Subspace Rhapsody

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 2

★★★★☆

The first time through “Subspace Rhapsody” my reaction was: OK, that was fun. Better than “Immortimas” but not on the level of “Once More With Feeling” or even some of the Magicians musical episodes.

I watched it again after seeing the behind-the-scenes feature, and appreciated it a lot more. Enough that I immediately tracked down and bought the soundtrack.

They did a good job of focusing on the cast members who could sing well. Christina Chong (La’an Noonien-Singh) and Celia Rose Gooding (Uhura) are the standouts, pouring their hearts into their solos. At the other end they found something more talky for Anson Mount (Pike), and let Babs Olusanmokun (M’Benga) stick with just a couple of lines. “…and I do not sing.”

Every song meant something to the people singing it, too. The classic way to do a musical, if it’s not sung-through, is to have the songs burst from the characters when their emotions are so high that they can’t contain them – when just speaking, or stewing in silence, isn’t enough. And I appreciated that the characters were genre-savvy enough to recognize and harness it!

I find it highly appropriate that Spock, of all people, would be the first one to sing. Because he’s normally the most emotionally self-controlled person on the ship, and he starts singing? Something weird is definitely going on! And the contrast between Chapel’s big song-and-dance number “I’m Ready” and his buttoned-down solo “I’m the X” (using the same melody) makes both songs better. I found myself thinking of what Russell Crowe tried to do as Javert. He and Spock are both very tightly-controlled characters, but Ethan Peck managed to convey Spock’s inner turmoil through the outer layer of control, while I think Crowe was just out of his depth musically.

The finale gets a bit glurge-y in places, but the only song that I thought fell flat was Number One’s song about “Keeping Secrets.” It should have worked better than it did.

“Connect To Your Truth,” OTOH, was absolutely dead-on Rogers and Hammerstein, and the Klingons’ brief pop verse about how they’ll “make your blood scream!” cracks me up every time I hear it.

And Paul Wesley (Kirk) is certainly a better singer than William Shatner. Though I have to admit, Shatner’s cover of “Common People,” is a trip!