Do we want to talk about a Black woman being a glorified space telephone operator at the start of the episode? Okay, I’ll move on to Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff’s “Subspace Rhapsody.” Horgan previously wrote for “Ad Astra Per Aspera” while Wolkoff most recently was involved with the beautiful “Those Old Scientists.” Actor-turned-director Dermott Downs is also involved. This is a man who played Truck in Escape to Witch Mountain and previously helmed the director’s chair for Doom Patrol and Arrow, as well as cinematography for The Tomorrow People. I won’t be moaning too much about Downs, I’ve got a lot more to say but direction isn’t one of the problems.

Let’s get the plot out of the way: The crew is parked up by a subspace fold, which is thought to be able to expedite the transmission of subspace relays. The fold is also thought to make comms almost instant over many lightyears instead of their slow carrier pigeon-esque pace right now. Sending through only normal comms chatter they receive nothing until Pelia suggests sending through music. Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, spacey wacey, bang(!) the universe becomes a musical where everyone sings about their problems through exposition, a rather dull exposition that doesn’t excite.

Meanwhile, everyone’s dirty laundry is getting aired, Kirk is aboard, and he’s having a kid with someone that he wants to stay faithful to. #NotMyStarTrek, Kirk should be shagging everything that moves, and some things that don’t. I’m joking, but it is weird to see. The majority of the episode focuses on the personal issues being aired publicly through song while Uhura, Spock, and Kirk are looking to solve the unzipped fabric of a subspace fold-shaped hole that is spreading musical joy to almost every ship. A typical concept topped with musical cheer and sadness.

Why don’t I like it? Aside from La’an wanting to jump on Kirk’s phallic bouncy castle, the disinterest in Spock and Chapel’s relationship, and the fact I don’t feel anything for Pike and Batel’s relationship? It isn’t a good musical. I’m not trying to beat anyone with a stick, writing music isn’t the easiest thing in the world and I would know (though maybe not the best to ask) but I want to feel something from the music I listen to. I want to feel like I should be moving and like something is connecting to me as a listener.

Una name-drops Gilbert and Sullivan, but there was no “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.” There is no “Wild and Untamed Thing,” “I’d Rather Be Me,” “Say My Name,” “Part of Your World,” “Zero To Hero,” “How Do Humans Live,” “Arabian Nights,” “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” or “Anything You Can Do,” it is all second rate pieces from season 2 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. No one is purposefully listening to “Thought Bubbles” from season 2 and everyone knows it! You had Patti LuPone and Tovah Feldshuh in that season, it had some “bangers,” as the kids say.

“Subspace Rhapsody,“ on the other hand, has a whole lot of “I am saying my emotions, but I’m not feeling them.” It didn’t feel like there was much conflict or it was heightened because it was in song, it was just there. That’s what I think I have such a problem with. We could have had another Eureka-like episode that danced the tightrope of serious problems to be solved with the colorful and “wacky” set pieces, however, it didn’t. It felt like it went through the motions and sang a few too many choruses for my liking to keep the pacing up.

I have nothing against the cast who are all beautifully pouring their hearts into this space song and dance. It is just that lack of writing the story around the songs and more so writing the songs to force the story. Very few of them stand out as songs on their own and the one that does is something I’ve been calling “Back to Black in Shades of Legal Grays.” Yes, I think you can tell that’s Jess Bush’s “I’m Ready,” a legally distinct take on “Back to Black,” but just and no more.

If we look at the longer tracks in “How Would That Feel,” “Keeping Secrets,” “Keep Us Connected,” and “We Are One,” they follow the typical structure of songs: A, B, A, B, C, A, B. The trouble is, unlike the conventional pop song or ballad, I’m bored of this exposition after the second verse. After that it is the chorus, middle-8/bridge, verse, chorus, and out. Even Mount and Scrofano’s short tension-filled argument in rhymes on the ship’s bridge, Mount playing up the camp, isn’t grabbing my attention.

Of course, that’s probably because Mount is the weakest singer (goodbye!) out of the whole cast, his only piece of armor in that is to camp it up. While I’m kicking one star, Celia Rose Gooding is once again getting all my praise because not only is she playing a wonderful Uhura but she’s the best singer of the bunch. I like Chong and Bush, their voices are not as uninteresting as Peck and Mount, but Gooding also comes from a musical background which helps her. Chong has an EP out, but Gooding was on Broadway with Jagged Little Pill.

Let’s step aside from my praising the actors for pushing through and let’s quote my notes: “I want to hear from the Klingons in this reality […] I WANTED THE SINGING KLINGONS!!!!!!! IT IS ME. I’M THE PROBLEM, IT’S ME!” I wanted to hear the Klingon Opera piece of this episode. I wanted to get into that and have this long boring operatic droning to be something different. Then we get Bruce Horak back to play General Garkog and what does he do? A Lonely Klingon Island via K-POP middle-8th breakdown in “We Are One.”

If this was Lower Decks, the show that is forgiven for having a dud joke here or there because you’ll get the next one only two seconds later, sure. Here, a week after the big piece about the Klingon War, the same Klingon War that took place only a couple of years prior, it makes me want to pull someone’s teeth out with stuff from my tool shed. I don’t have a tool shed, so I’ll have to get one first, but it is just the wrong style of characterization. Arguably it is the same problem 90 percent of the episode has after Spock’s piece in “Status Report.”

Ultimately, the most confounding thing about this half-hearted musical outing is that it had all the pieces to be good: A ready and able cast, a set of characters collectively at their high points, and doing something vastly different from their typical episode. Nonetheless, “Subspace Rhapsody” feels as if it was written by two writers and no lyricists, even with the lovely Kay Hanley onboard with Tom Polce, resulting in little to no musical minds structuring the 9-part drama as if it were a musical. The best piece of them all is actually the almost acapella take on Jeff Russo’s theme for Strange New Worlds.

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SNW "Subspace Rhapsody"

5

Score

5.0/10

Pros

• At least some of the cast are good at holding a tune.
• A ready (ready ready) cast for this sort of episode.

Cons

• How do you not do the operatic Klingons, come on!!!
• Exposition dialog rather than lyrics to music.
• A love it, hate it episode: I'm the latter.