Star Trek Social Club

That was insane, I was in equal parts cringing and laughing my arse off.

I knew La'an would be amazing. I was also very excited when I realised Kirk would be involved.

The singing of the intro should be permanent.

I loved the episode. I’m not a huge fan of American musical theatre, but this really worked for me and my partner.

The tone was just right and the songs were well matched to the skills and characters. It’s delightful.

It was also really nice to come to this community and soak up all the positivity. I really needed a place to come like this after watching episodes. As we see it a bit later on CTV Sci-fi Channel in Canada, I can often feel blasted with fan backlash when I check out people’s views after watching.

Yes, there are a few folks here for whom this isn’t there kind of thing, and they are letting us know. We’ve not however seeing brigading negativity that is cropping up on some other social media. I can appreciate that some want their Trek more dignified and serious, but the ‘worst thing ever’ hyperbole is a bit hard to take when Threshold and Code of Honor exist.

@ValueSubtracted
Subspace Rhapsody is the greatest episode in all of Star Trek canon.

I will die on this hill.

Edit: cannon -> canon

I feel like I’m the only person who was SUPER excited when the musical episode was announced, and.. rather underwhelmed by the actual episode. (Except for the a capella theme song. I adored that!) Maybe my expectations were too high, but.. I just didn’t think most of the songs were that good. I need to rewatch it a couple times, maybe it’ll grow on me.

Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/628489

@ValueSubtracted

Pretty silly episode. I'm not a fan of musicals, and I was dubious going in, but it was fun. They managed to make it as good as a musical could be for my tastes. I'm happy it was made, and I'm happy to have seen it. That's about the highest praise I could give for something like this.

What. The. Heck. Just. Happened. I always hated musicals but this was incredible! This show is KILLING it. OMG

One day they’ll do a proper adaptation of “How Much For Just the Planet?” and I can die happy.

In between the first watch earlier this week and a rewatch tonight, I've listening to and humming the songs over and over again. I don't know why people say the songs aren't catchy. "Status Report" is sooo catchy, and it even has a little reprise with the "Apologies" at the beginning of the "Private Conversation" which is also very catchy actually.

"How Would That Feel" is beautifully rendered. I've started to listen to other Christina Chong's songs now, and they are pretty good (listen to her "Twin Flames").

Also, in the last seconds of the episode we had Uhura humming a theme. The closed caption says "Uhura humming 'Keep us connected'", which I believe is incorrect. She is humming the opening of Chapel's "I am Ready" and Spock's "I am the X", not Uhura's "Keep us Connected".

So, I'm a good public for this I suppose, since I loved Mamma Mia, and am a real fan of rock/metal operas. And I think this episode is... surprisingly decent?

I mean, the singing was surprisingly good, even with autotune (I mean, if you ever want to hear a real musical disaster, try Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia ; everyone here is pretty much excellent compared to that), so kudos to crew. The music was uneven : some parts were quite bland/uninspired, but I very much loved the common theme of "I'm ready"(catchy!)/"I'm the X"(lovely!) and the two widely different feelings.

On the plot side, you can feel they are trying very hard to brush over how nonsensical this musical thing is. And, somehow, I'm glad that not much progress happens here : you can summarize what happens as "La'an tell Kirk about the time-travel event, Spock gets dumped for a study program, Pike have a minor fight. And musical subspace shenanigans.", which will sure come in handy if you're allergic to musicals and (re-)watch the series.

But yeah, it was fun. The "La'an cut the captains couple argument in the middle of signing", and the boys-band/K-pop klingon were unexpected.

Overall, I think this episode somewhat suffer the comparison with the Lower Deck crossover. The s02e07 was a real Star trek story : if Lower Deck wasn't a thing, "These old scientists" would still be a decent story, it's the meta element which push it into the land of deep sillyness (even when, like me, you don't really like Lower Decks). "Subspace rhapsody" is... a musical. It's good fun! But I was hoping for a bit more.

No, sorry. Very bad. Only Rose-Gooding and Chong could sing, the autotune was obvious and jarring for all the others. The songs weren't memorable (I confess I really dislike the modern US showtune style, but it can at least be catchy — this wasn't), the choreography and even the editing was shoddy. The first episode of Trek, other than Enterprise, that I've wanted to switch off.

I don't generally enjoy musicals (or rather, shows that aren't musicals but then do a random episode as a musical) but SNW definitely did it right! And I'm glad I didn't skip it since I considered doing so.

I was pretty sure they were going to nail this as soon as it was announced. Treks always played around with music and characters with musical aptitude so this was inevitable eventually.

I'm not really a musical fan unless it's something I'm already interested in like this or, say, Pick of Destiny, thought this was great though, simple sci-fi justification, then all in on the concept. Thought the songs and "musical rules" were a good way of packing an episode with dense character work across the whole cast in an era when you only have ten episodes a year to play with.

I love musicals and I love Trek so I was hoping I would love this episode, but I just didn't, and I think it was mostly because the music was... bad? It wasn't catchy, it wasn't fun, there was not one single legitimate bop during the whole episode. Uhura's last line about an earworm struck me as a sour note because... no. Not a single earworm to be had in the whole thing. I couldn't hum a single song from that episode and I watched it less than an hour ago. The only number that had any spark to it at all was Chapel's number at the lounge, and it was barely a spark.

Even Una's alleged Gilbert and Sullivan riff was barely, barely recognizable as a take on G&S. It was to G&S as a brick spraypainted orange is to a glass of refreshing orange juice. You're gonna do G&S in a musical episode and not do patter? Come on, son.

I just can't get behind this episode, and I was truly prepared to be thrilled. I mean the cast tried hard, but in a musical the music has to be good, and this wasn't.

I despise musical episodes and had to stop watching this one after I heard Spock's autotuned voice.

Now I really wanna see an episode where they poof into bunnies!!!!!

10 minutes in, Oh I like it!