Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to Feature First-Ever Star Trek Musical Episode

The upcoming ninth episode of season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be a musical themed episode, the first ever in the Star Trek franchise's history. 'Subspace Rhapsody' will be available to stream on Thursday, 3 August and features 10 original songs, with music and lyrics by Kay Hanley (Letters to Cleo) and Tom Polce (Letters to Cleo, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend).

An episode trailer (which I have not watched) is here.

There have been rumours of a Star Trek musical in the past. In the 1990s the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writers room talked about making a musical episode (they had a lot of cast members with musical theatre/singing experience - eg Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, James Darren, Rene Auberjonois) but it never happened. Although a number of episodes did feature the cast singing, eg Brooks and Darren singing "The Best is Yet to Come" and Visitor singing "Fever".

Around the same time, maybe even earlier, I even vaguely recall whispers of a Star Trek (TOS) opera... though I can't remember if it was supposed to be a film or an actual staged work... moot point, as neither happened.

In 2015 the Pacific Opera Project set a production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the world of Trek, with a new book and lyrics by Josh and Kelsey Shaw, but that's different. That opera was successful enough to be brought back in 2016.

I'll be watching this episode - which (mind) melds two of my great passions - with great interest. Musical episodes of TV shows can range from the brilliant (Buffy's "Once More With Feeling" being the standout) to the... not. But it's usually clear that cast members have had a lot of fun. I have not watched the trailer, but am hoping for a premise that's plausible, songs that are well written, numbers that are well performed, and that (like the Buffy episode) the musical also contributes integrally into the wider season character arcs, and isn't just a standalone lark.