There’s an old Klingon proverb that says, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Now, it would appear that Star Trek is a dish best served…karaoke-style? The franchise has been the subject of musical parodies in the past – and Lieutenant Commander Data did play the wedding singer in Star Trek: Nemesis — but is it possible we’ll see an actual musical episode on one of its Paramount+ shows in the future? Producer Alex Kurtzman apparently has his heart set on that very thing, so don’t be surprised someday if you see Klingons doing a reverse Kanye and dropping their double-sided Bat’leth blades in favor of microphones.
Kurtzman, the busy co-showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, seems to think the Star Trek: Short Treks anthology would be the ideal outlet for a musical Star Trek episode. On a recent episode of the official Star Trek podcast (via CBR), he outlined his vision for just such an episode:
“I’d love to do a musical, for example. I’d love to do one in black and white, figure out what that means. I can probably think of 50 different ways that we can tell stories and 50 different crevices of the Star Trek universe to explore. That may not be the right kinds of crevices for the larger shows, but I think we always think of the Short Treks as, these are the scenes that are just as important as what’s going on in the main shows but that you wouldn’t actually have time for. These are the moments that you can drill down on. So I’d love to. I’d love nothing more.”
To Boldly Sing Where No One But Data Has Sung Before
If you’re not familiar with Short Treks, it’s a series of streaming episodes that debuted on CBS All Access (the predecessor to Paramount+) after Discovery‘s first season. The episodes run about 1o to 20 minutes apiece. They’re like the Marvel One-Shots from the early days of the MCU, in that they allow viewers to explore corners of a shared universe they might not otherwise get the chance to see. In one Multiplicity-like episode, Rainn Wilson directed and starred as numerous android versions of the ineffable Harry Mudd, so that gives you an idea of how far off-the-beaten-path the series is willing to venture.
The question is, is another “Blue Skies” (the song Data performed on stage in Nemesis) really right for Star Trek? Or is it just another hare-brained idea from Kurtzman, the guy who co-wrote Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek Into Darkness, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2?
If the idea of a singing Star Trek episode seems outlandish (after all, this isn’t Glee), let’s not forget “Once More, with Feeling,” the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which Kurtzman actually references as a brilliant example of a singing episode done right. Wilson’s show, The Office, wasn’t above staging the occasional musical number, either. Forget Chaos Walking and its men projecting visible thoughts on distant planets. We could one day be looking at a Star Trek where the crew is infected by an alien virus that makes them sing their innermost thoughts and desires.
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