Star Trek Subspace Rhapsody, a Track by Track Analysis
In its near 60 year existence, sci-fi stalwart Star Trek through its many incarnations has continued to push the creative envelope, most recently having done so on the Paramount+ prequel streaming series Strange New Worlds, which features the musical episode "Subspace Rhapsody."
With a script by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, and lyrics and music by, respectively, Kay Hanley and Tom Polce (both of Letters to Cleo), the plot has the starship Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) encountering a fold in subspace that results in the crew sharing their private thoughts via song. While it starts off amusing, the revelations eventually turn painful and then dangerous.
"The conceit of this episode," Kay Hanley tells Woman's World in an exclusive interview, "is that they're observing musical theater rules where you sing what you can't say, and as soon as you start singing, it's like the truth really comes out. We were given a script by Bill and Dana and really bought it, the whole idea of a subspace fold with the music. But it was easily the most challenging songwriting job I've ever had. It was so hard and I ripped my guts out writing these songs, but at the same time it was so much fun."
What follows is an exclusive track-by-track breakdown of full-on musical episode "Subspace Rhapsody."
"Status Report"
PERFORMERS: Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Jess Bush (Christine Chapel), Christina Chong (La'an Noonien-Singh), Ethan Peck (Spock)
PLOT ELEMENTS: The crew is starting to break into song while simultaneously informing Captain Pike that everything is normal.
KAY HANLEY: It had the most Star Trek vocabulary; all of the mechanical stuff that the casual fan is not going to know how to write, so we really needed an assist from the writers on making sure that the correct terminology was being used in the lyric, and it was great.
"Connect to Your Truth"
PERFORMERS: Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Paul Wesley (James T. Kirk)
PLOT ELEMENTS: Based on what she's learned, Number One informs Kirk how he should interact with his own crew as he goes forward.
KAY HANLEY: This was the Gilbert and Sullivan tribute and obviously the most Broadway of the songs, which was perfect because Rebecca is a musical theater person. A song like that has to have some levity to it in order to really pull it off. If you did a real Gilbert and Sullivan song where they were being really earnest, I don't know if that would've worked, as it needed Rebecca's lighter touch. The only reason to do that song is because Rebecca was singing it; she had the vocal and comedy chops to do it.
"How Would That Feel"
PERFORMER: Christina Chong (La'an Noonien-Singh)
PLOT POINTS: La'an pleads with herself to open up and be free emotionally to express her feelings developed for Kirk in an alternate timeline, while recognizing her inability to "color outside the lines."
KAY HANLEY: As we were going, the script was in first and second draft, but we knew what had just happened with Rebecca's character kind of just being so open and free with an "I don't care" attitude. And Lon is the complete opposite — she can't tell Kirk how she feels, because she might embarrass herself or would be breaking the social contract of living in this world, which ups the stakes even more for her.
I was actually thinking of my sister a lot while writing that song. We're Boston people, very sort of parochial and polite and, as my father used to say, she wouldn't tell you if her coat was on fire. My sister was always obsessed with coloring inside lines. She would outline in our coloring books — she would outline the lines in dark crayon and then color. So I was thinking a lot about her.
"Private Conversation"
PERFORMERS: Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Melanie Scrofano (Marie Batel)
PLOT POINTS: Through singing, Pike is forced to admit that in some ways he's closed off emotionally from Captain Marie Batel of the USS Cayuga, who he's been dating.
KAY HANLEY: This is when everyone starts to realize that the situation could be really bad and that the singing that has infected our ship is not adorable anymore. It's not funny, it's dangerous.
"Keeping Secrets"
PERFORMERS: Rebecca Romijn (Number One)
PLOT POINTS: The importance of keeping confidences is shared — via song — by Number One to La'an.
KAY HANLEY: "Keeping Secrets" is the only song that was edited for time in the episode and I thought it worked beautifully. Tom and I loved the challenge of creating a song with a twist. We think Una is giving La'an a pep talk about keeping her feelings in check, but she's really warning her younger self. Rebecca really sold that emotional turn with subtle heartache. Such a fan of her acting.
"I'm Ready"
PERFORMER: Jess Bush (Christine Chapel)
PLOT POINTS: A developing relationship with Spock is abandoned by Christine Chapel, whose song announces to him and everyone else that she's leaving the Enterprise to join the fellowship offered by Dr. Roger Korby.
KAY HANLEY: Tom went to Toronto and met with the cast before we started writing and he recorded everyone's range; just had them sing "Happy Birthday" or whatever so that we had a sense of what their range was. So the thing that was exciting about writing the Chapel Song is that she sings more like I do. I don't have this huge range, but she's my kind of singer and we were able to write this really simple melody for her with attitude to burn and she just crushed it. So good!
And then there's Spock observing this, which Uhura set up because she realized that if they can't get more people to their emotional peak, they're screwed, so she set him up.
"I'm the X"
PERFORMER: Ethan Peck (Spock)
PLOT POINTS: Emotionally devastated by Christine Chapel's announcement that she's leaving him and the starship, Spock has to recoup and realizes he needs to embrace his Vulcan philosophies and devote himself to the study of the universe and the pursuit of logic.
KAY HANLEY: "Spock is such a part of our American television vocabulary that you really can't just pop off and give Spock a broken-hearted love song. He's half-Vulcan and half-human, so he's not your average broken-hearted guy, but with that song, coming up with using a metaphor of a math equation, searching for Y and "I'm the X," that felt like cracking the code for Spock. As soon as we had that, we could run with it and felt like we could really say some interesting things.
One thing I'll say is that we never meant to have "I'm the X" bookend with "I'm Ready," and the melody is exactly the same. Everything about that song just kind of happened very organically.
"Keep Us Connected"
PERFORMER: Celia Rose Gooding (Uhura)
PLOT POINTS: Uhura wrestles with her loneliness on the Enterprise and her role on the starship, ultimately reconciling herself with her job of keeping the crew united.
KAY HANLEY: I've never cried while writing a song in my life until that song, really. i would go to Tom and sat down and we came up with the melody. We kind of felt like her station was almost like a temple, so we were thinking very churchy, but also sort of setting it up like a Greek tragedy or something like that. I was able to reach into a place inside to find that song that I've never been to before; it was an out of body experience and the closest thing to a spiritual experience as I will ever have writing a song. And then, of course, Celia — anything that I dreamed of for it to sound like, her singing was just 10 times what I imagined.
The writers gave me so much to work with for her character — like the fact that her family had been killed. And so when Spock leaves her alone because he's wrestling with all of these human feelings, she's left holding the bad to deal with everything and is, like, "Why am I always having to clean up the mess?" Again, thinking of my sister, who ultimately saves everybody and fixes everything. The writers just gave me so much to work with and then Tom's musical arrangement was just incredible.
"We Are One"
PERFORMERS: The full cast.
PLOT POINTS: To disrupt the fold in subspace (also known as an improbability field), the entire crew needs — as well as the Klingons on their vessel, who break into a K-Pop act — to sing together, all about the joy they feel in working together.
KAY HANLEY: I almost lost my mind writing that song, because everybody had to say something about their job and my head was just spinning. But we totally worked out what the finale was going to be and what everybody had to be singing. We knew that it had to get loud so that they could break the improbability field, and the Klingon thing got solved pretty early on. They wanted the Klingons to be singing opera or whatever and I was, like, "No," and pulled up a video of my favorite K-Pop band at the time and said, "These are the Klingons!" We pitched the showrunners and they were, like, "Let's do it!"
I have to say, I am so proud of this episode. My dad introduced me to Star Trek; it was a show we would watch together on Channel 38 WSBK in Boston when I was a little kid. He died in January, but he got to hear these songs, so it was really special that I got to have that with him before he died.
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