5 reasons Star Trek must do a musical episode
By Mike Poteet
# 3 – A Star Trek musical episode could pay homage to the franchise’s past
In his piece, Chad claims a musical episode would be “stupidity” that would “sink [Star Trek’s] credibility to an all-time low.”
But, even as we saw on the previous slide, characters have been singing onscreen in Star Trek throughout its 55-year-history, and the franchise’s credibility is still more than intact.
Thankfully, no worries about singing prevailed during the original series’ first season.
Nichelle Nichols, who got her show biz start singing with Duke Ellington’s and Lionel Hampton’s bands, sang two songs that year in her role as Uhura.
You can watch the first in the video above (from “Charlie X”) and the second in the video below (from “The Conscience of the King”).
And even though I’ll grant you Uhura’s fan dance on Nimbus III is a cringeworthy lowlight of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, it might have at least sounded better had Nichols herself gotten to perform the song, as she believed she was going to be allowed to.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we know “dancing doctor” Beverly Crusher included musical theater in the repertoire she directed for the NCC-1701-D crew. Remember how she tried to recruit a reluctant Geordi LaForge to play Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance?
Geordi was reluctant to perform comic opera, but the EMH on Star Trek: Voyager wasn’t shy about singing the real, highbrow stuff.
The Doctor could even improvise new lyrics to classic opera themes to fit the situation!
All these characters and more singing on Star Trek—and yet the franchise continues to live long and prosper!
How threatening to its credibility could a one-off musical episode really be?