How Strange New Worlds pulled off the first-ever Star Trek musical episode
Throwing an hour of light comedy into the middle of a 10-episode arc with galactic-level stakes could derail an entire season, but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds dances gracefully from week to week between courtroom drama, time-travel romance, and its latest wild swing: a musical episode.
In “Subspace Rhapsody,” the crew of the USS Enterprise encounters a strange cosmic phenomenon that induces them to break into song and reveal their innermost feelings. The episode features 10 original songs by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce (of Letters to Cleo fame) and highlights the vocal talents of the cast, including Tony nominee and Grammy winner Celia Rose Gooding and singer-songwriter Christina Chong.
Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman, who heads up the franchise at Paramount, has been teasing the possibility of a Star Trek musical since 2020. But at the time, his only venue for bizarre genre experiments was Star Trek: Short Treks, a short subject anthology series that filled the gaps between Discovery and Picard. Short Treks eventually became the launchpad for Strange New Worlds, whose tone has proven equally elastic. After the warm reception to its first season, which contained everything from a screwball body-swap comedy to a grim political drama involving child sacrifice, it was time to set phasers to “sing.”
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According to the episode’s director, Dermott Downs, Chong was the cast member who pushed the hardest for a musical episode. Chong, whose debut EP Twin Flames is also out this week, confesses in her Spotify bio that her screen acting career began as a way to raise her profile as a singer and stage actor. “Subspace Rhapsody” would seem to be an important landmark in her career, as she features heavily on the soundtrack,
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