‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Recap – ‘Subspace Rhapsody’

8/4/2023

Written by Shae Rufe

Celia Rose Gooding, Anson Mount and Christina Chong as Ensign Nyota Uhura, Captain Christopher Pike and Lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh in Episode 209 of ‘Star Trek: Strange News Worlds’ – ‘Subspace Rhapsody’. (Photo Courtesy of Paramount+.)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 209 of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’. To revisit the previous episode, click here. Also, this piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.

The main lesson that should be taken away from this episode is, don’t mess with things. When the Enterprise finds a mysterious fold in space that can boost their communications if properly utilized, they decide to run some experiments on it and see if it can handle all of Starfleet’s subspace traffic. All is going well, until it isn’t. Any signal they try gets lost or thrown back at themselves. That is, until they try music.

No, just kidding, it also gets thrown back at them and then everyone is forced to live out a nightmare of being trapped inside a musical. Now, a lot of shows have a musical episode, most of the time it’s done as a dream sequence. Strange New Worlds, however, does their musical episodes with logic, science, and sound plot. Because, they really are redefining the standard of how things are going to get done. Everyone is forced to sing their deepest heart’s desires or emotions and it’s really more than just a security risk, it’s a literal embarrassing hellscape for most. La’an pines after Jim Kirk, Uhura sings about her lost family, Una melodically gives Jim work advice, Pike fights with his girlfriend, in front of the entire bridge, in song, and Christine snaps Spock’s heart in half and grinds it to dust with a snazzy bar number. It’s one of the worst days on the ship, and nobody is getting hazard pay for all the emotional damage being done.

But really, the best part of the entire episode is when a Klingon ship shows up to blow up the singularity, only to get caught singing about how much they hate the Federation. Listen, we’ve all been there. It’s kind of understandable at this point. Amidst all the hurt and confessions, there are some touching heart to hearts and some friendships are strengthened. Sure, the confessions didn’t go quite as planned. La’an did finally tell Jim about their alternate timeline budding romance. Only for Jim to crush her by revealing that he’s with Carol Marcus, at the moment, and she’s pregnant. At least she and Spock can bond over their heartbreak.

Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel in Episode 209 of ‘Star Trek: Strange News Worlds’ – ‘Subspace Rhapsody’. (Photo Courtesy of Paramount+.)

Thankfully, Uhura is a literal genius who manages to figure out a way to break free from the torment of song and inspires the entire ship to sing and dance like they’re performing on Broadway. The good news is it works, and the bad news is everyone has to deal with the fallout of what was revealed during these musical numbers.

All jokes aside about Vulcans being cold blooded and unfeeling, if they do feel feels like Spock, they actually do feel a great deal. Watching Christine break Spock by breaking up with him in a very public way, was so sad. Seeing La’an finally take a chance and open up, only to be shot down, sucked. But, Chris and Marie really do need to learn to communicate better. Chris really does need to speak his mind, in a healthy, polite way. And no, no camping, unless there’s room service.

All in all, this was a fun episode, still heavily laced with so much emotion and pain. The whole thing was a great follow up to last week’s PTSD deep dive into war veterans. The glimpse into the interpersonal lives of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise was more than interesting, it was fascinating.

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