Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Thread starter SHIELD Agent 47
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To be fair, I merely chose the first war I could find that fit the appropriate timeframe (roughly 300 years ago).
It was fun and it looked like they probably had fun doing it. I ended up feeling a greater appreciation for the art of the musical by the illustration provided by this episode (not complimentary) but a couple of moments like the dancing starships and the Pirates of Penzance callback made me happy.
Aaaaayiaargh. Two things I still can't get over:
1. Uhura has a solo about singing solos while she's making the final discovery about the nature of the problem and the solution. Spock has just left the room singing about being alone. The solution literally is singing together. It is a thematic crime against musical that Spock doesn't reenter the room on the pickup and the triumph isn't a duet. That's just what you do even when the text isn't itself already the metatext.
2. We have two drops about "singing Klingons". This is an outside joke. It's funny to the Enterprise crew, but we, and here I mean we longtime fans among the audience, know Klingons love opera and sing space shanties at work. Their tough image makes 23rd-century Starfleet incapable of clocking them as being more musical than themselves. But while the Federation doesn't yet understand the Klingons, the show largely should. In the climax we see on screen, the Klingon ships dance with the Enterprise and are clearly providing part of the solution by raising the improbability wave, their participation is not a joke, except the meta - you know, we're three layers into joke here, but it's serious for the plot. And on top of everything else, sea shanties got popular in real life in between Deep Space Nine and now.
So, setup and callback, they're on the right track - singing Klingons do come back at the end, right before Gilbert and Sullivan do. But this is a kill your darlings moment. Like don't get me wrong, the single funniest and best musical moment of the entire episode is the boyband Klingons. The word "bat'leth" being the rhyme word in a couplet is the kind of thing every song in the episode should have been striving for from go; it is the thing for which you do a Star Trek musical. I guess that, being so musically superior to the Federation, the Klingons are incapable of even being the butt of the joke without still showing them up on a meta level. But it's completely the wrong landing.
The joke should not be "Klingons are singing and it's exactly as silly as we imagined all along", it should be "Klingons are singing and it's the most badass thing I've ever seen and also saved the day." The joke is that the Enterprise crew are about 100 years too early to know that the Klingons have their own whole musical thing.
We should have got a truly epic orchestral space shanty out of this. This kinda jive:
Edit: Worth adding, they reference sea shanties twice, once offhand in a joke in the second act and once in Uhura's reveal of the plan, so they've actually set this up as hard as they've set up singing Klingons in the first place, apparently by accident.
1. Uhura has a solo about singing solos while she's making the final discovery about the nature of the problem and the solution. Spock has just left the room singing about being alone. The solution literally is singing together. It is a thematic crime against musical that Spock doesn't reenter the room on the pickup and the triumph isn't a duet. That's just what you do even when the text isn't itself already the metatext.
2. We have two drops about "singing Klingons". This is an outside joke. It's funny to the Enterprise crew, but we, and here I mean we longtime fans among the audience, know Klingons love opera and sing space shanties at work. Their tough image makes 23rd-century Starfleet incapable of clocking them as being more musical than themselves. But while the Federation doesn't yet understand the Klingons, the show largely should. In the climax we see on screen, the Klingon ships dance with the Enterprise and are clearly providing part of the solution by raising the improbability wave, their participation is not a joke, except the meta - you know, we're three layers into joke here, but it's serious for the plot. And on top of everything else, sea shanties got popular in real life in between Deep Space Nine and now.
So, setup and callback, they're on the right track - singing Klingons do come back at the end, right before Gilbert and Sullivan do. But this is a kill your darlings moment. Like don't get me wrong, the single funniest and best musical moment of the entire episode is the boyband Klingons. The word "bat'leth" being the rhyme word in a couplet is the kind of thing every song in the episode should have been striving for from go; it is the thing for which you do a Star Trek musical. I guess that, being so musically superior to the Federation, the Klingons are incapable of even being the butt of the joke without still showing them up on a meta level. But it's completely the wrong landing.
The joke should not be "Klingons are singing and it's exactly as silly as we imagined all along", it should be "Klingons are singing and it's the most badass thing I've ever seen and also saved the day." The joke is that the Enterprise crew are about 100 years too early to know that the Klingons have their own whole musical thing.
We should have got a truly epic orchestral space shanty out of this. This kinda jive:
Edit: Worth adding, they reference sea shanties twice, once offhand in a joke in the second act and once in Uhura's reveal of the plan, so they've actually set this up as hard as they've set up singing Klingons in the first place, apparently by accident.
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I honestly think the writers were focusing on "funny because boyband", which is an expired MRE take on par with "tough guys don't sing" IMO. 
Edit: My tactical rather than strategic solution to the Klingon interlude, inspired by mishearing the lyrics the first time, would be to make the last line "Off the view screen!" instead of "Make your blood scream!", and end transmission on beat instead of awkwardly off.
Edit: My tactical rather than strategic solution to the Klingon interlude, inspired by mishearing the lyrics the first time, would be to make the last line "Off the view screen!" instead of "Make your blood scream!", and end transmission on beat instead of awkwardly off.
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The dishonor was because they were singing the K-pop and not singing some badass Klingon opera that the audience would expect and have been fine with. Part of the whole joke is the audience with its knowledge wondering why Klingons would feel dishonored by singing when we know Klingons love to sing.
And the rhyme was mek'leth not bat'leth. Wrong sword
And the rhyme was mek'leth not bat'leth. Wrong sword
That's, uh, that's hyperdefensive as hug, actually. I actually noticed the term used was "mek'leth" in between when I rewatched it with subtitles on and (gasp) didn't even correct myself. Why do I get the feeling you've already read the comments about the class name....
So, yeah. The joke is in no way that they get the audience to be expecting something cool, so the show gets to disappoint them instead. I'd love for there to be some double reverse Uno card shot off the rim here, but it's just not in the show. The show just did a basic. It's as surface level as it looks.
It's La'an and Una who refer to "singing Klingons" as I recall, and neither laments "Klingon singing", but the concept of "singing Klingons". (Like, someone might resent showtunes as "white people music", but they're unlikely to find "singing white people" a novel concept. Unlike La'an and Una, Spock has by now experienced Klingon singing, and would not be laughing at the concept of "singing Klingons", despite probably hating it.) So I imagine we both agree that the characters don't know.
But I don't see any indication that the show expects the audience to know either. When we finally get the hail, the expectations of the characters that "singing Klingons" is a very silly thing are simply reinforced. As far as the crew's concerned, asked and answered. They aren't sitting there disappointed that the people they don't picture singing aren't cool when they do it. That reaction also certainly doesn't become any funnier to the audience simply because we know it's an unfair characterization. Quite the contrary in fact!
And think about the kind of Thanatos gambit you're proposing here. This is part of the grand finale number, and you think they want to disappoint the audience as a joke at this moment? It's complete nonsense. (That trick is used correctly by the way with "A Private Conversation," and where you expect it during the rising action.) Meanwhile, a year and a half after sea shanties were a TikTok trend is the least cool time to profit from a meme, but you know, you still very much do anyway....
No, they just missed the shot, it's okay, you don't have to convince yourself they're secretly winning four dimensional basketball. I'm glad Star Trek has participated in the tradition of musical episodes, but I'm only giving it the participation trophy it's earned for that. These are hardly the only problems, there's bad structure and missed gags everywhere, they're just the two things that are going to be nibbling the back of my brain for the rest of my life. Frankly, even between the two, the Klingon thing is just a missed (if obvious) opportunity, the Uhura thing is a crime against the structure of the musical.
So, yeah. The joke is in no way that they get the audience to be expecting something cool, so the show gets to disappoint them instead. I'd love for there to be some double reverse Uno card shot off the rim here, but it's just not in the show. The show just did a basic. It's as surface level as it looks.
It's La'an and Una who refer to "singing Klingons" as I recall, and neither laments "Klingon singing", but the concept of "singing Klingons". (Like, someone might resent showtunes as "white people music", but they're unlikely to find "singing white people" a novel concept. Unlike La'an and Una, Spock has by now experienced Klingon singing, and would not be laughing at the concept of "singing Klingons", despite probably hating it.) So I imagine we both agree that the characters don't know.
But I don't see any indication that the show expects the audience to know either. When we finally get the hail, the expectations of the characters that "singing Klingons" is a very silly thing are simply reinforced. As far as the crew's concerned, asked and answered. They aren't sitting there disappointed that the people they don't picture singing aren't cool when they do it. That reaction also certainly doesn't become any funnier to the audience simply because we know it's an unfair characterization. Quite the contrary in fact!
And think about the kind of Thanatos gambit you're proposing here. This is part of the grand finale number, and you think they want to disappoint the audience as a joke at this moment? It's complete nonsense. (That trick is used correctly by the way with "A Private Conversation," and where you expect it during the rising action.) Meanwhile, a year and a half after sea shanties were a TikTok trend is the least cool time to profit from a meme, but you know, you still very much do anyway....
No, they just missed the shot, it's okay, you don't have to convince yourself they're secretly winning four dimensional basketball. I'm glad Star Trek has participated in the tradition of musical episodes, but I'm only giving it the participation trophy it's earned for that. These are hardly the only problems, there's bad structure and missed gags everywhere, they're just the two things that are going to be nibbling the back of my brain for the rest of my life. Frankly, even between the two, the Klingon thing is just a missed (if obvious) opportunity, the Uhura thing is a crime against the structure of the musical.
Some people just NEED to find fault with things....
Why was engineering deserted during that bit anyway? Do they not need a bunch of people there working to make sure the warp core doesn't fall out or something?
(Some people just NEED to find fault with people....) No, I held off for 14 frickin' hours dammit. Gimme a cookie.
I think you understand how wrong that characterization is, mostly because you are also a human who also experiences experiences. I wanted to love this episode to the very deepest corners of my heart, because was set to combine two of my very favorite things in the world. Instead I had a delightfully fun but subtly offputting, wrong, and creepingly unsatisfying experience that, as I said and meant entirely unironically, made me more deeply appreciate the craft involved in all of the other musicals (and frankly some of the other Star Trek) I love. I'm not going to search your post history like a creeper to find an example of you being the first in a thread to express disappointment with something that disappointed you in an unexpected way. I have full confidence in your ability to look through your last five posts or so and find one. I don't need to qualify that to "media", opinions on air fryers will follow the same human patterns.
Star Trek is also literally the only ongoing show I engage in fandom discourse about, because for me it's the only thing not made worse by being exposed to others' terrible opinions. It does not matter (to me, but also to you or anyone else) whether they're positive or negative opinions, other people's opinions are always disappointing, and if we're still around talking about jive I assume we're coming in eyes open.
In short, I did not come into your living room sir
I did like that they tried to explain the random musical outbursts [pseudo] scientifically while not getting into a whole lot of technobabble. "Improbability Field" just about sums it up, even it if does kind of evoke a Hitchhiker's Guide feeling, which is a bit odd for Star Trek. I had fun, though, so I'll happily buy into that.
There is precedent in Star Trek, as they have dealt with probability-altering fields once before in that DS9 episode with the "game" that could cause people to become either lucky or very unlucky.
There is precedent in Star Trek, as they have dealt with probability-altering fields once before in that DS9 episode with the "game" that could cause people to become either lucky or very unlucky.
Yeah, keeping it light and silly while giving the crew something to wave their tricorders at, like a Christmas special one-shot. I honestly took it as a direct reference, since immediately after the parallel universe argle bargle, La'an asks if they'll turn into bunnies and Spock tells her they probably won't be bunnies for the sake of repeating the word "bunnies". Since the Improbability Drive is known for two things, one of them being instantaneous interstellar travel and the other being turning people into couches and missiles into whales and petunias, I took this as a rare case of setting aside the science and just treating another science fictional thing as if it's real in this universe.
Edit: Honestly still more plausible, and more deeply explored, than the interdimensional nebula babies
Edit: Honestly still more plausible, and more deeply explored, than the interdimensional nebula babies
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Honestly, I feel like it would've worked better with a random god-like alien behind it all, even if that particular plot mechanism has been done to death in other musical episodes (Buffy, The Flash, and sort of in The Brave and the Bold). I mean, it's Star Trek; god-like aliens putting the crew in silly situations is almost routine.
(I would also criticize putting Spock's number and Uhura's number back-to-back on the same set. There should've been a scene change or a location shift between them.)
(I would also criticize putting Spock's number and Uhura's number back-to-back on the same set. There should've been a scene change or a location shift between them.)
People are focusing too much on the fact of singing, when we know Klingons sing a lot. Remember: the singing forced people to admit to emotional stuff that they'd been hiding. In a culture where promotion is often based on assassinating your superior (or at least beating them in a fight), suddenly having all your strong feelings coming out in song form is gonna be a MAJOR PROBLEM.
---Dave
---Dave
Yeah, that could be the case. Anya was a bit paranoid when it came to bunnies, and it came out in song during Buffy's musical.
I was waiting for that shoe to drop as soon as they realized the singing was making them communicate their feelings. Their entire reason for interacting with the subspace fold was to use it for communication. The turn that it was trying to help them communicate all along seemed obvious.
Depends on what it was structurally meant to do, which the episode as aired has mixed feelings on. We're in engineering where the problem solving is happening, and by the end of this chunk of song Uhura is going to solve the problem. Before they get to that solution, Spock and Uhura need to sing about being alone, which is and isn't answered by the ultimate reveal of the solution. I don't honestly see a reason to have made these separate songs in the first place.
I know it looks like part of the gimmick was giving Spock an opportunity to decide to someday become the Spock we know from TOS, but Spock / Chapel / promotion is the C plot after the La'an / Una / Kirk plot and the Uhura-orbiting main plot, sacrifices must be made....
Are we, man? Are we overemphasizing the things that happened in the episode to the detriment of things that didn't? Am I overlooking all the things the writers were definitely probably maybe thinking about at some point, but ultimately decided not to bring up?