Songs written by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce of the ’90s alt-rock band Letters to Cleo
directed by Dermott Downs and written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff
There is a scene in Tim Burton’s 1988 classic Beetlejuice in which a dinner party is being held by a group of people from The City—stuffy, pretentious, over-entitled artistes and poseurs. The house they are in is haunted by the former owners, who are unamused by the no-talent creeps and their Wall Street spouses. So they enlisted help; a psychotic ghost (Michael Keaton) who is the complement of ghostbusters; he is there to scare off the living, a “bio-exorcist.” The dinner party is interminable, with nasty sniping and bleakly depressing banter. Suddenly, Big Pretentious, wearing a startled expression, stands up and starts belting out Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O.” The actual Belafonte, and not a cover. At first the others think it’s a prank or performance art or something, but then they all end up standing and swaying and singing along—involuntarily, with expression of horror and bafflement on their faces. It builds to a climax where they are attacked by their meals.
It’s the funniest scene in the whole movie, which is very funny to begin with, and may just be my favorite comedy scene of all time.
Humorous as it was, I could not conceive of the same device being used for an entire hour of television, especially not in a show normally not acclaimed for its humor. Imagine the scene, only with Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Pike and other members of the Star Trek show in their place. And subsequently leaving the table and conducting the entire rest of the movie in show tune song and dance. Having trouble imagining that?
In episode 9 of the second season of ST:SNW, that is exactly what they did. Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original series, has already shown a willingness to take risks and try new things, which, after all, is what Star Trek is supposed to be about. It’s right there in the title!
The Enterprise encounters a subspace wormhole. Realizing that this could make communications across thousands of light years instantaneous, they try communicating with the wormhole. I know, I know. It’s Trek, all right? Just go with it. Uhura hits on the idea of trying to communicate through music (and there are some pretty solid cognitive and neurological bases for that notion) and they send a variety of songs at the thing. Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” provokes a strong reaction.
The first clue that something is amiss is when Spock is giving a status report in Engineering and his voice suddenly develops a quite un-Vulcan lyrical intonation. He stops, startled, and asks, “Why am I singing?” in a thin but pleasant baritone. Within minutes, the entire crew, wearing the same expressions that so amused Goth teen Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, are singing and dancing.
Even as they are belting out show tunes with gay abandon, the captain and crew are horrified and alarmed by this strangest of new worlds in which they have been cast. The unease swells when they realize this phenomenon isn’t only spreading to other ships in the Federation fleet, but across the border into the Klingon empire. Their worst fears are confirmed when a clearly mortified Klin ship captain contacts them to know if the Federation had anything to do with the disgrace just visited upon their ship, and vowing revenge. We find out later what just transpired on that ship, and I’ll let you find out for yourself, but let’s just say they weren’t singing Klingon Opera. They build to a grand finale because that’s what musicals do, in which crew members are pirouetting down the aisles of the ship, snapping their fingers and in perfect choreography, West Side Story-style. This won’t make you forget Leonard Bernstein, but it’s a good pastiche.
A lot of musicals stop the plotline so various actors can belt out five minutes or so of vaguely related show tunes. A few, like Chicago, use the music to actually advance the plot. That doesn’t get used as often because its far more demanding for the show-writers to narrate the plot in verse, while maintaining character and keeping it congruent with the mood of the scene. Now imagine doing it with Spock. Or even just Kirk. The songs, all original, were written by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce of the ’90s alt-rock band Letters to Cleo, and they did a stellar job—so to speak.
This should have been an utter disaster, and Star Trek fandom, often afflicted with an utterly humorless fundamentalism, will no doubt howl protests to the skies.
But the fact is the writing and acting was utterly brilliant, and produced the seemingly impossible; a Star Trek episode as weirdly hilarious and original as Beetlejuice. It didn’t hurt that the cast members were clearly having an utter blast doing this—yes, even the ones in Klin makeup.
I’ll be doing a second season synopsis of highly successful second seasons going on now, and the rest of season 2 of ST:SNW will be included. But this episode is so outstanding it deserved its own review.
Now on Paramount.