It was popular. Don’t let those brigading against the mere idea of a musical distort the facts.
Some of the review sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ended up with average scores in the 7/70% range merely because of the large number of 1/10 votes.
If you check out the vote distribution, it was a small but very vocal minority who opposed the episode on principle, who created the impression that it wasn’t well received by the fandom.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of American musicals, but I enjoyed and have certainly included it in my rewatches already.
I hated it with the exception of Uhura's song, even fast-forwarded through La'an's song, but the second they mentioned it reaching Klingons I was invested.
And when they hailed the Klingons it did not disappoint.
I think both those things are too extreme. Maybe not every season, especially with short seasons now, but certainly they’ve earned more than one based on execution for both.
The crossover episode was great and the musical was superb, I thought. I don’t want that every episode, but I could handle once a season, but one every other is probably better.
I don’t watch much other tv than Star Trek, so I don’t really care if it’s a meme to do this on a tv show but I loved it. I usually hate musicals because the songs feel like they hit pause on the story but this episode was hilarious while also being meaningful.
I love both Star Trek and musicals, and when "Subspace Rhapsody" was announced, I wasn't thrilled and thought it would be bad Star Trek and a bad musical. I was so wrong! I loved it so much!
The best song is "How Would That Feel," La'an is the best, and I will fight anyone who says I'm wrong!
Even though I can't stand musicals and musical episodes, I'll concede that it was a good episode that moved the season's plot forward well. Even though I was squirming in my seat throught it.
A willingness to occasionally get goofy is honestly part of what makes Star Trek Star Trek imo. The lack of willingness to do that was actually something that kind of always bugged me about Disco. And this was definitely a fun as hell episode, especially the klingon boy band bit.