Logline
An 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
Can we talk about how great it is that they keep tinkering with the opening credits for the special episodes? Because I love it every time they do. Fukkin acapella man.
I love this as well! And doing fun stuff with the star trek brand intro as well, I hope they continue both of those in the future
Oh yeah, great idea. Kinda like the Simpsons gag or so:
- If they ever have a mirror episode, the opening credits should be horizontally mirrored
- If they ever have a time travel episode, the opening credits should go backwards
- Another cross-over episode? DS9 or some other ship better appear in there! etc.
Reminds me of how Community would change up things all the time.
I was wondering why the Klingons were all pissed off about singing. They love their opera.
…and then I saw the performance and was like ah yeah I bet that would be completely humiliating for them. 😂
I loved this episode!
I think it’s because the pop Hamilton style singing they were forced into does not constitute Opera in their tradition. Thus dishonor
I’ve come to the conclusion that SNW is the entry point series.
Do you like legal dramas? Perfect, here’s a great LGBTQ allegory episode!
Do you like goofy animation like Rick and Morty? Here’s the crossover with Lower Decks!
Do you like gritty serious war stories? We’re still dealing with the trauma of the Klingon War!
Do you like showtunes? Somehow we pulled that off too! (also Chapel’s song is a straight banger)
SNW is the show I’d introduce my friends to in order to get them into Star Trek as a larger thing. I think it’s an easier entry point than any other series.
You can also use the episodes they liked to recommend other Trek shows. Someone that likes the zany episodes would probably like TOS or VOY, for example.
Some of the lyrics were really clever and fun:
Spock: “I solved for the Y in my computation … but the variable so devastating: I’m the ex / X”.
At the same time: “When we gain control again, I confess”
- La’an / Pelia: “I’ll miss the singing”
- Spock: “I won’t miss singing”
Spock: “I solved for the Y in my computation … but the variable so devastating: I’m the ex / X”.
Thanks. Now I get it. IIRC the subtitles had “solved for the why” and then the X didn’t make any sense. That is indeed clever.
My favourite Spock bit came at the end during the grande finale. Everyone was singing “we know our purpose, to protect the mission – our prime directive”, and Spock just goes “not exactly”. 😄
If I had a nickel for every time Uhura solved a problem by singing at it, I’d have two nickels. That’s not a lot, but it’s the same number as how many times Chakotay’s been lost in the Delta Quadrant.
This was a fun episode. Some bangers, though I agree with some of the people who think some songs could have been shortened. The unexpected Klingon boy band was an amazing gag that didn’t overstay its welcome. Overall, I think it’s great to have Trek embrace the old-school campiness from time to time.
Anyone else convinced Captain Batel is kinda doomed? Pike got off the relationship trauma fairly easily in this episode.
Anyone else convinced Captain Batel is kinda doomed?
spoiler
The preview clip from “The Ready Room” suggests she’s about to have a very bad day, but maybe it’s a fakeout.
D:
I suspect she’ll die in this season finale. I just get those vibes.
Personally, I want to see Pike and Una happen. They’re already mom and dad to the rest of the crew (which skews really young).
I mean never say never? If I’m remembering the Cage correctly the Talosians at least thought there would be potential there. Though this is the much younger and possibly a little sexist Pike.
Thoughts/Observation as I watch:
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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!
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Uhura having to be the operator sounds like the most stressful thing to do that doesn’t involve imminent danger.
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“Even if it’s not fully necessary.” That basically sums up every contrivance to get Kirk on board.
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KORBY ALERT
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Ah, spatial distortions, the cause and solution to everything.
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The facial acting as they enter musical-land is priceless.
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Acapella theme song!
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“So… that happened.”
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“Quantum uncertainty field”. That’s some Hitchiker Guide type stuff.
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Ah, they brought back the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff.
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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.
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Good save, La’An.
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“Surprisingly beautiful baritone”
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It could have been worse for the crew. Imagine if Uhura had broadcast opera into it, then they’d ALWAYS be singing.
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Shaxs would suggest blowing it up by ejecting the warp core.
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Gratuitous zero-gee is gratuitous.
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Oh god, singing Klingons.
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Yeah, the Klingons would also like the “let’s just blow it up” plan.
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Wait were those extras twins?
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Apparently the improbability field also affects the lighting of the bar.
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Isn’t K’tinga the later type of Klingon ship? Ah, screw it, musical rules.
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“I don’t love rules but I think you’re about to break a big one.”
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This totally is going into Temporal Investigations Kirk file.
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CAROL MARCUS REFERENCE
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Oh shit, David Marcus reference!
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“I’m the Ex” standing as if X in a math question is a good bit of workplay.
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Kind of surprised it took this long to give Celia Rose Gooding a full-on solo.
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Grammy-Award winning singer!
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A grand finale. How meta!
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Boy Band Klingons was not on my bingo card.
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Lol, playing the TOS theme as a curtain-closer
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“You sang about lying to me.”
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“Sorry, Earworm.”
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All-and-all, it was a good enough gimmick episode. But it was no “Take Me Out To The Holosuite.” (“DEATH TO THE OPPOSITION!”)
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.
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It was wacky and I loved It! I laughed my ass of with the Klingon part
Oh my god, we had to rewind that twice. I haven’t laughed so much in a star trek show as I have with that.
Me too I wanted more of them tho lol
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
100% this. At first I was really salty that Chapel would just bail on Spock as soon as something more interesting came along, @[email protected], 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.
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.
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).
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. (Although now that I read what I wrote, that’s just like two more people who know it, and using the Klingon war as a way to establish the knowledge is pretty good.)
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.
I’m fairly certain there was a throwaway line from Scotty about how he tweaked something to keep the buffer running for so long
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.
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.
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.
Loved it. I was most surprised that the whole cast all had such beautiful singing voices.
La’an’s song touched me the most because I’m someone who also doesn’t really dare to do the things I’d like to do.
A bit sad that we didn’t get a Klingon opera but the alternative was … well, interesting too. 😄 Also, I kinda hope that Spock solving diplomatic crises with the Klingons by drinking excessive amounts of blood wine will become a running gag.
Addendum: after watching it again I realized that (for the first time?) several male background extras were wearing the dress-type uniform variant that only the women used to wear.
Are we getting the unisex skant back? Hell yeah! I love this show.
Boimler wears a skant a bunch of times in Lower Decks.
@UESPA_Sputnik I was hoping for a klingon opera too. But, yes, an interesting alternative.
Just like all Orions aren’t pirates, not all Klingons like opera. Some of them like…whatever that was that they sang.
That was obviously K-Pop.
My thoughts immediately went to boy bands but then again, K-pop is probably the modern equivalent so you’re probably right?
“K”lingon-pop
Kirk and Uhura are real ones for never telling McCoy that Spock had a phase of being proud to be human until he got dumped by Nurse Chapel. He never would have let him live it down.
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.
maybe we could get a crossover with Shaw so they can make that look together
SNW continues to break new ground really well. This was a really refreshing episode and very well done. I for one loooved this episode.
Alright, I get that musicals are not everyone’s cup of tea, but as a person who watched multiple dozens of Broadway musicals, I must say that the songs were really on par with actual musicals. The cast can really sing well – I expected many great things from Cecile Rose Gooding and wow she did not disappoint. I was very pleasantly impressed by Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijin, Ethan Peck’s performances as well.
I think the director made sure to highlight those actors that can sing well and put those that can’t sing into secondary positions. Clearly Grammy-Award winning/Tony Award-nominated Gooding was at the center of the story, and they cut off Anson Mount’s song, because well, he isn’t the greatest singer. They even fully acknowledged that Babs Olusanmokun can’t sing in universe as well. :) The ensemble pieces in the teaser and the finale were superb though and was a lot more entertaining than the solo pieces (which I get is probably much easier to rehearse/record and produce).
I loved that the episode intertwined music as a piece of the story, pushed the character arc forward between Spock/Chapel and La’an/Kirk. I am not so much of a sucker for La’an/Kirk but the alternative universe scenes were really a nice touch. The only cringey part was the Klingon K-pop/rap, but I suppose it was intentionally cringey/funny.
Whether you like this musical episode or not, you gotta admit that SNW really boldly goes where no one has gone before.
Yeah, they used the songs well to pack huge amounts of character work into one episode for most of the cast. Clever move in a ten episode a year TV landscape.
I honestly never fancied musical episodes, but this was so well done, I loved it!
Are those actually all of the actors singing? I thought they just got separate singers
Anybody who went to acting school has some background in music and dance. Obviously not their best talent or else they’d be a singer instead of an actor. I often consider that most people on television can sing and absolutely knows how to dance, we just never see them do it.
Sweeny Todd is a good example of this. You know almost the entire cast from something else and had no idea they were capable of doing music all this time. But, a classically trained actor has definitely been in a musical before, we just never knew about it. Alan Rickman wasn’t exactly a vocalist, but he could keep up with one.
Oh no. Those are the actual actors singing.
We all must have done some pretty amazing stuff in our past lives, to deserve this season we are getting.
I love Star Trek, and I love musicals. These are two of my favorite things, and I never thought they should mix. When this was announced, I was very skeptical. I have to say, that they pulled it off, and it was AMAZING! The plot was a bit meh and definitely made to shoehorn in the musical, but the singing really did it for me. “How Would That Feel” (La’an’s solo) and “Keep Us Connected” (Uhura’s solo) were my favorite songs, and I have listened to them so much today. “How Would That Feel” definitely cemented La’an’s place as my favorite character.
I hated it, because I hate musicals, but I love that it happened. I loved watching it and hated every godamn second.
Please… no more… but I’m glad this happened and I’m glad people that like musicals seemed to more or less have enjoyed it.
Just… I’m begging… no more.
edit: it was incredibly charming. I still hate it. It’s cannon and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I hate it. There is no way I am the only person like this.
You’re not alone. I hate musicals. Love that they can have fun like this in Trek, but please never again please because I’ll have to watch that one too.
Edit: Chapel’s number was pretty cool though.
There were some excellent bits, but I wish it didn’t take up one of the ten-episode slots. They did loop in Kirk’s kid, so that was an excellent plot beat, as was the TOS soundtrack. I didn’t have a problem with the concept (“Wha if…”); Spock / Chapel / Pike / M’Benga had great tunes and didn’t mind Ortegas and Klingons doing Tope 40 boy-band is 20 yrs of meme material. The finale was uneven.
Outside of the individual elements and the “Strange New World” concept … it was rough, especially knowing how good the show can be, and it took one of the spots for THAT goodness. Wish we had 15 episode seasons.
I hear you on the “ten episode” bit. I HATE that that became standard. It’s some real garbage and has hurt a lot of different shows. The Last of Us was generally amazing, but suffered from rushing a bit. Without spoilers, there’s an episode where they expand on a minor gay character from the game, and the main characters aren’t in it much. The episode is amazing, and also got a ton of hate because the internet is awful, but one very valid critique is that in spending the entire episode in that wonderful little vignette, you had to rush beats of other episodes. That could have been fixed by simply having more episodes in the season.
Point is, somewhere shrinkflation hit our TV shows and I hate it lol.
Right there with you on 10 episode seasons. I wish we could go back to 22 episode seasons.
I agree. As a fellow musical lover (I’m posting from the intermission of a touring Broadway show) the writers clearly understand what the music in musicals is meant to represent. La’an’s and Uhura’s solo numbers definitely gave some emotional insight into both characters that I feel benefited the show beyond just being decent musical numbers.
The autotune was painful in a few moments for certain actors but hey, they’re not professional singers, and I would have loved a bigger dance number, but I know that’s pushing it.
Another musical theatre Star Trek fan who finally caught up with the episode. Obviously I loved it. The writers took their cue from “Once More With Feelings” and used the “very special episode” conceit to progress seasonal character arcs (as they did with “Those Old Scientists”). You could tell was the intent even from the “previously on” recap with a bunch of relationship tensions ready to be revealed through song. (The bunnies reference was a nice nod to the Buffy episode.)
I knew Celia Rose Gooding could sing (although, sadly, she was off when I saw Jagged Little Pill on Broadway), so the actor whose vocal chops surprised me most was Christina Chong. I see from her wikipedia entry that she was actually in the Elton John musical Aida in Berlin, so that makes sense now.
Maybe my favourite minor running gag was how the characters always heard and acknowledged the backing music - in dialogue or with just a glance. I could go on a pretentious detour on mimetic vs diegetic music, but won’t.
But I wasn’t blind to some of the episode’s flaws either. The biggest to me was that the songs lacked the craft and polish of really good musical theatre songs, with (for instance) many imperfect rhymes and awkward prosody (putting the stress on the wrong syl-LA-ble of a word). Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a show that I loved, suffered from the same issue.
A minor complaint is that I didn’t think we need the rules of musical theatre to be so explicitly lampshaded by the characters, although La’an treating it as security (and personal, emotional) risk was cute - and in character.
Christina Chong reportedly switched to auditioning for television roles after an injury sidelined her musical theatre career for a time. It doesn’t sound as though she ever expected the kind of role she has with La’an.
She’s currently releasing a series of music videos for an album. The next one will come out at 4:00 pm EDT today August 7th. You can check out her other offerings on her YouTube channel. I’ve posted her release of two weeks ago to the Quark’s community here on this instance as it seems the better place to follow her singing career outside of the franchise.
Oh god, “Once More With Feeling” was the first musical TV episode that stuck with me. So much passion in that episode and it brought to a head so many issues the characters had been dealing with up to that point. It still stands out as my favorite episode of the entire series.
Guess I’m going to have to rewatch this episode, I missed the bunny reference!
Or maybe midgets.
