Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x09 "Subspace Rhapsody"

LoglineAn accident with an experimental quantum probability field causes everyone on the USS Enterprise to break uncontrollably into song, but the real danger is that the field is expanding and beginning to impact other ships—allies and enemies alike.

Written by Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff

Directed by Dermott Downs

plasmoidal ,
@plasmoidal@startrek.website avatar

Loved it.

Some amusing details:

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

This was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Not just of Star Trek but of anything ever. It was so cringey. I forced myself to watch it (on 2x speed) for completion sake, and I regret it. Thankfully I’ll never watch this again.

Potatofish ,

Ironically your post is at least as cringy lol

startrekexplained ,

If you don’t find that “singing” cringey, you’re a soulless monster.

Potatofish ,

Two days later and you’ve managed to dig a deeper hole. There are other hobbies out there…

TeaHands , (edited )
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

Ok I love musicals so was definitely looking forward to this one. Did anyone else find it a little disappointing?

There was a bit too much moping and not enough joy, for me. That’s what makes a good musical episode so great, they can progress the plot while giving us an over-the-top fun time. But instead we had everyone singing a sad song and then one or two upbeat numbers, none of which were particularly catchy or entertaining. Like, if you’ve seen it even just once or twice years ago like I have you can probably remember some of the songs from the OG Buffy episode, but we watched this last night and by the end I genuinely couldn’t even remember the supposed grand finale song.

Boy band Klingons made the wait worth it, but I spent most of this episode spaced out a bit and just half-listening rather than watching which is the first episode I can say that about.

Shoutout to whoever decided to redo the theme music though, that was inspired.

Also the talk about bunnies has to be a reference to Buffy, right?

Mezentine ,

Honestly this episode feels written by Sondheim fans more than anything, which is why all the G&S references were so odd to me lol. Definitely less focus on “fun” but I think all the lyrics were really clever and expressive and the way that all of the songs felt like they reinforced character work successfully was a feat even if none of them are particular “catchy” in that ear-worm way. Company is probably my favorite musical of all time but its pretty hard for me to hum you anything from that show

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

I’m not sure about Sondheim - it doesn’t really have his feel and the music and lyrics for the most part aren’t as thematically disciplined and crisp as I expect from a Sondheim musical.

The feel was a bit more contemporary pop, like a Pasek & Paul piece.

lonlazarus ,

I don’t love musicals in particular, but aren’t anti-musical, and I felt the same. The songs weren’t memorable, the numbers were a bit dull, and nobody really danced much except for extras that they hired that were clearly dancers. If you’re going to pull of a musical, gotta go big, SNW didn’t go big.

Hogger85b , (edited )

Agree. I love musicals (Buffy musical episode, scmigadoom) and was really looking forward to this. The first song I though yes this is great..... but when Una started singing to Kirk I thought meh....and the songs never really got any better. Just got too much into the angst and no joy (except chapels song that was a banger and should have been the tone of all the other songs)

QubaXR ,
@QubaXR@lemmy.world avatar

I think Strange New Worlds is the best Star Trek show made so far. Every season they seem to have 9 amazing episodes and one so cringe I end up fast forwarding through the whole thing. This musical one was the low point of the season and the series, just like that word fantasy ones they did in season 1.

Bleh.

PoweredByGeena ,

Upfront: I love musicals. I have to say this episode is just so creative and original. I think it is one of my all time favorites across all the series. Strange New Worlds has done such a good job bringing back the light-heartedness in a franchise that had become so overly dark and serious - and this is the pinnacle of that effort. Season 2 has just been outstanding.

Jacko ,

Same. Told my wife it was my fav ep ever.

chronicledmonocle ,

Well that episode was certainly…uh…something. Lol.

Don’t get me wrong I loved it, but in that “oh God it’s happening again” laughing my arse off kind of way.

Also, whoever wrote the lyrics to the first song “All Systems Stable” really made a banger.

williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

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

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

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

Mezentine , (edited )

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

r2vq ,
@r2vq@lemmy.ca avatar

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

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

korok ,
@korok@possumpat.io avatar

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

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

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

TeaHands ,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

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

canis_majoris ,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

The main thing that bugged me with M’Benga’s daughter is that they’ve basically just retconned how many people understand the way they can use the transporter buffer that was seemingly novel to the TNG folk when they came across Scotty inside of one during Relics. Geordi was all like “what is going on with this transporter” but this season you have Chapel and M’Benga using it as an active stasis system for triage purposes.

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

TheGayTramp ,
@TheGayTramp@lemmy.ca avatar

I’m fairly certain there was a throwaway line from Scotty about how he tweaked something to keep the buffer running for so long

lowvisnitpicker ,

Yeah, the part that puzzled Geordi was the transporter was able to hold a pattern for nearly 80 years. SNW shows M’Benga had to pull his daughter out periodically to keep her pattern from degrading.

LibraryLass ,

It does though. As the others said, Scotty did have to jury-rig some modifications for long-term storage and even then he wasn’t able to save the other survivor long-term.

Cantstopthesignal ,
@Cantstopthesignal@lemmynsfw.com avatar

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

poundsignbuttstuff , (edited )

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

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

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

Wyrm ,

100% this. At first I was really salty that Chapel would just bail on Spock as soon as something more interesting came along, @williams_482, describes my initial thoughts exactly. Then I remember how Boimler accidentally crushed her, even going so far as to say that Spock does some important things in the future that rely on him behaving very Vulcan.

Imagine how she felt, finally getting the guy you’ve been pining over only to find out that the universe really needs you two to not be together. Or at least, not be together in the way you wanted to be. We’ve even seen her struggling with it in the time since Boims spilled the beans. I can totally see why she feels she needs to move on. I don’t agree with her “I’ll leave you to get ahead” attitude, but I can understand it.

Mezentine ,

What an absolute gosh darned delight that was. I love musicals but I tend to be pretty cynical about musical episode of TV shows, but I think that’s probably the best one I’ve ever seen? It helps that a. its still a coherent episode with a plot about the musical itself, b. its effectively paying off three or four different emotional character arcs we’ve already spent a lot of time with and c. the music is actually really well written both lyrically and compositionally

MikeyMongol ,
@MikeyMongol@lemmynsfw.com avatar

I love musicals and I love Trek so I was hoping I would love this episode, but I just didn’t, and I think it was mostly because the music was… bad? It wasn’t catchy, it wasn’t fun, there was not one single legitimate bop during the whole episode. Uhura’s last line about an earworm struck me as a sour note because… no. Not a single earworm to be had in the whole thing. I couldn’t hum a single song from that episode and I watched it less than an hour ago. The only number that had any spark to it at all was Chapel’s number at the lounge, and it was barely a spark.

Even Una’s alleged Gilbert and Sullivan riff was barely, barely recognizable as a take on G&S. It was to G&S as a brick spraypainted orange is to a glass of refreshing orange juice. You’re gonna do G&S in a musical episode and not do patter? Come on, son.

I just can’t get behind this episode, and I was truly prepared to be thrilled. I mean the cast tried hard, but in a musical the music has to be good, and this wasn’t.

Disgustoid ,

I didn’t think they’d skip the opportunity to give us singing Klingons but the end result was just…wow. chef’s kiss

I absolutely love Pike’s “exasperated” face. It’s possibly a bit overused this season but it cracks me up every single time because it’s how I’d probably react if I were in his shoes and it’s so unlike how the previous Starfleet ship captains would react, even when the situation fully merited it.

cybervseas ,

Picard had a face like that. I think he mostly used it with diplomats.

r2vq ,
@r2vq@lemmy.ca avatar

Kirk had a face like that too. I’ve seen him use it with Tribbles.

FormerGameDev ,

maybe we could get a crossover with Shaw so they can make that look together

hivemind ,

SNW playing with the format we all know and love continues to pay off.

Trek has a very, very long history of the space anomaly of the week causing hijinks to ensue. And these hijinks were epic. Especially considering the sheer amount of raw broadway-class talent SNW has.

And the foreshadowing with the drinking-song-belting, sea-shanty-and-opera-loving Klingons getting pissed off about the “we have to sing everything” bit was hilarious (and Pike’s “WTF” face was the icing!)

I know it’s a one-shot, but bloody brilliant.

catshit_dogfart ,

I think that’s the best thing going for SNW.

Not every episode has to be about something. In fact most of them aren’t, they’re all one-offs. They go to a thing, some problems happen, they solve those problems. It can be thrilling, scary, intriguing, or silly.

None of these grand arc stories where every moment of every episode is so important that if you blink you’ll be lost for the rest of the show. None of these “very special message” episodes either. Just random space adventures most of the time. It worked in the 60s and it’s working today.

LibraryLass ,

None of these “very special message” episodes either

I mean, barring the single best episode of the show.

Walrus ,

According to the Ready Room, Bruce Horak played the Klingon captain!

r2vq ,
@r2vq@lemmy.ca avatar

The one with the eye patch? Is he only allowed to play virtually impaired characters?

LibraryLass ,

He may prefer to-- he is himself legally blind, and completely blind in one eye.

r2vq ,
@r2vq@lemmy.ca avatar

I’m glad he’s able to if that’s what he wants! I just hope he’s not being pigeonholed into roles since he’s a great actor.

Fuzzy_Dunlop ,

Ah, thanks. I was confused when I noticed his name in the credits.

Continuumguy ,

Thoughts/Observation as I watch:

  • Where will this stand in the long history of Star Trek gimmick episodes? After all, this is the franchise that gave us “Trials and Tribble-ations”, “Take Me Out To The Holosuite”, “In a Mirror, Darkly”, the OG “Lower Decks”, and most recently… “Those Old Scientists”. Holy shit, that was just two episodes ago and in between we got the darkest Star Trek thing in years!
  • Uhura having to be the operator sounds like the most stressful thing to do that doesn’t involve imminent danger.
  • “Even if it’s not fully necessary.” That basically sums up every contrivance to get Kirk on board.
  • KORBY ALERT
  • Ah, spatial distortions, the cause and solution to everything.
  • The facial acting as they enter musical-land is priceless.
  • Acapella theme song!
  • “So… that happened.”
  • “Quantum uncertainty field”. That’s some Hitchiker Guide type stuff.
  • Ah, they brought back the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff.
  • I like how they are hanging a lampshade on just how BIZARRE it is that people sing out their biggest secrets and deepest feelings in musicals.
  • Good save, La’An.
  • “Surprisingly beautiful baritone”
  • It could have been worse for the crew. Imagine if Uhura had broadcast opera into it, then they’d ALWAYS be singing.
  • Shaxs would suggest blowing it up by ejecting the warp core.
  • Gratuitous zero-gee is gratuitous.
  • Oh god, singing Klingons.
  • Yeah, the Klingons would also like the “let’s just blow it up” plan.
  • Wait were those extras twins?
  • Apparently the improbability field also affects the lighting of the bar.
  • Isn’t K’tinga the later type of Klingon ship? Ah, screw it, musical rules.
  • “I don’t love rules but I think you’re about to break a big one.”
  • This totally is going into Temporal Investigations Kirk file.
  • CAROL MARCUS REFERENCE
  • Oh shit, David Marcus reference!
  • “I’m the Ex” standing as if X in a math question is a good bit of workplay.
  • Kind of surprised it took this long to give Celia Rose Gooding a full-on solo.
  • Grammy-Award winning singer!
  • A grand finale. How meta!
  • Boy Band Klingons was not on my bingo card.
  • Lol, playing the TOS theme as a curtain-closer
  • “You sang about lying to me.”
  • “Sorry, Earworm.”
  • All-and-all, it was a good enough gimmick episode. But it was no “Take Me Out To The Holosuite.” (“DEATH TO THE OPPOSITION!”)
williams_482 ,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

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

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

MadMadBunny ,

Now I really wanna see an episode where they poof into bunnies!!!

RHTeebs ,
@RHTeebs@startrek.website avatar

That Klingon Boy Band was hilarious. The pause was just perfect.

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