How Star Trek’s Musical Episode Beats Buffy’s Once More With Feeling
When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds aired its musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody,” it was impossible for most genre fans not to compare it to Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s musical masterpiece episode “Once More With Feeling.” That Buffy episode managed to combine insanely catchy earworm tunes with a showstopper of character-driven plot, making it the gold standard for musical episodes. If we’re being honest, Star Trek’s musical episode is inferior to Buffy’s in almost every way except one: “Subspace Rhapsody” prominently features the entire main cast singing while “Once More With Feeling” had two cast members refuse to sing.
Buffy’s Musical Misstep
Well before Star Trek’s musical episode hit the air, Buffy’s “Once More With Feeling” gave almost all of its leads their own songs. Buffy channels pop stars as she sings about existentialism, Giles does a power ballad about holding her back, Spike becomes a rockstar to croon about his mixed feelings toward the Slayer, and so on. However, Hannigan’s Willow doesn’t have any songs of her own. In fact, she has only two musical lines, including the hilariously meta lyric, “I think this line’s mostly filler.”
As for why Willow doesn’t feature prominently in the musical’s tunes, showrunner Joss Whedon claims that Hannigan, “begged me on her knees to have her sing as little as possible.” He accommodated that request, which is why Tara does all of the singing in their totally witchin’ romantic song “Under Your Spell.” Meanwhile, the only other main cast member who doesn’t sing is Michelle Trachtenberg, as she had requested to utilize her ballet training and do a dance sequence instead.
Star Trek’s Musical Masterstroke
Like we touched on before, Star Trek’s musical episode pales in comparison to Buffy’s in most ways. The songs aren’t as catchy, the emotional stakes aren’t as high, and certain plot points occasionally fall flat. However, there is exactly one area where Star Trek outshines Buffy in the musical department: all of the main cast sings. Certainly, some of the voices are stronger than others, but it’s nothing short of impressive that nobody backed out, especially considering that Trek had never done a musical and that the expectations were going to be insanely high.
After Star Trek: Strange New Worlds brought us the ambitiously imperfect “Subspace Rhapsody,” showrunners Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman gave an interview with variety where they discussed their own surprise that the entire cast was down to sing. According to Goldsman, “We ended up with an absurdly good cast,” and he was expecting “a dud in the bunch” that either couldn’t or wouldn’t sing. Instead, he concluded that “it was as if they all secretly had been coveting the idea of a musical their entire lives,” making the filming of this episode that much easier.
Spock Sings
It also helped these Star Trek showrunners that they had the opposite problem that Buffy’s producers had. Instead of discovering someone like Hannigan who wasn’t really comfortable with onscreen singing, they discovered that one of their biggest stars was secretly a musical maestro. In 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 is basically the same as audiences watching the famous Vulcan bolt out tunes for the first time: “You’re like, “Wait, Spock is singing now?”
As it stands, Star Trek’s first musical episode is not quite as beloved as Buffy’s and for good reason. At the end of the day, the songs sung by the Enterprise crew just aren’t as catchy or fun as the ones sung by Sunnydale’s Scooby Gang. However, Strange New Worlds can boast that all of its leading actors stepped up to sing their hearts out while Buffy kept two of its actors from stepping into the spotlight (albeit at their own request). And that’s something worth singing about once more, with feeling. Even if those feelings are, as Spock would remind us, entirely illogical.
Source: Variety
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