How the musical episode of Star Trek surpasses that of Buffy with feeling
From Chris Snellgrove
| Published
If Star Trek: Strange New Worlds When the musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody” aired, it was impossible for most genre fans not to compare it to it Buffy the Vampire Slayeris the musical masterpiece episode “Once More With Feeling”. The Buffy The episode managed to combine insanely catchy tunes with a stunning character-driven storyline, making it the gold standard for musical episodes. If we’re honest, the musical episode of Star Trek is inferior BuffyThat’s the case in almost every way, with one exception: “Subspace Rhapsody” features the entire main cast singing prominently, while “Once More With Feeling” has two performers refusing to sing.
Buffy’s musical misstep
Long before the Star Trek musical episode aired, Buffy“Once More With Feeling” gave almost all of the main actors their own songs. Buffy channels pop stars as she sings about existentialism, Giles sings a powerful ballad about holding her back, Spike goes rock star to sing about his mixed feelings about the Slayer, and so on. However, Hannigan’s Willow has no songs of its own. In fact, it only has two lines of music, including the hilarious meta lyric “I think this line is mostly filler.”
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 let her sing as little as possible.” He obliged, which is why Tara does all the vocals on her absolutely magical, romantic song “Under Your Spell.” Now he’s the only other main character who doesn’t sing Michelle Trachtenbergas she had requested to use her ballet training and do a dance sequence instead.
Star Trek’s musical masterpiece
As we’ve already mentioned, Star Trek’s musical episode pales in comparison Buffyis in many ways. The songs aren’t as catchy, the emotional stakes aren’t as high, and certain storylines occasionally falter. However, there is exactly one area in which Star Trek outshined Buffy in musicals: all the main actors sing. Sure, some of the voices are stronger than others, but it’s nothing short of impressive that no one backed down, especially considering Trek had never done a musical before and expectations were insanely high.
After Star Trek: Strange New Worlds When she brought us the ambitiously imperfect “Subspace Rhapsody,” showrunners Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman gave a varied interview in which they discussed their own surprise that the entire cast was willing to sing. According to Goldsman, “we had an incredibly good cast,” and he expected “one idiot in the bunch” who either couldn’t or wouldn’t sing. Instead, he concluded that “it was like they had all secretly longed for the idea of
Spock sings
It also helped these Star Trek showrunners that they had the opposite problem Buffy‘s producers had. Instead of discovering someone like Hannigan, who didn’t really know how to sing on screen, they discovered that one of their biggest stars was secretly a musical maestro. While discussing Spock Actor Ethan Peck, Goldsman, said: “I didn’t know Ethan could sing until I said, ‘Holy shit, Ethan can sing!'” Amusingly, he noted that his reaction was basically the same as the audience watching Seeing the famous Vulcan pieces for the first time: “You think, “Wait a minute, Spock is singing now?”
From the looks of it, Star Trek’s first musical episode isn’t quite as popular as Buffy‘s and for good reason. Ultimately, the songs sung by the Enterprise crew simply aren’t as catchy or fun as those sung by Sunnydale’s Scooby Gang. However, Strange New Worlds can boast that all the main actors sang at the top of their lungs Buffy kept two of its actors from stepping into the limelight (albeit at their own request). And it’s worth singing about it again with feeling. Even if, as Spock would remind us, these feelings are completely illogical.
Source: diversity
