The Big Picture

“Subspace Rhapsody” is Star Trek’s first-ever musical episode. The episode celebrates the crew’s connection to each other and their triumph over their fears and desires to save the galaxy. Director Dermott Downs discusses the strength of the script and music, the balance between drama and comedy, and his excitement for future Star Trek episodes and his work on Fire Country.

Star Trek’s first-ever musical episode has arrived on Paramount+ with Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 9, “Subspace Rhapsody.” Epic in both scale and emotion, the heartfelt space romp sees the crew of the USS Enterprise thrust into a musical reality that has them singing their darkest fears and deepest desires. In order to set things right, they have to give their most triumphant performance together, celebrating their connection to each other to save the galaxy. The episode features knockout emotional ballads from La’an (Christina Chong), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Spock (Ethan Peck), alongside hilariously campy numbers from Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Una (Rebecca Romijn), and a whole ship full of Klingons.

To celebrate the groundbreaking new episode I sat down with the director of the episode, Dermott Downs to discuss bringing “Subspace Rhapsody” to life. During our conversation, we discussed the strength of the script written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff as well as the range of the music and lyrics written by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce. Downs also discussed what it was like to piece together that final number, drawing inspiration from Queen and K-Pop, finding the balance between drama and comedy, and what type of Star Trek episode he’d like to direct in the future. He also just finished directing and producing Season 1 of Fire Country and spoke briefly about what fans can expect from Season 2.

COLLIDER: You have quite a history with television and music; you’ve worked on various series and music videos, and this isn’t even your first musical episode of television, though I do think this is my favorite. This is the first musical episode in Star Trek’s 60-year history. What was it like to take on that task that you seem almost destined for?

DERMOTT DOWNS: I love the original, and if you had told me that I was gonna get to beam Captain Kirk onto the Enterprise, and in this he’s coming to visit — yeah, I would have been just floored. It’s such a treat to be able to revisit one of my childhood favorite shows. When I first met Secret Hideout about this, there was a sitcom-influenced episode, so like a three-camera comedy, and then there was the musical. So I was just like, “Well guys, let me give you my two cents.”

I’m in this business because I memorized the songbook to Oliver Twist at seven. I was a childhood actor before I became a cinematographer and then did years of music videos. So, by the time I did [The] Flash, it was like, “Oh my god, it’s the hybrid of everything I love doing,” but this was like a whole new level. The script was so sophisticated and great and grounded for even taking a flight of fancy and doing an hour of musical television because, you know, everybody’s singing what they can’t say. Once you get that sort of status report, the more the music becomes a virus in the ship, and within them, they’re singing their biggest fears. Until you have the Klingons, who are literally ashamed of what this has made them do when they’ve K-popped their way in a musical showdown with the crew.

Image via Paramount+

That was such a fun twist!

DOWNS: Yeah! There was another version because there were some people that were like, “This may be a bridge too far,” but we were like, “Okay, we’re all running to the bridge to hold hands in a line, like, there’s no bridge too far.” So yeah, I mean, I think as we were shooting, it was all very aware it was gonna be Klingon K-pop.

That’s fantastic. You mentioned being a fan of [Star Trek] The Original Series; what was your relationship with Star Trek, in general, before signing on?

DOWNS: Well, I had not done any of the shows. I had been under contract with Greg Berlanti and Warner Bros. for five, six years, so I was doing all the DC properties there, and then I’d venture out and do, like, Blindspot and Prodigal Son. But with the pandemic, all those deals sort of went away because nobody knew when we were gonna work, and certainly not getting on planes, so this was part of just sort of a reboot. I was just really excited to meet new people. It was just a blessing that it was the right place at the right time with my background to sort of convince them to come aboard for this.

My first meeting, though, I was like, “Look, there’s Discovery, there’s Picard…how many versions of Star Trek can there be?” Because Strange New Worlds Season 1 hadn’t dropped yet. so I was like, “What’s going on here?” Because what was great about the original was every week was a standalone, you know, ethical, moral or comedic episode, and they were like, “That’s exactly what we’re doing.” Then, when the musical came up, I was just…I don’t know how I can pitch myself too hard for that. And fortunately, it wasn’t just eager pleading because they heard that I had the experience and let me run with it. Obviously, the cast, the crew, everybody, gave it 100-plus percent, rehearsing on weekends…Yeah, it was a real good time.

I love when they first hit the anomaly. You can see it hit through the entire crew. How did you go about setting up how that would translate to screen?

DOWNS: If there was a way to interpret a sound wave, we didn’t want to get too kind of CGI and effect-y, but when Carol Kane says, “Have you tried sending music to it?” And they do, and then it bounces back, that was the idea. Sort of like a sound wave with maybe the transparency of water because you need to see it a little bit. It’s a wave that shimmers through the ship and doesn’t knock people down, but you’re just sort of pushed back, like a gust of air. So through status report, they’re trying to figure out what’s going on until they realize there’s a virus. There’s a full-blown infection.

Then, with Gilbert and Sullivan, there’s the whimsy of, like, “Are we singing or not?” And then it just grows and grows and grows until, you know, look, you’ve got, you’ve got Pike [Anson Mount] in a bad country duet with Batel [Melanie Scrofano], literally humiliated and pledging his love in front of everybody. [Laughs] That was the one I was most looking forward to because I just knew Anson would bring it. I mean, he’s got such great chops. But once I was part of this and got to see some of Season 1, which hadn’t even aired yet, it aired the week I started filming, so everybody was riding that high, but just his comedic chops, too! His timing – he’s hilarious. But great casting all the way around on this reboot.

Image via Paramount+

Oh, yeah! You do a really good job of balancing all of the performances because it can easily spiral into being too over the top, but it absolutely doesn’t. You somehow find a way to balance those really big comedic numbers, like the one with the captain on the bridge, but then there are also those really emotional numbers, like for La’an [Christina Chong] and for Uhura [Celia Rose Gooding] down in engineering. Those are really profound to me. So how did you strike that sort of balance between those two extremes?

DOWNS: I was fortunate that I had two weeks before production started that I was up there just with the choreographer and then the temp tracks of the song. We really got to sort of process the different tone even though they hadn’t laid down their version, which I knew was even gonna bring more gravitas to it. You know, Celia’s is such a big power ballad, and wanting to really support that but not wanting to overwhelm it, but they are such a dynamo. Obviously, they were coming to it full throttle, but internally. So, you know, there were moments with all that that’s overwhelming, wanting to be a little dizzy, but also wanting to just hold back and let their notes push the camera back, and not just be like a full three minutes of cinematic pyrotechnics. But Chrissy’s song is very different. It’s equally as emotional, but it’s very grounded in her room, and very static other than the imagination of where she could go with Kirk in that flash-forward/flashback or dream.

There’s a real fluidity in the way you move the camera in this episode, and it comes through beautifully. With the big sequences like the final number, parts of this are taking place all over the ship, which is very complicated and, I imagine, a major process to shoot. What was it like bringing all of those disparate sequences together for that final number?

DOWNS: Look, I had favorite numbers, like knowing I was gonna get be able to watch Anson break down or just have that Ethan [Peck] solo, but that, to me, I knew I was gonna have the most fun because everything was broken up like that. So, for instance, when they’re in the hallway running, and the camera spins – that was it. That was the one shot. They weren’t getting anything else. That was gonna propel and push. And then, the cross-cutting of that would be like, “Okay, we’re gonna limit the shots here. We’re not even gonna let the actors sing their way through it.” Because at that point, they’re taking charge, so they’re sort of pushing the camera around. Except when La’an and Pelia [Carol Kane] and Ethan are in the Queen moment, where they’re all three heads [laughs]; that was the most sort of meta-musical moment. But I was like, “We’re at the pinnacle of this, so I think we can give a little reference here.”

Oh yeah!

DOWNS: But yeah, I was like, “Okay, I don’t know if I’m gonna get spanked for this because it’s a very grounded show,” but even being grounded, we know we have to sing our way out of this. So it’s like, “Alright, I don’t know if they all had ever seen Queen, but…” [Laughs] That was the tone of the reference that I just felt people would embrace and have fun with it. Then bringing everybody onto the bridge, that was quite a challenge as they all come in off elevate and join, but we were able to layer it, and we beat the anomaly.

Image via Paramount+

You spoke a bit about how strong the script was, and I completely agree. With a musical episode, the plot can sort of get lost, but that doesn’t happen at all here. This episode actually moves several relationships forward and pushes the plot points of the season to where they need to be. How did you make sure that you were really bringing those story beats through as well?

DOWNS: As character is first, as everybody was telling me on the show, and as the song progresses, everybody is expressing vulnerabilities that they can’t speak. So, music became a way to really push, give exposition to those things that they couldn’t normally speak. But, you know, they were singing it with jazz hands. I mean, with someone like La’an’s alone. It’s so heartbreaking that she’s singing about these things she can’t express in person, and Celia’s big moment, Ethan’s big solo. Yeah, I mean, there’s big emotional moments as well as the whimsy of ballroom dancing and the craziness of private conversation.

[Laughs] Yeah! So Star Trek is sci-fi, but by its nature, it’s the type of sci-fi that can jump across genres and themes. If you come back to Strange New Worlds or any other Star Trek series, is there a particular genre or style of episode that you’d like to try your hand at?

DOWNS: I have yet to do a Western, so I would really love [that]. And look, a space Western wouldn’t be out of the box. And certainly, with Anson’s– They pull him out of the wilds in the snow in his cabin; he’s certainly an outdoorsman.

That would be great! I spoke to Celia and Melissa earlier this year, and they also mentioned doing a Western, so fingers crossed for Season 3.

DOWNS: Wow, yeah! Well, I’ll put it out there. [Laughs]

You recently finished directing and producing on Fire Country. What can you share about that experience? And can you tease anything about Season 2?

DOWNS: It was interesting. I went into Fire Country literally, I don’t know, a week after finishing “Space Rhapsody.” I just got back from Toronto, and I was actually looking for something that was really sort of gritty because I had come off of, before all of this, an overall deal with Berlanti and the DC Universe, so I had done a lot of larger-than-life superhero things. And Strange New Worlds was very grounded in a way that I loved, and obviously, it has the music element, but Fire Country was in the Friday Night Lights world of just, like, very gritty, character-driven, you know, not being precious with cranes and dollies. I mean, 80% of that show is handheld and just wanting to get to the truth of the drama, and not being precious with things. So, that was my whole goal with that.

And in Season 2, I mean, he ends up back in prison, so all I can tell you is he’s gonna start in prison and have to redeem himself again. [Laughs]

Let’s end on a fun one, besides the ones that you’ve directed, do you have a favorite musical episode of television?

DOWNS: You know, I like the whimsy of the oddness of Schmigadoon!, but I haven’t watched every episode of that. Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] (“Once More, With Feeling”) was kind of groundbreaking for what it was, but I would say “Space Rhapsody.” [Laughs]

The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale will be available to stream on August 10. “Subspace Rhapsody” is now available on Paramount+.