I’d originally intended to write a simple Facebook post expressing my love for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ latest episode, the musical “Subspace Rhapsody,” but I realized I had too much to say on the matter, not just about Strange New Worlds but about my history with Star Trek in general. I’ve always loved the show and its multiple incarnations, but now, at last, I feel like the show loves me back.
I can remember being fifteen years old and devouring the original Star Trek series in syndication, and seething when my local channel decided to discontinue it and air something far less interesting (I can’t recall what) in its place. I’d seen the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the theater and loved it, but I was still catching up on the original TV show, trying to make sure I saw every episode at least once. As I watched, I took the characters, especially Spock — the more out-of-the-ordinary the characters, the more I’m inclined to bond with them — to my heart, even though I noticed the episodes varied, sometimes widely, in quality. (For those who might be wondering about my favorite Star Trek: Original Series episode, it’s “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Yeah, I’m a bit basic in that regard.) In those days I was an expert at “gender-flipping,” imagining my favorite characters as female, so the fact that the show’s women were either window dressing (e.g. the Enterprise’s female crew members) or villainous (95% of the show’s female guest stars) didn’t turn me away from it. But as I grew older, I grew less and less satisfied, less patient with a pop/geek culture that so rarely showed women acting as heroes. I can’t say I fell completely out of love with it — I still enjoy quite a few of the episodes — but it fell into the general category of science fiction TV shows in which only evil women got to be active and resourceful and to play key roles in the plot. That was my adolescence for you.
By the time Star Trek: The Next Generation came along, I was a young woman, and while I’d learned to accept my least favorite aspects of the original show as being a “product of the time,” I hoped for something more, something better, from the new one. To some degree, I got it. The women of this new Enterprise were at least a little more than simple window dressing, there to be seen and not much else. They actually did things, and sometimes those things had fairly significant impact on the plot. Yet something was still missing. After Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) was written out of the series, the only remaining series-regular women were therapist Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) and ship’s physician Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) — caregivers, women with “soft skills.” Nothing ought to be wrong with that; “soft skills” can be very powerful. Yet rarely were they portrayed as decisive or game changing. Troi and Crusher could contribute with those skills, but couldn’t save the day with them. Day-saving was up to the men, who, not coincidentally, were the fan favorites, the stars of all the best-remembered and most highly regarded episodes. The ladies were “hero support,” sidekicks — better than window dressing, but still not heroes.
The first Star Trek series to do well by its female characters came along next. In Deep Space Nine, both Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) and Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) were competent officers who could fight when put to it. Even better, they were flawed, complex characters with interesting backstories, and the show would put them in situations where they had less-than-easy moral and ethical dilemmas to confront. This series, the darkest Trek up to that point, was by no means perfect — for one thing, the Ferengi get far too much screen time for my liking — but it holds up for me as the first series in the franchise to show its women taking decisive action in a good number of the episodes. Star Trek: Voyager continued along these lines, but I only watched a handful of the episodes; for me, while I appreciated what it was trying to do, it never quite captured the magic of the earlier series, perhaps because I found the supporting characters rather dull and one-note. The one character I did like, Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine, got a chance to shine in the recent Star Trek: Picard, and Kate Mulgrew’s Captain Janeway also appeared to advantage in the underrated Star Trek: Prodigy, showing that they could work beautifully when written well. But Voyager began my Trek slump, which lasted through Enterprise and ended with the dark, intense, sometimes confusing Star Trek: Discovery. Discovery has its detractors, many of them criticizing the show for being too “woke,” but it revitalized the franchise, with other Trek shows — Picard, Prodigy, Lower Decks — following in its wake.
Which brings me to Strange New Worlds.
This show technically qualifies as a spin-off of Discovery, in which Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romjin) appeared, all three “legacy characters” from the original series. Fans liked them, and those in charge decided to develop a prequel-to-the-original series that would center on them and add a few more legacy characters along with some new faces. The creative team behind Strange New Worlds have sought to capture the spirit of adventure, the energy, and the optimism of the original show. For my money, they’ve succeeded, as this new show has everything I love about the original Trek (the aforementioned adventure, energy, and optimism) and none of what I hate (the sexism). With my memory of those afternoons spent with syndicated Star Trek back in the ’80s strong in my mind, I can’t help but relish seeing Nurse Christine Chapel (played by Jess Bush in Strange New Worlds) and Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) finally become the heroes they always should have been.
One of the aspects of the show I appreciate most is the care with which it approaches its legacy characters. The creative forces behind it know that much of its audience will have watched the original series, perhaps even to the point of committing whole episodes to memory, and if their prequel incarnations are too far out of line with the “Captain Kirk years” versions of themselves, that audience will turn against them. Accordingly, while we get to know Chapel and Uhura in more depth and detail than we did in Star Trek, everything they do in the new series aligns perfectly with what we know about their “future” selves as we saw them in the original show. They aren’t revamped into martial badasses, and they don’t need to be; we have security chief La’an (Christina Chong) and helmsman Ortegas (Melissa Navia) for that. Like Troi and Crusher of TNG, they have mostly “soft skills.” Yet Strange New Worlds puts them into situations in which those “soft skills” can be the game-changers, the difference-makers. For example, a recent episode, “Charades,” finds Spock and Chapel aboard a shuttle investigating a newly discovered life form; unfortunately, the life forms identify the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock as “defective” and rewrite his DNA so that he’ll be fully human, like Chapel. Chapel, as anyone who has seen much of the original show knows, is in love with Spock, and a fully human Spock just might be able to return her affections. But that isn’t the man she knows and loves, so she takes it upon herself to save that man and restore his true, full identity. When scientific know-how can’t do the job, she gathers the courage to confront the life forms and persuade them to give her what she needs to turn Spock back into himself again. With honest love and pure bravery, she saves him and becomes the episode’s hero.
In the musical episode, “Subspace Rhapsody,” it’s Uhura’s turn, and Celia Rose Gooding, a Broadway veteran, makes the most of it.
[Spoilers for “Subspace Rhapsody” ahead]
Exploring an uncharted portion of space, the Enterprise is sending out communication probes, one of which includes a Broadway show tune, “Anything Goes” as sung by Patti LuPone. Shortly afterward, the crew find themselves in a “fold” in which they start singing whenever their emotions run high or strong. This leads to a series of catchy tunes and an opportunity for the cast to show off abilities we hadn’t guessed they had. La’an wonders in song about her closed-off personality and the possibility that she might train herself to take more risks, especially where her crush on the visiting Jim Kirk is concerned. Number One gives both Kirk and La’an tuneful pep talks, sharing her experience and hard-earned wisdom. Chapel sings in celebration of having been granted an anthropological apprenticeship, even though this apprenticeship will take her away from the Enterprise and from Spock, with whom she’s been in a tentative relationship since “Charades.” Spock, having learned to open his heart, sings of how it feels to have it broken. Perhaps not trusting in Anson Mount’s abilities as a singer, the episode gives him only a tense cut-short duet with his girlfriend, with whom he isn’t seeing eye-to-eye on how they should spend their time off together. Uhura, for much of the episode, is witness to all these musical shenanigans, observing them with an eye to figuring out a solution to the problem. Yet Uhura has an advantage: she knows musicals and understands how they work, so she starts to study the ways in which the fold fluctuates whenever the musical numbers happen.
Of all the characters on the original show, Uhura counts as the biggest missed opportunity. At one point, actress Nichelle Nichols was prepared to quit the show in frustration with how little she was given to do; Martin Luther King Jr. himself famously persuaded her not to, pointing out that she was making a difference just by being seen on the bridge, week after week. King’s point was well taken — among those inspired by her presence was a young Whoopi Goldberg, who shouted in excitement at seeing an African-American woman on television as something other than a maid — but the show continued to underutilize the character, though Nichols seized the few opportunities she was given. The writers couldn’t figure out just what a “communications officer” was supposed to do, other than open hailing frequencies and relay messages. Strange New Worlds doesn’t change Uhura’s job title, but rather, it expands upon it. When Gooding finally gets a song in the second half of “Subspace Rhapsody,” it’s an exploration of just what being a communications officer means. Her song takes her through a discovery of her own importance, even as it gives her the needed insight into what will finally disrupt the fold and free the Enterprise from becoming the main set on the show Crazy Ex-Starship Crew. At Pike’s urging, she persuades the entire crew to join her in an ensemble number that will blow the roof off. The ship is saved thanks to Uhura, her knowledge of musicals, and her ability to “keep people connected.”
Strange New Worlds succeeds beautifully with characters like Chapel and Uhura because its creative team understands that the path to heroism doesn’t have to lead through combat training. That’s why it may just be my favorite Trek series of all.
Nan Monroe 