'Star Trek': The Stealth Musical Revealed!

The Star Trek crew has adventure in their soul… and a song in their heart. After infiltrating the shoot of Star Trek Beyond and snooping around the sets (full disclosure: we were invited), we made a startling discovery. The intrepid Enterprise team spent much of their off-duty hours making beautiful music together.

Seriously.

“We’re on set 15 hours a day, three hours of which is actually shooting so you have to find ways to entertain yourself,” Chris Pine, a.k.a. Captain Kirk, told us during our trek up to the Vancouver shoot last July. And how do they entertain themselves?

“There’s been a lot of Dubsmash energy of this set, which has been a lot of of fun,“ Pine said, referring to the messaging app that has become the premiere way to show off one’s lip-synching skills. “Everybody brings they’re own flavor to it. John Cho [Sulu] has been surprisingly aggressive in his Dubsmashiness.”

“It became an epidemic. I can’t remember, it might have Zoe [Saldana, who plays Uhura] who started it,” said Simon Pegg, pulling double duty as Scotty and as a co-writer on Star Trek Beyond.

“As soon as we’re done saying lines, we just sit in our chairs and Dubsmash something,” added Saldana. “It’s our comic relief. John, Simon, and Karl [Urban, who plays Dr. McCoy] have a knack for it. They are so spot on.”

“We all downloaded it, and while we were sitting around during setups, all of a sudden a Dubsmash would come in,” Pegg added. “They range from songs to bizarre quotes. Karl did a lovely rendition of Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy the Silence.’”

Even Spock got in on the action. Zachary Quinto proclaims himself the master of the art form. “I am the reigning Dubsmash champion. I’m pretty sure that most people in the cast would say that I’m the best. If they’re not, they’re lying. Ly-ing.”

But the Trekkers do more than just pretend to sing. They have legit musical chops. Pine (Into the Woods) and Saldana (Book of Life, Nina) have shown off their vocal prowess on screen, and Urban isn’t afraid to pick up a microphone. “Zach plays the banjo. John plays the guitar. Anton plays the guitar and he picked up the banjo the other day and killed it,” said Pine.

And would the current Captain Kirk make like the vintage model and attempt to boldly launch a recording career? “That’s very cute,” Pine said, smirking. But after thinking a moment, he continued, “I do have some music in me, so we’ll see what happens — hopefully people would not bash it as they did with [William] Shatner. He’s an entertainer.”

Quinto, who never goes anywhere without his trusty banjo, sees the Dubsmash contests and jam sessions as an extension of the actors’ mutual admiration. “I’ve never worked with a group of people that I’ve loved this much. I could do every job with this cast,” he said. “Everybody’s serious about the work, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

So it’s only a matter of time before we see Star Trek: The Musical? “Coming to Broadway in the spring of 2017,” Quinto announced. “We can do it in our free time.”

Watch out, Hamilton. You’re on notice.

(Updated May 30, 2016 with additional Dubsmash clip from Karl Urban’s Twitter.)