The Next Star Trek Should be a Musical

 So if you couldn’t guess just from the title, I watched the musical episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds last night, and I enjoyed it a lot. I had heard about it before, both through cultural osmosis and grumpily from my dad, whose comment was something like, “Maybe they’d have more time for their plot if they didn’t waste time singing songs.” and my general impression was fans did not enjoy it, but I for one did. It was fun, it was light, it still hit all the Star Trek points of making a progressive political point, the importance of expertise and science, etc, etc. Lots of people get mad when Star Trek isn’t “serious” but thats not me, nor is it Star Trek, because Star Trek is often extremely silly (see: this episode, any Ferengi episode, any Holodeck episode, any episode involving a parallel earth, half of the episodes of the original series, etc, etc) and always kinda silly (what about if we just reroute everything through the deflector?) despite it often also being deadly serious, and complaining that “Well this is just too silly for me!” is either hypocritical - assuming you do not also object to all those other silly things - and that you just don’t like musicals, or that you in fact maybe just don’t like Star Trek.

But I do like Star Trek, and I do like this episode, and I do like musicals, and I have made at least two previous blog posts saying, “The Next Star Trek should do X” so lets have a third (or fourth? I’ve done it a lot). I think the next Star Trek should be a musical, and specifically one set in the alternate quantum reality speculated to exist in this episode of Star Trek. Why do I think this? Well, first of all, let me say, I don’t want a second Strange New Worlds musical episode. They made a Star Trek musical episode, it was great, but they did I think exhaust the concept for a one off episode and it doesn’t need to be done again any time soon - the soonest I would find acceptable is if in another Star Trek show they did their own episode (ideally with its own technobabble explanation).

I want a devoted TV series written as a musical, like Galavant or Schmigadoon or Central Park or Glee. I also want this because, obviously I like musicals. I think they are fun and in particular I like them because they expose that the thing you are watching is a facsimile - it is not actually happening but is a fictional portrayal of fictional events being made entertaining. I think this is valuable because it naturally bends a piece of art away from realism, and I think an overweening focus on realism in a perfidious evil in modern television and movies. So many shows in their art style and presentation and CGI and writing want to be realistic when suspension of disbelief is a fundamental and necessary part of all drama, and minimizing the amount required to enjoy something does not necessarily always make it better. It may make it more accessible, which is a good thing on its own, but it comes at a cost in terms of creativity and expression, and I like anything that pushes back on that.

However, I also like this idea from a lore perspective - namely, that it would be in an alternate universe, much like the reboot movies. Thus they would be free to do whatever the fuck they want, lore wise. To be clear tho I do NOT want Spock 3 and Kirk 3, this time with singing. I mean if they really want legacy characters let’s at least do TNG. But I honestly would rather it be entirely new characters in a musical Star Trek universe that largely resembles but is in universe distinct from the prime universe, to give the writers the freedom to do whatever they want without fans whining about them ignoring or messing up lore. I’m honestly sick of all the legacy stuff and filling in the holes, I want the writers to have the freedom to define things how they want and not worry about contradictions, but I sympathize with people who really value that stuff - so just put it in another universe. No biggie.

Now, do I think this show would be successful, if the fanbase hated SNW’s musical episode. Well, I think I might have overstated how much people disliked it, for one thing, but also, yes, I do think it’d still be able to succeed, and here is why: most Star Trek fans right now are old. Star Trek needs new fans. Some portion of existing Star Trek fans are gonna show up to any new show, even one like this which is radically different. Making a show to please those fans certainly can succeed - Picard, SNW, and Lower Decks were all efforts at that, and even having only watched two seasons of SNW and none of Picard I think calling them failures is almost certainly an overstatement at best and outright wrong at worst, and Lower Decks kicks ass. But long term you need to bring in new fans too, which Discovery, Prodigy, and Starfleet Academy were attempts at - and again, Discovery, as much as I disliked the first two seasons, was definitely a success at, it spawned so many additional series, and the other two, although both got canceled after only two seasons, were at least good IMO and could have brought in new fans if Paramount weren’t cowards and assholes licking Trump’s butthole. Okay that got way grosser than I intended. Anyway, my point is, a musical would probably bring about the same number of built in fans as any new Star Trek project not specifically made to cater to old fans would, but it also would potentially bring in pure musical fans - with the bonus that musical fans love camp, so if the show ends up campy, which, come on, it will Star Trek is campy already, they will love it. Its a natural pairing. Now you have a bunch of musical fans who would never have looked at Star Trek twice finding out Star Trek can be good? Revive Lower Decks and Starfleet Academy and both are super accessible jumping off points for these new fans, and then launch another new Star Trek series catering more to old fans for them to move on to after these easy wins, and you got a Star Trek stew going.