Summary
- Star Trek: Picard almost had a musical episode, but it never materialized, joining a list of failed attempts to create Star Trek musicals.
- The idea for a Picard musical may have originated from a musical cameo by Patrick Stewart's wife and a scene with Agnes Jurati singing influenced by the Borg Queen.
- The new Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, successfully pulled off a musical episode after a lot of hard work and preparation, creating something truly special for fans.
Showrunner Akiva Goldsman has revealed that Star Trek: Picard almost did a musical episode before Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' history-making song-and-dance spectacle. Despite several attempts over the decades, there had never been a Star Trek musical until "Subspace Rhapsody". Ronald D. Moore had attempted it twice on both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, while Linda Park attempted to mount a musical episode for Star Trek: Enterprise. Now it appears that Picard joins the list of failed attempts to mount Star Trek musicals.
In an interview with TV Line, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers talked about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' musical episode, and discussed the ill-fated attempt to bring a Star Trek: Picard musical to life. It's unclear where exactly this would have fit into the Star Trek: The Next Generation spinoff show. Picard season 2 featured a musical cameo by actor Patrick Stewart's wife, the singer Sunny Ozell, and a scene where Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) sang while under the influence of the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching), so it's possible that this was where the idea first started. Read an excerpt from the interview here, which explains how Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda scuppered the Picard musical:
Goldsman, who also serves as EP and co-showrunner on Strange New Worlds, recalled how Chabon told them he knew Lin-Manuel Miranda. “We were like, ‘Call him! call him!”” the EP shared. Two days later, when they followed up with Chabon, he told them, “[Lin-Manuel] didn’t call me back.”
“And that was the end of that musical,” Goldsman noted. “But it did seem like such a good idea. As soon as Henry and I got together to make [Strange New Worlds], I kept peppering him with, ‘We should do a musical,’ and Henry, of course, had done musicals before.”
How Strange New Worlds Did The First Star Trek Musical
The TV Line interview reveals just how much work went into mounting Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' musical episode. A veteran of musical episodes from his days on The Magicians, Henry Alonso Myers recalled how he had tried to warn Akiva Goldsman that "musical episodes are really hard." One of the reasons that "Subspace Rhapsody" is the penultimate episode of Strange New Worlds season 2 is because of the considerable amount of prep work required to achieve it. Preparations for the Star Trek musical began six months before filming as Myers had to source lyricists, composers, and set designers to pull it all off.
The episode's director, Dermott Downs revealed in a Screen Rant interview that the cast and crew even stayed behind after work and rehearsed their big numbers on weekends to ensure that "Subspace Rhapsody" was such a success. It's clear to see from watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' musical episode that all of this hard work from everyone involved has created something truly special. "Subspace Rhapsody" is a big musical celebration of the starship Enterprise, something that the more long-form and tonally darker Star Trek: Picard may have struggled to pull off.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' season 2 finale streams Thursday, August 10th, on Paramount+.
Source: TV Line