Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #6 — “Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad” And “Subspace Rhapsody”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary approaches, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September 8th, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

“New Star Trek isn’t like the old Trek!”

We’ve all seen that somewhere online in the last decade. Ever since Star Trek made it back to the small screen with Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, some of the worst people have crawled out of their internet holes to bemoan wokeness or some other silliness.

Just like all Trek before them, Discovery, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, and Starfleet Academy have gone through the line of fire. Bombarded with “Not my Trek” or other nonsensical things that people have been stating since they had to print it in newspapers about The Next Generation back in the ’80s.

All Trek is Trek, whether it’s your cup of tea or not. In that spirit I’ve chosen two really fun and good episodes from two of the most connected of the new shows. One from Discovery that gave an The Original Series villain a new coat of paint and a Strange New Worlds episode that proved once again, Trek can do anything.

— Spoilers Follow —

“Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad”
Star Trek: Discovery – Season 1, Episode 7 (10/29/2017)

The first season of Discovery, well, it isn’t the easiest in some cases. Serialization is the name of the game, and that isn’t everyone’s jam when it comes to Trek. Many detractors felt the same way when Deep Space Nine became heavily serialized in it’s middle and later seasons. Some just crave that adventure of the week style situation where things mostly reset week to week, outside of the major beats.

Despite that serialization, Discovery still managed to do some fun episodes that were sort of adventure of the week. This particular one saw the return of one Harcourt Fenton Mudd (Rainn Wilson), of TOS fame. This wasn’t Mudd’s first appearance on Discovery, but it was certainly the most notable.

Synopsis: Having escaped Klingon captivity, Harry Mudd finds a way aboard the U.S.S. Discovery to seek revenge against Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs). Utilizing a time crystal, Mudd kicks off a destructive time loop which destroys the ship and kills the crew in numerous ways. It’s all in the name of revenge, and quick profit, as he plans to sell Discovery to the Klingons.

I’m not a big TOS fan, which I know would shock a lot of folks.

Growing up on TNG, DS9, and Voyager made me little interested in the old series. Sure, I also watched all the films with that crew and loved them, but they were different. They were products of the current time rather than windows into a past that I wasn’t really aware of.

All that being said, I loved the use of Mudd here. There was something far more menacing about this version, compared to the usually campy version of old. Not that the old wasn’t also a dark and terrible man, but Wilson’s portrayal adds far more layers (a benefit of the way that shows are created now compared to back then).

Time loops are always a fun concept, and we get some really inspired uses here. Seeing Mudd come for the crew in a variety of ways feels quite fun. It’s especially true with Stamets, who’s been really changed by all his time with the spores, being the one able to see through the loops.

Plenty of Disco’s plotlines, characterization, and beats carry over here. That allows it to still be firmly in the thick of the shows serialization while still being free to breathe on its own as something else. Definitely worth a watch just for the shenanigans that time travel loops always bring.

“Subspace Rhapsody”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season 2, Episode 9  (08/03/2023)

Do you feel that? A song in your heart and a pep in your step, as you prepare to belt out your inner feelings for all to hear. Oh wait, sorry that doesn’t happen in real life like it does on TV and in movies. Especially not on a science fiction series like Star Trek for sure.

Except it most certain did happen. And by golly it was one of the best things that Trek had done outside of the box in years.

Synopsis: An accident with an experimental quantum probability field causes the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise to randomly uncontrollably burst into song about their emotions. While seemingly benign, there is danger in the air as the field is expanding and threatens to plunge the whole of the universe into the sing song trap for good.

Everything about this episode just works. There are beats from character moments from other episodes, a whole sci fi made up threat process to defeat, and some damn fine songs and choreographed dance numbers to boot.

It’s another episode that gives Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) a chance to shine in the spotlight. It’s both as a singer and also just as a character that holds things together, providing a boosting web to her crew. That gives this character so much more to do as a whole than she got to do in most of three seasons and six films.

It’s also resonant in the way that Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) and Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck) songs hauntingly match one another, as their relationship shatters. The happiness mixed with sadness that Chapel feels at getting her dream gig, against the sorrow and determination to push all those emotions aside that Spock has to deal with.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t go down a rabbit hold of playing the whole album of the episode when I hear even a beat of one of the songs. I mean hell, we even got K-pop in there, but the K stands for Klingon, naturally.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.