Episode 40: Zero G (SNW 2×10 Hegemony)

Hello and welcome to Subspace Radio. It's me, Kev.

And me Rob.

and we are here for a very special event. Rob, it is the first ever musical episode of Star Trek.

Yes, Kevin, we have reached an episode we've been waiting for some time.

And I cannot wait to break it down and see what else we want to talk about.

Dear listeners, we will not be singing the entire episode.

Oh, sadly. Sadly.

Sadly. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Drop that little nugget, that little hint of our musical talent. Possibly we may do a musical episode of Subspace Radio down the track.

We almost should though, Rob, just because this episode title is so much like our own title. It's Subspace Radio talks Subspace Rhapsody.

Look, it's almost eating in on itself. Like a, a ouroboros. Yes, the episode that everyone's been talking about is finally here and, oh you knew it was gonna cause some dissension in the ranks and it has exploded just as they knew it would.

Oh no, Rob, where do you hang out that all of these angry Star Trek fans hang out?

Online, Kevin. And I should, I know I should stop doing it,

That was your first mistake.

Yeah. Rookie mistake. So it's always good for me to get an idea of, yeah, just a sense of it. There's been a lot of positives and there's been some negatives. Some people have been like going for deep canon cuts and whether they were breaking canon or not, which they clearly didn't, and I thought they were tantalizing little treats which I was really excited to hear. But yeah, and just general opinions on the whole concept of a musical episode.

The magicians.

Yes. Multiple genre shows have done a musical episode. So this is just adding to that list.

The Buffy musical was explicitly referenced in this episode for anyone paying attention. The joke about turning into bunnies was, could be nothing other than a winking acknowledgement.

To Anya's lovely song, bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies.

Yeah. I went into this with very high expectations. Rob, I think I talked a couple weeks ago about how, for the crossover episode I was going in wincing and going, Ooh, this could really suck. I hope they don't screw it up. But I was on my guard for that. For this, I was going in openhearted and give it to me because the track record is there.

Yeah, look I, I got on the bandwagon with Once More With Feeling back in the early noughties. It was my first ever musical episode. It's like I'm one of the only few I'm aware of. It is right smack bang in the early section of season six, which is notoriously the worst season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But the musical episode is always heralded as the last great episode of Buffy. Like you said about The Magicians, all the songs in once more with feeling are bangers.

It was very self-conscious.

Very self-conscious. And also the fact that they incorporate just regular techno babble dialogue into the songs ate away at me as well. I don't want to hear them

Yeah, I couldn't tell if I liked it or disliked it. I think when it worked like there were moments where they were using Star Trek turns of phrase or language where I was like, oh, yeah, what else did I expect? Star Trek has such a distinctive language. We're gonna get to see that brought into song. But there were times where it was, it felt like a gimmick. And it was there not to keep the songs connected to Star Trek.

Yeah, there were moments when they started breaking into a song and instead of me going, oh, good, now is the time, a part of me went, oh no. So there I was quite relieved that the highlight scene for me in episode was La'an finally,

Oh yes,

talking to Kirk. And that

with not a song in sight.

a song in sight. And that was that they're going, that's not a good sign. When the

Yeah. Your best scene is not a song. Yeah.

I mean there are some really solid singers in that group. I mean, Celia as Uhura is an incredible singer. Christina Chong, of course, has released albums and she's a wonderful singer. Ethan Peck is the dark horse. He has a wonderful, soothing voice and Anson Mount's got a quite a nice voice as well.

Pretty much the only song with a male lead singer in this episode was Spock's song, and while it was great, it was also a reprise of Chapel's song.

Yeah, it's very odd hearing, uh, Spock saying, I'm the ex. The ex for me is a very is, is is a very juvenile teenager type thing. And

Yeah.

to hear Spock say that I'm going um, interesting. Yeah, Jess Bush, I love that song. That was a really good song and a really good, self-empowerment number. She's not the strongest of singers, but I like how well she did.

Yeah, the melody has definitely stuck with me. I personally think the strongest song in the episode is La'an's song, which she sings by herself. It is gorgeous. That, I said, okay, now we're getting somewhere. uh, The Gilbert and Sullivan number in the hallway with Una, I did not need that. The status report song I thought was quite awkward.

Yeah. And plus it has the um, bonus points of having the word paradigm in its main chorus. So getting the word paradigm in a chorus is a big plus for me.

Well that that was another example of Star Trek language kind of used in song, but I thought that one kind of worked.

Yeah. Yeah, for me using the whole, yeah. And saying the phrase that everyone talks about when the musical, when your emotions build up so much, you can't say it, you have to sing it, to hear Rebecca Romijn say that was quite cute. But yeah. Dealing with relationship type stuff that we thought we've evolved from, and there seemed to be with Pike and Batel, a bit of a step back.

And Chapel and Spock, seeing them torn apart in song was not very satisfying, I felt. When that message from Roger Korby came in at the start of the episode, I was like, Oh no. I could use another season of them dating before we go here, please. But uh, no. And her choice not to even say anything to him until, forced to by the song virus, it just, it felt kind of outta character.

I'm kind of relieved that it has become the case of Chapel and Spock, we hardly knew ye. 'cause if it was a little bit longer, it would stretch the boundaries of… For me, to have it end so quickly and so abruptly, for me, that kind of works.

Yeah. This is why they never talk about it again.

Yeah.

And how it still feels unrequited for her.

Very much so, and that, has to linger when we go into you know, original series. So there's a lot of easter eggs in there as well. So we talked about Korby being referenced. And we mentioned earlier, the big scene is where finally La'an talks to Kirk, and I think Kirk handled that scene incredibly, was written well and performed well. And we have a drop of…

Freaking Carol Marcus!

gets the drop!

Yeah.

bring in Carol. I wanna see

Bring her in. Yeah.

There's been a lot of controversy about, uh, and people just not watching Wrath of Khan to fully understand it, people going Kirk didn't know about David and going, did you actually watch the film? The first thing he says is when he goes, is that David. 'cause the one line going, why didn't you tell me? 'cause No, he was talking about, why didn't you tell me that David was on the station. Yeah, so that is brought up. Girlfriend, pregnant, that this is the point where it happens.

Yeah. Okay. Well, So yeah, that is the thing that, that you were referencing, that people are a little uh, perturbed by the canon impact of Carol Marcus and the Marcuses being introduced at this point. The thing I was, thinking you might be referencing is just like Jim Kirk paying another visit to not just the Enterprise, but standing on the bridge and saying, I learned everything I know from you people, that is, that is stretching it a bit.

Sitting in a briefing with Pike. I'm there going, are they gonna lose their memory after this? Is it, it's gonna be? Nope? Okay. All right. They've met more than once and Kirk just forgets the musical.

Yeah. Because I believe the line is Kirk is asked whether he ever met Pike, and this is in The Menagerie. And Kirk says, we met once when he was promoted to fleet captain. And so they did that deft thing, the other episode when the Farragut happened to be around at the deuterium refinery and Pike was made fleet captain. And so we were like, okay that's the time they met when he was promoted to fleet captain.

Not only do they meet again, they share a bridge, they share a chorus line of awkwardly linking arms and trying to do some sort of choreography in a very slippery, confined set.

I guess my feeling about it, Rob, is I am definitely up for the story of early Kirk and his relationship with Carol Marcus, all of that I'm interested in seeing it, but I don't want it to be at the expense of seeing the stories of Strange New Worlds and the characters of that show. Especially when we only have 10 episodes to play with each season, the more Jim Kirk we get, the less of this show we get. And this show deserves every minute of screen time it can get.

Exactly. Yep. That's the rub. I could not agree with you more. It's, we were sold on the fact this is Strange New Worlds, this is Pike's crew leading up to that. So we don't want to, shortchange that. And especially like I've mentioned before, this is a crew that has a running clock. We know that they're not all gonna stay. We don't know where they're gonna go, and we don't know what's gonna happen. We only know certain things. We know where Spock is, we know where Pike

If anything happens to La'an at this point, I am gonna riot. She's my favorite character on Strange New Worlds at this point.

Incredible actress, incredible character. I love how they've developed her out of the shadows of her heritage and her lineage.

Going back to her scene with Kirk, the thing that I loved about it, not just how Kirk handled it, but I loved how she handled it, that it was not a, confession of love. It was, I met an alternate version of you and felt seen, and I like that distinction that it takes it from school girl romance to look, when I'm around you, I feel like a different person for this reason.

Yeah, and beautiful stuff like they're going be careful what you say because of timeline stuff and him saying, I know that I feel the connection with you, but I don't know where it comes from. That type of really pleasant stuff. So yeah, for me that was a highlight.

Just for the record, I don't need to hear Jim Kirk say, I don't like rules, but… I don't need to hear them hang a lantern on that anymore. We all know Kirk is a rule breaker. You can stop saying it.

Um, and another bone of contention we got the Klingon singing and it was K-pop style as opposed to opera. Your thoughts, Kevin Yank?

It was fine. By that point, by that point I had so given up on the story of this. Like, for this to be a successful episode for me, it both needed to be a great Star Trek story and a great musical. And that those two things would be more than the sum of their parts. But to me it was by far the weakest story we've gotten in two seasons of Strange New Worlds, and it was not a particularly great musical either. And as a result, it was less than the sum of its parts for me.

Yeah. I'm, like I said, I'm trepidatious of musical type episodes and it, I didn't want it to be disposable, forgettable fluff. And it was. It was fun and cute and I'm not gonna, rail against it and be angry, but I'm just there going, yeah. It's not gonna be it's a forgettable one

Much worse than Klingons singing K-Pop, which actually, like if everything else about this episode was firing at nine outta 10 or better, that could have been this ridiculous thing that pushed it over the top into instant classic to me. I would go there with a good episode. That was not this episode's biggest sin. For me the biggest one is setting up the plot need of someone to sing a song, to rally the crew, to bring them together under a leader.

And if you want to do an episode that highlights the musical talent of your cast, do like what was done in Deep Space Nine, when you've got the fabulous work of Benjamin Sisko singing with a hologram some funky jazz musical numbers from the fifties. You can have, you can make it a part of the show. You don't need to structure a whole episode of it and compromise

Or going back to the Battle of AR-558 last week, we had rom at the start of that episode singing That's Why the Lady is a Scamp. Instant classic, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There's gotta be karaoke in, you know, in the 23rd century. Come on.

But the thing that we wanted to cover based on this week's attempt at a classic musical uh, was other times that Star Trek has jumped with both feet into the land of camp, and gone, you know what? We get accused of being campy now and then, let's show you what it's like when we get campy. Why don't you go first and tell us what you got because mine's fairly late timeline.

Mine's Voyager. Is yours Voyager?

Oh, mine is also Voyager.

Mine is Voyager, season five, episode 12, Bride of Chaotica!

We've done it again, Rob. We've done it again. Yes. Bride of Chaotica! Watched it today, knew what I was in for, and it did not disappoint.

Yeah, I was, I, from my memories of it, I thought it was a lot more fun. And it was about 40% fun, 60% justification. And I'm there going, oh, cut out the justification, all right? Do a Our Man Bashir type thing and just go full Flash Gordon style.

I think if they ever try this again in Strange New Worlds or elsewhere, that's also what I want, is don't have the characters aware that singing is strange and spend half the episode trying to figure out how to stop singing because they hate it so much. Let's just, imagine Star Trek was always a musical, and tell us a story that way.

So tell us about Bride of Chaotica!

Yeah, so this is mid Voyager. We do have Seven of Nine on board, but she is still pretty grumpy. Uh, she and uh,

And surprisingly in the background for this one.

Yes, indeed. And we have a long established Paris Kim man date where they go into the holodeck and play out these old B-movie plots under the name Captain Proton. Tom Paris plays Captain Proton, and Harry Kim plays Captain Proton's sidekick, who has a name; I can't remember what it is right now. I don't think we're meant to remember what it is. And the scenes in the holodeck are all in black and white.

very cool. Yeah.

I think we had seen snippets of Captain Proton in other stories up until this point, but this was the one where they were like, we're gonna make this the setting for the entire episode. And so Tom and Harry are on their mandate in the holodeck playing through their story. Harry is the one playing it for the first time; Tom's played this scenario 10 times and he knows exactly how it goes.

As always, Tom Paris is the expert of ancient Earth culture. So he knows how to put a car together. He knows how to put a, a plane together.

Yeah. And suddenly they see a purple portal in this otherwise black and white environment. A kind of creepy purple portal appears in the sky. And that's the cold open. The big picture story here is that trans dimensional life forms— We're getting a lot of trans dimensional life forms in Star Trek, all of a sudden, it seems like.

At first she isn't. She has the double take at first going, oh no, no, no,

No, no. And, if you get into trouble, ma'am, you can always release the pheromones. I beg your pardon? It's it's very funny. That scene or, or or couple of scenes where she is in the holodeck in her full like Spider Queen outfit, it's something that is often referenced at conventions. Kate Mulgrew talks about how much fun she had in that episode, and I think I agree with you that this episode has taken on a larger than life presence in fandom because of that reason.

So much so, I wanna see more of it. The joy of Our Man Bashir is seeing all our regular cast taken over by these personalities, uh whether Russian spies or drug dealers or, all this type of man of mystery, and they embrace it for most of the story. Whereas with this, like I said, it's, 60%, how are we gonna solve this problem? And sure, it's great to get a scene of Janeway walking in, having Neelix talk in her ear and she goes, I can't talk until I get my coffee.

Yeah.

That's good. But I want a full hour of black and white ridiculousness, full body costume robots and Kate Mulgrew just chewing up every scene.

Satan's robot is what they call it in this episode. And it's funny because they never quite say, I hate you, robot. But all of the acting that's going on in the scenes when the robot is there says, I loathe this thing. Like they, they repair the robot and then immediately the robot gets itself in trouble and gets itself damaged and goes, Need repair. Need repair. And Tuvok and Paris who are in that scene, just very deliberately roll their eyes and turn away from it.

Yeah.

into unbelievability.

It's very much watching this episode has made me realize, of course of all the cast of Voyager, of course it would be Tom Paris and Harry Kim who create their own podcast to review every episode because the actors and the characters are perfectly that. Like the moment where he goes full nerd and goes, now remember it's not phaser, it's called Laser Gun and nah, it's not called transporter, it's Energizer. Nah.

Yes, that's right.

That's why we need a moment where Boimler meets Paris, 'cause I think they would just geek out together.

Well, so we chose the exact same example of Camp Star Trek, and I don't think there's anything that comes close to the Bride of Chaotica!

Not really. I mean, 'cause I think Bride of Chaotica!, like you said, they returned to this holosuite a bit in season five. I think the first episode of season five is where they first introduced that Paris goes into it. 'cause I think each season they have almost something new like season one when they go to the holosuite, it's like that Parisian cafe type space that they go to.

The only other one that came to my mind was like from the original series, season three, episode 20, The Way to Eden, which is the one with the singing space hippies on board. And I barely remember the plot of this episode, but it ends with the space hippies finding the planet that they think is Eden, but it turns out the fruit is corrosive and poisonous and the leader doesn't believe it. He climbs a tree and eats one of these fruits and dies on the ground.

Yeah, a lot of people have called out uh, Trouble with Tribbles as a little bit of a campy one just because of the inherent

The lighthearted.

Yeah. Um and we've mentioned it many times before, like baseball episode, Take Me Out to the Holosuite is quite campy in some ways on Deep Space Nine. So they are there. But definitely Bride of Chaotica! is the one that's leaned into. And like you said, it's quite surprising, my memories of it, it was more campy than it actually was.

Certainly Dr. Chaotica and his chewing of the scenery, that is camp at 11 and uh, he pulls it off like the actor is playing 100% commitment and truth.

And the henchman as well is great as well. The henchman

The henchman with the helmet that's got room for two heads in. It is,

yeah.

hilarious.

So, Yeah, that's us going down the all singing, all dancing, all

I know. And it is, unlike every other episode this season, they like, they have the cloak of secrecy around this one. There has been very little pre announcing of stuff that will happen here. I don't wanna say it out loud, but I feel it's pretty clear to me that Pike's lady friend is gonna get eaten by a gorn. Like those are the, those are the two dangling plot threads that I've got.

She is not coming back. And she's great. She's a really good character, really good actor. But, things must be sacrificed in the story of Pike.

Hey I forgot to mention regarding our hip hopping Klingons, the captain of the Klingon ship was played by Bruce Horak. Uh, Hemmer.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Brought him back again, and this time as a Klingon.

He could be the uh, the new Weyoun.

The new Jeffrey Coombs.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Coombs is there going, don't take my record, man. Now before we finish up, I've got to, I've gotta bring something to light. Last night I did something, 'cause I've been watching a lot of videos about the history of star Trek and stuff like that. So I went back and I did something that I said I would never watch again, Kevin. Last night I watched Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Why what, what, what possessed you? Uh, I, I'm not complaining, but of all the times I have implored you to go back and watch that amazing movie and, and you haven't done so, I'm wondering what made you do it this time?

I've been watching these uh, series of retrospectives on Star Trek. I'm watching them out of order. So I watched like the Deep Space Nine one first and I'm going back through the movies. So I did them out of order. So I did like Star Trek II first, then I did Star Trek V, then I did Star Trek VI, and I did Star Trek III.

The ship out of danger uh,

Oh God.

When they replay the lines, because the katra that was put in McCoy is before Spock goes into the radiation chamber, the fact that he would have the same questions with the same words when he is brought back to life. I love that writing. It is it is underwritten in such that subtle way that lets the performances tell the story. I agree that is a powerful ending.

And I knew it was, I knew it was coming, but I, it was interesting to find out that they pretty much wrote backwards because they knew that Spock's final line would be, or what the powerful line would be, Jim. Your name is Jim. And just watching Nimoy's face and just this is why I, he is incredible.

Oh, very

and yeah, bawled myself into a state of catharsis.