Supreme Commander 2 Update 13-SKIDROW Hack Working
Matt Dreher
Let it be said that the idea of Star Trek: The Musical was not an automatic winner in my book. I figured this had an even chance of being an embarrassingly goofy misfire. But "Subspace Rhapsody" is a swing for the fences that connects (as sure as Uhura's concluding effort to bring the crew of the Enterprise together in song), and it runs an emotional gamut I was not expecting.
I mean, sure, the plot is completely absurd and the opening minutes had me fearing the possibility of a show that would collapse under the weight of its own conceit. But as the setting took hold, the episode managed to build more and more emotional resonance and tie into the characters in very specific ways.
Obviously, some of these songs are better than others, and your mileage will vary when it comes to ranking them, but what I appreciated about this episode were the thematic character threads running through it, and the way nearly every character got their due. Granted, some get more to do than others, but it's spread around generously. (Ortegas and M'Benga were the most clearly short-changed here, and it's perhaps noteworthy that Ortegas has been the character to get the least spotlight and substance all season.)
Uhura is the heart of the episode, starting with her at the beginning being the glue that holds the ship's communications together as she serves as switchboard operator in the absence of automation that's been disabled by the anomaly's interference, and continuing through to the end where she puts the pieces together and unites the ship in song.
But the emotional core of the story is La'an's, whose personal crisis is the most emotionally affecting. Her confession to Kirk, where she reveals how she met a version of him in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," is touching, all the more so because of Christina Chong's vulnerable performance. I wasn't a big fan of "Tomorrow," but this payoff almost makes that episode worth it. (As it turns out, Kirk is in the "on-again" stage of his on-again/off-again relationship with Carol Marcus, and as it happens, she's currently pregnant, making Kirk, well, unavailable. It's a smart way to tie this story into the pre-TOS timeline.) I may never see Paul Wesley as fitting the Kirk mold, but that doesn't make his performance here any less solid.
This episode is all the more effective because it chooses not to simply be a lightweight romp. It explores the feelings of the characters and ties into their personal stories that have been playing out all season. Like I said, it runs the gamut, from the rousing and victorious to the somber and reflective.
I'm by no means an expert on musicals, and I rarely go out of my way to watch them (the last musical I saw was Hamilton in Chicago in 2019), but the cast here seemed to acquit themselves nicely, with Gooding (especially) and Chong and Romijn being the standouts. I'd imagine an off-format episode like this is difficult to make on a TV production schedule (Tom Polce and Kay Hanley were brought in to write the songs). They went for broke here and they pulled off a beauty.
Four stars. Yes, really. The show took a Really Big Swing, it went for it and Tried Something, and it completely pulled it off as far as I'm concerned.
"Hail the Klingons, Uhura." I had to pause the playback for several minutes I was laughing so hard.
If you didn't like this because you can't get over how "it's not Star Trek," then, well, you're a sourpuss who doesn't like fun. End of.
. . .
That said, this is something that works because you only do it once.
The universe, being so vast, should be full of wonder and strange, improbable things. A ship exploring that universe should come across the "just plain weird" sometimes. Like a giant space Amoeba, or a planet that's an exact copy of Earth down to the landmasses except only children survive, or a planet full of 1920s gangsters . . . you get it. This fits in that spirit. I love it.
(Once.)
Another thing I really liked is that they didn't lean too hard into the humor and they resisted going camp. Despite the absurdity of what is happening with them all bursting out into song and dance at inopportune times that reveal feelings they would otherwise keep hidden from each other, it IS a crisis they are in and it is treated as such. The crew approach resolving it with Starfleet professionalism.
They could have, for example, had La'an phasering herself (on stun) to stop herself from having to sing, or written a song for Spock that was all catchphrases with a refrain of him singing "most illogical," or other things like that. They didn't. They avoided the temptation, and they made the musical anomaly a threat that actually had stakes. They gave the unfolding situation real teeth.
A charming episode overall, with emotional, character insights and implications aplenty (e.g., receiving personally bad news via collective, gleeful song would certainly cause most anyone, be it Vulcan or otherwise, to shut themselves out from their emotions and others).
Viewers mileage with this episode may vary - I'm not particularly a fan of musicals, and found some of the numbers to be a bit cringey - but I will give the writers and staff great credit for taking the leap, and possibly creating an episode that may hit a note, pun intended, with a new or different audience.
And, finally, props to Celia Rose Gooding. What an incredible performance. She's sneakily 'stealing the show' this season. Love her work and what she's added to the character of Uhura.
Coulda been an absolute knockout (and it was looking like it mighta been), but goddamn did they overdo that finale. And maybe a couple less songs of people standing around in rooms would have helped. Still a solid 7/10
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.
LOL...People wondering about the chapel and spock break up thing? well that is what you get when you have a star trek show do a riverdale love arc like the spock/chapel/tpring stuff.
the couple don't last for up to 3 episodes.
Also I think this show has been very disrespectful to spock and to chapel characters. jess bush chapel is nothing like the tos version, not even close and in this episode, that really showed in a way that hurt chapel character.
SNW wanted to apologise to chapel for been a laughing stock in tos by turning her into this sexy confident action chick but that is not the character and in this episode it showed.
jess bush could have been a new character and nothing would have been lost.
laslty the spock/chapel stuff should never have happened because it started it crap writing and went no where. their story line was poor.
when all is over spock/chapel will be one of the worst trek couples ever. their 60s dynamic was better.
this is what happens when extreme feminist take over star trek stories, they make it worse.
Hard to believe we've only got one episode left until what will likely be a very long break.
Next week has to be about the Gorn, so that doesn't bode well for Batel and her Priority One mission.
In Amok Time Spock made that observation about the difference between wanting and having. I don't think that's actually true about Chapel, but to Spock it could sure look that way.
Man, I can't believe they pulled it off. Not every choice made in the episode was my cup of tea, but my hats go off to them.
I'm not really a musical fan - I wouldn't say I'm a musical hater by any means, but they're not something I go out of my way to look for. But the songs were serviceable to certified bangers, and it turns out everyone on the cast can sing (aside from maybe Babs - M'Benga singing little here makes sense, though. Otherwise, he would have confessed to being a murderer. The penultimate song - the solo by Uhura - was fantastic, though I know Celia Rose Gooding actually has a musical theatre background, so they were saving the best for last. The inclusion of Pelia here was a bit weird to me because she contributed nothing to either the plot or really the singing (I wouldn't expect Carol Kane to have a golden singing voice).
The emotional beats worked well for the characters also. We got a culmination of several character arcs built up across the show to date, with Spock/Chapel and La'an's internal turmoil around Kirk. Also, Uhura getting to reflect upon her own pain. I didn't find the Pike/Batel stuff very convincing, but it seems like they're just setting up Batel to die horribly in the finale anyway, so whatever.
The plot was, of course, total nonsense, but there's no way that a "musical episode" could have a sensical plot. It was either this or something like "a Q did it." All of that is completely forgiven.
Still, even though they hit it out of the park in terms of executing what they wanted to do, some of it didn't work for me. I felt a few of the songs just dragged a bit too long, particularly Una's song to La'an, and La'an's solo. I found myself drifting out of focusing on the episode, reflecting on how different the storytelling is for a musical than a regular drama. Musicals don't show, they tell - the characters just directly say what they're feeling, which you can't get away with in books/movies/TV. This makes sense as shorthand within a musical because things have to move quickly, and that's actually how we get to know the inner voice of the characters. But...the songs here basically told us stuff we already knew about the characters. Yes, there was drama related to the other characters finding out, but from a narrative perspective, we didn't really need the songs to understand what was going on between the characters ourselves. They were just there for fun, which is why - once they made their point - I thought a few overstayed their welcome.
Final thought: The Klingon "boy band" scene was possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen in Trek and will live rent-free in my head for the rest of my life.