Sub Rosa.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x09 - "Subspace Rhapsody"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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Sub Rosa.
I rewatched it and enjoyed it more the 2nd time.
Neither am I, but if it's part of a series and a good one that I've sat through all the other episodes of, I'd still sit through it. Maybe it'll convince me it's good. Especially as Trek has introduced musical numbers before, such as "The Way to Eden".
Do I think this was a good episode? Well, I think there could have been a better reason to get everyone to belt out tunes - even an alien using the mind control routine, but that would be cliche so just wandering into a neat region of space and all of a sudden people sing and dance... It's not my thing but I can't hate it either. Maybe disappointment over what did not work. But for a one-off there's not much to honestly complain too much about. For all we know, it could be a subspace anomaly full of nitrous oxide mixed with the airborne version of the naked time virus. (read: the episode missed out on an opportunity...) Space is as weird as it is big. TOS proved that. Of course, TOS was also made in the 1960s, but before I digress...
The Klingon ditty could have been done a lot differently, and without sodding Autotune that rendered it all as a bad joke. It's all over official channels on Youtube. Have fun finding and viewing and deciding if you felt it was the greatest scene in the story, the worst, or if there was potential or opportunity missed.
The other songs? Meh. Do they really need to be singing what we've seen them do incessantly, adding nothing interesting to the plot or characters? Even the hippie story did better on that front and, by late-TOS standards, people hated the episode. But I digress. The songs seeems beyond the fourth wall, especially with "♪ we appear to be singing ♫" while forgetting to add "the obvious of what we doo, doo-doo de-doo-doo" yet I'm not watching "The Simpsons" or, more apropos perhaps, "Barney the Dinosaur" since - for a show aimed ostensibly at older age groups - there should be a little more going on in the plot department for a real hook and not just a gimmick that these ditties amount to. But is asking for a mature sci-fi show to be mature and explore sci-fi too much and one should just coast on it for the fun that it is? It is a one-off and other episodes can be serious, should they all? TOS had comedy-driven episodes, for which only "Tribbles" holds up, but I digress... even then, the gangster world where the dumbass brought down a book and everyone read and then treated it as the only way to do things and
That said, some of the songs DID have some messages - it's not all that bad, but before I digress...
In the end, Eden feels like the more rewatchable episode. It's a mixed bag in its own rights, but I've defended the episode before and there feels more like a point and purpose woven throughout the episode -- not just a random anomaly out of nowhere (subspace, since people were whining about the quantity of nebulae throughout the galaxy in regular space during VOY's tenure) causing people to belch out showtunes as a whim. Imagine if the original Kirk, Uhura, and others sang with the hippies about what they do all the doo-dah-day. It wouldn't work, but that leads to the ultimate point of them all:
The only way to know if something's going to work is to try it. So like or dislike the episode, or think of how it could have been better or worse, the episode IS trying to do something different. I don't see why it shouldn't be respected for trying something a little different.
Emphasis added.
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I think it's cool that they're covering the new material. Especially when they like it; it's nice to read reviews across the entire gamut of like-vs-dislike and everything in between. IMHO, YMMV.
What's wrong with that? It works and calculating the amount of time needed to redo it versus the end result... aren't people going there to read his content, not drool over how pretty and blingy it looks? How will redoing it bring in a ton of new viewers? If the site's appearance changes, that's great. If it doesn't -- meh, it works.
Why not bring up the transcript website? That's on par with 1980s Usenet right there. Nobody's been complaining about its layout. And, as with Jammer and others, there's honestly not much of a reason to. It simply works.
One regret: Hemmer wasn't still around to sing a song that had references to cold temperatures in it.
What if Anne Rice wrote Star Trek?
Maybe next time they can do a jukebox musical and Christine can sing
Interview With The Hump Lighter.
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I love that towards the end, when they're singing "We Are One," and the crew says they'll miss the singing, and Spock clearly says he won't miss the singing. That and the "not exactly" line later when talking about the Prime Directive were just great little quips from him.
Not quite Hemmer, but I did just realise the Klingon Captain was played by the same actor (Bruce Horak)!
Fally the Snowman.
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150 times on that damnable Klingon K-Pop song. It's addictive as hell, and I need those guys to drop an album.
What if Tim Rice wrote it.
I don't know. STAR TREK has been recycling vintage plots since TOS, sometimes to great effect. "Balance of Terror," a fan favorite, is a shameless rehash of a classic submarine movie. "Wolf in the Fold" was Robert Bloch recycling his own short story, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," which had previously been adapted on ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS just a few years earlier. "Arena" was reworking a Fredric Brown story that had already been done on THE OUTER LIMITS only a few years before. "Charlie X" arguably shares some creative DNA with "It's a GOOD Life" on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. "The Enemy Within" is Jekyll & Hyde with a sci-fi twist. "Elaan of Troyious" is a riff on "The Taming of the Shrew." "Requiem from Methuselah" is (like FORBIDDEN PLANET) blatantly inspired by "The Tempest." Etc.
To be clear, I'm not dissing any of these eps, some of which are favorites of mine. Just pointing that SNW is hardly unique in riffing on classic stories and/or the pop culture of its time, just as TOS did back in the day.
And let's be honest: it's not a coincidence that TNG did its "Robin Hood" ep around the same time as the Kevin Costner movie. They were shamelessly jumping on the Sherwood Forest bandwagon.
I don't know. STAR TREK has been recycling vintage plots since TOS, sometimes to great effect. "Balance of Terror," a fan favorite, is a shameless rehash of a classic submarine movie. "Wolf in the Fold" was Robert Bloch recycling his own short story, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," which had previously been adapted on ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS just a few years earlier. "Arena" was reworking a Fredric Brown story that had already been done on THE OUTER LIMITS only a few years before. "Charlie X" arguably shares some creative DNA with "It's a GOOD Life" on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. "The Enemy Within" is Jekyll & Hyde with a sci-fi twist. "Elaan of Troyious" is a riff on "The Taming of the Shrew." "Requiem from Methuselah" is (like FORBIDDEN PLANET) blatantly inspired by "The Tempest." Etc.
To be clear, I'm not dissing any of these eps, some of which are favorites of mine. Just pointing that SNW is hardly unique in riffing on classic stories and/or the pop culture of its time, just as TOS did back in the day.
And let's be honest: it's not a coincidence that TNG did its "Robin Hood" ep around the same time as the Kevin Costner movie. They were shamelessly jumping on the Sherwood Forest bandwagon.
All Those eps you mentioned had similar plots but didn't look like those earlier stories. The gorn episode really pushed it. The even had newt in it. Lol.
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Listened to the soundtrack again. It truly is terrific, and now without the distraction of the visuals, the words hit harder, especially Una's "Keeping Secrets," which I can really empathize. I keep secrets to protect myself. You can't be betrayed if you're the only person who knows. It's a wonderful song, and Rebecca Romijjn does it so much justice.
Also, I love the finale "We Are One" because it celebrates Star Trek in its own way, as stated by the ending lyrics:
We know our purpose is (We know our purpose)
To protect the mission, our prime directive (Not exactly)
Will this work? Who can say?
We're gonna sing it anyway
Our voices will rise
Through space and through time
We're the unbreakable, unshakable, improbable, unstoppable
sensational, ovational, we're boldly explorational
Crew of the Enterprise!
I mean, come on, if that's not a celebration of Star Trek, the fandom, the show's history, and everything in and out of that universe, I don't know what is, and I love it so much. This, THIS is a love letter for Star Trek.
Also, I love the finale "We Are One" because it celebrates Star Trek in its own way, as stated by the ending lyrics:
We know our purpose is (We know our purpose)
To protect the mission, our prime directive (Not exactly)
Will this work? Who can say?
We're gonna sing it anyway
Our voices will rise
Through space and through time
We're the unbreakable, unshakable, improbable, unstoppable
sensational, ovational, we're boldly explorational
Crew of the Enterprise!
I mean, come on, if that's not a celebration of Star Trek, the fandom, the show's history, and everything in and out of that universe, I don't know what is, and I love it so much. This, THIS is a love letter for Star Trek.