The "Strange New Worlds" of Musicals

"Subspace Rhapsody" and our emotional connection to music

I had forgotten that this week would be the Strange New Worlds musical episode. I settled onto my rower with my iPad at the ready to keep my left brain distracted for 40 minutes, and when I realized what I was in for, basically said, “Oh…. kay.”

Fair warning: there are spoilers ahead! If you haven’t seen the episode, I’ve marked where the spoilers start. But you don’t have to have seen it, or SNW itself, to follow this post, I promise!

Music is ephemeral. Unlike painting or sculpture or even TV and movies, it exists in a specific moment of time, and unless it’s recorded, that particular iteration of music will never be heard again. It’s a singular moment. And music taps into the human psyche in ways other art forms don’t because it has the unique ability to get stuck in our heads, even if we don’t want it there. You may choose not to look at a certain piece of art in a museum, but if you’re anywhere within earshot of music as it’s happening, you’re going to hear it, whether you want to or not.

Everyone has their own personal reactions to different musical forms, too. Some love opera; others can’t stand it. The same goes for rap, country, heavy metal … no matter the form, some people will love it, and some people will hate it—and often, very strongly. Anyone who’s ever been a teenager knows this.

Music connects deeply with us on an emotional level, whether we love it or hate it.

I’ll be honest: We’ve already established my love for American standards, most of which are the product of Broadway musicals, but my relationship with musicals as a whole is much more mixed. I find characters suddenly bursting into song difficult to pull off in a way that doesn’t feel hokey, and I don’t have a lot of patience for shows where the music feels supplemental. If the character has already told me the same thing they’re saying in the song, what’s the point of the song?

One of my favorite musicals, it occurs to me, is one I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen as a complete production. Chess came out in the mid-80s as a concept album, and the songs did a fine example of telling the story all on their own—and are fantastic. There’s a whole other wild story of the many versions of this show, several of which flopped (if you’re into Chess, Tim Rice did a podcast during lockdown with tons of backstory on it and his other shows), and yet it has enough of a following that PBS did a Chess in Concert special with an all-star cast about 15 years ago. I wonder as I write this how much of my affection for it is based on the fact that I’ve really only heard the music.

In any case, this is roughly where I was coming from when the episode started. That, and a general expectation of something cringeworthy that we might all regret, because I am not at all convinced that the musical format does better as random episodes of non-musical TV shows. In fact, some of the inherent cringeyness is no doubt due to the sudden switch in format, but I think there’s more to it than that.

As a little more full disclosure: I’m a choir nerd. (How many different kinds of nerd can a person be all at once? A whole bunch, it seems, as I’m about to prove!) I’ve been singing in choirs since I was a kid, and I’m pretty biased in favor of choral singing as Something That Is Good For You. Singing itself has a whole host of benefits, and it’s a great community builder. Gareth Malone’s UK series The Choir does a great job of demonstrating both these ideas, and I’m just disappointed that it got minimal airplay in the US (and doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere. Sigh).

The thing is… the second series of The Choir is called Boys Don’t Sing, and I think that’s a big clue about what makes us react to musical episodes the way we do. There’s a massive gender bias against singing, and as with most things that are biased in one way or another, especially around gender, it trickles out to the rest of us. “Boys don’t sing.” Why? Well, because it’s something girls do, and therefore it’s not something boys should do—and if you do, you’re probably gay. That colors it for a lot of girls, too.

I’m not going to dig into that in depth, both because I’m not qualified and because I want to get to other stuff, but I’m sure you’ll have no trouble falling down that rabbit hole if you choose to. Either way, that’s why Malone has to put a lot of energy into convincing people, especially boys and men, to join his choirs. There’s a degree of social embarrassment on the local level, no matter how many fabulous singers of any gender we might admire from afar.

And that brings us back to Strange New Worlds. (Spoilers! Spoilers!)

The fun begins when Chief Engineer Pelia encourages Spock and Uhura to send some music into space. Uhura chooses Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” (I wasn’t kidding—this stuff is timeless, or Star Trek has an obsession with it, or both), and shortly thereafter, the crew find themselves singing their status report. To their credit, our heroes have the good sense to be distinctly weirded out by what’s going on rather than carrying on as if this is normal. “Apologies” and “Why are we singing?” are the literal chorus of the first song.

It’s quickly determined, in what I have to think is a conscious nod to the late, great Douglas Adams, that the cause of this bizarre behavior is a “quantum improbability field.” (Adams dreamed up the “infinite improbability drive,” which made very strange things happen on its ship.)

The most interesting thing about the episode, to me, is that, in many ways, it’s a commentary on singing, and on musicals themselves. It’s quickly determined that song breaks out when someone is in a heightened state of emotion, and also that the things revealed in the song may not be things a character would ordinarily choose to say. Security Chief La’an deems this unexpected, and perhaps unwilling, honesty a security threat, and she has a point. While we don’t end up with a moment when Federation secrets are about to be shared in song, we do see one in which La’an is disturbed enough at being unintentionally privy to what should be a private subspace conversation that she closes the channel to save everyone, including those in that conversation, any more embarrassment.

The song is not just additional exposition. It’s potentially dangerous because of its emotional honesty…and there’s a little bit of a consent issue, too.

Anson Mount, who pays Captain Christopher Pike, is a lifelong Trek fan, and has said that if Kirk is the brawn and Picard is the brains, he wants Pike to be the heart. It makes sense, then, that an episode that is all about what happens when emotions seem to run amok, without the consent of those doing the emoting (and revealing), would happen on Pike’s ship—and that he’d be the one who needs to be saved from himself.

I want to note that there is some solid character and plot development in this episode. The songs are not just there to repeat what we already know. Whatever you think of the fact that they exist in a Star Trek episode, they do advance the plot. And they’re pretty good songs, too, written by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce of Letters to Cleo.

I’m partial to La’an’s “How Would That Feel” (which, sorry not sorry, should be called “Flying Blind,” and I’m clearly not the only one who thinks so), Nurse Chapel’s “I’m Ready,” and Uhura’s “Keep Us Connected,” the last two of which are solid show-stoppers.

It also doesn’t hurt that Christina Chong (La’an), who really pushed for this episode, is a singer first and actress second, and Celia Rose Gooding (Uhura) is a bona fide Broadway star, with the Tony nomination and Grammy to prove it.

The songs themselves work through the theme of honesty and being true to yourself, which fits nicely with the idea that they reveal a character’s inner truth, even if the characters don’t want them to. There’s a real sense here that courage and honesty may scare the hell out of us, but they’re also the only way to move forward in the ways we really want to. Outside of Ted Lasso, I’m not sure when I’ve ever seen those ideas explored so deeply in a single TV show. Anson Mount is right: Pike and his crew are fundamentally all about heart.

To circle back to the beginning of the episode, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I really, really love that even the theme tune for this episode was sung. SNW has one of the best title sequences and theme tunes I’ve ever come across anywhere, and despite the fact that it’s about two minutes long, I rarely ever skip it. I can’t find a video for this episode’s version, but you can hear some of it in the trailer above. In the meantime, here’s the regular one:

Now… all of this leads to one vital question: Was a musical episode a good idea? I don’t know. I am sure that it’s being torn to shreds all over the interwebs (I’ve seen a couple shreddy video titles on YouTube, like “Star Trek Fans DISGUSTED by this episode”). My reaction to that is to wonder who’s doing the shredding. I’m not going to go looking/clicking, because I like myself more than that, but I’m going to bet that it’s the uber-nerd geeks who think their show should only happen in one way—their way. (I’ll also bet they are among those men who think singing is “for sissies,” but I would certainly love to be wrong about that.)

For myself, my initial reaction was that I don’t hate it, but didn’t know what to think about it. After writing this and revisiting a lot of the songs on their own, I’m leaning more toward actively liking it.

Just two weeks ago, we saw a crossover episode with the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks, so it’s pretty soon to be doing another episode that leans in a potentially gimmicky direction. I’m not sure I’d have advised that sort of timing if I’d been asked, because you do need your audience to take you seriously in order to get away with the occasional flight of fancy. That said, fandom is incredibly fickle, so you’ll never win with everyone no matter what you do.

The most important thing about this episode (and the animated one) may be that this show is living up to its name. It’s taking us to strange new worlds where animated characters cross over into the live action universe, or where an improbable quantum field can cause everyone in its vicinity to burst into song. It’s experimenting in ways that other Trek series have not.

As long as it continues to do that in good faith, with a good balance of how it experiments, and how much, I think the wild and interesting ride that is Strange New Worlds will continue to take chances and surprise us—and maybe be a model for other shows, and the rest of us. It’s always better to take risks than not: even when those risk don’t pan out, that’s always the best creative place to be.

What do you think about musicals? Do you agree that songs take us to emotional places we might not otherwise go? If you’ve seen this episode, what did you think? (Let’s agree to disagree agreeably, yes?) Leave a comment and let us know!