera perhaps.

Ha, and the music video could be of someone caught within a fever-dream inside of a coma!

I did not mind the singing as much as I minded the mention of K’tinga class battlecruiser which is WAY too early for cannon. 2270 or 2265 at earliest. Not 2257!

Yes nitpick but at this time the K’tinga was still the D7.

It’s the same design, but with more details added anyway.

Maybe “K’Tinga” is the Klingon name, and “D7” was just Starfleet’s designation for it. The Enterprise and her sister ships were still called Constitution-class even after the TMP refit. The K’Tinga is basically just the TMP-refit version of the D7 from the Original Series. Maybe it was called “K’Tinga” all along.

K’tingas were brand new in TMP according to the GR novel.

Given the novels aren’t canon though, they have some latitude. I mean it’s pretty obvious that TMP Klingon ship was the same one from TOS, but done with the level of detail they could now afford for the model.

These writers don’t care. They just do what they want. Their knowledge of Star Trek is what they look up on memory alpha or Google search.

I noticed the name thing but since this is an alternate reality/reboot none of that matters. They can, and have, change anything they wish to.

Agreed! I also view this show in an alternate timeline.

It’s not just a personal view. I’d prefer it to be Prime and to obey all the rules. But they themselves showed us it absolutely isn’t in Ep 2.3.

That’s nuts criticizing Memory Alpha like this? Dude, that site, which I have written with many other Trek volunteer fans over the years, is the best single resource for this type of information.

You are way off base and you are throwing hundreds of volunteer fans over years who created this outstanding encyclopedia under the bus. In fact, the collaborators of that site intend that current and future creators of Star Trek will use the database actually like your are criticizing them for?

WTF? This is just way out of line! Of course we would hope the current producers and writers, who are very busy, would take the time to use this outstanding online resource Your comment is just freaking nuts to make fun of Memory Alpha — insulting many who have worked on that for decades.

Ah, internet. What would we do without you?

According to Memory Alpha website the K’tinga entered service in 2259.

And where did THEY get that info from?

They removed this episode, which is obviously canon.

I would love to know what William Shatner, Nick Meyer and Rick Berman think of this episode.

Nicholas Meyer loves it, William Shatner doesn’t give a damn, and Rick Berman thinks it’s gay.

I’ll add I thought it was great :)

Doubt any of them are watching….

Hopefully they all enjoyed it if they watch it.

A reference to turning into bunnies and uhura saying ”I’ve got a theory” have to be Buffy homages, right? 😁

Absolutely :)

I was skeptical but cautiously optimistic. Didn’t expect to like a a musical episode, but assumed I’d end up at least think it was cute or something by the end. But . . . I really just cringed my way through this.

It wasn’t particularly funny, I thought. Except maybe the Klingon bit. The songs weren’t especially good or even catchy . . . Watching La’an just more it less stand in her quarters and sing on repeat felt like an eternity.

I’m glad there seems to be a good number of people who enjoyed this. I want the show to succeed and do well . . . But . . . It’s just not one that’s going to have the rewatch value I’ve come to expect from other Treks.

This season has tried way too hard to be cute and not hard enough to seek out strange new worlds. Loved the Lower Decks episode, but . . . Yeah.

And not to beat the canon dead-horse, but k’t’inga class cruisers pre-TOS??

Yes to all of what you said and then some. I was not engaged at all for yet another hour of Trek. And that makes me sad because I LOVED this show in its first season.I’m all for Trek taking chances and doing lighter episodes, but with few exceptions (making M’benga a murderer, for instance), this has been a rather comedic season.

But that just one grump’s opinion. This episode is clearly some folks’ cup of Earl Grey and I’m glad for that. I’m one of the rare souls who LIKED “Spock’s Brain”, after all.

And not to beat the canon dead-horse, but k’t’inga class cruisers pre-TOS??

Remember the events in Episode 2.3. Falling in line with the prime TOS universe is no longer a thing. In fact it turns out it never has been.

Yep, just another confirmation – if having a musical episode wasn’t enough of a confirmation in the first place.

Why did you expect it to be funny? Most musicals aren’t. Sure, sometimes they have an amusing number like How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria but usually, no.

I didn’t expect it to per se, but I hope for it to be. For me, *my* tastes, comedy has been the saving grace of a number of musicals.

I actually come at this from the opposite standpoint: a lot of musicals have a number that’s morose, or at least a kind of soulful ballad — think “Tonight” in WEST SIDE STORY, or THE NIGHT OF THE DRAGON in “Miss Saigon” (literally about a Viet Cong commissar forcing Jonathan Price to pick rice in the fields), or “Memory” or “Old Deuteronomy” from CATS, or the main number from FROZEN.

That’s what “Subspace Rhapsody” was missing, I think, and La’an’s orchestral theme was the obvious place to put it.

I come at this from the perspective of liking musicals, but by that I mostly mean on-stage, in-person musicals, where you’re part of a communal, almost transcendent experience. CHICAGO and most Bollywood productions do nothing for me; I’ve only seen Hamilton on screen, and I failed to see what the hype was about. I bet I would have a different reaction in a theater. PHANTOM on the West End was a magical experience; on Disney+ during the pandemic, it was kind of “meh,” although anything during the pandemic kind of fits that bill. (To contradict myself a bit, I’ve enjoyed the two screen adaptations of WEST SIDE STORY.

I don’t know how well science fiction and musicals mash up together. I’m going to re-watch this and decide; my first impression was “good, but not great” — it was just a bit too peppy. I had a similar reaction to the Back to the Future musical adaptation. I never saw the Spider-Man musical.

The song that Uhura first played into the subspace fold seemed to be Nichelle Nichols singing if I am not mistaken

Awful. Just awful.

Nichelle Nichols is awful?

If it was Nichelle, at least that’s one better way to look at the choice of song. But to me, the way I look at the use of “Anything Goes” is that, why on earth would someone that far in the future even KNOW that song? That would be like someone today pulling out a Bach concerto and jamming out to it and expecting everyone else to hum along. Sure, there are still plenty of people who appreciate classical, but I highly doubt “The Great American Songbook” would be the first thing thought about on a starship in the 23rd century…. In fact, the first question might be, “What do you mean by American?”

Well, Anything Goes is 89 years old and is still well-known, so there’s that. Plus, there was a revival of the musical (from which the song originates) last year on the London stage.

And why wouldn’t the Great American Songbook still be known to music lovers? Art lovers are still well acquainted with the Dutch Masters who painted their works in the 1500s and 1600s.

I don’t think works of art (such as paintings) equates with music – even though it is an art. There are plenty of art lovers in the world, but the average person doesn’t grab their phone and start browsing through paintings everyday. But popular music is everywhere, and I would say 1 out of every 4 people in most public places have on headphones or are somehow enjoying music. The vast majority of music listeners don’t spend their time listening to creations more than 50 or 60 years old. And even if people do listen to classical on occasion, other than classical musical lovers, I don’t think most people could identify much more than Beethoven’s 5th Symphony or maybe Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.

Simply put, the average person is going to identify with music from their generation. They may enjoy some “oldies” but, from my interactions with people of many ages, I think “oldies” fall within the last 30 to 50 years for most people. I work with college students everyday, and I can guarantee you that they aren’t very familiar with songs recorded in the 1950’s, much less the 1750’s!

So to assume that a person on a starship in the 23rd century is very familiar with 20th century music, so much so that it’s the first thing that pops in their head when told to come up with a tune, seems absurd. This problem isn’t limited to SNW. Most Star Trek’s have this problem.

As for knowing the “Great American Songbook”, I would ask a different question – what would you pick from the “Great Native American Songbook”? Native American’s were the dominant population throughout most of North America less than 300 years ago. Can you sing one of their songs? You probably live in an area close to where a tribe called home in the 1700’s. Shouldn’t you be able to recite a song from that time if Uhura was aware of “Anything Goes” being part of the “Great American Songbook”?

what would you pick from the “Great Native American Songbook”?

False equivalency. Native American music has only rarely been recorded for widespread distribution. Sure, you can find some modern day performances, but the vast majority of Native American culture (including music) has been lost to time since the arrival of Europeans and therefore was never widely known. That isn’t the case with Anything Goes and others of the Great American Songbook, which have been recorded too many times to count in dozens of languages and is very easily available. At least two versions of the Broadway score (1987 and 2011) are readily available on iTunes. Not bad for an almost 90 year old musical.

summt augenblicklich “ein feste burg ist unser gott, ein gute wehr und waffen….”

That would be pretty cool. I can’t be entirely sure, but I don’t think it’s Nichols: https://music.apple.com/mu/album/anything-goes-broadway-version-single/438424778

I think it was Patty Lupone from the 1987 revival of Anything Goes.

Loved it. Can’t wait to watch again.

It was a harmless episode that I didn’t personally love. I don’t mind the concept at all, I just wanted more out of the story, beyond the character stuff coming to a head. Or maybe the personal stuff should have been framed in a more urgent way, I don’t know.

That said, I hope Spock’s eventual path towards logic isn’t based on his brief romance with Chapel ending. Spock believes in logic, he doesn’t just use it as a shield against feelings.

That was something that was cringe too. I find it a bad creative thing to do even with alternative timeline Spock. But whatever.

Honestly this episode wasn’t nearly as bad as most episodes but still… This show doesn’t seem know what it wants to do. It’s not going with different genres. Trek always did some of that. It’s not knowing how it even wants to treat itself.

At this point it’s pretty obvious any episode that ends up being decent is likely a mistake by the producers.

Yep on Spock’s turn toward logic. I had hoped he would have been inspired by a mentorship. Instead they went for heartbreak and that’s also a poor decision for Chapel too. Here’s hoping with her going away for the internship the characters get a chance to grow in better ways. I did at least appreciate the closure of some storylines like La’An and Kirk’s. Number One also got the opportunity to show not just tell what kind of leader and support system she could be to the crew. Like how all the characters got some scenes once again. This is something new in the back half of season 2 and I am liking it. I would also like to see some background characters, like Mitchell and Sam Kirk, get some more screen time. Admiral April would also be deserving of a bigger role. Special mention to Bruce Horak he does a great Klingon.

As for the delivery through songs….they did the best they could with it. It will never be a favorite and that’s ok. I hope they continue to take risks going forward into season 3. By focusing on strange new worlds and including more legacy characters or even original characters to enhance the show. Oh and an Ortegas episode. She deserves more serious content.

I absolutely loved this episode. I can’t belive there is only one episode left of the season.

Yes and probably no more after that for at LEAST 18 months!

Easily that where SNW is concerned. And generally in terms of live action, after episode 10, that will be it until Disco S5 starts.

I don’t actually mind the concept of a musical Trek episode. I can easily imagine DS9 doing one. And they did find a technobabble explanation that works for what it needs to do.

But why were the songs so boooooring? It’s all generic pop stuff that an AI could have written. And the music sounds like those loops that come free with a keyboard. It’s so aggressively mediocre.

I still have the music from the Buffy episode in my head. Or the songs from Todd and the Book of pure evil. Or Picard and Worf singing Gilbert and Sullivan for a Trek example. I can’t remember any of the songs from this episode and I JUST finished watching it.

With the album being released on digital platforms today, I was hoping to add at least a few of the songs to a playlist, but nothing really grabbed me enough to go seeking any of them.

I wasn’t wowed by the music itself, but was surprised they took the time to write stuff that integrated into the story of the episode and the overall arcs. I think for me, it was just easy to not take this episode very seriously, so I could just sit back and take it in for what it is. And I thought it was fun. Applying my general criteria as it relates to canonical Star Trek, and it’s an unmitigated disaster. As funny as the Klingon stuff is, why would they act like just because they were singing? Would they not sing in their native tongue? Why would they immediately know to sing in another culture’s musical genre? Where did the music come from and why do they know how to sing original songs in unison? Again… think too much, and your brain will boil.

That was another complaint. I enjoyed that opening number. But then the rest of the songs were all so similar! After the opening I was hopeful. I shouldn’t have been. This is still Secret hideout after all.

Really? I thought La’an’s number was musically very different from Chapel’s.

They changed tempo but that doesn’t really differentiate them that much. It’s almost like rearranging a cue for a different feel.

No, they are completely different, stylistically. Now, I do think Chapel’s song “ I’m Ready ” and Spock’s song “ I’m The X ” have some elements in common, but I’m fairly sure that was deliberate, servings as two sides of the Chapel/Spock relationship coin.

This is a spot on review of the music. I won’t touch the episode as a whole or the fact that it happened as “Star Trek”, but as a musical, there wasn’t anything interesting or really any of the songs that will last in my memory past a few weeks.

I have kids, I’m exposed to a lot of kids music and movies, but some of them aren’t that bad. When Encanto came out, I didn’t really think it would be as big as it was, but I had to admit that several of the songs were catchy, and a few even stuck in my head beyond the first viewing. Since then, most of them have been nailed into memory, but there’s a couple I still like.

If you’re going to do this sort of thing, DO IT RIGHT! I felt like this was a mediocre attempt at music composition. And several of the performances were just static and empty. La’an’s solo soliloquy just about put me to sleep, as an example.

When I initially heard about the episode, the first thing that popped into my memory was “Star Trekkin across the universe…”. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know that a comedic parody song was more catchy than what was done here.

Crap! I haven’t had that in my head for a very very long time. Now you mentioned it and there it is again and I have no idea how long it will live there!!

Did Kirk know in TWOK that he was a father? I thought it was a surprise to him. I’ll have to watch that again, I just find it interesting that Kirk would have gone though all of TOS without mentioning David then

My thoughts exactly! Perhaps someone who has seen TWOK recently can confirm?

From: Trek BBS

TWOK is the first time that viewers became aware that James T. Kirk had a son, David Marcus, with his old flame Carol Marcus. But it’s a little unclear exactly  when  Kirk found out about David. He knows that Carol has a son by that name, but Kirk obviously doesn’t know David well enough to recognize him in the Genesis Cave ( “Is that David?” ). Kirk and Carol’s private conversation afterwards (added during reshoots to clarify things) is still ambiguous at best:

KIRK: I did what you wanted. …I stayed away. …Why didn’t you tell me? CAROL: How can you ask me that? Were we together? Were we going to be? You had your world and I had mine. And I wanted him in mine, not chasing through the universe with his father. … Actually, he’s a lot like you. In many ways. Please tell me what you’re feeling. KIRK: There’s a man out there I haven’t seen in fifteen years who’s trying to kill me. You show me a son that’d be happy to help him. My son. …My life that could have been, …and wasn’t. And what am I feeling? …Old. …Worn out.

No, he knew. In the film he said to Carol, “I did what you wanted… I stayed away”

Okay, I remember that now, so all of TOS he never once mentioned David and Carol Marcus, but he blurts this out to La’an now. Hmm.

I do think Paul Wesley is starting to grow on me as Kirk but best to leave him alone for a few seasons I think. He’s already overshadowing Pike.

Well, not mentioning it in TOS is what it is. Has been ever since TWOK came out.

Was he ever in a situation in TOS where someone was suggesting a serious relationship like La’an was though?

And we should have a pool for what Trek elements they are going to stick to and which they are going to completely obliterate in this new rebooted version of Trek. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for any of it.

Writer’s room: “Hey, wasn’t there some guy named Korby who Christine hooked up with? Let’s throw his name in there this episode. Oh, and what was the type of the Klingon cruiser in TOS? K’Tinga class, right?? And I think Kirk needs another pointless reason to return. It makes sense that he wouldn’t spend any time at his post with a family member on another ship. He’s just learning to be a first officer from someone he met ONE TIME…”

They mentioned Korby in Charades (and at the time, someone said he’d been mentioned before, but I don’t recall which episode.) so this seems to have been their end-game to get Spock and Chapel back to their TOS status quo.

But they didn’t need to. They set up a situation where they could have played with the relationship a lot more than they did. They aren’t beholden to what happens on TOS.

On TOS, where Chapel asks Spock, ‘have you ever been engaged?’ Clearly not beholden. More like, making it up as we go, but then when somebody says ‘tribble,’ instead of drinking, they put in a worthless nod to continuity, as if that offsets all the damage.

Exactly. It’s such a weird way how they are handling canon. One hand they acknowledge Korby, but they literally changed the entire back story o of how they originally got together.

I guess I just don’t really understand it? It’s not acting like a ‘true’ prequel but more like the Kelvin movies did and just added whatever canon they wanted but changed a lot of it around, but unlike SNW the Kelvin movies made clear it wasn’t trying to fit TOS canon and do its own thing.

But then they went and made an episode that says “Yes, this is why everything is so very different. This is a different timeline/reality.” Just like the KU movies did.

Yeah I agree with you, I just mean the way the producers discuss the show. They still talk about it as if they are trying to line it up with TOS and anyone with eyes clearly see that’s not the case.

But as you said they gave themselves an out where they can change whatever they want in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow but then in the OTHER time travel episode, TOS, they still treat it like the show MUST line up with every event in TOS (the show) and how strict Boimler and the crew treated his and Mariner’s presence. Now of course Boimler and Mariner don’t know about the changes in the timeline or obviously they are affected by the changes as well but I’m going on the notion in LDS everything from their POV is exactly what leads up to TOS and the canon we know.

So it’s a bit confusing but welcome to temporal mechanics lol.

The producers don’t really have a clue what the prime timeline really is. The difference between the Kelvinverse and this, is that the writers for the Bad Robot movies decided to create a new timeline / canon.. which is the smartest thing they did. This braintrust has decided that this is an altered prime universe, so basically TOS as we knew it is wiped out. That’s a problem for a lot of fans.

I’ve heard it said that they actually WANT to wipe out TOS and do what they think is the superior version of it. I still have a tough time with that as that sounds too conspiratorial for me. But there are times when I cave and think that theory might have merit.

But yes. Say what you will about the KU features they had the balls to tell us all it was an alternate/reboot.

This very well could be an example of having their cake and eating it too.

Honestly I just don’t know what the producers are thinking. They said it was in prime but then they just blow apart some rather huge parts of the lore. Then they make an episode that clearly says, “this is an alternate reality” yet haven’t publicly confirmed that is what they did. Did they intend for some fans to follow what they said last year and other to follow what they showed in the episode? What’s the point of THAT? This is why I say this show is very schizophrenic. I don’t think they really know what they want to be. Or they know they want to be everything. They want to be both prime and be free to do what they want. Those two things would seem to be at odds with each other.

True that. If the show really was prime then using a version of the little rectangle things or throwing in Dr Korby call outs doesn’t make up for the HUGE mistakes already made. It’s like smashing out a car windshield and replacing the radiator with one for a different make and model but saying “Look! We added a USB port! It’s fine!”

K’Tinga actually only appeared starting with TMP, so this K’Tinga is over a decade early.

He also asked Carol “Is that David?” when he first saw him. So he already knew about David.

I think heyberto is correct. I think Kirk’s surprise in TWOK was based on David being fully grown/a man and not recognizing his own son…that many years had passed since he stayed away and he obviously didn’t get birthday pictures along the way, so he had no idea what his son looked like after a couple of decades.

Nice tie-out to canon.

He was surprised to run into David, and I think it was a little ambiguous whether or not David knew that Kirk was his dad, but Kirk definitely knew that David was his son.

I’m calling it now, Kirk and La’an hook up before she leaves the enterprise. We find out she is pregnant with a child Kirk will never be aware of. The great revelation that Kirk’s greatest nemesis is actually an ancestor of his own child.

It had a few good moments but ultimately the A plot was not strong and the dual B-plots were stretched to carry the rest of the episode through all the singing and dancing. Those songs were not particularly inspired or catchy.

“Creating a musical episode has been a stated goal of executive producer Alex Kurtzman”. I think this is biggest the problem I have with this episode. It felt like it was really stretching hard — an undeniable trait of Kurtzman to shoehorn personal goals into trek. In fact, it might be my least favorite episode.

I was curious what other people thought of it and I guess they liked it, so whatever — to each their own.

See, I was hoping they’d just leave plot out of it completely, and just make this a crazy, non-canonical romp. So making the plot elements weak is a feature, not a bug, IMO. And I agree wholeheartedly that the idea of a musical episode is not something that makes any sense, conceptually. Perfect for Lower Decks. However.. I do think the creatives have conditioned us for something so ridiculous with their low bar for storytelling in this series so far.

Yeah, actually. If they had a Trek comedy series a musical episode with no explanations would slip into that genre more easily. There is a reason comedy/musical are often mixed together.

Lower Decks was best left out of this, and outside of canon. It’s the perfect place to do ridiculous things. This series, is not.

See, I was hoping they’d just leave plot out of it completely, and just make this a crazy, non-canonical romp. So making the plot elements weak is a feature, not a bug, IMO.

It seems like Spock and Chapel had this crazy relationship for all of one week before it began falling apart.

Yeah. They are free to do what they want. So if they are going for a Spock-Chapel thing then they should really go for it. Just like Spock-Uhura in the KU. To be as brief as they were doesn’t feel fair to anyone.

I’m ok with it. The break up was the best part of the episode.

A more serious episode where the characters lose the ability to mask their feelings but this just comes out in normal verbal interaction might have been better.

The songs were kinda meh, but t It was a fun episode. But when the original Star Trek theme played after the rift blew up and the bridge crew cheered, i got choked up. They got me with that one.

I really thought they should have been singing the actual GR lyrics to the TOS theme at some point, maybe the climax. Instead of singing about the ‘mission.’

I thought about that, too. But I thought it might have cost them too much money to do it. Funny when one considers why GR wrote the lyrics to begin with.

Well I got it COMPLETELY wrong! Thought this was going to be a horror show but my god this was good.

Some of the singing was excellent, especially from Celia Rose Gooding but also great stuff from Christina Chong, Jess Bush and even Ethan Peck!

Choreography was excellent, especially with Jess Bush in the bar and that finale….WOW!

I gotta say hats off to the actors, composers and arrangers for this episode. I expected this episode to be over the top and at times corny, which it was, but hey, this is fiction and fantasy, so I was ready for the “take me there” moment. I have been a Treker since the 60s, and have seen every second of Trek that has been released, but by profession, I am a recording engineer, producer, arranger and composer, working on projects that range from contemporary, to classical, to world, to traditional musics for commercial, theatrical and large scale event releases, so, with professional curiosity, I was looking forward to hear what musical adventures Toronto/Hollywood had come up with for this episode.

I have always admired Treks high production values, not only visually, but also audio wise. When these episodes drop, I usually watch them in my studio, through my studio monitors, to get the full, juicy sonic experience. When our characters are speaking to each other in engineering for example, you will hear the “ambience” of the large space they are working in (engineering), but when they kick into song, the voices all of a sudden become very dry and up close, very processed, with varying degrees of pitch correction software (from 3 to 11:). That alone took me out of the fantasy. I suppose the solo actors were recorded in a proper isolation booth in a studio. which sound very, very dry, with no acoustics at all. Again, high praise to the creative staff and the actors who sang, BUT there are people on the production staff responsible for continuity, both visual and auditory, and the differences in the way the voices sound in and out of song is very noticable, more so to professional ears, but also to your average Joe (or Josephine). There are ways to minimize these sonic differences, but it looks like nobody paid attention to this or they just did not care (maybe short on time?). Heck, even the musical movies of the 60s did a better job of this.

The song styles were also all over the place, but that may have kept the episode more dynamic. One thing tho, had it not been a musical, these character confessions would have been much shorter.

I know a lot of my production colleagues are also Trekers, and we do look up to the show for its production values, and sorry to say, this one lowered the bar. The episode sort of looked like a lip synced karaoke show.

Well, I hope SNW returns to the science part of science fiction soon. Pike, Spock and Una were much more focused on Discovery than they are on their own ship. Even Prodigy is more of a science fiction than SNW.

The lip syncing took me out of it early on. I realize they have to do that, but it was pretty blatant.

I appreciate your analysis as an expert. I helps me know that i’m not crazy. I do video production but not full on audio engineering. But even to me, I felt there was a lot lacking on the production side – both visually and in terms of audio.

Actually watched it again, this time knowing about those audio bumps on the road, I had an even greater appreciation for the work that the actors put into their performances. My faves, “I’m ready” and “I’m the Ex”.

It was… terrible. Far too indulgent of the cast and producers. I wish somebody had just said No.

That assessment is harsh. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it showed the real range and talent of so many of these writers and actors. I found it to be silly, as most musicals are, but I also am impressed with the quality of the original songs and was pleasantly surprised at how good a singer Ethan Peck actually is.

Well, as I’ve said above, I was able to enjoy the episode, but it isn’t very good Star Trek, and I do wish they’d quit trying to make Trek into something it’s not. I don’t need to see the cast sing and dance to know they’re talented. If this had been a singular one-off, and they quit trying to tie everything in to a larger storyline, I think it would have been better. Combine this with the Lower Decks crossover and get the ridiculousness of both out of the way in one shot.

This is not a harsh assessment by any stretch – if you remember that this is STAR TREK. It should have been a hard “no”, and this isn’t even the only instance this season.

I’ve said it multiple times before, but I feel like the inmates are running the asylum – as in the actors have more say than they should. I read and listened to comments talking about SNW the production of season 2 last year where they were talking about how the direction was going to take more “big swings” similar to The Elysian Kingdom (one of my least favorite episodes of season 1), and I knew things were getting out of control. The cast talked about how much “fun” it was to do that episode. Yes, work should not be painful, but there’s a fine line between having fun and remembering the source material.

Despite the fact that I found this fun (unlike the Spock Comedy episode), I agree with everything you said. I would say it’s not terrible at what it’s trying to be, but it certainly is terrible Star Trek.

Indulgent is definitely the right word for it lol. I was certainly prepared to hate it like you, but actually liked it in the end. But no, I don’t see myself rewatching it a lot either. But it seems to be a hit overall with people based on reading the other boards, especially on Reddit. I can’t wait to see what the IMDB score will look like for this.

It was a very entertaining episode. Christina Chong is a wonderful singer.

I also liked the nod to canon with the mention of a pregnant Carol Marcus. Poor La’an.

The Spock and Chapel relationship seems to be ending now since she will be away falling in love with Roger Korby. That was a very brief off-screen romance. Poor Spock. I guess now we know why he threw the Plomeek soup at her in Amok Time. LOL

Not the best episode out of the season in my opinion, but entertaining.

Cringy Girl glee trek…..

Just skip and delete episode for me. Not that the songs were bad, mind you, but I still hate musical, especially when they are 2 and more singing. This didn’t do anything for me, other then being a cringe illogical episode. The cross over with Lowers decks was much more logical and done with care then this. If they would have done the Klingon’s opera or side of things, it might have been fun.

I’m actually surprised people like this episode. Well, different strokes for different folks, I guess I’m in the minority here. I was expecting silly great songs like in the classic Buffy episode ‘Once more with feeling’ but got a bunch of lame, boring songs that all sound the same. Horrible episode. The only reason I’d rate it 2/10 instead of 1/10 is that absolutely hilarious Klingon scene. With a better songwriter this could have been a legendary episode. Too bad.

I think that some people jumped on early today to make sure and skew it more positively. I’m sure some other social mediums are full of positive publicity. But taking this as JUST a musical and discounting that it’s Star Trek, I thought it was mediocre at best.

Peck could have sung a cover version of Nimoys “Bitter dregs” after Chapel dumped him.

I won’t be surprised if Christine Chapel leaves after this season. I also don’t see Kirk being used again until a series finale when he takes over the Enterprise.

If canon still mattered, then one could only hope that Kirk doesn’t show up. Since canon is out the window, Kirk will be back in season 3 – if and when that ever happens.

I have to say this episode was fantastic. I wasn’t expecting to to be…The writing, the songs that were actually good songs and the lyrics that fitted so well into the story and plot. The production, the choreography… “those negative Nancy self proclaimed did hard fans” will state… Star Trek doesn’t do musicals… yet song played a big part of the last season of DS9 with Vic. And yes Star Trek does to silly comedy… little green men and trials and tribulations!!

When it started I was thinking, “Holy crap! This looks to be very enjoyable and fun for a change!” And it was. Unfortunately the songs ended up all being too similar. Since the new characters are being overshadowed by the classic ones I still don’t really care much about them so the emotional side of the episode ended up falling flat. And that finale was super uninspiring. Once again, the writers need to learn nuance. Subtlety.

All that being said it’s still the 2nd best episode of the series. After 1.10.

I can’t agree with you today. We’re often on the same page, but this one ranks near the bottom for me. Star Trek has done fun before without throwing the baby out with the bath water. The premise alone was enough for me to even think of skipping it. I’m not that kind of person, but I kinda wish I had. But it’s also par for the course for an underwhelming season. 10 episodes, and I think maybe 2 are worth ever going back and watching.

Fair enough. And I can certainly understand where you are coming from. This figured to be an extremely divisive episode to begin with. Even still I expected the people who have been liking the season overall would still like the episode and those who have not been liking it would not find this one any different. I was obviously OK with it. I wish the numbers were better and it didn’t try to get all emotional. The only thing I really enjoyed was the opening number. Beyond that it was repetitive and tiresome. But I do want to give them credit for trying something different. But again, if they did more episodes in a season I think doing something like this would be a safer bet. But with only 10 and they have started so very many storylines already… This didn’t seem like the best choice. Maybe if the show was better….

I expected to hate it.. and I really didn’t. It’s not a great musical or anything, but it is a fun romp. Like I said above, break the 4th wall, Take it out of canon, and this would work a LOT better.

I would probably say there has only been one great episode and one pretty good and the rest of the season has been so average. I actually really enjoyed last season’s final episode and was really looking forward to season 2. Spock has gone from one of my favourite characters to in this series the most annoying characters. Not really the actor himself who is pretty good but the writing for the character is very poor. I bought the first season on UHD blu ray, think I’ll be giving this one a miss.

This definitely deserves some kind of award

LOL, nope! Perhaps I watch too much TV and movies, but this doesn’t rank that high on the level of quality that you get from SO MANY OTHER productions that have either included musical numbers or even done a full on musical. Maybe it had potential, but I don’t think the final product is anything more than a ratings stunt.

Okay, cards on the table: I’m a theatre person, and I have sympathy with the “theatrical” elements of it

That was the most fun I’ve had with an episode of Star Trek in a long time. The songs weren’t all to my taste, though the opener was technically really solid. It has some really nice rhythmic and melodic subtleties.

I appreciated that it gave (almost) everyone something to do, and we got to see them working. Sad that we didn’t get enough Ortegas, but I’m glad they actually did something with Number One.

At first I hated the Klingons. I wanted a blast of Opera in the middle of the finale. But the flip into hip-hop with the backup dancers was so over the top that it came back around. Brilliant.

On a technical side, one thing I think they missed the mark on a little was the lip syncing. I know they’re working on a time crunch, and tastes vary, but, to me it seemed that a lot of the folks were very obviously lip syncing. The more seasoned singers sold it (Celia Rose Gooding continues to crush it), but others, not so much (looking at Anson Mount).

Still, I’m really happy this exists. It was fun. If someone doesn’t like Star Trek but has a soft spot for campy musicals, this is a good gateway episode.

I think it was a fail not having the Klingons sing in Klingon. If not an opera then perhaps something for contemporary Klingon. But yeah… These writers just don’t have it in them for something as detailed as that.

I wouldn’t call it a fail myself, but perhaps a missed opportunity. It’s tough enough to learn music as is, and then add in a fictional language and its own musical foibles it might not be worth it. They’d have to really knock that portion out of the park, and I just don’t see any Trek writer pulling that off

Star Trek is usually pretty Shakesperian. Traditionally the actors have had some of that background. Wrapping their mouths around a made up language shouldn’t be too hard for people who can perform that olde English stuff. They had to have hired songwriters for the numbers, right? Put the effort in. Make it work. What we ended up seeing just came across as lazy.

I’m gonna strong disagree on the comparison between Shakespearean English and Klingonese.

Background: I have two linguistics degrees. I specialized in the history and development of English before doing ma MA in Norse. I’m a theatre practitioner, and studied music for 10 years.

Shakespearean English is basically identical to modern English. Words have come and gone from usage, and we’ve changed the value of some vowels, but the gist of it is identical. The phonetic inventory has been stable for a few hundred years.

Klingon was *specifically* designed around being as utterly alien as possible. Weirdest syntax you can imagine. Consonant clusters that just don’t happen normally.

Add in the harmonies and rhythms that don’t follow regular conventions. It’s gonna be damn near impossible to get that into a 20 second bit.

Like, listen to ‘u’ — it’s something else. If it’s not that, it ain’t Klingon opera.

They could make some knockoff Bizet, but that would be so boring. That’d be the lazy way out, imo.

OK. You seem to have the credentials and far be it from me to question your experience.

That said uttering Shakespearian lines, while still english words, is weird and unnatural for today’s language. In that respect memorizing random sounds ought not be that difficult for competent actors. Perhaps making up an authentically alien sounding Klingon song is a tall task. And perhaps would turn a lot of viewers off. But it sure would have helped with creating depth in their universe. And it wasn’t like it had to be 4 minutes long. Just 10-20 seconds of it would have done the job.

I went into this episode with a lot of trepidation but the episode actually was excellent. They embraced the campiness of it all. It had all the vibes of Buffy the Vampire Slayers musical episode.

This is the most original, creative and beautifully realized episode of any Star Trek iteration, ever. Period. They keep hitting it out of the park on SNW!

Settle down.

It’s interesting that when someone responds to overly harsh negativity (which seems to permeate here) they are clapped back with “I’m allowed to have an opinion too!”

But when someone is overly positive your response is “settle down.”

Very very interesting.

I’d much rather celebrate people’s love and positivity than encourage hate and negativity and force everyone to be as miserable as ML31.

Overall I liked it, but far from love it!

I think like many, I wasn’t sure what to even think of the idea when most assumed it would be a musical. On one hand, yeah, interesting and unique for Star Trek that’s for sure lol. On another level, this could be a total disaster that’s just beyond cringe and an embarrassment for Trek as a whole that would sit in its rightful place with other noteworthy disasters from Spock’s Brain to These Are The Voyages. But this one done in spectacular fashion. It was a gamble for sure, but thankfully I think it was mostly successful and will be considered one of the whackier but memorable episodes that many will truly love and embrace. Others…not so much.

For me, not being a musical person at all, but certainly liked many growing up, this was definitely a fun episode. I thought the songs were very fun and enjoyable, more than I thought they would be, but it was still a bit too many for me. But the story itself and how it supposedly happened was confusing. I gave up trying to understand Spock’s very deep technobabble of the event and its ‘musical reality’. I actually just wish they went super silly with it and met a large pink alien unicorn in space who sprouted out some bizarre space glitter from its horns onto the Enterprise that made the crew sing and dance in order to save the multiverse or help conceive a unicorn baby or something.

But I did like it, especially the Klingon boy band lol. Easily the best part for me. I laughed so hard. But everyone put a lot of effort into their roles and were mostly good, but La’An and Uhura were definitely the stand outs IMO. I did like how we got some actual story in there with Kirk and Carol Marcus or Chapel breaking up with Spock (thanks Boimler ;)).

Overall, I thought it was good, but still not amazing. I’m always happy to see Trek try to shake it up a bit, especially with 800+ stories and counting, but I highly doubt this will be much of a rewatch for me in the future. But I’m happy for the people who truly loved it.

Yeah, definitely Celia Rose Gooding and Christina Chong were the stellar voices, but I was also impressed with Rebecca Romijn’s vocal stylings. The guys, not so much haha but they did not embarrass themselves. Also liked how they progressed the stories of Kirk and La’an as well as Chapel and Spock. Yeah Boimler did play a big role in making sure Spock stayed on course haha.

Absolutely loved it.

I’m pretty sure Nichelle Nichols would have broken down and wept over Celia Rose Gooding’s performance. Fantastic.

She’s the vocal standout of the whole thing, and it’s not close.

I thought it was fantastic! Really enjoyed this musical episode 😃

It’s over.

I’ve already felt this multiple times this season, but this one took the cake. Star Trek as I knew it and loved it pre-Secret Hideout is officially gone. Picard season 3 was the last thing even closely resembling Star Trek, and even it had its issues. But what SNW has proven is that what I call Star Trek and what the powers-that-be in the Kurtzman world call “Star Trek” are not the same thing.

The worst part is, this isn’t even the best version of a terrible concept. They could have at least made something that would be memorable enough to sing the songs over and over (whether you want to or not), but that’s not even the case. Looking at it as solely a musical, it’s still mediocre at best .

SNW season 2 was already ranking a lot lower than season 1 to me, but now I don’t think I can even compare them anymore. And once again, the premise of the episode excluded a “Strange New World”. I mean there was a spacial anomaly, and for past Trek’s, that would have sufficed because there may have been more to discover about the anomaly and that could have worked as a “new world”. Instead, we once again explore the feelings, relationships, and dynamics of the crew – just this time in song. The universe be damned! At least we had a chance to see them dance!

Someone in an early post on this article compared this to TOS’s The Naked Time, but I don’t think that’s fair to TOS. The Naked Time was FAR SUPERIOR to this episode in that it gave a plausible reason for the crew to lose their inhibitions, and the interactions were MUCH MORE interesting. The fact that Subspace Rhapsody decided to use the “multiple universes” excuse to somehow explain the idea that a “musical universe” exists and there’s even rules that it follows that were apparently created by Broadway just sits poorly with me. Maybe this can somehow be put into a “out of universe” category and ignored, but SNW season 2 has already had enough other fails that it’s just par for the course.

Star Trek as I knew it and loved it pre-Secret Hideout is officially gone.

Oh, I’ve given up on Secret Hideout Trek over a year ago. For reasons that have been stated here ad nauseum. My only hope is after a lengthy writers & actors strike the Secret Hideout deal is somehow ended. Trek goes away for a bit but resurfaces later with better people involved. Maybe we don’t need self proclaimed Trek fans running things. Just new people who will respect the source material.

This site needs a block button ASAP

I’ve been a proponent of that for quite some time. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. My personal block “button” has been to see a name of someone I no longer wish to engage and just move past the post without reading a word. It does work pretty good.

…. because people having a different opinion should be blocked?…..I’m assuming IDIC is not your thing.

To be fair, for me it’s not about different opinions/takes. I’ve only done that to people who were insulting, stalkers or troublemakers. And of the few I’ve done it to all but one has been banned. And the last one I just don’t see around all that much anymore.

Dude… we know. We ALL know. I’m all for everyone sharing their perspectives but you just spam the same ones over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. We know what you think. We get it.

Who’s “we”? You don’t get to speak every everyone. You don’t like what I say then either ignore it or engage me and talk about it. No need to react in such a way. It’s not a good look.

Cut the music from it and it is watchable. I hate musicals and this did not sway me!

In space, everyone can hear you sing!

Well I just checked IMDB and yeah this is not going to be the runaway hit I thought it might be just reading some of the first reactions. At the moment, the episode sits at 6.6. Thats very low for this show. Not Discovery ratings low, but low for SNW. It’s the second lowest ranked episode of the show overall with Elysian Kingdom being the lowest with 6.1. And it’s the only other episode that has fallen in the 6 category out of 19 episodes.

Of course it’s early it can still move up (or move down) but starting that low from the start tells me this episode is a divisive one and probably will stay between 6.5-7. It’s not going to be a fan favorite, put it that way.

Now compare that to Those Old Scientists that started with a 9.4 rating immediately after it aired and currently sits at 9.2. And that is still the top rated rated episode of the show overall.

“Elysian Kingdom” has a 6.1…? That’s preposterous.

LOL, sad but true!

But I will admit, on a rewatch of it, it’s not as strong as I originally felt and it’s the second worst episode of season 1 for me. The pacing felt super slow as well. I wouldn’t rate it that low personally but probably in the low 7’s.

As far as Subspace Rhapsody, yeah a 6.5 is about where I would rate that one so it’s right on target for me.

I’d be interested in seeing the distribution of when the scores were submitted. If there were a slew of low scores within moments of it being possible to watch the episode, that would maybe be indicative of some reactionary brigading.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that’s happened here – people are 100% allowed to like/dislike what they want – but it is curious.

Reading more of the reviews, it reflects the score because it doesn’t seem to be a lot of people in the middle. The people who like it seems to REALLY like it and the people who hate it REALLY hates it. But sure I would be curious too.

But no one should be surprised lol. Most people thought it was a weird idea from the start and many were apprehensive about it. Very few people thought this was an amazing idea. But I think a lot more people liked it than they thought they would and that includes myself.

But making a Star Trek ‘musical’ a home run for a lot of hardcore sci fi geeks was always going to be an uphill battle.

lol, yeah, I’m not surprised in the least bit surprised at the reviews given the what these pages have been like over the last few weeks. I don’t have any problem with people disliking the episode, but I know some folks heralded the mere concept as the Death of Star Trek, which just seemed silly to me.

Definitely an uphill battle. It was successful for me, and that’s the vote I care most about. :)

That’s not a horrible rating either. The reality is MOST Trek episodes there usually fall between 6 and 7 which is about average. Anything 5 and below is considered bad. So people definitely didn’t like it, but it’s not a trash rating or anything.

And I liked the episode as well, but that’s about the rating I would give it personally as well.

yeah, I think I’d likely give it ~7/10

I tend to rate things on a 1-5 scale, without decimal options, with 3 being the typical about which I have no disqualifying complaints. I’d probably put this at 4 overall on that rubric

Btw Tiger2, I think you said this a few weeks ago, that a musical episode would draw attention from the mainstream entertainment media and not just the science fiction pundits. Well after looking at this morning’s coverage, it looks like you were right. From the LA Times to the EW, Variety (which has picked up many SNW stories), Vuture and The Guardian just to name a few. No, not as much as the Picard finale, but no bad. We shall see if it translates to the Nielson ratings.

Wow that is great to hear! :)

Not surprising this episode would bring some non-Trek media buzz for a change. It’s a big first for what they did and its great people are paying attention.

I’m pretty sure the ratings will be huge. I don’t know as big as TOS because people genuinely seem very excited about the crossover. This is more out of curiosity but I think every Trek fan who has P+ probably watched it, at least a little.

Haha TOS now has a new meaning!! Very appropriate!

No it doesn’t.

Well it has another meaning now which I think DeanH means.

Every time I see it I think one thing.

Sorry. It’s engrained.

I think pretty much everyone here does as well.

As you have said, the posts for E9 really seem to demonstate people either really liked it or hated it. As a kid, I grew up loving Star Trek and science fiction, but my parents also loved musicals, music and singing (along with sports and good food) so I really liked last night’s episode. That said, I totally understand why some are appalled of the thought of a musical episode and why the concept was polarizing. An “uphill battle” indeed, but one I personally am happy they took on.

Yeah it’s actually funny reading the reviews here. One post says ‘this was absolutely fantastic and a stunning achievement that is now the best episode to date’ but then the next one after that is ‘I am appalled this thing even exists and someone should be fired for making this embarrassment’. Yeah VERY divided man. ;)

But I actually went back to see what the review rating is on IMDB now and it actually went up . It’s currently at 6.9 now which is pretty impressive that it jumped this high in a day. It will fluctuate for weeks obviously but I might have to take back my original assessment and this ends up being a bit more popular than what I thought. The episode may ultimately land in the 7s somewhere. Still not amazing, but certainly an improvement if it happens.

I don’t follow into either of those. I didn’t hate it, like usual. Nor was it great. It started out promising but ended up, meh. Which is pretty good for SNW.

Same, I’m mostly in the middle like you are. I didn’t cry with joy watching it but I didn’t feel like I was being tortured by watching it either. ;)

IMDb users have some biases. Rom-coms and pure romances don’t tend to do all that well. Musicals are a little hit or miss there but they usually have a rabid fan base to combat the naysayers (I can’t really explain The Greatest Showman outranking Chicago otherwise).

I’m guessing a lot Trek fans in general are not big musical fans either. Again you can’t be surprised because for two months now on this board people were complaining about it being a musical. It was always going to be a hard sell. But I did think maybe after it ran and seeing how much others loved it, it would be a bigger hit kind of the Lower Decks crossover turned out. But as this board is proving, it’s a pretty divided view.

You remember how divisive Vic Fontaine was at the time. Still is, probably.

LOL oh yeah! ;)

horrible turned it off

What the f was that

I’m not a fan of musicals, but had to sit through the whole thing anyway in case there was some plot progression elsewhere. It was torture. Thankfully I don’t ever have to watch it again if I ever return to rewatch SNW.

I’m happy to see the mostly positive reaction to this episode. It works because the writers have taken the time to give over two seasons and just 19 episodes (more for Pike thanks to Discovery) to let us get to know these characters. I have a better understanding of this crew than I ever did for VOY, ENT and especially Discovery. SNW, like TOS, TNG and DS9 is a true ensemble cast. Will this be an episode I rewatch often? Probably not. It was a heck of a showcase though for the talent of the writers, crew and especially the cast. Hate that the season is almost over and season 3 feels a long, long way away thanks to the current strikes.

Finale looks like a doozy with Pike likely to encounter more heartache and misery.

Shout out to Wil Wheaton on The Ready Room too. He does a nice job hosting and I enjoyed his interview with the very lovely and talented Christina Chong.

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Published Aug 4, 2023

RECAP | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 209 - 'Subspace Rhapsody'

Their voices will rise through space and through time.

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

StarTrek.com

In " Subspace Rhapsody ," this season of  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' penultimate episode, an accident with an experimental quantum probability field causes everyone on the U.S.S. Enterprise to break uncontrollably into song, but the real danger is that the field is expanding and beginning to impact other ships — allies and enemies alike.

• Nyota Uhura
• Christopher Pike
• Una Chin-Riley (Number One)
• Christine Chapel
• Marie Batel
• La’An Noonien-Singh
• James T. Kirk
• Erica Ortegas
• Dr. Joseph M'Benga
• Jenna Mitchell

• U.S.S. Enterprise
• Far edge of the Alpha Quadrant

"Subspace Rhapsody"

While traveling at the far edge of the Alpha Quadrant, the  U.S.S. Enterprise  encounters an unusual phenomenon — a naturally occurring subspace fold. Lt. Spock posits it could be used to triple the speed of subspace communications in the sector, but his experiment requires so much computer power that it temporarily forces Ensign Nyota Uhura to manually coordinate the entire ship’s communications network. Uhura struggles to keep up with the overwhelming task, routing calls and providing updates to numerous crew members.

In his quarters, Captain Christopher Pike conferences with Captain Marie Batel, who suggests their first vacation as a couple should involve visiting Crivo. Pike is hesitant to visit the touristy — and cliché — locale, claiming the time might be right and requesting they hold off on planning for a few days. Disappointed, Batel nevertheless agrees to postpone the chat.

Lt. La’An Noonien-Singh strolls into the Transporter Room, where Commander Una Chin-Riley waits for Lt. James T. Kirk, the  U.S.S. Farragut ’s future first officer, to beam aboard. Kirk’s captain hopes that, by shadowing Number One, Kirk will maximize his potential upon his promotion. Una senses an “energy” from La’An, observing the security chief had arrived in the room “hot” and “on fire.” Number One engages the transporter beam and greets Kirk, who is skeptical over the need to be shown the ropes. Noticing Noonien-Singh, Kirk playfully reminds her that she still owes him a drink, eliciting a knowing smirk from Chin-Riley. La’An struggles to compose herself and acknowledges she has met James.

Nurse Christine Chapel paces in Sickbay, worrying that she has received a rejection letter from Dr. Roger Korby’s fellowship. Dr. Joseph M’Benga describes Korby as the “Louis Pasteur of Archaeological Medicine,” while Lt. Erica Ortegas maintains she is unfamiliar with him.* Glaring at her PADD, a frustrated Chapel points out that thousands apply to this program each year, with only five being accepted. The nurse summons her courage and grabs the device, a wave of relief washing over her as she learns her application was granted. M’Benga notes she will be gone for three months, and Chapel realizes that a difficult conversation with Spock awaits.

In Engineering, the  Enterprise ’s science officer updates Uhura and Commander Pelia — their 12th attempt at sending a message through the subspace fold has failed. Frequencies propagate through the fold three times faster than normal, meaning the weeks it takes a message to travel across the quadrant through their current relay network would be replaced with instantaneous, real-time communications. The thought thrills Uhura, who hums as she works. This sparks an idea from Pelia, as the Lanthanite proposes they send music through. Given they are seeking to communicate through a medium with different laws of physics, Pelia believes fundamental harmonics might be the answer. Curious as to whether the phenomenon is a fan of the Great American Songbook, Uhura boosts a recording of “Anything Goes” toward the fold...

...with unexpected results. The shimmering, ribbon-like phenomenon releases a visible pulse which ripples through the Federation ship. Confusion descends upon the crew, and Captain Pike calls for an analysis as he steps onto the Bridge. Lt. Jenna Mitchell declares there are no other ships in the sector — the distortion must have come from the subspace fold! The captain checks in with Uhura, who is astounded when Spock begins delivering his own report in the form of a song. Visibly perplexed, Spock continues to croon his words, and additional vocals are heard from M’Benga and Chapel, who report no serious injuries among the crew. The peculiar melody strikes the Bridge, sending Ortegas, Chin-Riley, and Noonien-Singh into song as they check in at their stations. All systems are stable and no threats are detected, yet Pike’s concern grows as the Bridge crew harmonizes around him. The captain adds to the chorus, asking, “Why are we singing?”

Captain Pike gathers his senior staff — Spock, Noonien-Singh, Chin-Riley, M’Benga, and Pelia — in his Ready Room, where the music has finally subsided. James Kirk is still shadowing Number One, and he admits he thought the musical interlude was something the crew had rehearsed. M’Benga emphasizes that he does not sing. They turn their focus to the problem at hand, with Spock theorizing that the song they transmitted had created a resonance frequency and dislodged a quantum uncertainty field from the fold. An area of space where quantum uncertainties collapse so rapidly and randomly could create new realities — including one in which people sing uncontrollably. The Vulcan states the Enterprise has become tethered to this particular improbability field, so trying to fly out would most likely widen the disturbance. Pelia and Pike observe the phenomenon’s zipper-like properties, leading Spock to offer a way to close the rift — manually connect the shield harmonics and Heisenberg compensator to the deflector array. The captain approves, and Kirk compliments Spock’s explanation.

Spock and Uhura confer at the ensign’s Bridge station, where the science officer notices the ship’s communications log lists a transmission from Dr. Korby to Nurse Chapel. Intrigued, Spock questions if the message was related to Chapel’s fellowship application, but Uhura doesn’t read personal correspondence. The ensign perceives Spock’s discomfort, and the Vulcan concedes that he and Chapel have become more than colleagues. Uhura’s grin quickly gives way to concern, prompting her to wonder why Spock doesn’t ask Chapel about the transmission. An incoming call from Number One and Kirk interrupts their chat, and Uhura sends her the harmonics data.

Chin-Riley watches as Kirk makes a few modifications inside a Jefferies tube. The Farragut officer comments that his brother Sam described Una as an excellent Number One — someone who keeps a necessary distance from her crew because she knows she has to make hard decisions. Una confesses she has recently elected to try a more hands-on approach. Kirk slides out of the junction, and music begins to resonate through the ship. Singing once again, Chin-Riley advises Kirk to connect to his crew. Her musical side causes her to divulge that she could imagine herself performing on stage and sharing her fondness for Gilbert and Sullivan.** The two officers begin dancing in the corridor, and a dejected La’An looks on from afar. Kirk replies to Chin-Riley with his own lyrics, expressing an eagerness to heed her advice and connect with his truth.

The song concludes, and La’An quietly retreats from the scene — at least until her emotions start to unravel through a somber song of her own. Noonien-Singh enters her quarters, lamenting her trouble with expressing her innermost feelings to others. She gazes at her reflection in the mirror, moving to the window as she belts out an admission — it might be time to let go of her fears and be vulnerable. La’An pulls the watch she obtained during her time-traveling mission with another reality’s James T. Kirk from a drawer, gripping it tightly to her chest. The security chief pictures herself back in 21st Century Toronto, imagining the life she and the alternate Kirk could have had together . A tearful La’An returns the watch as the music fades.

In the turbolift, Noonien-Singh reports that people are confessing highly personal — and emotional — information when they sing. Skeptical that their emotions constitute a security threat, Pike marches onto the Bridge. Spock and Uhura are ready to initiate their plan to collapse the musical reality back into their standard quantum state. Uhura relays their status to the bantering — or bickering — Kirk brothers in the Transporter Room. The Enterprise ’s deflector is activated, and a beam is projected into the phenomenon. Another energy surge bursts out, but an incoming hail from Captain Batel on the U.S.S. Cayuga arrives before Spock can determine what happened.

A reluctant Pike orders Uhura to put Batel’s transmission through to the main viewscreen. The musical reality has spread beyond the Enterprise , as the Cayuga ’s captain sings about her irritation with Pike over their canceled vacation plans. Pike replies in kind, uncharacteristically displaying his emotions in front of his crew. The private conversation intensifies, with Pike professing his bad habit of hiding in the face of true affection. Pike collapses to his knees, but — recognizing the situation will only escalate — La’An cuts off Batel’s signal. Embarrassed, Pike listens as Spock states the improbability field must be expanding across Starfleet’s entire subspace communications network.

Pike, Chin-Riley, Noonien-Singh, Uhura, and James Kirk discuss the developments in the captain’s quarters. A message from Admiral Robert April — which he delivered in a surprisingly beautiful baritone — indicates the field has spread to 12 Federation ships. The captain questions why this reality is compelling them to reveal their deepest emotions. Uhura theorizes that the musical reality actually follows the rules of musicals, where characters begin to sing when their emotions are so heightened that their words won’t suffice. Emotions have the capacity to overwhelm rational thinking, as well as the potential to drive the crew apart. Pike is eager to blow up the subspace fold, but Spock encourages them to test the idea first. Una assigns La’An and James to beam subatomic particles from the fold over to the ship, a task which clearly unsettles La’An.

Chin-Riley and Noonien-Singh visit the Ready Room, allowing the security chief to confide in Number One. La’An doesn’t believe she is acting like herself, but Una guesses she is actually afraid of singing to James Kirk. Referencing her time in 21st Century Toronto, La’An claims her feelings pose a space-time security risk and decides to just tell James what is on her mind. The fervor instigates another catchy tune, allowing Number One to recommend that sometimes it’s best to be your own best friend and keep your secrets safe inside you. Una deactivates the room’s artificial gravity, ultimately announcing she wishes she had never become so good at keeping secrets.

In the Transporter Room, La’An speaks to James as they work to refine the molecular imaging scanner and isolate subspace particles from the fold. They succeed and transfer the particles to Engineering, inspiring Kirk to say he and La’An should collaborate more often. La’An takes a deep breath, but an explosion rocks the ship.

Standing on the Bridge, Pike, Number One, and Spock assess the experiment in front of a map of the Federation-Klingon border. Hitting just a few subatomic particles nearly blew up Engineering, so firing on the field would destroy everything connected to the Federation’s subspace network. Uhura alerts them to a hail from an incoming vessel, and Spock detects a signal with Klingon encryption. Number One is unenthusiastic about the prospect of singing Klingons, but the tension escalates when Uhura replays a message from the Klingon ship. The improbability field has reached them, and General Garkog of the Imperial Klingon Defense Force calls the disturbance a Federation invasion. The Klingons plan to destroy the fold and warn Starfleet not to oppose them.

Back in the Ready Room, Pike and most of his senior staff agree that — by firing upon the fold — the Klingons would inadvertently destroy the Federation and half of their own Empire. Disinclined to strike first and commit an act of war, Pike wants Noonien-Singh and James Kirk to devise a tactical strategy to disable their opponents’ disruptor cannons and torpedo launchers. The captain turns his attention to the remote prospect of shutting down the improbability field before the Klingons are within range, assigning Spock and Uhura to explore new possibilities.

In the corridor, Uhura marvels over Spock’s scheme to study the songs and the frequencies the moment they begin. Isolating a pattern in the improbability field could reveal how to generate an improbability-breaking event. Wishing to use overwhelming emotion to trigger a song, Uhura brings Spock to see Chapel in the Enterprise ’s Port Galley. The nurse celebrates her fellowship with Ortegas and Sam Kirk, who toast to her achievement. In Sam’s view, they can’t put their lives on hold every time the ship is in trouble. Spock and Uhura join them. The Vulcan congratulates Chapel and inquires why she did not share the news with him — was it intentional? Chapel is not interested in talking about it now, but Spock presses the issue...

The elevated emotions give way to the rise of a new melody, and Uhura seizes the chance to take scans with her tricorder. Chapel croons, elaborating on how the fellowship changes everything — a distant dream has become real. The nurse’s joy spreads to the other officers in the lounge, and the room joins in with song and dance. Buoyed by the possibilities, Chapel acknowledges she’s prepared to let Spock go, a confession which silences the crowd and sends Spock to the exit.

La’An and James utilize the Ready Room’s display to assess the vulnerabilities of the approaching K’t’inga -class battlecruiser, but James revisits what La’An had intended to tell him back in the Transporter Room. Uncrossing her arms, the security chief bravely conveys her time-traveling adventure with the alternate James Kirk. The other James saw La’An for who she really was, and — through his eyes — she could finally see her own potential. As someone unburdened by tragedy, she could be free to take chances and make connections. James ponders her words before convincing La’An to acknowledge that she also likes the way he looks at her. James feels their connection, but reveals he’s in a “sometimes” relationship — and his partner Carol, a scientist on Starbase 1, is pregnant.*** La’An is overwhelmed with speechlessness.

Uhura finds Spock down in Engineering, and the duo analyze their fresh data in search of a pattern. Rattled by Chapel’s certainty over ending their relationship, Spock sees the logic in her decision, yet he is still hurt. The self-reflection turns into song, and the Vulcan admonishes himself for thinking he and Christine shared the same feelings. Now the ex, Spock concludes he must follow reason — his true north. Spock apologizes and departs, leaving Uhura to wax poetically about needing to find a pattern in their data. Loneliness overwhelms the ensign, and she reminisces over her parents, brother, and the late chief engineer, Hemmer. In a life defined by love and loss, Uhura has found purpose by keeping others connected, an observation which sparks a pivotal idea — and rays of exuberance — within the ensign.

Now in the Ready Room, Uhura presents her findings to the captain. Every time someone sings, the state of quantum improbability in the field spikes. If they can push that spike to 344 giga-electron volts, it would shatter the fold. Uhura has found the improbability-breaking event, but two additional K’t’inga -class battlecruisers are headed their way. The singing has caused many relationships to be torn apart on the ship, but Uhura highlights music’s communal properties. Citing the backup vocals she helped supply to Chapel in the Port Galley, Uhura surmises that a grand finale with melodies and harmonies with tone ratios that achieve algorithmic and logarithmic balance on a mass scale — the whole crew needs to sing together. Spock is curious as to how they could rouse the entire crew’s emotions at once, but Pike expresses his confidence in Uhura’s ability to see connections and inspire song.

On the Bridge, Pike sits in the captain’s chair and addresses the Enterprise via a shipwide broadcast. He entrusts their lives to Ensign Uhura — the voice of the Enterprise . At her Communications station, Uhura speaks to her colleagues, focusing on the threads that connect them. Her impactful speech causes her to start singing, emboldening other crew members to enact elaborate choreographed moves. La’An and Spock join in, and the giga-electron volts reading climbs. The chorus grows, with officers throughout the vessel voicing their dedication to Starfleet and its mission. 

A perimeter alert chimes, notifying the Enterprise that the three Klingon battlecruisers have reached their position. Invigorated and electrified, the crew praise one another. Uhura hails the Klingons, who deliver a pop-infused threat. The music resumes aboard the Enterprise , and various officers lock arms in friendship around the Bridge. The quantum improbability state spike hits 344 giga-electron volts, eliciting a tremendous burst of light and energy from the field. The plan has succeeded! The elated Bridge crew exchange smiles and congratulatory remarks.

La’An broods over a drink in the Port Galley, telling Una about what happened between her and James. Even in the face of her pain, La’An is glad she took the chance to share her feelings with Kirk. Meanwhile, in the captain’s quarters, Pike cooks for Captain Batel, who emphasizes that not even Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon could make her forget Pike singing about lying to her. Batel proclaims their relationship will never work if Pike isn’t more comfortable being honest with her. Pike agrees, but Batel must soon leave for a Priority One mission. The couple promises they’ll decide on a vacation when she returns.

An unsteady Spock wobbles onto the Bridge, having just returned from engaging in diplomacy with the Klingons over bloodwine. At her station, Uhura acknowledges the receipt of a transmission from the U.S.S. Nimerfro . At Captain Pike’s request, the Communications officer scans for nearby vessels to share their fold-related findings. Uhura hums a melody, drawing worried glances from her shipmates. Noticing their unease, Uhura apologizes and assures them the humming was caused by an earworm — not another musical reality! The captain sighs in relief, and Uhura resumes her duties.

* " What Are Little Girls Made Of? "  - The  U.S.S. Enterprise  searches for exobiologist Dr. Roger Korby, Nurse Christine Chapel's fiancé, on the planet Exo III. Chapel had signed onto the  Enterprise  in hopes of finding Korby, who is known as "Pasteur of archeological medicine." His expedition had left him stranded on an icy planet with 'The Old Ones,' ancient android natives that have since been extinct.

** " Q&A " - This Star Trek: Short Treks episode reveals Spock's first day aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise . While stuck on the turbolift with Number One, the ensign is allowed to barrage her and the other crewmen with questions until he becomes an annoyance. The first officer observed his smile when he beamed aboard the ship and cautions him to keep his "freaky" under wraps if he hopes to be in command one day. She then shares her freaky by singing Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.” She then forces Spock into secrecy once the moment passes, which he's forced to betray during her court-martial trial in " Ad Astra per Aspera ," revealing her secret affinity to musicals.

*** Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Carol Marcus was first introduced this film. Investigating Dr. Marcus' complaint, Kirk and his crew board the Regula I , and then the planetoid below it where he reunites with his old love Carol. A ruse set in motion by Khan Noonien Singh propels David Marcus — Carol and Kirk's son — to discover who his father is.

• " Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Main Theme (Subspace Rhapsody Version) " - Jeff Russo
• " Status Report " - Anson Mount, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Melissa Navia, Celia Rose Gooding, Babs Olusanmokun, Paul Wesley, Carol Kane, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " Connect to Your Truth " - Rebecca Romijn, Paul Wesley, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " How Would That Feel " - Christina Chong, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " Private Conversation " - Anson Mount, Melanie Scrofano, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " Keeping Secrets " - Rebecca Romijn, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " I'm Ready " - Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Dan Jeannotte, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " I'm the X " - Ethan Peck, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " Keep Us Connected " - Celia Rose Gooding, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " We Are One " - Anson Mount, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Melissa Navia, Celia Rose Gooding, Babs Olusanmokun, Dan Jeannotte, Paul Wesley, Carol Kane, Tom Polce, Kay Hanley
• " Subspace Rhapsody End Credit Medley " - Tom Polce, Kay Hanley

• Written by Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff
• Directed by Dermott Downs

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Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to StarTrek.com, Star Trek Explorer, and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com. Learn more about Jay by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, South Korea, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In addition, the series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada and on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

We Should Take It To Broadway: Strange New Worlds Cast & Producers Deep Dive Into Star Trek's Musical Episode

• The cast and crew of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds praise the musical episode, "Subspace Rhapsody."
• Original songs written by Tom Polce and Kay Hanley reached Top 10 in Apple's music charts.
• A new interview in Emmy Magazine delves into behind-the-scenes details of each song with the team.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' cast, executive producers, and song composers sing the praises of Star Trek 's first-ever musical episode in a new interview - including their hopes to bring "Subspace Rhapsody" to Broadway. Written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, Strange New Worlds ' musical episode was directed by Dermot Downs, with original songs written and composed by Letters to Cleo's Tom Polce and Kay Hanley. "Subspace Rhapsody" was an acclaimed highlight of Strange New Worlds season 2, and the soundtrack to the groundbreaking Star Trek episode even hit the Top 10 in Apple's streaming music charts.

Bill Wolkoff (@flying_lobster), the Hugo Award-nominated co-writer of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' musical episode, shared a new interview in Emmy Magazine about "Subspace Rhapsody." The cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , including Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Celia Rose Gooding, and Christina Chong, as well as director Dermot Downs, executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and Henry Alonso Myers, composers Kay Haney and Tom Polce, and co-writer Dana Horgan break down each song with behind-the-scenes details. Check out the interview in Wolkoff's X post below:

Every Song In Strange New Worlds' Musical Episode, Ranked Worst To Best

Star trek executive producers want to take strange new worlds' musical to broadway, "it's a no-brainer" says christina chong.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds takes pride in taking "big swings" with their episodic storytelling, but Star Trek 's first-ever musical is arguably the biggest risk they have ever taken. Yet it paid off as "Subspace Rhapsody" is already a classic Star Trek episode with an incredibly popular soundtrack. In their Emmy Magazine interview, Strange New Worlds' co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman shared his dream to take "Subspace Rhapsody" to Broadway , and Alex Kurtzman, Bill Wolkoff, Celia Rose Gooding, and Christina Chong agreed:

Akiva Goldsman: I keep trying to convince Alex we should take it to Broadway. There, I said it. Alex Kurtzman: It's a great idea. I would not rule it out. Celia Rose Gooding: A limited run, with ambitious choreography. Bill Wolkoff: We could include a tap-dance number on the transporter pads. Christina Chong: It's a no-brainer!

There is a precedent for taking a popular musical from a TV show and making it a real-life stage production. Marvel Studios made "Rogers: The Musical" a real-life performance after it got a lot of buzz in the Disney+ series Hawkeye. Right now, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' musical on Broadway is just a flight of fancy, although it sounds like at least some of the cast with musical theater backgrounds like Celia Rose Gooding and Christina Chong would be interested in starring in a Broadway version of "Subspace Rhapsody." However, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has to finish filming season 3 and soon, season 4 as well. But fingers are crossed that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' musical on Broadway could actually happen.

Source: Emmy Magazine, X

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is streaming on Paramount+

Cast Bruce Horak, Celia Rose Gooding, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia, Ethan Peck, Babs Olusanmokun, Rebecca Romijn, Paul Wesley, Christina Chong, Anson Mount

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Bill Wolkoff, Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers

Showrunner Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers

Directors Amanda Row, Valerie Weiss, Jonathan Frakes, Chris Fisher

Where To Watch Paramount+