Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x09 “Subspace Rhapsody”
An accident with an experimental quantum probability field causes everyone on the Enterprise to break uncontrollably into song, but the real danger is that the field is expanding & beginning to impact other ships - allies & enemies alike.
I love musicals, but this episode was a total dud.
The premise was absurd. In a universe where they have the Q, and other entities of absurd power, they could easily have made this episode about some creature using the crew as singing puppets for their amusement. The idea that this was natural phenomenon that follows the rules of musicals was just several orders of magnitude too stupid.
But the worse crime of this episode was that the music was just awful. Incredibly boring melodies, and the lyrics were equally dull.
I would have forgiven all other sins in this episode if the music had been great. But wow... I can't believe they moved ahead with a musical episode with those songs. Just terrible.
Hell yeah it was! Strangely enough, I found it absurd enough to be enjoyable. It was a decent one-off, IMHO.
the music was just awful.
Some of it was, for sure. The worst parts of it for you, I would speculate, were the songs that leaned really hard into the Disney'esq style where auto tune was also grossly abused.
I found Chapels and Spocks songs to be on the better side, as well as the opener. A duet of Chapel and M'Benga should really be explored much more, I thinks.
To someone else's point, I do have a healthy respect for musicals as I grew up in a fairly musical family. I was treated to some of the classics as a kid: Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, etc... I still need to see The Book of Mormon though.
But yeah, I can see where someone would find this very annoying. Especially the Klingon scene, which made me chortle a little.
In summary, I believe the plot was bad but it was still a playful episode and could have been much, much worse.
I thought this episode was fun, and you can tell they tried to not take it too seriously. Musicals always have those over-wrought moments and songs that are just a bit too slow or go on a bit too long. This episode had that too.
It takes a lot of courage to do a musical episode, and I honestly thought I'd never see one in Trek, ever. They pulled it off just fine.
I loved it. When serious shows get a chance to let lose and not care too much about being serious it's always good time for me. I'm so sick of every show being so dark and broody. This was a nice break from that.