Per Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When Star Trek: Strange new worlds aired its music episode “Subspace Rhapsody”, it was impossible for most fans of the genre not to compare it to Buffy the Vampire SlayerThe musical masterpiece of the episode “Once More With Feeling.” That Buffy episode managed to blend incredibly catchy tunes with a compelling character-driven plot, making it the gold standard for musical episodes. If we’re being honest, the musical episode of Star Trek is inferior to Buffy‘are in almost every view except one: “Subspace Rhapsody” prominently features the entire main cast singing while “Once More With Feeling” has two cast members refusing to sing.
Buffy’s musical misstep
Before the musical episode of Star Trek hit the airwaves, Buffy“Once More With Feeling” gave almost all of its hosts their own songs. Buffy channels pop stars as she sings about existentialism, Giles does a power ballad about how he’s holding her back, Spike becomes a rock star singing about his mixed feelings for the Slayer, and so on. However, Hannigan’s Willow does not have any songs of its own. In fact, she only has two musical verses, including the hilariously meta line, “I think this verse is mostly fuller.”
As for why Willow doesn’t feature prominently in the musical’s tunes, showrunner Joss Whedon claims that Hannigan “begged me on my knees to sing as little as possible.” He acceded to the request, causing Tara to sing all in their all-witch romantic song “Under Your Spell”. Meanwhile, the only other non-singing member of the main cast is Michelle Trachtenbergsince she asked to use her ballet training to dance the sequence instead.
Star Trek’s musical masterstroke
As we mentioned before, the musical episode of Star Trek pales in comparison Buffyis in most ways. The songs aren’t as catchy, the emotional stakes aren’t as high, and certain plot points occasionally fall flat. However, there is exactly one area where Star Trek surpasses Buffy in the musical part: all the main actors sing. Sure, some of the voices are stronger than others, but it’s nothing short of impressive that no one dropped out, especially considering Trek had never done a musical and expectations were insanely high.
After Star Trek: Strange New Worlds brought us the ambitiously imperfect “Subspace Rhapsody,” hosts Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman gave an interview with Variety in which they discussed their own surprise that the entire cast had to sing. According to Goldsman, “We ended up with an absurdly good cast,” and he expected “a badass in the group” who either couldn’t or wouldn’t sing. Instead, he concluded, “it’s like everyone’s been secretly yearning for the idea of a musical their whole lives,” which made filming this episode a lot easier.
Spock sings
It also helped that these Star Trek hosts had the opposite problem Buffymanufacturers had. Instead of discovering someone like Hannigan who wasn’t exactly comfortable singing on screen, they discovered that one of their biggest stars was secretly a musical maestro. In discussing Spock actor Ethan Peck, Goldsman said, “I didn’t know Ethan could sing until I was like, ‘Shit, Ethan can sing!'” Amusingly, he noted that his reaction was basically the same as an audience watching the famous Vulcan tune for the first time: ” You say, “Wait, Spock is singing now?”
As it stands, the first musical episode of Star Trek isn’t as beloved as it was Buffyand with good reason. At the end of the day, the songs sung by the Enterprise crew just aren’t as catchy or fun as the ones sung by Sunnydale’s Scooby Gang. However, Strange new worlds can boast that all of its main actors came forward to sing their hearts out as Buffy prevented two of his actors from entering the limelight (albeit at his own request). And that is something worth singing about once again, with feeling. Even if those feelings are, as Spock would remind us, completely illogical.
Source: Diversity