Viewers of Strange New Worlds are gonna get whiplash. Seriously, we had “Those Old Scientists,” which was a hilarious Lower Decks crossover, and then we had “Under the Cloak of War,” which is one of the darkest, nastiest Trek episodes in the franchise’s five-decade-plus history.
And now we get the musical episode. But what’s fascinating (sorry) is that—like “Those Old Scientists”—this isn’t just a gag concept. Important character stuff happens amidst the singing and dancing.
There is a long history of TV shows deciding to do a musical episode. Sometimes it’s because the creator/executive producer grew up in show business and thought it would be cool (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Once More, With Feeling”). Sometimes it’s because the show has a history of doing crazy-ass stuff, and this is in line with that (Xena’s “The Bitter Suite”). And sometimes it’s because the vast majority of your acting ensemble has singing chops and you want to take advantage (The Flash’s “Duet”).
Music has also been a part of Trek throughout its history. One of the most powerful scenes on TNG was the concert in “Sarek,” and the character of Data in particular explored the human condition through playing music. DS9 had a holographic lounge singer as a recurring regular in its latter seasons, with music playing a particularly strong role in “His Way,” “The Siege of AR-558,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang,” and “What You Leave Behind.” Voyager took advantage of the singing prowess of Tim Russ (“Innocence”) and Robert Picardo (“Virtuoso”). And, going back to the original series, we have the space hippies’ music in “The Way to Eden” and just in general the character of Uhura. The character’s predilection for music, taking advantage of Nichelle Nichols’ background as a singer and musical theatre star, was a part of many episodes, such as “Charlie X,” “The Conscience of the King,” and “The Changeling.”
Like Nichols, Celia Rose Gooding came to the role of Uhura from a background in singing and musical theatre, having won a Grammy and been nominated for a Tony prior to joining the cast of SNW. And while she is very obviously the most talented singer in the ensemble, she’s not the only good one…
Part of me was tempted to do this entire review without mentioning the plot because it’s not really that important. But that’s not fair, so let’s get it out of the way: there’s a subspace fold, and Spock and Uhura are trying to see if they can use it to enhance communications. All attempts to do so have failed, and Pelia—upon hearing Uhura hum while working, as she does—suggests sending music into the fold rather than words. Doing so activates an improbability field that takes the music Uhura put in—“Anything Goes” from the musical of the same name—and has an effect on everything around it. Suddenly, people on the Enterprise break out in song when they’re feeling particularly emotional.
The effect spreads, and soon half the quadrant is breaking into song, including the Klingons. One of the best moments in this episode full of them is a Klingon captain and his bridge crew breaking into what appears to be a hip-hop number. Points for both defying expectations (I, at least, was expecting Klingon opera) and also for casting Bruce Horak as the Klingon captain. The erstwhile Hemmer can carry a tune and bust a move…
Jim Kirk is on board, too, and he and Number One have a delightful duet on the subject of being a good first officer, complete with ballroom dancing bits. Kirk is there to shadow Number One prior to taking on his new role as the Farragut’s first officer. Paul Wesley has a lovely voice, and we now have confirmation that two out of three Jim Kirks can sing, as Chris Pine can also croon beautifully. (If you’re wondering about the third, check out this. Or this. Or this. Or, better yet, don’t…)
Buy the Book
System Collapse
There’s a lot that’s impressive about this episode, but the thing that I loved most is that, like the Buffy musical episode, and unlike the Xena and Flash ones, this is still an important episode that has serious character ramifications. (There’s also a reference to the Buffy episode, as La’an, M’Benga, and Spock discuss the possibility of them all being changed into bunnies. Even if the rest of the episode was terrible, it’d be worth it to hear Ethan Peck calmly intone, “I doubt we will be bunnies.”)
One of those ramifications involves Kirk and La’an, as the latter decides to go ahead and tell Kirk what happened in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” A big reason why is that people are revealing their innermost feelings in song whether they want to or not. As La’an herself says: “I need to say this before it comes out in a seventeenth-century sea shanty.”
Kirk’s reply is at once unexpected and spot-on: he enjoys La’an’s company, but he’s kind of seeing someone, and it’s in an awkward place because she’s pregnant and he’s on the Farragut and it’s a big ol’ mess. And then one does the math and realizes that, yes, it tracks that Kirk would be in the midst of his relationship with Carol Marcus right about now and she’d be pregnant with their son, David. And Spock knew about Carol and David in The Wrath of Khan, so having this shortly after Kirk and Spock first met is perfect.
It’s a beautiful moment, especially since it catches La’an off-guard—and the viewer as well, since we’re all trained to see Kirk as the guy who has multiple successes with the opposite sex.
However, it all works out nicely, since La’an bares her soul to Kirk and the universe doesn’t come to a halt, and she admits at the end to Number One that she might be emotionally open again some time. (It’s also great to see the Number One-La’an mentor/student relationship again, as that’s a nifty dynamic we’ve seen too little of…)
The biggest character moments here, though, belong to Spock and Chapel. One of the most fabulous things SNW has accomplished is to completely recontextualize the Spock-Chapel pairing in the original series. The realities of 1960s television are such that we only caught glimpses when it was important to the plot (“The Naked Time,” “Amok Time,” “Plato’s Stepchildren,” “Return to Tomorrow”), as character development wasn’t really a thing. The common interpretation of Chapel’s obvious interest in Spock and Spock’s never really reciprocating (aside from some sweet moments in “Amok Time,” anyhow) was Chapel having an unrequited crush on Spock and Spock being a stoic Vulcan who can’t return the feelings.
But having them be exes works just as well in the context of the minimal information we got from 1966-1969, and makes Chapel significantly less pathetic and Spock significantly less mean.
And the breaking point is here. Chapel has applied for another fellowship, this one with Dr. Roger Korby (who we know she will later become engaged to, per the original series’ “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”). Spock is hurt that she doesn’t tell him that she got the fellowship, but their relationship has been rocky since “Under the Cloak of War” when Spock found himself unable to comfort the PTSD-wracked Chapel. Which, by the by, is another reason why the heavy episode needed to be inserted there, as it was another wedge to drive between Spock and Chapel (as well as the one Boimler hammered in when talking to Chapel in the turbolift in “Those Old Scientists”).
It also gives us the big Act 1 finale, and that’s the other wonderful thing about this episode: it follows the structure of musical theatre beautifully. (Uhura herself points this out.) We have the jaunty opening number, which has the added amusement of everyone realizing they’re singing and having no idea why. Anson Mount in particular has a magnificent WTF face throughout—well, most of episode, really. It’s hilarious.
Then we have the upbeat character bit with Number One and Kirk, the revelatory intense song from La’an, and then we get Chapel celebrating the fellowship. Spock comes to the bar to ask why she didn’t tell him. Chapel’s response is a glorious dance number that everyone in the bar (except Spock) participates in.
That’s followed by an introspective ballad by Spock, which is a masterpiece by Peck. Besides the fact that he has a great singing voice, he also moves around engineering, maintaining a placid facial expression and walking and moving just like Leonard Nimoy did. All while singing forlornly about the pitfalls of emotionalism. It’s a bravura performance.
And then we have the grand finale. Off-camera, April has told Number One (“in a surprisingly beautiful baritone”) that they need to fix this, and Uhura and Spock have figured out a way from their examinations of the subspace fold. And there’s a ticking clock, because the Klingons are going to blow the thing up (between hip-hop songs, anyhow). This is a problem, as Spock has determined that an attempt to blow up the fold will result in a catastrophic explosion that will wipe out large chunks of the Federation and the Empire.
Her solution: a grand finale. A musical number that the entire crew sings, which is inspired by Uhura herself who, as communications officer, feels like she knows everyone on board, and she has seen what a great crew they can be. The closing number does the technobabble thing it needs to do and the fold collapses and everyone lives happily ever after.
One of the running themes since the second episode of this series has been Uhura trying to find her way. She joined Starfleet mostly for lack of anything better to do after her parents and brother died. In this episode, she truly finds where she belongs: as the hub at the center of this little city in space.
We also see the developing friendship between her and Spock. Here’s another relationship that we saw hints of on the original series (“Charlie X,” “Who Mourns for Adonais?” “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” among others). The Bad Robot films chose to interpret that as a romantic relationship, but it’s just as supportable that it’s a deep friendship, and the seeds of it are sown especially in this episode where they work so closely together and also when Spock confides in her about his feelings for Chapel.
On top of that, we’ve got development of the Pike-Batel relationship, as the enforced singing gets Pike to admit that the vacation Batel has planned for them is of absolutely no interest to him. (She doesn’t need to be forced to sing to tell him that his alternative of camping is of even less interest to her.)
Indeed, the difficulties of relationships are all over this episode, from Kirk hinting at the problems he and Marcus are having, to Pike and Batel, to Spock and Chapel, to La’an and Kirk.
The singing is sensibly divvied up at least in part based on talent. The best voice in the cast is Gooding, and she gets the most vocal time, and also the most powerful song of the bunch, her revelatory solo in engineering. Peck and Christina Chong are next best, and they get numbers that show off their talents—Peck’s expressive voice and Chong’s powerful one. Wesley, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia, Melanie Scrofano, and Rebecca Romijn are all good singers, and they get their moments in the sun. Mount and Babs Olusanmokun get very few solo bits, while Carol Kane only sings as part of the chorus.
The most important thing here is that the episode is fun. In the grand finale, Uhura is leading the singing, and Gooding is bopping back and forth with a big smile on her face, and it’s infectious. I was bopping right along with her.
And with all that, it’s still a strong and powerful episode of SNW. Just an absolute masterpiece. Even if you do get whiplash from having this right after the Klingon War PTSD episode…
Keith R.A. DeCandido has starred in productions of The Mikado, HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers, The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Doctor Doolittle, West Side Story, Damn Yankees, and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. However, they were all when he was between the ages of six and sixteen. Still, he performed “Model of a Modern Major General” in Penzance at the age of eight, which he considers one of his prouder accomplishments. He also played Snoopy in …Charlie Brown, which has surprised absolutely nobody who knows him.
You didn’t mention what was maybe the funniest part of the episode for me, and maybe another one of the reasons Pike didn’t get a big solo number: Anson Mount apparently can’t hide his Tennessee accent as well when he’s singing. I had a big laugh at that.
I am reminded of why I love musicals and why I love Star Trek. And I can’t tell which one al of my friends would mock me for worse….
I was worried because I always think I’m going to hate musical episodes, but, as usual, I ended up really liking it. I appreciated the fact that the singing didn’t just happen. It happened for a science fiction reason and the characters were aware that it wasn’t normal.
I also loved the character beats: Una telling Jim how to be a good first officer, La’an letting go of her fear and talking to Jim, the mention of Carol, the mention of Korby and Christine’s happiness at getting the fellowship, Pike/Batel, oh, and especially Uhura being a badass and saving the day.
That number in the bar was my favorite!
I loved the tenor-singing Klingons. LOL.
BTW–I’m with Batel–no camping without room service!
This was a fun one right before the season finale which seems to be a heavy one.(Plus, I’m wondering if we’ll have a cliff-hanger)
Great review. I snickered over the bunnies. I also noticed, as a dedicated non-camper, the reference to Jadzia Dax’s NOT wanting to hike Vulcan’s Forge (cough) but to go to Russ with room service.
we have a new genre: space operetta (not opera because nobody dies. Especially not the soprano.
Oh, it’s not just hip hop that the Klingons are performing. It’s… K-pop.
Whichever member of the production team came up with that one deserves a medal.
Keith, you couldn’t be more wrong about Xena‘s “The Bitter Suite” — it had profoundly important character ramifications. It came at a point when Xena and Gabrielle had suffered the deepest rift in their friendship, and the events of the episode helped them work through their bitterness (hence the title) and renew their bond. (Though maybe you’re thinking of their second musical episode, “Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire” from season 5, which wasn’t as important to the story arc and used licensed songs instead of original ones.)
Indeed, I’d say the perception that musical episodes are disposable fluff tends to be untrue more often than not. When TV shows do musicals, they tend to follow Xena and Buffy‘s lead by using them to bring about important moments of character growth or resolution. Even Batman: The Brave and the Bold‘s “Mayhem of the Music Meister,” while mostly having little effect on the series’s largely episodic continuity, featured the beginning of Green Arrow & Black Canary’s romance.
“Subspace Rhapsody” was in that tradition, featuring some major character growth moments. It was, to coin a phrase, fascinating to see Spock singing to Uhura about his decision to just keep it inside, and learn how to hide his feelings — no, wait, that’s a different song. But seriously, you could see his future characterization taking shape at that moment, and it’s fascinating that Uhura was witness to it. It really adds an intriguing context to their musical duets together in TOS season 1.
This was an entertaining episode thanks to character moments like that, and the songs were fairly effective, though the lyrics were nowhere near the level of Gershwin or Sondheim. The technobabble explanation for the singing was utterly preposterous, though — a “musical reality?” I would’ve preferred some kind of superintelligent alien trickster being behind it. But it was cute, though predictable as hell, that the technobabble solution required the entire crew to do a big production-number finale. And I liked how that was used as symbolic of Uhura’s importance in bringing the crew together, and the contrast with her own solitary tendencies. This was a really strong episode for her, as one would expect a musical to be.
Am I right that the Una-Kirk number was something of a Gilbert & Sullivan pastiche, in keeping with her private love of G&S? Although not as much as it could’ve been. But Una was teaching him how to be the very model of a modern Starfleet Number One.
I hadn’t expected a reference to Carol Marcus, but the timing makes sense. David’s age has been depicted inconsistently, but the Vanguard novels put his birth around 2260, and we’re in ’59 or ’60 now. Anyway, Kirk’s mention of Carol being on Starbase One, a recurring location in the show, makes me wonder if there are actually plans to show her in season 3, and explain how she and Kirk broke up.
Speaking of Starbase One, I’m disappointed we didn’t get to hear Admiral April’s baritone. I don’t know if Adrian Holmes can sing, but with his voice, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Anyway, why the heck did Una turn off the gravity during her song to La’an?
I’m not going to lie, seeing ‘Numero Una’ treating being caught up in a Musical Episode as living her Best Life is the only thing in this episode that might – just might – be better than Nurse Chapel stealing the whole darned episode with her Drinking Hall Dance Number … or seeing Number One defying gravity with La’an Noonien Singh … or seeing that poor, poor Klingon Captain visibly recognise that he is going to get cast out of Sto-vo-kor for his pitiful, pitiful excuse for a music number.
I’ll bet KOR would have given us a full-blown Villain Song (Complete with Evil Cackle) worthy of the great Keith David himself: now THAT was a Klingon who knew how to enjoy himself!
On a slightly more serious note, now I’m wondering which of THE ORIGINAL SERIES and STAR TREK ‘09 casts would have done the best with an all-singing, all dancing episode…
Lovely, fun episode. Appreciated how significant character development occurred along with the whimsy.
The finale’s gotta be about the Gorn, right? I’m getting U.S.S. Cayuga tragedy vibes about Batel’s “Priority One” mission, though.
@6 Pike calling Uhura the “Voice of the Enterprise” was very lovely, I thought. It reminds us just important her role as communicators officers was, something that TOS never quite managed to drive home.
Maybe turning off the gravity was symbolic of letting go of the thing that’s holding you down. Or it was just supposed to be silly.
Quoth Chase: “Maybe turning off the gravity was symbolic of letting go of the thing that’s holding you down. Or it was just supposed to be silly.”
My money is on both.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I must admit, I was kind of hoping for a badass villain song for the Klingons (was that Bruce Horak? I didn’t recognize him at all!), but making them sing like a boy band about their desire to kill Starfleet was hilarious too (and goes a way to explaining why they consider this a source of dishonour).
I’m reasonably confident that Captain Pike would be dealing with a new Klingon Captain after the end titles of this episode – for surely no Klingon Captain worthy of the name could live with being condemned to be a mere gag when he could have been a Full Blown Classic Disney villain?
@CLB/Chase/KRAD: “Defying Gravity,” anyone? Hello?
Not gonna lie: The TOS end credits theme at the end of the grand finale had me in actual, sloppy, non-metaphorical, wiping-my-face tears.
@7 -“The finale’s gotta be about the Gorn, right? I’m getting U.S.S. Cayuga tragedy vibes about Batel’s “Priority One” mission, though.”
That was my thought as well. As soon as she said Priority One and didn’t add details my mind went “Well, they’re going to kill Batel
I had a smile on my face from start to finish. I have to compare every musical episode of a show to the one from Buffy, and this is right next to it on the top tier.
The Klingon gag was cute, and I’m happy with the Uhura-focused climax they had, but it would’ve been cool if there had been a big musical-battle climax with the E crew and the Klingons trying to out-sing each other.
This episode had an incredibly stupid premise even in-universe (they needed a Trelane-esque being to justify it) but it was something I forgive a lot of flaws due to the emotional development.
Some random thoughts:
* Jess Bush is fantastically sexy in her number. It needs to be said. However, the big thing is it is a woman choosing her career over a man. You still don’t see that very often in media.
* In the words of Friends with Kirk and La’an, “It could have been worse. He could have shot her.”
* Speaking of which, actually addressing Carol Marcus is something I’m glad they did.
* Spock’s breakup depression song is a math pun so chef’s kiss.
* Uhura is lonely despite being the center of everyone else’s drama. It makes me wonder if they’re going to do her and Spock.
* Captain Batel couldn’t be throwing up more death flags than if she was two weeks from retirement on her ship the USS Immortal.
* The Klingon Boy Band thing was hilarious but I now have to wonder if Klingons have boy bands or if the Federation DID infect them (in which case destroying the Federation was justified)
* I really expected Pelia to have more comments on this. “Oh, yeah, I wrote that song.”
@15/C.T. Phipps: “* Spock’s breakup depression song is a math so chef’s kiss.”
Yeah, it took me a while to realize he wasn’t just singing “I’m the ex,” but “I’m the X,” the variable in the equation.
“* Uhura is lonely despite being the center of everyone else’s drama. It makes me wonder if they’re going to do her and Spock.”
I doubt it — Spock’s had his experiment with romancing a human, and it didn’t go well. He’s not going to make that mistake again. But I do think we’ve seen the beginning of the friendship they seemed to share in TOS season 1.
I’m not going to lie, realising that the poor, unlucky Klingon Captain in this episode was played by the artist formerly known as Hemmer and that Spock’s Big Solo was built on a
mathematics pun just make me love it all the more.
So beautiful. So goofy. So clever.
So very perfectly STAR TREK in other words.
I just have to say that the term “earworm” feels like it has rather different connotations in a piece of media that directly references Wrath of Khan!!!
LOVED this. Two subtle moments that stood out:
– The moment near the start of the episode when a lyric about keeping secrets is accompanied by back-to-back shots of Chapel and M’Benga looking at each other knowingly, followed by the phrase “…cuts like a knife” when we see M’Benga. Was NOT expecting what I assume was a reference to “Under the Cloak of War” in this episode.
– Anyone else think of Chekov’s nasty time with Khan when Uhura closed the ep by saying, “Sorry… earworm!”
William Shatner’s lack of singing ability has never slowed down his music career.
At any rate, this was pretty entertaining. The lyrics weren’t always amazing and some of the numbers went on a bit too long, but overall I think its one of the better efforts as far as musical episodes go. It had some great moments of character development, so it didn’t feel like it was just a stunt. The highlights were Chapel and Spock’s numbers, La’an finally coming clean with Kirk, anytime Uhura sang (just because Celia Rose Gooding has a terrific voice), and of course the big finale.
As for what is coming in the season finale, I really hope they don’t kill off Captain Batel. Hopefully her ship will just need rescuing or something, probably from the Gorn. Here’s hoping the show tries to tackle that species with more intelligence than they showed last season.
@19/ I’ve been enjoying the lack of Gorn this season, even though I think that “Memento Mori” was actually pretty good. I just hope that they manage to walk back the “Gorn are literal horror movie monsters” characterization.
Look, I am prepared to go along with the well, dopey premise as much as the next gal, and yes, I was surprised at how well Christina Chong can belt her sci-fish version of “Defying Gravity”, Celia Rose Gooding stole my heart and yes, Ethan Peck has a wonderfully rumbly baritone(?) and I giggled at Anson Mount’s natal Tennessean accent peeking out in song, but my question is….
where was the musical accompaniment coming from!?!?
(edit: Chong, not Chang)
According to the producers’ interview with Variety, there was a version of the Klingon number that was shot having them sing in an opera-style, since Klingons are known to go in for that sort of thing, but they decided to go with the boy-band version because it was unexpected. Now I really want to se the other version so I can compare them.
I really, truly, deeply hope that LOWER DECKS manages to fit in a Klingon Opera musical episode, because what other TREK show could possibly do Justice to such a beloved running joke? (Bonus points if it’s a Klingon Opera adaptation of their great national poet Shex’pir*).
*Extra bonus points if the Klingon Opera Costumes are very, very obviously DISCO Season One costumes and somebody in the Klingon Opera Costume Department goes on about how historically authentic they are (Whilst somebody else remarks that those costumes
MUST be historically-accurate, because otherwise you’d never convince audiences that anyone would be crazy enough to wear anything like that in a war zone).
@16/ChrsitopherLBennett
“Yeah, it took me a while to realize he wasn’t just singing “I’m the ex,” but “I’m the X,” the variable in the equation”.
I watched the episode with closed captioning on – the first time Spock sings “I’m the ex” the captions reflect that but the captions for the remainder of the song have “X” rather than “ex” – there is another step on his journey toward the TOS Spock that may have happened there
10/10. Easily my favourite episode of Star Trek since Voyager ended.
Had to pause every minute or so to laugh. Uhura and Sam suddenly doing the backing vocal’s to Chapel’s song nearly killed me.
@19/David Pirtle: “William Shatner’s lack of singing ability has never slowed down his music career.”
Everyone misunderstands that The Transformed Man was a spoken-word album of poetry readings. It included several Shakespeare soliloquies, several poems, and the lyrics to a few popular songs delivered as if they were poems — perhaps a bad idea, but not an attempt at singing, and making up no more than a third of the album. (My 11th-grade English teacher introduced me to the album and let me borrow his LP to make a cassette copy. The Shakespeare bits are terrific. Shatner’s interpretation of “To be or not to be” really helped me understand the meaning of the archaic language, because he actually performed the underlying emotion rather than just reciting the words in a constant tone like so many performers do, and I’m looking at you in particular, Kenneth Branagh.)
The thing is, from Airplane 2 onward, Shatner started to embrace self-parody and leaning into the popular jokes and caricatures of his performance style, and that included doing more spoken-word “singing” in keeping with the memes.
@19/David Pirtle: “I really hope they don’t kill off Captain Batel.”
@20/jaimebabb: “I just hope that they manage to walk back the “Gorn are literal horror movie monsters” characterization.”
Hmm, I dunno… Given that Captain Batel is played by Wynonna Earp, maybe playing up the portrayal of the Gorn as outright demons will improve her chances of defeating them. ;)
Incidentally, was this the first time we learned that Batel’s first name is Marie?
@21/Lady Belaine: Christina Chong is pursuing a music career alongside her acting, and she’s releasing her first album this month.
Christina Chang is a different actress, a regular in the TV series The Good Doctor.
@25 It’s the first time her first name has been spoken out loud, but it was displayed on a monitor in the courtroom episode. And I think she’s going to survive the next episode, though I doubt her ship is going to be as lucky. I also don’t expect that the characterization of the Gorn to change too much, given that’s something the Enterprise won’t discover until “Arena.” Maybe we’ll get a hint about there being two types of Gorn or something.
@25 I was actually thinking of my own first encounter with Shatner’s music career which was the album he recorded with Ben Folds in the mid-2000s. I actually thought it was pretty good. It was only later that I learned about his history with the medium.
@17, 18: I instantly thought of the Ceti Eels as well! I wonder if that was intentional on the part of the writers or just a funny coincidence, as “ear worm” definitely works within the context of this episode.
@15: I don’t see Uhura as lonely at all, especially as of this episode which is all about her finding her place within this floating community. She even seems to be developing a nascent friendship with Spock.
I agree that Batel seems to have a big target on her back. So I guess we’ll see what happens with her next week.
When the Klingons were first brought up in this episode as being affected I was wondering to myself if we’d actually see evidence of that and if so, would it be in the same silly Broadway-style as the rest of the musical numbers. That they broke out in a boy-band number was a shear delight and I had to laugh (as much as I enjoyed the crossover episode two episodes back, that one just had me grinning a lot, this story actually got me to elicit a few laughs).
Celia was undoubtedly the singing star of this show (and is having a great season overall), although Chong was also excellent and I was pleasantly surprised how good Peck was too. And Mount’s delivery was amusing throughout. I just loved Celia’s “solo” number. That, and the initial song where everyone first sings, as well as the big dancing finale, along with the Klingon number, were my favorites.
Super silly but wonderful episode. I can’t wait to see the outtakes and deleted scenes for this particular episode when I pick up the set on disc whenever that’s released. And this is also one of the most excellent runs of 3 solid episodes in a row since the days of peak TOS, TNG, and DS9.
There were a lot of ways this could have gone. I expected a different form of communication with aliens. (Channeling Close Encounters and a certain well-regarded TNG episode (the title escapes me at the moment.)
But while the technobabble/science didn’t make too much sense to me, this was extremely entertaining. And it moved the story forward.
Like the fun crossover, there were serious moments as well.
Kudos to the cast and the production team.
horrible
I loved it. I’ve been listening to the songs over and over while getting ready to write this, and the more I hear them, the better I like them. The standouts for me were Uhura’s song and Chapel’s song, and that joyous finale.. (And yes, I laughed out loud at the singing Klingons.)
The songs weren’t just a gimmick, but an integral part of the story, and perhaps the most effective way of dramatizing each character’s innermost thoughts and feelings. I found Uhura’s meditations more compelling in song that in dialogue in Lost in Translation, and I thought this episode was a better showcase for her character, despite the fact that Lost in Translation was presumably meant to be “the Uhura episode.”
I particularly like that Subspace Rhapsody was not just a gimmicky throwaway episode, a narrative detour that took some generic songs and gave them a veneer of Star Trek references, but an essential episode that advanced and concluded the season-long arcs for each character. The La’an/Kirk and Spock/Chapel romantic storylines are wrapped up. Uhura finds the sense of purpose that’s eluded her since the start of the series. The crew is closer than ever and rededicated to the mission. Really, this would have been an excellent season finale.
The story was well structured, too. I enjoyed the symmetry in the resolution of the two romances. Both La’an and Spock face romantic rejection, but La’an takes the right lesson from it, that it’s better to be emotionally open and put yourself out there, even if that means being hurt, whereas Spock takes the wrong lesson from it, vowing to close himself off emotionally and never allow himself to be hurt again.
I’m so impressed with the audacity and the creativity that went into making this episode. I really don’t see how they could have pulled it off any better.
If there’s ever a one-off TV movie or mini-series idea, how about something revolving around Spock’s wedding that’s alluded to in dialogue in the TNG episode “Sarek” when Picard tells Riker he attended the ambassador’s son’s wedding. I have to wonder who Spock ended up getting hitched to. You could put Ethan Peck in aged-up makeup.
Given what we know about Spock’s future, it’s hard to say that he made the wrong choice here. For a Vulcan, it’s very likely the right choice.
This was a very nice blend of high-concept, with just enough Trek-style technobabble to keep it plausible, and then using the musical conventions for some fine character work. I especially liked how the numbers were kept simple. Nobody was suddenly belting out Cole Porter, or Gershwin, or Sondheim, like a Broadway trouper. And, even then, everyone started slow, and more tentative, and perplexed, as one would be, before rounding into the songs as the emotions took hold. Jess and Ethan made me realize why they went for the tonal whiplash of this particular order to tell their story. Excellent modulation of the various talent levels, from Babs and Anson doing something closer to the spoken song of Rex Harrison (who really had no singing voice) in “My Fair Lady”, to the bolder voices of Christina and Celia. I was vaguely aware that they’d cast Celia with an eye to matching Nichelle Nichol’s considerable talents, but didn’t realize how accomplished, like Nichelle, she is already. Yes, it was obvious they were building towards her having the big solo number, and, boy, did she deliver. Feel free to play, SNW, I’m loving it, so far.
This was simply delightful. My favorite by far was Peck as Spock. His voice, his mannerisms, how the song fit into his character development due to his breakup with Chapel. Absolutely fantastic. Chong and Gooding were also excellent. I was a bit nervous about this episode, but they Absolutely Nailed It.
Yeah, the Klingon Pop number absolutely broke me.
I’m still giggling, LOL.
This is a test.
If it goes through, both my wife and I loved the episode, and she hates musicals.
Extremely brave choice to do this. Easily could’ve been a Fonz Shark Jumping episode and instead it’s an instant classic. Just realized that the Klingon number that everyone is calling “K-Pop” is so obvious of a pun (and a great one) that I’m actually annoyed with myself that I missed it the first time.
And I just noticed KRAD’s little bio piece. You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is one of my absolute faves and to this day I will break out with “Behold a brimming bowl of meat and meal which is brought forth to ease our hunger!” at random intervals. My family is utterly bewildered and I care not at all.
It’s great to see that everyone’s rallying around this episode, even people who were skeptical based on the trailer and the concept.
I think what makes it so much fun is that the plot hinges on the joy of space exploration. Uhura is absolutely delighted to discover the phenomena, and even when it starts to become a genuine threat, everyone’s still quite amused and intrigued by it. Then the big song at the end about how glad they are to be in space, and the meaning they find in exploration, is just sublime.
It’s a real celebration of SNW’s ethos. I’m not trying to rag on Discovery and Picard here, but everyone in those shows seemed to be perpetually stressed and distraught by the prospect of space exploration, and I could never figure out why they were even there half the time. Starfleet’s a volunteer organisation, why not just leave if turns out you actually hate space exploration and find it extremely stressful and anxiety-inducing? This episode was the perfect counterpoint – a ship full of people who volunteered to do this because they absolutely love doing it, which is the same vibe that TOS/TNG/VOY always gave off.
SNW may not have yet produced episodes to rival the sheer quality of the best of the previous shows, but it’s virtually always fun and upbeat, and this episode acts as the perfect distillment of that. As others have said, it was a bold and risky decision to make this episode and it’s paid off enormously.
Loved it. The klingon song came out of nowhere and was an amazing changeup. I have a feeling many of us will be making that our ringtone once we get the soundtrack. :)
I was impressed by the singing, but I also felt that the decision to make La’an and Kirk’s conversation not a musical number was crucial to their scene together, and I am glad that they chose to play it that way.
From beginning to end this was so much better than I thought it would be. I actually had to pause after the a la Perfect Pitch rendition of the theme music. At that point I knew it was going to be a ride. The story was solid, the musical numbers just moved it along, and the entire cast is so talented. The Klingon boy band just capped it off for me and left me rolling on the floor.
At first I was kind of surprised that the opening credits didn’t use Roddenberry’s horrible lyrics from the Courage original theme. But in retrospect, that would have set the stage for more of a parody than an episode with consequences.
It was not anywhere near Buffy level but it was good. However, perhaps they should change the name of the show to “Nyota Uhura grows up and saves the Universe until Kirk becomes her Captain and the patriarchy wins?”
They have made Pike completely unnecessary and, in fact, ineffectual.
JTown: I’ll get you, Red Baron!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who wants to know what’s wrong with making meals a happy occasion….
Wow am I in the minority, but I found this episode major cringe. And this is someone who has written a musical (never fully produced), and who knows every note of Once More With Feeling by heart. And maybe this is why; maybe I’m too close to it.
FTR, I am also not particularly fond of Wicked, and that kind of thing I know was a big touchstone for this show.
Some of the songs were good, some of the moments were good, most of the character plot development was great.
It just could have been lots better and I wish I had had the chance to write the songs.
The lyrics are often awkward and don’t flow. The musical style is almost entirely 90s and largely synth based, in a way that TV musicals often are, but that doesn’t make it great. The orchestrations seemed simple and rapidly assembled, and I get it, it’s TV, but I am still disappointed.
Very few of the songs stick with me. Traditionally, musicals contain songs that extend beyond the specificity to be truly great. They become karaoke standards and wedding songs.
Also there were too many melancholy I Want songs. There’s usually only one, or maybe two for two main characters; this felt like the I Want depressed songs took over most of the score.
I’d try to watch it again and see if it grows on me, but the autotune. THE AUTOTUNE. It’s not only robotic, it’s dated. Modern pitch correction doesn’t have to sound like that!
I loved the Klingon song moment, but it bothers me that they sent a 1934 song into the cloud and got back lots of mostly very white seeming, Glee-ish, 90s style stuff. It feels unimaginative. When Uhura sang in the original series, it was haunting and strange and futuristic, yet ancient. When Uhura sings in this, it should be AMAZING. Something new and ancient and fabulous. And she’s great, but it is soooo not alien enough. We have more variation on our own planet, let alone all the quadrants and all the history. I want to hear and see all the extras from other realms singing in their own ways. I want it all to blend together in some kind of grand interstellar harmony. Gollllldangit.
Once More With Feeling has Let Me Rest In Peace, I’m Under Your Spell, Standing In The Way, etc; these are very relatable, universal in their specificity, and have proven to be singable and beloved. I didn’t really get that from this episode; the songs were more tell than show. As a formula, in a strong musical, something barely begins to happen before the music, and then happens or peaks during the song. But, too often, something is totally established and mostly over before a song, and then the song describes it afterward, or the song describes the feelings without much of a journey really happening (it tells, about the feelings, rather than demonstrating them). I could get more specific but I’d have to go look up the lyrics. This kind of thing is not uncommon but it feels empty to me.
There are, in fact, loads of songs that most folks know which originally came from musicals, but the musicals are long forgotten and the songs are still around; and I don’t just mean Xanadu :)
I know I’m old fashioned, for sure, of course, but name the best musicals, your favorite musicals; I bet the “hits” stand out and stand on their own. This ep reminded me of the Xena or Scrubs ones, cute but I don’t remember any of the songs, and I don’t remember feeling like a song gave me something new to sing about.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad it happened. I love musical episodes on principle. I am super fond of this show and I look forward to every ep. But I had to share my frustration. Thanks ok bye.
I have only two observations:
One: I now have renewed hope that someday there will be a full-bore adaptation of John M. Ford’s How Much for Just The Pkanet–
and…
Two: Somewhere, Nichelle Nichols is smiling.
I think SNW has done a fantastic job establishing that some of Chapel’s depression and sadness in TOS was not just a crush on Spock but a reaction to trauma. Jess Bush is great and has redeemed a problematic character.
Strangely enough, Wesley seemed the most Kirky in this episode. I like him a lot in the role.
@47/jofesh I’m with you on the music. There were moments, but in particular, the Grand Finale really needed to be much much grander. Chapel’s number in the bar (described as not being enough by Uhura in the build-up) obviously had so much more energy.
Also, does the use of the TOS end credits theme mean that all the timeline/alternate reality/canon/continuity issues are resolved?
There is one performance by Shatner that must never be forgiven – oops, I mean of course forgotten – his karaoke cover of Right Said Fred – I’m Too Sexy in My Dad Says (yt). I recommend you view both together, the original first, and then the ever sublime Shatner version.
Everyone’s very good at singing, but it got old FAST. By the third or fourth number, I was just watching the clock waiting for the plot to start back up.
The character moments/subplots were fantastic, but broken apart by ALL THE SINGING. Outside of the singing, this is a fantastic 8 or 8.5/10 episode.
Giving them an excuse to sing felt gratuitous and overdone. First SNW episode that really felt like a slog (only the fairy tale ep from S1 scores this low for me, but it would still be easier to rewatch). I can’t imagine rewatching this one. 5/10, lowest of the season.
I thought the performers were good, but the songs didn’t work for me as well as I’d have liked, and they felt a bit too much like one another. I generally really enjoy musicals and musical episodes, but this fell a little flat for me. (I *liked* it, but I expected to like it much more.) I kind of wish La’an *had* sung a 17th century sea shanty to change things up.
Also too many solos, not enough duets and ensemble pieces. (Until the finale, of course.) And it’s sort of weird to shoehorn Kirk into yet another episode and then not give him a number. I do like seeing him approaching relationships as an adult rather than the caricatured womanizer he’s sometimes reduced to.
(I feel kind of bad for the actor playing Sam, who seems reduced this season to doing short bits with his brother and Spock.)
They do really seem to be going kind of overboard with Uhura this season. It’s fine that she’s a high achiever destined for great things, but she’s still just an ensign now. She shouldn’t really even be the full comms officer, let alone have people continually telling her how great she is. It reminds me of the 2009 film’s approach to Kirk, which had Pike insisting that he had the makings of a great officer when he was a delinquent getting into bar fights, and had him commanding the Enterprise before graduating the academy.
(And of course both Kelvin timeline Kirk and Secret Hideout Uhura got time travelers to inform them of their respective destinies.)
I did like them changing up the theme music, though I think they should have gone full a capella for the opening theme.
Also a missed opportunity to peek in on other ships in the fleet to show quick snippets of them being enmeshed in music hall numbers, dream ballets, roller disco, etc.
(I wouldn’t mind a series set in the musical universe, but please get Alan Mencken or Rachel Bloom in to consult on the the songwriting. Or at least Joss Whedon.)
Like others, I have a bad feeling about Batel’s priority one mission.
Wow, what a lovely episode! The cast gave it their all, it was written, choreographed, and filmed beautifully, and the mood of the episode repeatedly varied between hilarious, heavy, and heartwarming!
I’ve rarely laughed so hard at an episode as I did at this one. The moment the music for La’an’s number began I immediately burst out laughing. I expected a silly song about pining for Kirk. It wasn’t long, however, before I realized that it was a great song that really allowed me to relate to her character in ways I hadn’t seen before.
The character development is very well done despite the amount of it they had to fit into this episode. Spock in particular was well acted and written. Ethan Peck has never embodied Nimoy’s role more flawlessly than he does in this episode and I really felt warm inside when he sang about how understanding the universe was his purpose.
The grand finale was such a great statement about Star Trek and its central message of working together to overcome obstacles. I really love this show and I think it’s turning out to be some of the finest Trek ever!
@55:
James Kirk did get a number: it was the duet with Una, which was the second song of the episode not counting the reworked theme song.
The actor playing Sam Kirk is a recurring character and he only had small bits in the first season as well so I don’t really see him as having a reduced role this season.
I don’t think the focus on Uhura this season is overboard at all. She’s the youngest one on the cast and newest officer to the ship (when it debuted) so she’s like a surrogate for the audience. Plus, she’s been described by Pike as a prodigy so he’s very aware of her communications/linguistic prowess. And there’s no reason she shouldn’t be a full comms officer. On Voyager we had Harry Kim, an ensign fresh out of the academy who was the senior officer at Ops. Uhura as a character has just been popping.
And I don’t think anyone (at least publicly) will work with Joss Whedon for any consulting work as he’s been cancelled for apparently being an awful person.
@55/mschiffe: “I do like seeing [Kirk] approaching relationships as an adult rather than the caricatured womanizer he’s sometimes reduced to.”
True, although they’re still leaning into the Kirk caricature a bit by tacking on that “I’m not a fan of rules” line, which is totally not true of TOS Kirk.
“[Uhura is] still just an ensign now. She shouldn’t really even be the full comms officer…”
Why not? Ensign Sato was the full comms officer on NX-01. Ensigns Mayweather, Chekov, and Crusher were permanent navigators. Ensign Kim was the permanent operations manager. I don’t know if that makes sense by real-life military standards, but there’s abundant precedent for it in Starfleet.
And I love it that they’re doing so much with Uhura, because Gooding is my favorite Uhura ever, and because Uhura was the most underutilized main character on TOS. It’s natural for a show to focus on its standout cast members, regardless of how important it seems their characters “should” be on paper. And Gooding has certainly proven herself to be that.
Anyway, it occurred to me that an overlooked tag line for this episode is “La’an Noonien Sings!”
First off: this episode was everything I could have wanted and then some. My musical and nerdy heart enjoyed every minute of it, regardless of some of the cheesiness, auto-tune, etc.
Secondly: when listening to the first song after the anomaly hits (Status Report) I kept thinking “I’ve heard this song before, but where?” It finally came to me this morning on the way to work – there’s a *lot* of shared chords and similarities to “Eleanor Rigby” in it, just like the duet between Una and Kirk was very clearly inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan.
In Babylon 5, JMS showed us the end of Londo’s character arc in the very first episode. By the time we saw it actually happen, the context had changed completely even though the end was the same. The Spock – Christine arc has, to a much more minor extent, recontextualized the interaction between the characters in TOS. In particular, the scene in A Private Little War when Spock is in a healing trance and M’Benga tells Chapel “He’s aware of what’s going on around him. He simply can’t take his attention off the healing. He probably even knows you were holding his hand.” And then Chapel tries to assure Spock that she does that with all her patients. It shows she’s interested.
On a more general note, I enjoyed the episode. I was pleased it advanced character arcs. One difference between Subspace Rhapsody on the one hand and Once More With Feeling and The Bitter Suite on the other is that none of the songs in SR were really suitable for spontaneous singing by fans. I can remember and sing several songs from both the Buffy and Xena musicals, but this morning I couldn’t remember any particular lyrics from Subspace Rhapsody.
Delightful, well crafted show. While the technobabble explanation is, well, preposterous, its consistent with the Star Trek universe and using the episode to advance long term story lines, buttress TOS canon about Chapel and Spock in deepening Chapel’s character arc, and being sufficiently self aware that a character confesses an emotional truth to avoid singing a 17th century sea shanty, its impressively good work. I couldn’t help but wonder though about the growth of Uhura’s character in SNW. Nichelle Nichols was very gifted and her skills were mostly wasted professionally and story-wise on the original show. Yes, it was the times but it’s still sad to remember. The current actor was great and no criticism implied of her—but it sure seems unfair that Nichols never got a similar opportunity.
A couple of people have mentioned autotuning, and that surprises me, because the sound of autotuned voices is intolerable to me, worse than fingernails on a blackboard, and yet I didn’t notice it here. Are you talking about a subtler kind of pitch correction than the kind that makes the singer sound like a robot, like in that Cher “Believe” song that tortured me by playing incessantly on the PA of the college bookstore where I worked for a year?
I enjoyed this.
Spock’s number has great lyrics, indeed — not just the double meaning of “I’m the x / ex” but also “I solve for y / why”.
This was a particularly neat way to get La’an to tell Jim what happened, as it only broke the rules with the aim of not having the information come out at a more compromising time in front of more people.
I understand that any episode like this will be compared to Buffy’s “Once More, With Feeling” — and this episode is no, well, that episode — but it could’ve used a “They got the mustard out!” moment when La’an or another core member of the cast peers around a corner.
We all have different thresholds for this sort of thing but I thought the pitch correction was fairly tasteful; it only makes sense that some actors would need their voices smoothed out and the technology has come a long way in terms of how organic the results sound.
The musical accompaniment manifested extradimensionally by virtue of the same bizarre force that had people singing in unison or breaking into appropriate complementary dance moves, obviously.
I was hoping for an entirely a cappella rendition of the show’s theme but understand why certain instrumentation was left in to gird things up.
@62. ChristopherLBennett — Much subtler than Cher on “Believe”. When you hear AutoTune on that level, or vocoder effects, it’s almost certainly meant to sound processed. (By the way: “La’an Noonien Sings!” @58… Ouch.)
Ethan Peck was auto tuned.
Celia Rose Gooding has a excelent musical theater voice, but Christina Chong has the strongest voice.
@62 said: A couple of people have mentioned autotuning, and that surprises me, because the sound of autotuned voices is intolerable to me, worse than fingernails on a blackboard, and yet I didn’t notice it here. Are you talking about a subtler kind of pitch correction than the kind that makes the singer sound like a robot, like in that Cher “Believe” song that tortured me by playing incessantly on the PA of the college bookstore where I worked for a year?
AutoTune – when used as originally intended – was used to imperceptibly fix slightly wrong notes in a track, rather than having to have a singer either record an entirely new take or drop into the existing one to fix a couple bad notes, running the risk of creating an even more artificial sound. I believe it was Lil Wayne who came up with using it as a gimmick, with Cher’s track coming later.
AutoTune was definitely present on most (if not all) of Ethan Peck’s songs. The Una/La’an tune had its fair share as well. Given the fact that only two of the cast were actual singers, they did a pretty good job of making it work.
I liked this episode well enough and appreciate the effort and imagination it took to come up with it. However, I doubt it will be one I return to often in rewatches. My daughter kept saying “This is so weird.” That was my assessment as well. Musicals and Star Trek aren’t a natural fit
All I can think of now is that we’re one step closer to an adaptation of How Much For Just The Planet?
(We could get Neil Gaiman to write it! And play “himself”! :) )
@16
Yeah, it took me a while to realize he wasn’t just singing “I’m the ex,” but “I’m the X,” the variable in the equation.
He sang both. Per the closed captioning the first time he sang the line it was “I’m the ex” but all the other times it was “I’m the X”.
The chance to work in a couple of lines of “There’s Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow” was RIGHT THERE and they didn’t take it. Boooo!
:)
I’m a fan of the episode, but I’m a little surprised that such an august collection of nerds hasn’t commented on the use of “K’t’inga-class” to describe the Discovery/SNW VFX model of the D7 battle cruiser. Which depending on your perspective is either a long-overdue confirmation that the “Motion Picture” battle cruiser model was always supposed to essentially represent the TOS battle cruiser OR yet another vile retcon perpetrated by fiendish producers with sinister motives. :P
Regardless the “you really have to watch out for those aft torpedoes” struck me as a cute reference to the V’Ger sequence.
@70/Patrick: I’ve often suspected that “D7” was just a Starfleet designation for the K’tinga class.
@71 Discovery ruined that idea by having L’Rell introduce it to the Empire as the D7 . I just assumed that the K’Tingas were newer ships, even if they used the same model (I don’t think it’s quite the same).
@60: I would say “Keep Us Connected” has pretty memorable lyrics. It’s my favorite song from the episode and I’ve been playing it on repeat. I think it’s real-Broadway show tune quality.
@72/Chase: Was that scene in English or Klingonese? Maybe we were just hearing the translation of her words.
If not, there’s no reason the same class couldn’t have both a proper name and an alphanumeric designation; it seems logical to expect it to have both, like, say, the P-51 Mustangs from WWII.
One moment that was a little too on the nose at the end was when Kirk belted out, “if I make captain, it’ll be because of all of you.” I’m resigned to the fact that Kirk is going to be a factor on this show from now on, but leaning too far into making it the story of how Kirk took over the ship really runs the risk of sidelining Pike and others. On the other hand, Kirk congratulating Spock by telling him he “almost understood” what he had said was a vintage Kirk-Spock exchange
@74 I tried to find that scene on YouTube, but was unsuccessful. So I don’t remember. But I think your explanation is a good enough one that I’m not going to worry too much about it.
@75 I think periodic appearances by Kirk showing him establishing those crucial relationships with the Enterprise crew (especially if he brings Bones with him at some point) would be a great ongoing storyline in this show.
I’d rather see Kirk’s appearances spaced out more. These 10-episode seasons are too short. I want to see more of what the show is named for, more of the classic episodic planet-of-the-week stuff we got in season 1. I don’t want the show to get overwhelmed by prequelitis.
I agree about “prequelitis.” The one thing this season seemed to really lose track of – even more than the first one did – is that “these are the voyages of the starship Enterprise” under Captain Pike and crew. Spending so much time with Kirk makes Pike feel like a placeholder rather than the guy whose birthday will later become a holiday. Yes, I get that we are at the tail end of Pike’s time aboard the Enterprise – but we’ve still got years before the accident, delta rays and wheelchair. One thing that was brilliant about season one was the sense that Pike was determined to do great things in the time he had left. This season’s arc seems to have been about his relationship difficulties – and we still don’t know even whether he has told her about his future. Yes, the storylines are more evenly spread out among arguably the most talented cast in Trek history. But that does come at a cost to ostensibly the show’s lead character.
And all that feels like complaining it’s 72 and sunny rather than 73 and sunny, given the quality of the writing and performances
This was a fun episode, not as good as last week’s awesome episode, but quite enjoyable, especially when the Klingons break into song about killing everyone in Starfleet. That was hilarious.
I kinda miss the old Jim Kirk, a strutting womanizer who never would have let the fact that his sorta girlfriend was pregnant get in the way of another sexual conquest. But I get that that sort of behavior doesn’t fly anymore, for good reason.
Anyway, twenty bucks says that Pike’s girlfriend never makes it back from her “Priority 1” mission. My guess is that she and the Cayuga will be blown to smithereens by the Gorn. Captain Pike will feel quite sad and guilty and undoubtedly share his feelings with us, the crew, and the entire Federation.
@79 I’m honestly not sure if you’re trolling or not, but that was never who Jim Kirk was. He had plenty of relationships in his life, but there’s no reason to believe that he ever would have been unfaithful to somebody he cared about. He’s a man of integrity.
@79/mark: “I kinda miss the old Jim Kirk, a strutting womanizer who never would have let the fact that his sorta girlfriend was pregnant get in the way of another sexual conquest.”
That is absolutely not who Jim Kirk was. That is an odious modern myth that is profoundly wrong and deeply unfair to his character. If you look at the actual show, he wasn’t going around making “conquests.” In most cases, either the women pursued him, or he seduced them in service of the mission, or he was in an altered mental state, or he reunited with old flames from his past that he clearly had strong feelings for. On a few occasions (Edith, Miramanee, Rayna), he fell deeply, committedly in love, in a way anathema to the “womanizer” mentality.
Kirk was anything but a womanizer. He was a romantic, a man capable of deep love and devotion, but forced by his sense of duty to isolate himself from the kind of connection he longed for.
Indeed, aside from the mistake about Kirk being a rule-breaker, SNW’s approach is great because it really gets Kirk right, basing his characterization on the actual facts of TOS instead of the total BS caricature of Kirk that’s somehow supplanted the reality in public perception. The way the alternate Kirk formed a relationship with La’an was very true to TOS, where his deepest bonds (Edith, Miramanee) were formed in instances where he was away from his ship and crew for some time and able to relax his sense of discipline so the romantic inside could come out.
@79- You obviously haven’t spent a lot of time in these Trek watch/rewatch comment threads. Any mention of Kirk, especially TOS Kirk, as a womanizer is going to get you a well-deserved beat-down, lol.
As for this episode, I’m sorry, bridge too far for me. I love music and I love Trek, But someone else mentioned cringe and that’s what this episode was for me. Full disclosure, I couldn’t finish the whole thing. It was too awkward and too much. I know it’s meant to be different and daring and imaginative and it is all of those things, except that where is the damn music coming from? Why are they singing In lyrics that rhyme? Etc. Ugh. Too gimmicky for my taste, sorry, someone has to be Mr. Crankypants and I’m glad to step up, because I hated the hell out of this.
. It was strange to see M’Benga murder a Klingon last week, but I’m already looking fondly back at that episode….
@82/fullyfunctional: Meh, just assume that Q was messing with them and they theorized a “musical quantum reality” because they didn’t know any better.
Kirk as a womanizer is really the invention of stand-up comedians more than anything else. If you look at the “numbers,” there are not a ton of “green alien women” (and that’s more of a Pike thing anyway) waiting to sleep with Kirk at every port of call. Edith Keeler and Carol Marcus definitely count as serious love interests., as would Miramanee. In Edith and Miramanee’s cases, he is with them for months (though contained within a single episode). Areel Shaw and Ruth from “Shore Leave” are former partners. That leaves Shahna from “Triskelion,” the lady from “Bread and Circuses” and Janice Lester. I’m forgetting whether Kirk had been involved with the lady from “Deadly Years.”
The Kirk I do wonder about is Sam Kirk. Aren’t we due for a trip to Deneva to see Aurelan and the kid(s)?
The only time I recall Kirk behaving in a sexually sleazy manner on TOS was when he slept with the slave girl provided to him in “Bread and Circuses”, which was, admittedly, a pretty horrible thing to do under the circumstances, even though she seemed outwardly perfectly willing.
(I feel like that was just an extension of an entire genre of mid-20th century erotica that used the institution of Greco-Roman slavery as a pretext for dominance/submission fantasies. Not that that makes it any better, just…you know. Context.)
@84/twels: Part of the “womanizer” myth is just a reaction to the tendency of episodic TV to give its lead actors multiple short-term love interests. But if you compare Kirk to contemporary heroes like The Man from UNCLE‘s Napoleon Solo or The Wild Wild West‘s Jim West, he’s much less of a womanizer than they are — much less on the make, much more respectful toward women. In season 1 in particular, he was portrayed as so serious and stiff that he practically needed to be under some kind of mind-altering influence to admit feelings for a woman; in “Mudd’s Women,” he was the only human male unaffected by the women’s allure.
@85/jaimebabb: There’s also “Wolf in the Fold,” where Kirk seemed eager to partake of the pleasures offered by hedonistic Argelian women. But that was the expected behavior of a sailor on leave. And it’s not nearly as bad as Drusilla, because the Argelian women were free to make their own choices.
Re Autotune, FWIW, I brought it up as a generic term for vocal pitch correction, and as someone who does digital pitch correction I am pretty sure that everyone was processed within an inch of their lives. Making it not awful is good, but making it all superhumanly dead-on pitches loses the humanity, to me. Including the backing vocals being mostly so cleaned up and precise, it lost the emotion. When combining groups of voices, the variation becomes the texture and remarkable inconsistency often just thickens the sense of support. Once you pitch clean every background vocalist, it sounds cold.
Yeah there could have been a mustard moment; there were so many ways it could have had more fun with the concept. Like more bizarre languages, like the computer singing, like more eras of Earth music, like the ship sounds we know and love being retuned as part of the orchestra, like the phasers becoming useless usher flashlights, like someone having to put on a suit and repair the exterior of the ship whilst singing to themself, like one of the ‘how do we fix this’ meetings being conducted in song…
Also I would have loved a better technobabble. Like, aliens trying to communicate sending music, like Close Encounters. Maybe some of the music makes no sense or is bad/out of tune until they fix the translators. I know this is not that important but it just felt unimaginative.
How about this: The ship is nearly destroyed by getting too close to the spacetime fold and then some kind of alien or alien physics freezes the ship in place to save it, and while everything is in this dreamlike frozen state, music is everywhere and people sing. Why singing? Because as Spock and Uhura noticed, this fold allows communciation to zip through at unheard of speeds. It is a vortex of communication, all sorts. It is full of collected radio signals from everywhere, it’s full of songs of all sorts, it causes the old printer they never use (it’s in The Cage) to start up and print out sheet music until they unplug it. Fun!
In a frozen time state, some of the big themes in the songs could be about time, and how without it, you can think about this or that, torture yourself or find peace, all kinds of vibes we were talking about in lockdown. That stuff would relate to each person’s story but also speak to some of the big meaning of life, who am I questions.
FWIW I would have their second realization be they are not frozen but moving very very slowly, grazing the tiny edge of the field, and in about 3 hours or whatever, they will probably be through it and presumably be on their way again. This would take away the urgency of solving the problem and allow for some B plot adventures. Then when they are about to clear the anomaly, it grinds to a halt and they realize that singing is required to resume the motion, thus we get the big finale.
Like I said, I’m just frustrated they didn’t call me! No, they don’t have my number. No, I’m not an established and well known musical composer, hush.
Patrick: I didn’t mention the K’tinga thing in the review because I don’t have the bone in my head that makes me care about space ship design……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I was also expecting Klingon opera, so the “K-pop” interlude had me wiping my eyes and trying to breathe.
The part that I’m surprised by is that so many people are surprised that there was an in-universe explanation for the singing. “Once More, with Feeling” was over 20 years ago. I’m entirely certain that everyone involved in this episode was well aware of OMWF’s reputation, and I expected nothing less.
Just over the last three episodes, it’s clear that SNW fears nothing, and that level of fearlessness is often rewarded.
Random observations: 1) I’d love to know the genesis of this episode- I’m guessing it has something to do with Celia Rose Gooding being a Tony-nominated/Grammy Winning actress. 2) I love that we aren’t in the age of syndication- there is no way in hell an episode like this ever could’ve happened then. 3). As far as the D-7 v K’Tinga argument I could see it as a reference point or maybe that the K’Tinga was a subclass of the D-7 that was different enough to make the distinction the way that a plane might have both a reconnaissance and a bomber version of it. 4) As someone who watched Anson Mount in Hell on Wheels as this gruff Western archetype its almost unbelievable how gifted he is that he is now the singing dancing father figure captain.
@89/Brian McDonald: There’s always an in-universe explanation for the singing. In “Once More, With Feeling,” it was a demon. In “The Bitter Suite,” it was a supernatural realm the characters got sucked into. In “Mayhem of the Music Meister” and “Duet,” it was the Music Meister. In Fringe‘s “Brown Betty,” it was a character’s drug trip. In the Lucifer musical episode, it was literally an act of God. Several hospital-based series (Chicago Hope, Scrubs, Gray’s Anatomy) did episodes where a patient hallucinated people singing.
It’s actually kind of refreshing on those rare occasions where a show functions like a normal musical and just has people singing without an in-story excuse, like in the season 1 & 3 finales of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
@90/MikeKelm: “I love that we aren’t in the age of syndication- there is no way in hell an episode like this ever could’ve happened then.”
Xena was a syndicated show, and its “The Bitter Suite” started the trend of musical episodes, predating “Once More, With Feeling” by 3 years. But then, Xena and its sibling show Hercules were often quite bold and format-breaking for their day.
@55 — re: Rachel Bloom, the songs here were written by Tom Polce who wrote for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
@89 said: Just over the last three episodes, it’s clear that SNW fears nothing, and that level of fearlessness is often rewarded.
I agree that this show has a very high batting average. Nevertheless, there are some course corrections I’d definitely like to see in Season Three:
1. Less Kirk. There’s already a show in which this guy is the main character, plus another 8 movies with him in them.
2. Less Spock. See above. One of the most brilliant things the Marvel Early Voyages series did was make Spock a background character so the other “new” characters could shine.
3. Even more Number One. Una got more of an emphasis this season than last, but I still feel like there’s a lot more to explore.
4. More Strange New Worlds. Most of my favorite episodes are the “seeking out new life” kinds. Let’s see the crew be explorers a little more.
5. More Kirk. Sam Kirk, that is. Let’s see his family and what prompts him to leave the Enterprise. Plus, how does he know Pike? Does Pike know George Kirk Sr.?
6. La’an’s “new paradigm.” With Kirk off the table, what kind of person would she go for?
7. More Discovery tie-ins. I’m curious where Ash Tyler is and what he’s doing.
8. Less gimmickry. Yes, the musical and the cartoon tie-in worked. But always swinging for the fences can lead to strikeouts.
9. More Ortegas. Honestly, this character feels 100% more about Melissa Navia’s natural charisma than about anything written down on the page.
10. More Enterprise. More than any other setting in Trek, the Starship Enterprise is a character in and of itself. Let’s see a story from her history with a de-aged Pike and Captain April in charge. Let’s see a story about how the ship works and a few locations (the bowling alley comes to mind) that we’ve never seen before.
I liked this episode. Star Trek is full of absurd concepts: sometimes it works (“Darmok”), sometimes it almost works (“Babel”), and sometimes it’s “Masks”.
Regarding the use of pitch correction software, I noticed it, also. Some voices sounded more corrected than others. I didn’t have a huge problem with it. I imagine there is a wide range of ability within the cast, and there may not have been a lot of time to prepare.
Autotune or not, there was still a great deal of pleasure discovering Rebecca Romijn can carry a tune, Celia Rose Goode showcase her chops and Christina Chong can belt.
I mostly really enjoyed this. Now that I’ve read this review & comments and watched TrekCulture’s Ups and Downs, I want to watch the episode again.
I felt that the big songs went on a little too long. This opinion surprised me because I love me some musical theatre, But then, there have been years where I’ve seen 50 plays and two movies. (I simply enjoy it so much less with a screen between me and the performances, and with editors doing jump cuts and close-ups).
Chapel’s big production number kept seeming off to me (but what do I know about TV musicals?) Anyway, I didn’t think it sounded like Jess Bush’s voice. And they kept using cuts to “suggest” most of the lifts (a closeup of someone grabbing her boot, then a shot of her supposedly lying atop all their arms).
tl;dr: As much as I imprinted on Trek when I was 11 in 1967, TV conventions seem like cheating compared to live theatre.
Marvin Kaye’s *The Incredible Umbrella* had a visit to a musical universe as well, so I couldn’t help but think of that
@83- That works for me, lol.
@83 @98 Seriously. Given the multiple instances where some causes the crew to reveal their inner self (The Nakeds, etc.) or powered beings force them to do silly things (Plato’s Stepchildren, Catspaw, etc.), folks really shouldn’t have a problem with what happened.
I suppose it’s silly to criticize the science in an episode where music comes out of nowhere, but I flat refuse to believe that a human (Uhura) can perceive a pattern in a series of numbers where the computer cannot, hundreds of years in our future.
@87. jofesh — I really like most of your suggestions. If only those of us with strong affinities for certain material by vocation or avocation easily got our visions manifested on the screen… I have so many improvements to comic-book adaptations in my head.
I adored every schlocky moment of this episode. The bunny reference little kid me who could sing Once More with Feeling from memory.
But did no one else spot Pike dropping into the Zach Effron posse from High School Musical 2? Right at the end of his song argument in front of the crew?
@102/K: I saw Pike doing a generic pleading-on-his-knees pose, which I’m certain has existed in theater and dance since far, far earlier than High School Musical.
A fun episode, even if all the songs sounded kind of the same (every time the music started, I thought it was going to be some sort of reprise). I was also kind of hoping for a Kirk Brothers rap battle…
Full disclosure. I hate musicals, well not hate. I don’t like musical theater in general, and given the choice it will never be my first genre to select. Or second or third…or fourth or fifth. Probably because my musical talent is…muted…at best. I mean I’m not incapable of enjoying them, I grew up with Julie Andrews movies after all, and my Mom could survive by having them injected directly into her veins 24/7/365.
That out of the way I loved this. I also found myself pausing to laugh, It was adorable all the way through. I figured Celia could sing, (I think it’s a prerequisite to play the character) but it was a joy watching her have so much fun. And now Uhura has her own theme song. I loved Status Report, that’s the one I actually want to learn, I’ll never be able to sing it myself, so I’ll just listen to it regularly. This was fun, and it was funny. It had poignancy because Chapel stabbed Spock in the spot on a body where a human keeps their liver.
Spock’s number was an excellent exercise in Vulcan Punning and you feel for the guy. He and T’Pring are on a break because he couldn’t open up to her, he opened up to Chapel just in time for her to shut him out. Indeed Chapel did a similar thing to him that he did to T’Pring withholding important information. And as Spock finds himself feeling more lonely than ever, we have the contrast of Uhura realizing she’s not alone at all and has found her place.
La’an as usual this season just makes me want to hug her and give her a hot chocolate. I think Kirk handled that with excellent delicacy, and the reveal that David is already in progress is fantastic. With the mention of Carol I’m now wondering if we’re gonna see her the next time we pop in to Starbase 1. It would be interesting if Carol and La’an really do get along. Kind of like how Boimler’s girlfriend and Mariner hit it off.
I liked that Ortegas’ verse of Status Report followed on to her appreciating her role from “Among the Lotus Eaters”.
It was fun, Perhaps my lack of attachment to the genre lets me overlook any flaws present. But like “Those Old Scientists” I just had a big ole smile on my face.
And if Marie Batel dies…no one is going to be surprised. So there’s a substantial possibility that she’ll live. Alternatively, she’ll end up captured and season 3 will have a rescue arc, where she goes through what La’an went through as a child.
AH YES. Props in this thread. Mr. Bennett, “La’an Noonien Sings”….bravo *Picard Clap.gif*
Ash….”K-Pop” Nailed It. No wonder they were so pissed.
Well, I certainly appreciate all of the constructive criticism concerning my “womanizer” comment. I applaud everyone for their loyalty to James T. Kirk, and he is definitely my favorite Star Trek captain. And you are right that he is an decent man of integrity.
But perhaps we should all watch “The Enemy Within” again. It was a terrific episode. It shows that Kirk has an evil, lecherous side and it is an important part of him; he cannot be the great captain he is without it. That is really the point of the whole episode. He needs to keep that part of him under control, but it’s always there and we do see it manifest itself from time to time.
Anyway, I do note that Kirk kissed a woman in 19 out of the 79 episodes in TOS. But, to keep the peace, I will forgo calling him a womanizer and simply refer to him as a highly successful ladies man. I do have some opinions on Pike, but perhaps I should not mention them. To everyone who does not care for my thoughts, I simply say “Live Long and Prosper”.
@106/mark: The point of “The Enemy Within” is that Kirk normally keeps that side contained, as most of us do. I’ll counter and say you should watch “The Naked Time” again. Yes, he yearns for love and connection, but he doesn’t allow himself to relax his control unless he’s in an altered mental state.
We all have selfish or harmful urges. What distinguishes a good person from a bad person is not whether we have those urges, but whether we let ourselves act on them. That’s a theme that came up many times in TOS (e.g. “I will not kill… today”).
“Anyway, I do note that Kirk kissed a woman in 19 out of the 79 episodes in TOS.”
You’re ignoring the points we’ve already made, and abusing statistics by ignoring their context. Many of those kisses were when he wasn’t in his right mind, or when he was seducing someone for the sake of a mission rather than personal desire, or where the women were seducing him. It was the nature of 1960s television that male leads were expected to have frequent romances of the week, but because Kirk was a serious, disciplined officer, the writers had to contrive artificial situations to get him into romantic situations, precisely because he was not a skirt-chaser constantly on the make like so many other male leads in ’60s TV.
This show is a mess and not in an entertaining way
@92 I hadn’t known that- thanks. And I certainly didn’t hate the songs. They just didn’t work as well for me as the memorable numbers from works like CXGF, “Once More With Feeling”, Galavant, etc., where I’d want to go back and rewatch the numbers right away.
And given that I seem to be in the minority here, it may just be a matter of my personal taste rather than anything wrong with the songs themselves. I’m still glad they’re trying things like this.
@109 – I’ll join you in the minority. The songs were not that great in my opinion, and were mostly just too alike in style that they started to drag as the episode went on. (K-Pop Klingons excepted.) Had they mixed things up a little more with the Starfleet personnel beyond giving Chong a power ballad to showcase her pipes, I think it would have made a big difference.
@109, @110 That’s very fair (and K-Pop Klingons worked so well BECAUSE it was a bit different). I think Una’s initial song was supposed to be influenced by Gilbert and Sullivan, but it was probably not strongly differentiated enough to stand out.
Oh, and everything @93 said.
Relevant to the discussion, I ran into this :) Not bad! I know this song is trippy 60s more than would fly today, so to speak. But it’s neat to hear :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVENiaB9W_c
Ok but who else wanted the “seventeenth-century sea shanty”?
@102 & 103: the falling-to-ones-knees finale to a song is definitely an old trope. I was a member of my university’s musical theatre troupe, and I used it at the finale of my big number in Act One of “FASS ’92: Ain’t Myth-behavin'”. I did it again for the reprise in Act Two, before being interrupted and carried offstage screaming by a group of about 20 Little Orphan Annies. (Don’t ask. All you need to know is, the song was set to the tune of “Tomorrow”. Turns out Annie always secretly hated that song.)
@CLB: Now that you mentioned “Believe” by Cher, all I can think of is the “South Park” version and giggle uncontrollably…
Meh. I appreciate the attempt, but this just didn’t do it for me. It was pretty much cringey and silly.
Too much fan service for one – “Ooh! They mentioned Carol Marcus and she’s PREGNANT!” and “Oh wow! Roger Korby!”
Instead of telling a story, the episode was too busy setting up the characters for TOS.
And let me say that I LOATHE what they did with the Chapel/Spock romance. We never got to see any happiness and they made Chapel out to be a itch with a B in front of it. I’ll never feel bad for her again while watching TOS.
They did a better job with the crossover episode.
@110/northman:
I think that’s valid. I enjoyed the episode, but I don’t see myself memorizing all the lyrics. Something just wasn’t quite there. But I’ll remember Vic Fontaine singing the line “and that laugh that wrinkles your nose” to Kira, or O’Brien and Maxwell singing “The Minstrel Boy,” or the Doctor and Seven singing old tunes with each other.
All of the songs in this week’s episode were competently written and arranged. They were just missing that certain something to make them special.
@104:: When the Kirk brothers were squabbling while they worked, I thought, Aha, here comes an “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)” duet. Too bad they didn’t do that. It would have been fun, but I guess there’s only so much you can squeeze into an hour. Save it for the sequel!
@25/ChristopherLBennet
I’m in love with Andrew Scott’s take on that monologue. He makes the character’s struggle and mental state plainly visible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6CLdCl9TB0
@42/tinsoldier
100% agree.
I have a weird relationship with musicals. It’s not really a genre that fits my usual tastes, I’m not usually out looking for the next one, and yet, when I do finally watch one, I always come out of the show mesmerized and blown away. Every time I’ve seen a musical whether it’s in Broadway or elsewhere, it’s been a unique experience that I’m grateful for – no regrets whatsoever. And the same can be said about TV shows attempting that particular approach: Chicago Hope’s whimsical musical episode in the late 1990s, Fringe’s superlative “Brown Betty” episode, and of course Buffy’s unforgettable own musical outing (and I might add, that Fringe musical episode was co-written by none other than Akiva Goldsman).
I wish Nichelle Nichols had lived a year longer just so she could have seen this episode come to life. This is the ultimate love letter to the gift that was her voice – a voice that made those few musical interludes in TOS all the more special. But maybe, somewhere out there amongst the stars, she has. And if Trek shows ever got nominated for creative awards, Celia Rose Gooding would deserve every single one.
Like Buffy’s “Once more with Feeling”, this episode is a whopping lively character piece that moves the characters several parsecs in their arcs. As I predicted, Spock/Chapel is closer to its end than not. I was expecting a Korby reference before the end of the season, and we got it. The minute Kirk told La’an the name Carol Marcus, I blurted: “she’s pregnant with David” (now I’m wondering when Sam will transfer off the ship so he can be with his doomed wife and his not-so-doomed offspring).
I’m glad they kept M’Benga away from the singing for the most part. Not that he doesn’t have a unique voice, but we didn’t really need yet another M’Benga-heavy outing after that whole brutal Klingon business.
The real star besides Uhura was La’an. Ever since last season’s cosplay episode, I’ve been paying attention to Christina Chong. I’d argue she’s become the show’s breakout character. We have excellent Uhura and Spock material, and not nearly enough Pike/Una stuff. But besides M’Benga and Chapel, La’an’s the one who’s been really carrying a lot of the show’s emotional weight. And nowhere else has that become more clear than in this musical. She puts her personal life on hold for her duty. She carries the burdensome weight of the Noonian Singh name. She took time off to atone for her pain and regrets by helping Oriana. She’s fallen in love with a version of James T. Kirk in an unprecedented and unexpected time travel story. And every scene with her there’s that powerful voice behind the character. Chong’s been putting 110% worth of effort into every scene. So I went into this episode expecting a LOT of La’an singing. I wasn’t disappointed.
Even the Klingon rapping bit worked. Naturally, I was expecting Klingon opera like everyone else. In fact, I half expected a remixed version of Aktuh and Maylota, the opera that Worf and the lounge singer did together before that Ferengi weapons dealer cut them off.
Between a Lower Decks crossover, a brutal Klingon/Federation war scar episode and now this, SNW keeps swinging for the extremes. And succeeding. And it’s great we get two Uhura-centric episodes the same year.
@121 Yeah, La’an’s been a star this season. For someone I was a little wary of coming in (going to the well AGAIN with a Khan?), she’s come to claim my heart–and not in the physical way, but in the mama-bear, protect-her-at-all costs way. I never expected the emotional vulnerability route they took for her character.
And oh-my-god her voice!
(ETA…was fascinated by the dual review from the LATimes. one from the regular TV writer, and one from the theatre/musical writer.Apparently, the thing worked well enough for the non-Trek writer so that she wants to go back and binge on all the past SNW episodes).
Regarding Shatner, I will always think of Futurama‘s “Where No Fan Has Gone Before”:
“How do you do a spoken word version of a rap?”
“He found a way!!”
@… Way back in the 30’s?: The standard assumption in the novels has been that Saavik marries Spock, at that point being at least 40 years past their student teacher relationship (and ignoring literature that says Spock outright raised her, if I recall”Vulcan’s Heart” correctly. To me that’s more important). In a previous thread I may have come across as having any sort of issue with the former reason, but I was just illustrating one reason for whomever had an issue with the relationship, but I personally did not. I did realize I had that issue with Kelvin Spock/Uhura though, in hindsight. I think there needs to be a bigger gap than “teacher and still in the Academy”. And honestly, I appear to not be old-fashioned in that thinking but apparently shockingly modern for my late Gen X brain.
Which leads me to this point: I can totally see how if these two people were romantically involved in one universe but are likely going to be “just” good friends in the prime universe. Obviously some things have changed in the Kelvin timeline, butterfly effecting things where Spock and Uhura didn’t have the same postings and neither did Chapel, so Spock and Uhura didn’t meet first before Spock developed feelings for Chapel. And now, he’s not in a place to start a new relationship. And that’s just fine.
@25
Of all things, the Happy Days rendition of Hamlet with Fonzie in the lead role was really helpful for me.
Woof – guess I’m the only one who didn’t enjoy it! The first couple of numbers were alright, and the music to regular dialogue ratio was really good at first, but they just keep coming more and more rapidly, and just like the Lin Manuel Miranda pieces they clearly intended to emulate, the remainder of the songs are so heavily expositional, self referential, and overly long, but unlike his work, I found them lacking in the soul that makes his work exceptional. I ended up skipping through the second half of just about each one past the halfway point.
I love the episodic format of this series, but I’m kinda surprised at how much it was lacking in a serialized story line this season. We had the Spock romance, the Pike romance, and the La’an romance to bridge episodes, and I guess we’ll wrap it up with some Gorn scraps from last year. An uneven season, but admirable for its unorthodoxy, and full of enjoyable moments.
@126 interesting point about the different romances of this season. What surprises me I guess is how inconsequential they all are. The Spock Chapel romance seems to exist only for continuity p*rn purposes. I really liked the La’an Kirk time travel episode because of how poignant it was at the end for La’an, but that pairing has fizzled out like a wet fuse because Kirk has to be baby daddy for Carol Marcus. And I really dont have any clue what Pike’s deal is with Batel. Major relationship problems because he doesn’t want to tell her he’d rather go camping than sip drinks with her at an all-inclusive?
And it’s all sort of a shame because I think the actors in each pair have extraordinary chemistry with each other. I’ve rooted hard for each duo, but the powers that be have decided to use a cringy awkward musical to throw cold water on each relationship. Ahhh well, I hope next week’s gimmicky hook is a tokusatsu mashup. Gorn versus the Smog Monster.
@127 I would disagree about the inconsequential nature. I don’t believe that the consumation of a relationship to be the ultimate end, nor does a consummated relationship serve as the only purpose of relationships in fiction. For example, I don’t think I’d be pulling so hard for La’an if she HAD developed an ongoing relationship (whether if it was with Kirk or anyone else).
@127/fullyfunctional: “The Spock Chapel romance seems to exist only for continuity p*rn purposes.”
I’d hardly say that. It didn’t just use continuity for the sake of invoking the familiar; it deepened continuity, added unexpected depth to it in a way that recontextualized it and vastly improved Chapel as a character. It fixed what we didn’t realize was broken.
“I really liked the La’an Kirk time travel episode because of how poignant it was at the end for La’an, but that pairing has fizzled out like a wet fuse because Kirk has to be baby daddy for Carol Marcus.”
Or maybe the relationship had to be doomed because it would be too facile for her to get the happy ending she wished for. This Kirk is not that Kirk, so there’s no reason to expect him to conform to her wishes, any more than Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3 had reason to expect post-Avengers: Endgame Gamora to fall in love with him like her counterpart did.
Mabye it was just not my style of musical but none of the songs really clicked for me. I think they were too similar? One of the things I liked about Once More was that it experimented with a variety of styles. It was still a fun episode. Points to Spock for sounding like a singing Vulcan.
I liked the ending of La’an/Kirk. Especially the acknowledgement that they do have a thing despite La’an being very awkward around him. The timing is wrong. That’s a better reason than many they could have come up with.
Also, it occurs to me that we know Kirk isn’t going to stay with Carol. David will grow up not knowing who his father is, which makes it pretty clear there’s going to be a serious falling out between Jim and Carol before too much longer. So maybe La’an will still have a shot?
(Although I’d rather see less of Kirk in season 3, if there is one. At least, this show really needs longer seasons.)
@131
Needing more episodes in a season is a bit unusual these days, usually it’s a case of “they needed to drop half”. Really hoping they release this season on blu-ray.
@132/wiredog: “Needing more episodes in a season is a bit unusual these days”
Because most shows these days are serialized, which encourages tighter arcs. For an episodic show, it’s good to have more episodes to play around with. This season has focused so much on character arcs that there’s hardly been any of the strange new worlds for which it’s named. And with only ten episodes, some characters have been better served than others.
Also, the current strikes have driven home that the short-season model favored by streamers is extremely hurtful for writers, actors, and other creators, depriving them of job security, production experience, and steady residual income. It also means it’s no longer possible for new writers to break in as freelancers with spec scripts, the way so many major creators used to do (e.g. Ron Moore, Steven S. DeKnight, etc.). There’s nothing wrong with some shows being tightly serialized miniseries, but this ridiculous modern insistence that every show should be like that is deeply toxic to the industry. In a healthy industry, it would be one option alongside more episodic shows with long seasons.
Granted, with the 22- or 26-episode seasons of the past, you had to wade through a lot of weak stuff that had to be settled for to meet deadlines. But reducing season lengths to 10 or less is going way too far in the other direction. The solution to one extreme is never the opposite extreme. Maybe something like 13-18 episodes per season would be a good middle ground.
@133 said: Granted, with the 22- or 26-episode seasons of the past, you had to wade through a lot of weak stuff that had to be settled for to meet deadlines. But reducing season lengths to 10 or less is going way too far in the other direction.
I thought the 13-15 episode range the early episodes of Discovery has were just about right. However, if memory serves, someone who did NOT like how long those seasons took to shoot was Anson Mount. If I’m not mistaken, he made lowering the episode count (and therefore, the amount of time he spent in Canada shooting the series) a condition of his signing on as Captain Pike for SNW.
Like I’ve said in other threads, for me, the wealth of riches we’ve gotten from these two seasons makes the lower episode count frustrating in some ways – but I’d probably rather have a 10-episode season of this quality rather than up-and-down 23+-episode seasons we got in the past.
@134/twels: “If I’m not mistaken, he made lowering the episode count (and therefore, the amount of time he spent in Canada shooting the series) a condition of his signing on as Captain Pike for SNW.”
Which is good for him, but again, bad for the writer-producers. The early part of this season already showed that the series can get by with Pike on the sidelines now and then, so maybe they could have 13-15 episodes with Pike having a minimal role in several of them. Heck, there were DS9 episodes where Sisko only had a token scene or two. That’s the advantage of an ensemble cast — it’s easier on the lead’s schedule.
I felt The Orville‘s 10-episode third season had a pacing issue. With so few episodes, mainly focusing on big, epic, movie-like stories, there wasn’t enough time to let character arcs evolve and breathe, so they tended to jump forward artificially, like a close friendship being asserted when we’d never seen it before, or a pair of characters consummating a supposedly long-standing attraction out of the blue and then jumping from casual sex in one episode to being madly in love in the next. There are advantages to taking your time. Not everything has to “advance the plot” — a lot of storytelling is about character, about setting the scene, about inhabiting the world. That can be taken too far, of course — see The Mandalorian — but as with most things, the key is to find a healthy balance.
“I’d probably rather have a 10-episode season of this quality rather than up-and-down 23+-episode seasons we got in the past.”
Which is a false binary, because I’m saying the best option is probably somewhere between those.
@135, Before this discussion I hadn’t really considered the points you’re making, which I appreciate you setting forth so cogently. For some reason I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Debussy (later paraphrased by Miles Davis) about the key to great music being the silence between the notes. I appreciate an ambitious series, but at this point SNW is giving me a case of whiplash. When I rewatch series like TNG or DS9 I make it a point to slog through even the ones I dislike or that I found uninteresting, because even those will color my appreciation of the great episodes and of the worldbuilding in general. (Full disclosure I still haven’t made it through this episode, But I’m sure at some point I’ll sit down and endure the rest of it.)
Maybe you’re right, maybe 23 episodes per season is too much, but I’d still be okay with it, because along with some filler we would get some quality downtime with the characters that we’re becoming invested in. I for one would savor that opportunity.
This discussion of season length is getting me on my hobby horse…the people making the decisions really have no clue on how their business operates, or the kind of life they demand for their workers. They’re just running speadsheets, not running a business. If how they operate makes it impossible for their employees to work adequately, they’re going to run out of workers, both in the short term AND long term.
16 episodes is what the Walking Dead shows tend to do. 16 would be a perfect number for current Trek seasons. Not too dragged or exhausting like 26, and not a ridiculous paltry 10 either. With Trek’s episodic approach and slow character arcs, it makes little sense to crunch it all down to 10 episodes or less. And I’d argue most of the “premium” streaming shows don’t have enough story for 10 episodes either, especially the ones that pride themselves on being a “10 hour movie”. Marvel’s Secret Invasion is living proof that approach is more fruitless than not (it didn’t have enough story for a paltry six ridiculously short episodes), and that most of the movie people that have gotten involved in television over the past decade have little to no understanding of how TV pacing works.
If Anson Mount really signed on to do SNW on the condition that a season be limited to 10 episodes, all I can say is this: that son he had during production, which is the reason Pike is less present this season? I’m not going to hold that against him. He has the right to be a parent and be given time to breathe. But in 18 years, once that kid goes to college, Mount will look back and wish he had done longer seasons in order to pay that steep tuition. The paltry streaming residuals and shorter seasons are two of the many reasons everyone is rightfully on strike.
@135 quoted me and then said:
“I’d probably rather have a 10-episode season of this quality rather than up-and-down 23+-episode seasons we got in the past.”
Which is a false binary, because I’m saying the best option is probably somewhere between those.
I would agree that a few more episodes might be to my liking, but that’s clearly not what was negotiated.
As to whether one could just dial back Anson Mount’s appearances as Pike to compensate, I don’t think that’s really a viable option. If you take a look at a lot of the mainstream reviews of the first few episodes of this season, they definitely note the absence of Pike as a factor in the first three, noting a return to form starting in the fourth episode. That definitely echoes my own feelings about the way this season went , as compared to the more focused first season
I absolutely agree that writers (and actors) should get a bigger slice of the pie in terms of residuals – and initial payments for that matter. The fact that streamers really don’t release any kind of statistics as to actual viewership makes it hard to say what’s being watched – and in what quantity.
HOWEVER, as a viewer, I would say the move to shorter, more consistent seasons (i.e. the “Sopranos”/“Breaking Bad” model) is a huge success creatively. The “wheat-to-chaff” ratio seems much higher in the shows I tend to gravitate to.
@139/twels: “I would agree that a few more episodes might be to my liking, but that’s clearly not what was negotiated.”
And I’m not talking about a single show, I’m talking about why the industry-wide trend toward short seasons is harmful.
“As to whether one could just dial back Anson Mount’s appearances as Pike to compensate, I don’t think that’s really a viable option. If you take a look at a lot of the mainstream reviews of the first few episodes of this season, they definitely note the absence of Pike as a factor in the first three, noting a return to form starting in the fourth episode.”
That’s only because they’re not used to it. As I said, there were plenty of DS9 episodes where Sisko played a minor role, or VGR episodes where Janeway did, and even some TNG episodes where Picard did. More recently, the modern Doctor Who has periodically done “Doctor-light” episodes to give the lead actor a break, and The Flash did a fair number of episodes that Grant Gustin was hardly in. Ensemble shows became the norm in TV for precisely this reason, to spread out the workload and give the actors more downtime.
“I absolutely agree that writers (and actors) should get a bigger slice of the pie in terms of residuals – and initial payments for that matter.”
That’s only one part of the problem. As I’ve already explained, short seasons are bad for writers because there’s much less job security if you’re only working part of the year, and much less opportunity for the on-the-job training that hones writers into experienced producers so they can become the showrunners of tomorrow. It turns the industry into a gig economy.
And even if residuals improve, they’re still just a percentage. A bigger slice of the pie doesn’t help much if the pie is a third or a quarter of the size it used to be.
“HOWEVER, as a viewer, I would say the move to shorter, more consistent seasons (i.e. the “Sopranos”/“Breaking Bad” model) is a huge success creatively. The “wheat-to-chaff” ratio seems much higher in the shows I tend to gravitate to.”
I repeat: it doesn’t make any sense to demand that all TV shows do the same thing. There is value in tight season arcs, but there is also value in longer seasons that give you more time to explore the characters and the world. Arc-driven seasons are about telling a single story in depth, but episodic seasons are about telling many stories. That’s bound to be hit-or-miss, yes, but it’s a mistake to focus only on the whole when it’s the individual parts that matter. One “City on the Edge of Forever” is worth more than the entire second season of Picard.
And nothing works equally well all the time. There are excellent examples of short serial seasons, but there are also bad examples. Serialization has its own drawbacks and excesses and lazy habits — like the way a disproportionate number of season arcs are conspiracy stories, or the way the protagonists tend to be too preoccupied with their own personal problems instead of helping others with theirs.
@138: He has the right to be a parent and be given time to breathe. But in 18 years, once that kid goes to college, Mount will look back and wish he had done longer seasons in order to pay that steep tuition. The paltry streaming residuals and shorter seasons are two of the many reasons everyone is rightfully on strike.
Or maybe shorter seasons give him more time and opportunities to do other equally lucrative side jobs and hit the convention circuit. One reason a lot of shows have gotten shorter seasons is that it’s allowed actors to have more opportunities to find different types of roles and work. Hell, there are major film stars who are taking TV gigs due to the flexibility shorter seasons give.
@140 said: That’s only one part of the problem. As I’ve already explained, short seasons are bad for writers because there’s much less job security if you’re only working part of the year, and much less opportunity for the on-the-job training that hones writers into experienced producers so they can become the showrunners of tomorrow. It turns the industry into a gig economy.
I think that ship has already sailed. It’s the downside of the auteur-driven stuff like “Breaking Bad” and the “Sopranos.” It’s a better show done with fewer people. Essentially, it’s a better mousetrap than the old 26-episode mold in terms of generating profits and (if we’re being honest) more consistently good storytelling in terms of this particular iteration of Trek compared to others.
That said, I will agree that one “City on the Edge of Forever” is greater than all of season 2 of Picard. Hell, I’ll raise you the other two seasons as well
@141/twels: “I think that ship has already sailed.”
Nothing is forever. Trends have always come and gone, and they always will. And whenever anything is taken to excess, it sparks a counterreaction, and things swing back until they become too excessive in the other direction, and then the pendulum swings the other way again.
“It’s a better show done with fewer people. Essentially, it’s a better mousetrap than the old 26-episode mold in terms of generating profits and (if we’re being honest) more consistently good storytelling in terms of this particular iteration of Trek compared to others.”
Which does not in any way rule out a 16-episode season being a good compromise between the two options you keep dwelling on. When both options have downsides, you look for a balance in the middle.
And again, none of your arguments in favor of serials mean that longer shows should never be made. It is not a binary choice. There are advantages to both, so they should both exist alongside each other. It makes no sense to pit them against each other as mutually exclusive opposites. TV should be diverse. It should have a range of approaches, not just one.
And you know what? I’d rather have consistently released TV than consistently good TV. Because the way you get good TV is by giving writers and producers experience, and good and bad episodes contribute equally to that experience — indeed, you can learn more from your failures than your successes. Is an 18-episode season with only 6 great episodes really worse than a consistently good 6-episode season? I’d say it’s better, because even those less great 12 episodes will still have their worthwhile moments and let us spend more time getting to know the characters and their world, and because they’ll give the creators the working experience they need to become good showrunners in the future, as well as making it more feasible for them to put their kids through school.
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.
@142: And again, none of your arguments in favor of serials mean that longer shows should never be made. It is not a binary choice
I’m not saying longer seasons should never be made. I’m saying that – for me – the transition to shorter “cable drama” seasons also – largely, but not totally – came with an uptick in quality per episode. I’m totally cool with that if that’s not your experience. There are plenty of longer-form dramas out there to enjoy – and I’ve greatly enjoyed many of them, as well.
As a child of the ‘70s and ‘80s, I understand the desire for more consistently released TV. But I also see some value in releasing bf something when it’s been perfected as opposed to on an arbitrary date.
I
sorry but this was horrible wish I had skipped it like I planned at least I get another one to watch to wash the bad taste out of my mouth
I’m amused that the season length conversation is happening here at the same time that Tor.com republished the Babylon 5 article. I think B5 could have benefitted from slightly tighter seasons (at least one of the terrible episodes was because they’d run out of budget and failed at making a good clip show) but not as tight so that they were all arc episodes with no filler.
@146/noblehunter: I hate how people today abuse the word “filler.” A standalone episode is not “filler” as long as it tells a worthwhile story or develops the characters or the world in a meaningful way. The worst damage done by the modern serialization trend is that it’s created the false belief that plot is the only worthwhile driver of a story, ignoring the importance of character, theme, and setting.
@147 As I wrote it, I was trying to think of a filler that improves the base substance. The lime in Roman concrete which repairs the inevitable cracks? Maybe it’s more like the fat in a good steak or roast. There’s a place for completely lean meat but it’s often better with some marbling.
@148/noblehunter: “I was trying to think of a filler that improves the base substance.”
Kintsugi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
When this this show turn into The Orville? I’ll be giving the rest of the season a miss
Ollie: “the rest of this season” is only one episode. This was #9 of 10.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So different perspective here on why this episode was amazing:
I was just beginning to watch this episode in the kitchen this evening, and my 6yo daughter came in and asked if I was watching Star Trek and if she could watch it with me. And right away it dawned on me that this was the perfect introduction for her to watch my current favorite Trek show. And she absolutely loved it! (as did I) My favorite moment was right at the end, when Uhura is softly humming to herself while working…my dear daughter does that constantly!
She has watched a few TNG episodes and a couple of TOS episodes with me (and she even talked me into showing her ST:TMP!) She keeps asking for more…and I often hesitate, as I know her well, and it’s hard to find a good insertion point that suits her age and individual temperament. But she so loves singing and dancing (and I could easily see her doing stage work as she gets older), and this was perfect. (And I had a sense that it wasn’t going to get gory or similarly intense!)
Anyway: this was exactly what our family needed Trek to be, this week!
@146 ABSOLUTELY FRAGGINGLY AGREE.
If you enjoy it, done in ones are good.
I loved this one, and have now watched it several times. I feel like the songs really advanced the character building, and they’ve grown on me with repeated listens. I’ve been rewatching TOS and watching TAS for the first time and this reminds me a lot of one of those episodes – something weird happens, we see the characters do fun/weird/interesting things, we learn some things about them, technobabble, the end. Loved the classic TOS jangle at the end.
Something I *JUST* noticed was during the big finale when the Klingons are singing there’s a cut-away to Uhura with her eyebrows raised looking at Sam Kirk and he’s grooving to the K-Pop. Fabulous.
The Visitor. Standalone episode. Not filler.
This is one of the most fun episodes of Star Trek I’ve ever seen. I’m not a big fan of musicals but the songs were all great and progressed the character arcs that the season has been focusing on.
My 3 favorite songs:
1) Chapel’s song
2) The finale
3) La’an’s song
Paul Wesley’s Kirk is finally feeling like Kirk, though not sure if he’s actually changed his performance or I’m just getting used to him. Also, it’s nice that they’re fleshing out Sam Kirk. It seemed like he was just a one note comic relief character in the first season.
Also, what kept me invested in the story is that there actually were some stakes to the story, unlike the Lower Decks crossover. The Klingons were going to shoot at the subspace anomaly (a nod to TMP where they shot at V’Ger?) which would’ve had disastrous results. I can’t recall there being any real adverse effect of Boimler and Mariner staying in the past, other than the fact that they would continue to be a minor annoyance to everyone.
Chapel doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the implications of her taking the fellowship on her relationship with Spock (which seems to be understood to be a death sentence for the relationship for some reason). When she even remembers Spock it’s “If I need to leave you I won’t fight it.”
At first I thought their break-up was going to be (bizarrely) the fault of Boimler for revealing how Spock is remembered by history: as ultra-rational and (apparently) as having nothing to do with Chapel.
But if the characters’ true feelings are coming out in the songs, then Chapel isn’t really sad or regretful about leaving Spock. There’s no hint of PTSD either. Doesn’t really sound like the Christine Chapel we know. I doubt they’ll stick with this…perhaps the song was just too good to resist?
@158/Wyatt: “But if the characters’ true feelings are coming out in the songs, then Chapel isn’t really sad or regretful about leaving Spock…. Doesn’t really sound like the Christine Chapel we know.”
It seems consistent with the Chapel of season 1, who avoided close relationships and broke things off when they started to get serious. Spock was an exception to her pattern, since she developed stronger feelings for him, but it makes sense that Boimler’s words would’ve reawakened her fear of being hurt and made her choose to withdraw emotionally again. We can take her TOS-era crush on Spock as a manifestation of her years-later regret at letting him get away.
Although a large part of it is probably just that she really cares about her career and the fellowship is very important to her, enough to outweigh her romantic life.
Spock was attempting the Hell to communicate.
If this episode did nothing else it gave me the mental image of Klingon Opera as a combination of Wrestlemania and La Scala, so if it did nothing else – and it does SO MUCH else – it would be a treasure.
As it is this episode is a Treasure for the Ages (One must confess to the somewhat-guilty suspicion that STRANGE NEW WORLDS has more all timer episodes in this one season than dear old ENTERPRISE managed in four).