I want to say upfront that I love Musicals and show tunes and I enjoy Musical episodes of shows. I even still listen to the Music from the Buffy episode twenty years later. All that out of the way, this was pretty bad. A few of the songs were nice, I especially liked the the opening number, Chapel’s and Spock’s second song in engineering but that finale was like something a kindergarten would have come up with. Really terrible. I keep harping on this but please can they act like they are the crew of a ship instead of kids at Summer Camp?
I wanted to like this so much but, man , the lyrics were just complete amateur hour. They did not live up to the voices which were actually pretty nice.
And if I recall - its more of a ‘That’s David?’ and “You wanted him in your world, I wanted him in mine” - So, while he may never have met David prior to those events - he was fully aware of him.
Dr. Corby - that ties in to TOS - and we know his fate, etc.
Lots of things in this episode - and the Klingon bit at the end - worth the whole damn thing.
Except for Nurse Chapel (the only cast member with a distinctive singing voice) and the Klingons, all of the songs were way too long. Oh. And did anybody else notice that the characters were apparently aware of the accompanying instrumentation? Like they were wondering where the oboes were coming from before being compelled to sing.
We enjoyed the musical for what they tried to do but also agree that Buffy’s was best. We also still watch it and did last night. Having rewatched Buffy, though, it had a lot of layers to it that these songs didn’t. Further, as others have said, nothing about the songs were catchy for me. I didn’t want to hear any again or learn them as I did with Buffy’s.
I also thought it was funny that they would hear the music and know what was about to happen.
Did anyone else catch that the Klingon captain was Hemmer? Well, the actor who played Hemmer, anyway.
We watched the talk show with Wil Wheaton on this one and it sounds like What_Exit was correct with most of them being theater geeks and wanting this. So, they probably did sing their own songs.
I felt the songs in general were a bit too long and expositiony to hold interest, too much monologueing (monosinging?) alone in a room. Given the hour-long runtime, more bite-sized variety in songs and sequences would have kept the energy of the episode going. There could have been so much opportunity for some prop-based dancing as well.
Chapel was the standout with an interesting distinctive voice, reminded me of PJ Harvey tone.
Spock has been really hitting the bloodwine this season. I got a kick out of his little stumble out of the turbolift and the way he plopped into his chair. I’m not a huge musical fan, but I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. I like the premise – a reality where musicals are just how things work. I can buy that as easily as the mirror universe. I thought most of the songs did way more for character development than some whole episodes, especially for Uhura, Chapel and La’an. Spock’s “I am the ‘X’” also sets the stage nicely for TOS.
One thing Buffy did was have a least a few of the non-main-characters having their own song-and-dance bits completely outside the main story lines (“They got the mustard ooooouuuutttt!”)
It would have been nice to see the current equivalents of Boimler et al. singing about sleeping in a corridor, or tuning a phase conduit.
Hell, that last one almost writes itself…
When you’re plying the space ways
the conduits must be in phase!
Our standards we must raise
to receive the captain’s praise
so we must keep our conduits in phase!
Start it out with all of them singing over top of each other, then end with them all singing >puts on sunglasses<in phase.
Why does Christine Chapel wear a white jumpsuit that doesn’t match anything else we see, even other medical staff? And what’s the difference between a doctor and a nurse, even? She seems to basically be a doctor.
Actually, in this last episode we see a guy wearing the same uniform.
Overall I thought this episode was a huge missed opportunity. They should have gone the Galavant route, not only with shorter songs but with much more in the way of distinct genre shifts and parodies.
Anyone think the “earworm” throwaway at the end was a purposeful Wrath of Khan wink?
Gender…at least in TOS. Same reason you can’t have a male “telephone operator”. SNW writers have to play cards from a deck that’s embarrassingly out of step with 21st Century sensibilities…let alone 23rd Century.
I believe that being a nurse is the starting rank of being a medical officer in this timeframe. Hence why Chapel is applying at different science academies; she’s still trying to make a splash in Star Fleet.
I liked this episode. I felt like they released it as a palate cleanser after the previous very heavy episode. The music reminded me more of Doctor Horrible than Buffy.