By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Where Star Trek: Strange New Worlds aired its musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody,” it was impossible for many fans of the genre not to compare it Buffy the Vampire Slayera musical masterpiece called “ Once More With Feeling ”. That Buffy the episode managed to combine insanely catchy earworm songs with a showstopper of a character-driven plot, making it the gold standard of musical episodes. To be honest, the Star Trek soundtrack is under it BuffyIn almost every way except one: “Subspace Rhapsody” prominently features the main cast singing while “Once More With Feeling” has two cast members refusing to sing.
Buffy’s Musical Mistake
Before the Star Trek soundtrack starts playing, Buffy‘s “Once More With Feeling” gave almost all of its songs its own songs. Buffy plays pop stars as she sings about being there, Giles does a power ballad about holding her, Spike becomes a rock star to talk about his mixed feelings about the Slayer, and so on. However, Hannigan’s Willow is not without its own songs. In fact, he only has two musical lines, including the hilarious meta lyric, “I think this line is too full.”
As for why Willow doesn’t appear in the musical, showrunner Joss Whedon says Hannigan, “begged me on her knees to make her sing as little as possible.” He accepted the request, which is why Tara sang in their love song “Under Your Spell” perfectly. At the time, the only other non-singing main cast member was Michelle Trachtenberg, as she had asked to use her ballet training and perform dance sequences instead.
Star Trek’s Musical Masterstroke
As we’ve touched on before, the Star Trek soundtrack is small in comparison Buffyin many ways. The songs aren’t that catchy, the emotional impact isn’t that high, and some plot points sometimes fall flat. However, there is one area where Star Trek excels Buffy in the music department: all the main characters sing. Sure, some vocals are stronger than others, but it’s no surprise that no one backed down, especially considering that Trek had never made music before and that expectations were going to be very high.
After Star Trek: Strange New Worlds brought us the incomplete “Subspace Rhapsody,” showrunners Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman conducted an interview with Variety where they discussed their surprise that the entire cast would be singing. According to Goldsman, “We ended up with a ridiculously good cast,” and he expected “garbage in the cast” who may or may not sing. Instead, he concluded that “it was as if they had all been secretly yearning for the idea of music all their lives,” which made filming the episode much easier.
Spock Sings
It also helped that these Star Trek runners had the opposite problem Buffy‘s producers were. Instead of finding someone like Hannigan who was really uncomfortable with on-screen singing, they found that one of their biggest stars was secretly a musician. When discussing Spock actor Ethan Peck, Goldsman said, “I didn’t know Ethan could sing until I went, ‘Holy f***, Ethan can sing!’ Amusingly, he noted that his reaction was the same as the audience watching the famous Vulcan release the first songs: “He’s like, ‘Wait, Spock is singing now?’
As it stands, the first episode of Star Trek’s soundtrack isn’t very interesting Buffyand for good reason. At the end of the day, the songs sung by the Enterprise crew are not as catchy and exciting as those sung by the Scooby Gang of Sunnydale. However, Strange New Worlds can boast that all its leading actors stand up and sing their hearts out in time Buffy prevented two of its actors from entering the spotlight (despite their request). And that’s something worth singing about too, with feeling. Even if those feelings are true, as Spock would remind us, they are completely irrational.
Source: Variety
Source link
