Much like Star Trek,
Spoilers Strange New Worlds jumps the shark... ("Subspace Rhapsody")
I was inspired to play the soundtrack again last night. Gorgeous!
They're in my spotify likes and it's never too long in between instances where my shuffle decides to play one or two of them.
This news really changes everything.
I was fine with a musical. We've had plenty of daft Star Trek episodes. I feel it was well executed but shows lack of maturity in the writing and the show. Buffy built and built the story strands that would explode in Once More With Feeling. Rhapsody had none of that, it didn't do the legwork for the payoff. As to the SNW writers everything is a laugh, a joke and a jape.
I feel season four jumped the shark then violated its corpse repeatedly.
I feel season four jumped the shark then violated its corpse repeatedly.
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Almost every song in Rhapsody was tied to character arcs that had been running through the show since the start. One or two were "payoffs" for those arcs. It was also a pretty serious episode in spite of the format.
Did we watch the same episode? The entire episode was filled with meaningful character development.
What changed? What was learnt? How did the story move forward? How was the course of these characters meaningfully changed for that season and beyond from this episode?
Now in fairness I don't want Trek to be at the level of Pike's crawled out of his grave much graver and Uhura is fucking the undead as part of self destructive behaviour while Spock violates Scotty's memories.... so it had less to work with as a result. I'm just saying that it lacks the clout of Once more with Feeling as they set the stories up for a long time and the music was the device from which the secrets fell out and there was huge pay off. In Trek Its motivation was to be "the musical episode" and it'll be remembered as "the musical episode."
OMWF set an unrealistically high expectation, and was based on 121 previous episodes
Once Upon a Time had a good musical episode. It built on 154 previous episodes
Subspace Rhapsody was episode 19. That's not a lot of history to mine for long running story threads.
Flash had one at episode 60 (episode 38 for Supergirl) and wasn't great from that story line perspective. I never saw Supernatural, but I believe it was episode 200 when they did theirs. Likewise with Xena -- episode 58. Was that as good as Once More?
I think SNW season 2 suffered from having so many "special" episodes -- the Lower Decks Crossover, the Documentary episode, the Musical episode. 3 in a normal season would be a lot, but given that these seasons are less than half the length of a normal tv season it leaves little room for ongoing plot
There was plenty of character driven change in the episode.
-Pike learns to deal with emotional honesty instead of resisting it.
-Number One shows a stronger sense of belonging, no longer hiding who she is after her trial.
-La’an allows herself to be vulnerable and openly express her feelings, which is a big step for her.
-Spock realizes that leaning into emotion has consequences, pushing him back toward the discipline we associate with his future self.
-Chapel chooses her career and personal growth over the relationship, asserting her independence.
-Uhura leans into her strengths in communication and problem-solving, playing a key role in resolving the crisis.
So yeah, there’s a lot more going on there than just the musical gimmick.
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All those can be answered by paying attention to what happened in the episode and the previous episodes. Relationships were changed and altered the course of the several characters. Things from the episode had an impact on future episodes
SUPERNATURAL's 200th episode, "FAN FICTION", wasn't doing the actual musical for most of the episode. I don't think it qualifies as a musical as much as XENA's episode or "Subspace Rhapsody", which had the musical portion happen throughout the entire episode.
Legends of Tomorrow had lots of singing. And puppets. And singing puppets.
The documentary is in season 3.
All good points thank you. I'm not saying it's a gimmick per se... I'm just saying I don't think it drove the story forward in of itself. That's all. The things you describe could have happened without the music.
I love musicals, so I'm not against the episode... but it will still feel for me it was "Let's do a musical" first and character driven second.
That said, much of Trek has been concept-led. Cause and Effect was let's blow up the ship, and then find some story.
The music anomaly is what drove those particular feelings to the surface, much like the virus in NakedTime/Now. Which is sort of a Trek staple.
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