Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x09 - "Subspace Rhapsody"

[Commander Troi]

La'an and Uhura clearly needed no autotune, their control over their tone, vibrato and the transition from chest voice to head voice showed that they're both technically proficient singers who would have sounded amazing without the added sheen (more so, in my opinion).

Yeah, I noticed they both have tremendous control and nuance!

 

[Amaris]

My wife and I just finished watching this. Holy crap. It was amazing. Here's my take as a musician/composer/arranger.

It reminds me in many ways of Once More With Feeling, Buffy The Vampire Slayer's musical masterpiece of an episode (which I now see was just referenced above this post!).

While I'll have to sit with it for a bit before declaring it to be on par with such a classic, I think it might be up there for me.

What Buffy did, and this episode as well, was work major plot points and character development into the songs, to give them weight both at the time and later in retrospect.

I found a fair portion of the songwriting in this episode to be stellar. La'an's solo piece in her room laid bare many of her thematic elements that were shown but not outright stated in her time travel episode.

And Christine's and Spock's contrasting arrangements of the same melody were superlative. They demonstrated musically how two people can be on completely different pages with completely different takes on an identical event by giving them completely different vibes with completely different emotional content through alternate arrangement of the same melody. It essentially went from Mardi Gras to a funeral dirge through nothing but musical arrangement.

Plus, the wordplay. Jesus Christ, the wordplay. The way Spock went from singing about "why...I'm the ex," to "I solved for Y...I'm the X," was just fantastic. He's the independent variable, the predictable one, the reliable one, the one whose every move can be counted on, and he was dealing with a dependent variable - the one capable of moving up, down, and back again while he marches forward steadily.

It was a frickin' algebra metaphor wrapped in a homophone pun and sung during a parallel musical arrangement contrasting their approach to the same melody and event. The number of levels on which that operated had me flipping out. That's some serious top-tier songwriting right there.

In order to temper my gushing, I'll give my biggest criticism. I hate how autotuned everything is now. Like Glee (which I hated), they're autotuning the great singers alongside the crappy ones in order to keep the weak ones from seeming so out of place. La'an and Uhura clearly needed no autotune, their control over their tone, vibrato and the transition from chest voice to head voice showed that they're both technically proficient singers who would have sounded amazing without the added sheen (more so, in my opinion).

But man, that was a fun watch (and listen).

I highly recommend listening to the soundtrack itself if you can. They did a better job of mixing and it sounds so much better, IMO.

 

[Noname Given]

My wife and I just finished watching this. Holy crap. It was amazing. Here's my take as a musician/composer/arranger.

It reminds me in many ways of Once More With Feeling, Buffy The Vampire Slayer's musical masterpiece of an episode (which I now see was just referenced above this post!).

While I'll have to sit with it for a bit before declaring it to be on par with such a classic, I think it might be up there for me.

What Buffy did, and this episode as well, was work major plot points and character development into the songs, to give them weight both at the time and later in retrospect.

I found a fair portion of the songwriting in this episode to be stellar. La'an's solo piece in her room laid bare many of her thematic elements that were shown but not outright stated in her time travel episode.

And Christine's and Spock's contrasting arrangements of the same melody were superlative. They demonstrated musically how two people can be on completely different pages with completely different takes on an identical event by giving them completely different vibes with completely different emotional content through alternate arrangement of the same melody. It essentially went from Mardi Gras to a funeral dirge through nothing but musical arrangement.

Plus, the wordplay. Jesus Christ, the wordplay. The way Spock went from singing about "why...I'm the ex," to "I solved for Y...I'm the X," was just fantastic. He's the independent variable, the predictable one, the reliable one, the one whose every move can be counted on, and he was dealing with a dependent variable - the one capable of moving up, down, and back again while he marches forward steadily.

It was a frickin' algebra metaphor wrapped in a homophone pun and sung during a parallel musical arrangement contrasting their approach to the same melody and event. The number of levels on which that operated had me flipping out. That's some serious top-tier songwriting right there.

In order to temper my gushing, I'll give my biggest criticism. I hate how autotuned everything is now. Like Glee (which I hated), they're autotuning the great singers alongside the crappy ones in order to keep the weak ones from seeming so out of place. La'an and Uhura clearly needed no autotune, their control over their tone, vibrato and the transition from chest voice to head voice showed that they're both technically proficient singers who would have sounded amazing without the added sheen (more so, in my opinion).

But man, that was a fun watch (and listen).

I'm not into the technical aspect of music mixing and so many posts reference "Autotune' which I assume can digitally adjust various aspects of pitch, tone, etc. but I'm curious what gives it away - IE what does someone with a trained ear hear that you KNOW they've adjusted a human singing performance using "Autotune"? (Just curious)

 

[TRON JA307020]

Have a new STAR TREK short story coming out soon, and a Weird Western story in an upcoming horror anthology that should be going to press any day now.

And, oh, an sf-detective story that's slated for another anthology that doesn't have a pub date yet.

Cool. The western sounds interesting..

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And Christine's and Spock's contrasting arrangements of the same melody were superlative. They demonstrated musically how two people can be on completely different pages with completely different takes on an identical event by giving them completely different vibes with completely different emotional content through alternate arrangement of the same melody. It essentially went from Mardi Gras to a funeral dirge through nothing but musical arrangement.

Plus, the wordplay. Jesus Christ, the wordplay. The way Spock went from singing about "why...I'm the ex," to "I solved for Y...I'm the X," was just fantastic. He's the independent variable, the predictable one, the reliable one, the one whose every move can be counted on, and he was dealing with a dependent variable - the one capable of moving up, down, and back again while he marches forward steadily.

It was a frickin' algebra metaphor wrapped in a homophone pun and sung during a parallel musical arrangement contrasting their approach to the same melody and event. The number of levels on which that operated had me flipping out.

Well said.

 

[Cyrus]

His Columbo guest starring role in 1976 may have been the biggest thing he did between TOS and TMP.

He was the main character on the short lived TV series Barbary Coast (1975). I watched it and kind of liked it.

 

[DrMike]

I highly recommend listening to the soundtrack itself if you can. They did a better job of mixing and it sounds so much better, IMO.

I'm actually doing that right now. I have a nice HiFi setup connected to my TV, so the episode itself sounded good, but this is definitely better.

I'm not into the technical aspect of music mixing and so many posts reference "Autotune' which I assume can digitally adjust various aspects of pitch, tone, etc. but I'm curious what gives it away - IE what does someone with a trained ear hear that you KNOW they've adjusted a human singing performance using "Autotune"? (Just curious)

Autotune is a specific software product people use to mean "digital pitch correction," kinda like how "Kleenex" has come to mean "paper tissue."

To a trained ear, pitch-corrected singing is usually painfully obvious. There are tons of microscopic variations in pitch as a human voice sings, even for an incredibly well-trained singer. Some can be very intentional - like vibrato (the wavering pitch during a sustained note that many styles of singers can accentuate or tone down depending on the intended musical effect). Glissando is another, which is when they bend up or down to a target pitch instead of making an abrupt change from note to note. The chorus of La'an's solo relied on her ability to sing a glissando during the sustained word "might" in "It might be time to change my paradigm." That's something that can't be authentically autotuned into a bad singer's performance, which is why they wrote it into such a crucial moment of her song and not some of the others.

A violin can do both of those things (vibrato and glissando) while a piano can do neither. When you autotune a voice too harshly, you get the T-Pain effect," although Cher was the first artist to have a hit using it intentionally for musical effect in "Believe."

Modern pitch correction can be as subtle as the audio engineer wants to be. It can be used to nudge one or two notes into place in an otherwise perfect take by a great singer, or it can be applied aggressively to every single note.

The more heavily it's used, the more the voice starts resembling a piano rather than a violin in its transitions from note to note, and its steadiness throughout the duration of each individual note.

M'Benga was the worst singer (they even broke the fourth wall and had him state "I sang...and I don't sing") who got hit with it the hardest. Pike was sledgehammered with it as well. Uhura and La'an got the least, but it was still all over their recordings.

 

[Amaris]

I'm actually doing that right now. I have a nice HiFi setup connected to my TV, so the episode itself sounded good, but this is definitely better.



Autotune is a specific software product people use to mean "digital pitch correction," kinda like how "Kleenex" has come to mean "paper tissue."

To a trained ear, pitch-corrected singing is usually painfully obvious. There are tons of microscopic variations in pitch as a human voice sings, even for an incredibly well-trained singer. Some can be very intentional - like vibrato (the wavering pitch during a sustained note that many styles of singers can accentuate or tone down depending on the intended musical effect). Glissando is another, which is when they bend up or down to a target pitch instead of making an abrupt change from note to note. The chorus of La'an's solo relied on her ability to sing a glissando during the sustained word "might" in "It might be time to change my paradigm." That's something that can't be authentically autotuned into a bad singer's performance, which is why they wrote it into such a crucial moment of her song and not some of the others.

A violin can do both of those things (vibrato and glissando) while a piano can do neither. When you autotune a voice too harshly, you get the T-Pain effect," although Cher was the first artist to have a hit using it intentionally for musical effect in "Believe."

Modern pitch correction can be as subtle as the audio engineer wants to be. It can be used to nudge one or two notes into place in an otherwise perfect take by a great singer, or it can be applied aggressively to every single note.

The more heavily it's used, the more the voice starts resembling a piano rather than a violin in its transitions from note to note, and its steadiness throughout the duration of each individual note.

M'Benga was the worst singer (they even broke the fourth wall and had him state "I sang...and I don't sing") who got hit with it the hardest. Pike was sledgehammered with it as well. Uhura and La'an got the least, but it was still all over their recordings.

Indeed. I don't mind auto tune too much, as long as the end result is aesthetically satisfying for me. You mentioned Cher's "Believe," which is one of my favorite songs. It works because it fits into the style of music being made. Where it gets on my nerves is in a more traditional style of singing, and it takes the place of someone's voice, essentially drowning it out in digital backwash.

It can be used to fun effect (the K-Pop Klingons are absolutely my favorite example of this, even as I watch the Klingon scene for the 325th time), but I'm far more partial to someone's actual voice. Minor imperfections don't really bother me, because everyone's voice is unique, that fingerprint helps make the song their own, IMO.

That said, I think the people behind this episode used it pretty wisely. Babs certainly needed it, as did Anson Mount. I don't mind how they used it for Ethan Peck, because he has a gloriously rich voice, and I think the net result with the auto tune for him actually worked to his benefit, as it made him seem a little more logical, the man who would be a computer if he could because of what has happened.

Anyhoo, it really is such a wonderful episode, my favorite of the season. I hope they never stop swinging for the fences.

 

[Noname Given]

I'm actually doing that right now. I have a nice HiFi setup connected to my TV, so the episode itself sounded good, but this is definitely better.



Autotune is a specific software product people use to mean "digital pitch correction," kinda like how "Kleenex" has come to mean "paper tissue."

To a trained ear, pitch-corrected singing is usually painfully obvious. There are tons of microscopic variations in pitch as a human voice sings, even for an incredibly well-trained singer. Some can be very intentional - like vibrato (the wavering pitch during a sustained note that many styles of singers can accentuate or tone down depending on the intended musical effect). Glissando is another, which is when they bend up or down to a target pitch instead of making an abrupt change from note to note. The chorus of La'an's solo relied on her ability to sing a glissando during the sustained word "might" in "It might be time to change my paradigm." That's something that can't be authentically autotuned into a bad singer's performance, which is why they wrote it into such a crucial moment of her song and not some of the others.

A violin can do both of those things (vibrato and glissando) while a piano can do neither. When you autotune a voice too harshly, you get the T-Pain effect," although Cher was the first artist to have a hit using it intentionally for musical effect in "Believe."

Modern pitch correction can be as subtle as the audio engineer wants to be. It can be used to nudge one or two notes into place in an otherwise perfect take by a great singer, or it can be applied aggressively to every single note.

The more heavily it's used, the more the voice starts resembling a piano rather than a violin in its transitions from note to note, and its steadiness throughout the duration of each individual note.

M'Benga was the worst singer (they even broke the fourth wall and had him state "I sang...and I don't sing") who got hit with it the hardest. Pike was sledgehammered with it as well. Uhura and La'an got the least, but it was still all over their recordings.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[DrMike]

Indeed. I don't mind auto tune too much, as long as the end result is aesthetically satisfying for me. You mentioned Cher's "Believe," which is one of my favorite songs. It works because it fits into the style of music being made. Where it gets on my nerves is in a more traditional style of singing, and it takes the place of someone's voice, essentially drowning it out in digital backwash.

It can be used to fun effect (the K-Pop Klingons are absolutely my favorite example of this, even as I watch the Klingon scene for the 325th time), but I'm far more partial to someone's actual voice. Minor imperfections don't really bother me, because everyone's voice is unique, that fingerprint helps make the song their own, IMO.

That said, I think the people behind this episode used it pretty wisely. Babs certainly needed it, as did Anson Mount. I don't mind how they used it for Ethan Peck, because he has a gloriously rich voice, and I think the net result with the auto tune for him actually worked to his benefit, as it made him seem a little more logical, the man who would be a computer if he could because of what has happened.

Anyhoo, it really is such a wonderful episode, my favorite of the season. I hope they never stop swinging for the fences.

Oh, absolutely, I have no qualms with using it for musical effect. Cher's Believe is a classic and wouldn't have worked without it. Daft Punk's Instant Crush is another superb use (although it's actually a combination of autotune and a vocoder, but we don't need to go into that right now). The K-lingons were obviously a aesthetic application because of the genre, which uses it heavily.

I also agree that Ethan Peck's performance was a reasonable use given his character and the song's content. Still, some more human imperfection in his voice would also have worked thematically, since the whole point is that he's grappling with the balance between his human side, which wants to be imperfect and emotional, and his Vulcan side, which feels more intensely and therefore needs to rely on rigid emotional suppression to cope with the ups and downs of a relationship (and his realization that a fickle and volatile human is the wrong kind of partner, since he struggles worse than a human to handle those challenges).

But Uhura's such a polished singer that it wouldn't have been necessary if it wasn't for the sake of homogenizing the crappy performances and making her stand out less. There are so many note transitions where I hear her being hit with it that were just plain musically unnecessary.

I get why they did it, it's the current sound of pop music as well as "TV Musicals" and more average viewers would complain about "crappy" singing than about "over-autotuned" singing. So I don't begrudge the decision, I just lament it because it robs the great singers of some of the authenticity and expression in their instrument. They work hard training those pipes and then a lot of that subtlety gets wiped away in production. But such is the state of the music industry, it's not a "Star Trek problem."

 

[DrMike]

Thanks for the explanation.

My pleasure. I'm really excited to be here, I just found this forum and everyone is so friendly and knowledgeable. I'm happy to contribute where I can!

 

[Tallguy]

Ugh. (Not the episode. Yay!) I finally got to see it. I loved it.

I'll post my usually ramble tomorrow. I hope.

But at least:

I think I have four favorite songs.

I've been saying for a year that I'm not sure how this show's handling of Spock and Chapel makes me feel about Spock on TOS (if I take these stories as really connected). NOW I'm not sure how I feel about Chapel!

 

[DrMike]

Ugh. (Not the episode. Yay!) I finally got to see it. I loved it.

I'll post my usually ramble tomorrow. I hope.

But at least:

I think I have four favorite songs.

I've been saying for a year that I'm not sure how this show's handling of Spock and Chapel makes me feel about Spock on TOS (if I take these stories as really connected). NOW I'm not sure how I feel about Chapel!

Maybe I can make you feel better about both.

Chapel was genuinely excited to see where a relationship with Spock could go. Then Boimler pops in and gives her a spoiler from the future that he knows all about Spock but was surprised she was dating him. That told her that it doesn't work out.

How do you go on putting effort into a relationship that you know with certainty will end? That's a bummer of the highest order. Most romantic relationships are generally predicated on the assumption that they at least could work out in a major and/or longterm way.

She knows this one won't. You could see how disappointed and hurt she was as soon as she found out.

Meanwhile, Spock's response to Boimler's surprise that Christine is making him laugh and smile was that, in order to become the man he knew of in the future, he must continue on his present path, including this relationship.

It's quite a deep question about the role of a relationship as a destination vs a journey. Christine hoped it was the former. Spock accepted it might merely be the latter.

His comments to Boimler also served to foreshadow the breakup and his conclusions he'd draw from it. He is deciding here and now that the volatility of a romantic human relationship is too painful for him to bear. He's going to return to the path of Vulcan emptional suppression, because laughing and smiling also means feeling pain too great for him to bear.

A pretty great way to handle a doomed relationship at this point in time between two characters you see in TOS. Instead of making it a fan-service frivolity, they're making it into a crucial event in Spock's balancing act between his human and Vulcan sides. We know who he is when Nimoy portrays him, but this is the path he followed to get there.

 

[Shaw]

Chapel's song was the low point of the episode for me. My feelings on it were lessened when my wife pointed me back to the turbolift conversation between Boimier and Chapel in "Those Old Scientists".

As I said before the series began, it is a mistake to attempt to tether these characters too much to their TOS versions. Compelling characters deserve compelling stories. But bringing up Korby (for Chapel) and Marcus (for Kirk) seemed like attempts to force the characters into their TOS starting positions.

Kirk's character was helping La'an's character grow. This goes beyond what we saw this season, because in last season's "A Quality of Mercy" she appeared to be Kirk's first officer on the Farragut, and was nowhere near as stiff as her character normally was when she interacted with Pike. Kirk doesn't need to be a constant presents on the show to help La'an's growth (just like Batel doesn't need to be a constant presents for Pike). I just hope injecting Marcus into this isn't killing off a good thing.

And with one episode left, I'm a bit disappointed that Princess Runa hasn't made an appearance this season.

 

[fireproof78]

Compelling characters deserve compelling stories. But bringing up Korby (for Chapel) and Marcus (for Kirk) seemed like attempts to force the characters into their TOS starting positions.

And there is nothing compelling about how they got there?

 

[Shaw]

And there is nothing compelling about how they got there?

Absolutely... Dr. Christine Chapel, Ph.D., falls in love with her mentor, Dr. Roger Korby, who is lost during a research expedition. When efforts to find him fall short, she joins Star Fleet after getting her RN so she could be assigned deep space duty in hopes of finding him, setting aside her bioresearch career in the process. After his death she completes her MD while serving on the Enterprise, and does her residency during the Enterprise's refit, returning as a full (medical) doctor when it relaunches.

Very compelling... and absolutely not this story. That compelling story is gone (was from day one of SNW), why not let this new one progress organically? Lets see where this Christine Chapel character goes without pointlessly kneecapping her after having already taken her in a different direction.

Neither Chapel nor Uhura know who T'Pring is in TOS... but they sure know who she is in SNW. So the time for shoehorning these characters into their TOS starting points has long since sailed. Why not run with this and give them all open ended futures? Futures that we don't know about yet.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

Neither Chapel nor Uhura know who T'Pring is in TOS... but they sure know who she is in SNW. So the time for shoehorning these characters into their TOS starting points has long since sailed. Why not run with this and give them all open ended futures? Futures that we don't know about yet.

I get what you're saying but in this regard I disagree. They've been very careful not to have Uhura in contact or see or know anything about T'Pring But there was nothing in TOS indicating that Chapel didn't know anything about T'Pring. I went back to watch (and so did a lot of other people ). It actually works. Almost all the scenes in TOS work with what we're seeing now.

 

[Farscape One]

I daresay certain scenes and dialogue in TOS work better due to SNW. (Or at the very least, puts a deeper spin on it.)

 

[fireproof78]

Neither Chapel nor Uhura know who T'Pring is in TOS... but they sure know who she is in SNW. So the time for shoehorning these characters into their TOS starting points has long since sailed. Why not run with this and give them all open ended futures? Futures that we don't know about yet.

That is not the purpose of a prequel.

And I welcome it because it takes a new tinge when watching TOS.

And Uhura hasn't seen T'Pring in SNW and Chapel does not indicate knowledge one way or another.

 

[Greg Cox]

Cool. The western sounds interesting..

Thanks. FYI, the book in question is The Good, The Bad, and the Uncanny: Tales of the Weird West, edited by Jonathan Maberry. My contribution is a Bigfoot story set during the Gold Rush.

Not exactly sure what the pub date is, but this fall probably.