Strange New Worlds boldly goes where no Star Trek show has gone before: the Musical Episode.
The soundtrack
was released before the episode itself, albeit only in preview form. The full soundtrack was released the day after the episode's release.
The Enterprise is at the site of an unusual phenomenon: a naturally-occurring subspace fold. Spock believes harnessing it could triple subspace communication speeds, but the processing power needed for this means Uhura needs to play switchboard operator for the time being. She passes along messages — Pike and Batel try to plan for a vacation, but Pike's reluctance leads to more squabbling; Chapel learns she's been accepted into Dr. Korby's fellowship gathering, but she'll need to tell Spock about it; and Una learns of James T. Kirk's impending arrival and is joined by a still-crushing La'an as the former prepares to train Kirk on how being a First Officer works. In engineering, Spock and Uhura try to figure out how to make the experiment work as twelve messages failed to get through. Pelia steps in and suggests a song instead. Uhura chooses the title song from Anything Goes, Spock makes attempt thirteen... and it works!
A little too well, it seems, as a wave of energy strikes the Enterprise and everyone on board. Pike races to the bridge and demands a status report... and Spock begins singing the "Status Report", followed by Chapel and M'Benga, and then the bridge crew, ending with Pike asking "But, why are we singing?!" In the ready room, the senior staff (and Jim Kirk) figure out what happened: the song Spock sent out accidentally dislodged an alternate reality of sorts and attached it to the Enterprise. Don't worry, La'an and M'Benga, no turning into bunnies, just singing. Pelia notes the fold looks like a zipper and, using the analogy, Spock warns they can't leave lest they "unzip it" and he's going to get to work on a "zipper beam". As they work, Spock notices the correspondence to Chapel leading to Spock to wonder why he wasn't told. In a Jeffries Tube, Una and Kirk have made one of the modifications needed for the "zipper beam" before discussing how to be a First Officer. Una suggests that, instead of keeping his distance from his crew, he should embrace who he really is and "Connect To Your Truth", as expressed by a comedic-styled duet and waltz a la Gilbert and Sullivan.
The singing bug isn't done yet and it strikes La'an, as the ever-stoic Security Chief ponders how it could be if she could express herself and even imagines herself with Kirk while wondering "How Would That Feel". On the plus side, it leads to an "Eureka!" Moment and she rushes to tell Pike: the singing seems to hit whenever emotions run high. La'an believes these songs could be a security threat, but Pike isn't too sure about that. Soon, the "zipper beam" is ready and is fired... only for another wave to strike and the hole not being "zipped". Even worse, the Cayuga is calling. It's Batel, still upset over their wrecked vacation plans. Despite the need to discuss this "Private Conversation" in a more discreet location, it's being sung on the bridge. In front of the crew. Thankfully, La'an is able to cut the communications. Even worse, Spock lets them know that the effect is going through the subspace communications network, affecting all Starfleet.
Through confirmation with Admiral April, who (according to Una) has a surprisingly beautiful baritone singing voice, at least twelve ships have been affected and they kinda want this resolved now. Uhura and Una figure that, since they're in a musical reality, they're running on the rules of musicals, where they express their feelings via song when words won't suffice. Pike suggests just blowing it up and Spock agrees, but he needs to run some tests just in case. La'an and Jim Kirk suggest sending subatomic particles into the fold, which require a two-person team, but La'an refuses to work with Kirk as she's still all rattled with emotions. Una talks to La'an... or rather sings, that "Keeping Secrets" is not worth the trouble and even she knows how that is, convincing her to finally just tell Jim how she feels.
La'an rejoins Jim and the two proceed to gather up test samples of Spock and Uhura to use. During this, La'an struggles to tell Jim how she feels... before the ship is rocked with a massive explosion. Turns out blowing up the fold is going to be a bad idea. And things go From Bad to Worse — Klingon ships are on their way to the fold and, via General Garkog, the musical infection has now hit the Klingon Empire and it's caused them massive dishonor and they're going to blow it up. So, now the Enterprise has two hours to figure out how to save the entire Federation and half of the Klingon Empire from getting nuked out of existence. Spock suggests using song to get them out of this mess, but they have no idea how it could work. To that end, Uhura proposes seeing how the songs work and go from there. Unfortunately, this leads to Spock confronting Chapel, who asks about the fellowship. Spock pushes just a little too hard and Chapel begins to sing that she's ready to take what she has been dreaming of attending and that if she needs to dump Spock to do so? Fine ("I'm Ready"), leaving Spock to walk off, hurt.
While going over the schematics of the K't'inga-class Klingon cruiser, La'an finally tells Kirk about what happened in that adventure that got her all tongue-twisted around him and ultimately reveals her feelings. Jim sees the connection and feels the same... but he's already taken. He's seeing a Carol Marcus, who is working on Starbase 1, and she's pregnant with his kid. In Engineering, Uhura finds Spock alone and clearly upset. Not only can he not find any sort of connection with the data they have, he's clearly rattled by Chapel's casually dumping him despite him betraying his core beliefs ("I'm The X") before leaving Uhura alone. Uhura takes over the work, realizing she might have to do this alone and trying to find the connection while also lamenting the loss of her family and Hemmer ("Keep Us Connected"). However, she discovers the connection and realizes what needs to be done.
Uhura tells Pike that they need to generate enough electron volts to shatter the field, breaking everyone free, which Spock realizes is what is needed to escape. Pike needs them to hurry as more Klingon ships are on the way. Uhura explains they need to reach a show-stopping grand finale, but it would be difficult for them to convince the entire crew to go along with this plan. Pike believes that this is a job for Uhura. Via ship-wide hail, Pike declares Uhura the "voice of the Enterprise" and has her lead everyone on, inspiring the crew via their connections and how fate lead them all to be on this ship. As everyone gets in on it, it's just not enough and Pike orders even the Klingons to get in, who go into a K-pop routine about how much they want to kill Starfleet! Even the ships get in on the fun, spinning around and reaching the crescendo needed to shatter the field and save the day ("We Are One"). With things calmed down, Pike orders the Klingons hailed again so they can mend some fences.
As things calm down, La'an tells Una about what happened between her and Jim and while that stung, La'an's ready to try and take more chances. In his quarters, Pike and Batel apologize for their own spat, but vacation plans would need to wait - she's been given a priority one mission, so they got time to plan. Soon, Spock staggers onto the bridge folowing another round of bloodwine diplomacy and Pike suggests passing over what they learned to other non-Federation ships just in case they get caught up in something like this. As she sets off to do so, Uhura hums her little solo song, prompting glares from the bridge crew.
"Sorry, earworm."
Tropes:
- A Cappella: subverted. The show's main theme is recorded with singers front and center doing various "bum ba bum" syllables, but there's still percussion, some vibraphone dings and a harp glissando. (The singers and/or group who performed this rendition have yet to be identified.)
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Defied by La'an. Due to the musical environment forced upon them she worried about being too close to Jim when a love song breaks out. So she avoids too much time with him before addressing him privately. She shares the relationship she developed with an Alternate Timeline version of him in a rational, blunt but still vulnerable way, and thankfully no song kicks in. Jim is empathetic to what that means to her, but he is also honest that he is in a complicated relationship with a scientist named Carol.
- Ascended Meme: The classic Uhura has sometimes been joked about being a glorified switch board operator, summed up as "Hailing Frequencies are Open," while the modern version of Uhura is clearer that she is also a linguist and has to deal with both abstract comm frequencies (scientist) and the physical operation of the equipment (mechanic). At the start of this episode Spock is looking to dedicate computer power to punch a signal into the subspace fold, and temporarily took down the automated comm relay system. That meant for certain periods of time Uhura had to manage both external and internal comms manually... what a switch board operator would do.
- Background Magic Field: Subspace through the franchise has always been a Minovsky Particle that explains anything Faster-Than-Light, but here a natural subspace fold is treated as a direct conduit that could drastically improve communication lag time. Spock and Uhura's experiments with this causes the Musical Episode to happen, and because it is in subspace it can transfer to the rest of the fleet through their subspace communication.
- Break Up Song: Nurse Chapel's "I'm Ready", in which she publicly informs Spock that she's leaving for a medical fellowship, including the lines "It's freedom and I like it. My spark has been ignited. If I need to leave you, I won't fight it." This is followed by Spock's "I'm the X", where he laments setting aside his emotional stoicism to be with Chapel only for her to abruptly dump him for a career opportunity and declaring he'll never let himself be that emotionally vulnerable again.
- Breather Episode: After last week's PTSD and moral ambiguities, it's time for a musical!
- Brutal Honesty: Part of the problem with the musical reality, beyond it being rather distracting, is that it compels people to sing their hearts out and reveal secrets they otherwise might not. In particular, while Chapel no doubt would have broken the news of her fellowship to Spock with far more tact, she instead sings a painfully blunt song about her excitement for the assignment and her willingness to ditch Spock, which understandably crushes poor Spock's feelings and hardens his heart.
- Call-Back: Quite a number dealing with this season:
- The supposed Aborted Arc that was Chapel going on the fellowship is back on thanks to her future fiance Dr. Korby.
- Pike and Batel's shaky relationship, as seen in "Among the Lotus Eaters", is still shaky and suffers another rattling.
- Once more, Spock deals in bloodwine diplomacy and walks (or, more accurately, wobbles) away with another hangover.
- Call-Forward:
- Kirk's reaction to Spock's technobabble foreshadows their eventual dynamic as Captain and Science Officer.
- When La'an is about to confess what happened in the alternate timeline to Kirk, he remarks that La'an might be breaking some big rule. Starfleet's Department of Temporal Investigations will be holding Kirk responsible as their most infamous rule-breaker, with seventeen violations on record.
- Kirk speaks high praise of the Enterprise crew during the final musical number, crediting them for helping make him the captain he hopes to become. He'll be their captain a few years from now.
- Kirk mentions his on-again-off-again relationship with Carol Marcus and that she's pregnant. Both she and her son David first appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which makes his flirtation with La'an especially ironic.
- Chapel is accepted to a three-month Fellowship where she will study under Dr. Roger Korby.
- Chapel's very public, very painful breakup with Spock goes a long way to explaining why he rebuffs her advances in the future (except for when his judgement is impaired). Indeed, it makes the scene from "The Naked Time" when Chapel confesses her love to him come across very differently. Instead of Spock being "sorry" about his inability to return her affections, he's "sorry" about how they worked out, and it gives more meaning to his total breakdown once he's alone. He's grieving because he lost Chapel once, and now years later she's claiming to be in love with him when he has devoted himself to pure logic.
- Career Versus Man: Perhaps informed by what she learned from Boimler about Spock's future, Chapel sings a song about embracing her new career opportunity, and Spock realizes he's going to be left behind.
- Continuity Nod: Una's song alongside Kirk is in in the style of a Gilbert and Sullivan song, even calling them out by name; Una's affinity for the comic opera duo was well-established.
- Crowd Song:
- Everyone automatically knows the words to the songs, and Kirk is weirded out by that because he was under the assumption the crew rehearsed the first song before he came aboard, until he found himself joining in.
- Invoked near the end when they realize that they need the entire crew to take part in a Big Finale Crowd Song so they can seal the subspace fold.
- Dark Reprise: Spock's solo, "I'm The X”, is a lyrically darker, slower, straight-time reprise of Chapel's solo, "I'm Ready", which is a faster, more upbeat, and swung piece with ensemble backing vocals and dancers.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
- Inverted — Uhura hums the melody of her solo, "Keep Us Connected", before the beginning of the Negative Space Wedgie effect that will give rise to the song itself.
- Later played straight — Uhura hums the melody of "I'm Ready" after it takes place in-universe.
- Doomed by Canon:
- Chapel breaks off her relationship with Spock, and he's pretty hurt about it, swearing not to let himself fall victim to emotion again. Given how rather cruel (in song form, no less) that breakup was, it explains why he wasn't so eager to have her back on TOS. That won't end so well for her either.
- James Kirk is in a relationship with Carol Marcus, who is currently expecting. It won't last. Neither will their son.
- Double-Meaning Title: The song "I'm the X" does this with the mathematical variable "X" and being the "Ex" in a relationship, who is searching for the "Y"/"why".
- Ear Worm: Uhura refers to "I'm Ready" as this (and we can hardly blame her).
- The Eleven O'Clock Number: "Keep Us Connected," performed by unquestionably the strongest singer on the cast: Broadway star, Tony nominee and Grammy winner Celia Rose Gooding.
- Facial Dialogue: Facial expressions are all over the place.
- During "Status Report", multiple characters have "WTF?" expressions. (Pike in particular looks like he's about to freak out.)
- During several subsequent numbers, the characters look around knowingly when the music starts, as if to say "Here it goes again."
- When the Klingons go all-out K-pop, Pike looks like he's about to start laughing.
- Foreshadowing:
- Uhura warns that songs can tear people apart. Chapel's number about accepting the fellowship ends up breaking Spock's heart.
- Garkog and the Klingons being hellbent on destroying the quantum field. Their rationale is that experiencing its effects is a grave dishonor. But even if being caught in a musical is an embarrassing experience, it does seem a bit like an overreaction, as Klingons have operas and poetry. What Klingon warrior wouldn't want to star in their own personal Klingon opera? Then comes the climax and the reveal that the Klingons weren't experiencing a Klingon opera at all; instead, they were being turned into a Klingon K-pop boy band. Scant wonder they declared war on the musical genre.
- Friendship Song: The final number "We Are One" is all about how the crew's unity allows them to overcome any crisis."'Cause we work better all together
We overcome our obstacles as one" - Funny Background Event:
- During Status Report, one of the bridge officers is really getting into it, waving her arms around like a conductor.
- During the Klingon K-pop number, Sam can be seen bopping his head to the Klingons' beats.
- Genre Savvy: Once the crew realize that they're in a musical, they start going over the rules of musicals, such as singing when emotionally stimulated to do so and ending in a grand finale.
- Given Name Reveal: Pike calls Captain Batel "Marie" during "Private Conversation," the first time her given name has been spoken onscreen by any character.
- Giving Up on Logic: A subtle example — from the beginning, Spock is the most restrained crewmember during each musical number. This extends to the grand finale, where he refrains from joining in the group dance...until he sees that they need just a little bit more to break the subspace field and throws himself into the final few seconds of dancing, putting them over the top.
- Throughout the episode, the crew tries several different scientific methods of closing the fold, usually resulting in making it worse. It's only when they embrace the fact that they are in a musical and apply the laws of musical theatre that they are able to resolve the issue.
- Gone Horribly Right: Uhura transmits "Anything Goes" into the fold on Pelia's suggestion that music may trigger a reaction. It does, and musical shenanigans ensue.
- Got Me Doing It: When Pike sings "It's happening again" in response to Chapel and M'Benga singing, his eyes go wide as he realizes that the singing bug just bit him.
- Heroic Willpower: Parodied, if downplayed. When the Klingon K-pop number begins, Garkog valiantly tries to resist succumbing to the siren's song. He lasts about 3 seconds.
- "I Am" Song: Uhura's song "Keep Us Connected" describes her life with her family, and how losing them left her isolated until Hemmer encouraged her to form connections with other people.
- "I Want" Song: La'an's solo number "How Would That Feel" is about letting her guard down as she did with the alternate timeline Kirk.
- Imagine Spot: During her solo number, La'an imagines herself making love with Jim Kirk.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Pike tangibly isn't taking La'an's concerns about the musical effect being a security threat all that seriously. Cue "Private Conversation".
- Internal Reveal: La'an tells Kirk about her time travel adventure with his alternate self, though she leaves out the specific details of their relationship.
- Left the Background Music On: The instant Spock begins the first vocal section of "Status Report", it becomes apparent that characters can hear and see each other vocalising in universe; a couple of lines later, it becomes apparent that they can also hear the background music, although it's never explained specifically where they perceive it as coming from other than "not from anywhere on the ship".
- Logical Weakness: Since the subspace field leaked out a "musical reality" Una and Uhura work out how the songs come about and then Uhura figures out a big number is needed to close the Negative Space Wedgie.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The looks on the crew's faces (especially Pike's) as they sing, "But, why are we singing?"
- The whole Bridge crew react in horror when Uhura starts humming one of the songs they had sung while under the influence of anomaly, only relaxing when she clarifies that it's just stuck in her head and she's humming it voluntarily.
- Moment Killer: In the transporter room, La'an is about to confess her feeling to Kirk when an explosion rocks the Enterprise.
- Mood Motif: In "Status Report", for La'an's security/tactical report, the orchestration acquires the obligatory snare drum of military significance.
- The Multiverse: Messing with the subspace fold creates the musical situation they find themselves in. Spock speculates that sending music into the fold touched upon a reality that is centered entirely around musical numbers. They eventually take to calling it an "Improbability Field," basically the manifestation of any event will happen in another universe.
- The Musical: Played straight, though with a side of Painting the Medium to explain things like The Eleven O'Clock Number.
- Musical Episode: Transmitting a song into a subspace rift makes the Enterprise, and anywhere connected to it via subspace, break out in song. The solution of the episode is to follow musical tropes to trigger a Big Finale Crowd Song, the energy of which destroys the effect.
- Musicalis Interruptus: Pike's brief number with Batel is cut off when La'an ends the transmission, which stops the music in its tracks.
- Musical World Hypothesis: Flavor 1 (Musical Alternate Universe), variant. The cast begin involuntarily singing.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- When Pike's song with Batel is interrupted, he looks devastated at realizing they had another argument, this one in front of his entire bridge crew.
- After Chapel sings about leaving Spock to accept a fellowship with Dr. Korby, she looks remorseful when she sees how upset Spock is.
- Negative Space Wedgie: A naturally-occurring subspace fold is the danger of the episode, creating the musical reality when Spock and Uhura send music into it.
- Never Be Hurt Again: "I'm The X” sees Spock singing about how badly he's taking his breakup with Chapel, promising he won't allow emotion to drive his actions any further and setting the stage for when he'll become everyone's favorite Vulcan in a few years.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sending music into the subspace fold creates the musical reality everyone has to deal with, and attempting to zip it back up spreads the effect to the entire Federation and part of the Klingon Empire.
- No Reprise, Please: Uhura starts humming "I'm Ready" at the end of the episode, but gets a couple of hostile looks and quickly knocks it off.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: According to Una, Bob April has a "surprisingly beautiful baritone". Too bad he doesn't sing onscreen.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Mitchell looks horrifed when Ortegas starts singing.
- Spock gives Uhura a moderately horrified look when they hear the music for "I'm the X" starting, which tells him that he's about to start singing his feelings in front of her.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Pike realizes what's about to happen when Batel calls him and asks to have a private conversation, in a more discreet location, about their canceled vacation. (Especially since there's also music playing again.) Pike tries to cut it off right then, but Batel refuses and the song goes on.Batel: (singing) Apologies. I appear to be rhyming. And singing.
Pike: (wide-eyed) Marie, I'm gonna call you back—
Batel: (singing) Oh, no, no, you don't. I'm not done yet. - Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
- Singing in an accent is hard and Jess Bush's native Australian accent slips through at times.
- Carol Kane's artificial Lanthanite accent doesn't come through very well in song, either. Then again, given Pelia's relative lack of singing outside of ensemble numbers, it's not really an issue.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: The first ever Star Trek Musical Episode. It even counts In-Universe, as the crew realize that reality is being altered to fit the genre.
- Phlebotinum Overload: To break the quantum field and end its effect, Uhura has to get the entire ship to sing in unison, creating a frequency spike big enough to overload it. The Klingons help a little, much to their horror.
- Plot-Demanded Manual Mode: In the beginning of the episode, Uhura has to manually route communications like an old-timey switchboard because Spock's experiment is drawing so much processing power that the automatic systems are off-line. This allows Spock to find out about Chapel's fellowship based on the sender of the message.
- Quarreling Song: "Private Conversation", a semi-reprise of "Status Report", is a quarrel between Pike and Batel made extremely public by the nature of the anomaly. (It ends up coming across as more of an anti-quarreling song, with Pike singing that he doesn't want to argue with Batel, both because he's on the bridge and because he's inherently conflict-averse in their relationship.) La'an does him a favor by abruptly ending the transmission.Pike: (singing) I don't want to hurt you, Marie
You mean more and more to me
But when you and I don't see eye-to-eye
A switch inside me flips and I'm compelled to hide—(song ends) - Ridiculously Potent Explosive: A few subatomic particles from the fold detonated in controlled conditions rock the Enterprise, and the entire anomaly has enough potential energy to wipe out the entire Federation and half the Klingon Empire.
- Romantic False Lead: When La'an admits her experience with an Alternate Timeline version of Jim to the Prime Jim, he is gentle with her but admits to already being in a relationship in addition to a child on the way.
- Seduction-Proof Marriage: James Kirk seems to be invested in his relationship with Carol Marcus, turning down La'an when she confesses her feelings for him. Of course, that relationship with Carol eventually fails.
- Serious Business: The Klingons are not amused by the effects of the quantum field, finding the entire situation deeply dishonorable, and immediately send warships to destroy it at any cost (which would blow up the entire Federation and half their territory). Then we see why they are so horrified by the field: it turns them into a K-pop boy band. At least thirty years worth of dignity lost in thirty seconds.
- Ship Sinking: Any chance of La'an getting to be with Kirk is shot down when he reveals that he's dating a woman named Carol, and she's pregnant. As well, Chapel breaks it off with Spock, setting the stage for him to become the less openly emotional Vulcan we all know and love.
- Shout-Out:
- The singing and dancing is caused by an Improbability Field being generated by the subspace fold. That was the name of the field generated by the protagonists' starship to travel in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which also produced all sorts of random improbable phenomena at the moment of transit.
- In an early scene, the characters discuss the possibility of the improbability field turning them into bunnies; soon after that a scene begins with the line "I've got a theory." These are both shout-outs to the most famous Musical Episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Once More, with Feeling", which featured the song "I've Got a Theory" where the characters went through possible explanations for what was happening to them, including a digression where Anya sang about her long-established phobia of bunnies and how they must be the culprits.
- Singing Voice Dissonance: Garkog has a stereotypical gruff Klingon voice for normal conversation, but when the music hits and his crew goes full K-pop, his voice shoots up a few octaves.
- Special Edition Title:
- The opening credits music uses A Capella for most of the main theme, though accompanied by other instruments.
- The end credits use an instrumental medley of "I'm Ready", "Private Conversation", and "Connect to Your Truth".
- Spectacular Spinning: The Enterprise plus three K't'inga battlecruisers in the grand finale join the final number by flying in formation and spinning.
- Spontaneous Choreography: The subspace fold causes everyone to sing and dance with perfect choreography, especially for the grand finale. There's a moment in the first song where Ortegas and Mitchell exchange annoyed looks as the duo operate their consoles with identical movements, both seemingly trying not to copy the other and failing.
- Stealth Pun: The Klingon musical number is modeled on Korean popular music — i.e. a genre of music better known by its short name of K-pop.
- Stunned Silence: Uhura and Pelia stare open-mouthed when Spock starts singing. Pike then gets a look of pure "WTF" when the bridge crew join in.
- Even the music stops for a Beat after the K-Pop interlude during "We Are One."
- Techno Babble:
- Spock explains how the subspace fold is making people sing.Spock: I believe the song created a resonant frequency and dislodged something from the fold, a quantum uncertainty field.
Pike: Okay, why would that make us sing?
Spock: Imagine an area of space where quantum uncertainties collapse so rapidly and randomly that new realities are created. In one such reality, people sing uncontrollably.
Pelia: A musical reality.
Spock: Indeed. - Kirk comes in with the lampshade after they further technobabble up a solution.Kirk: Mr. Spock, you explained that very well. I almost understood it.
- Spock explains how the subspace fold is making people sing.
- Tempting Fate:
- Quoth Una: "The last thing anyone needs is singing Klingons." Guess what happens during the grand finale. Better than them shooting, at least.
- Batel and Pike don't have time to sort out their vacation plans because she's been called away on a priority one mission. They agree they'll make plans and go on the vacation afterward.
- Theme Tune Cameo: Straight after the last song ends and the anomaly is dealt with, a portion of the TOS theme is heard.
- This Is a Song: The first song, "Status Report", has the repeating refrain "Apologies / The most confounding thing / We appear to be singing / Most unusual / So peculiar".
- Time for Plan B: After Plan A (rezip the fold) makes everything worse and Plan B (blow it up) proves too dangerous to use, Pike wants a Plan C. Ultimately, the only solution is to play things out to their logical conclusion, which means invoking a grand finale.
- Time-Travel Tense Trouble: La'an has trouble trying to tell Kirk that she met another version of him."I met you before. I mean, not you, but another you."
- Tragic Keepsake: La'an has the sports watch she and alternate Kirk used to foil the Romulans.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: Twice in "Status Report".
- Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: Spock unwittingly triggers this when he asks Nurse Chapel why she never told him about her being accepted by a fellowship of scientists lead by Dr. Korby. In response, she sings "I'm Ready", basically telling him that she's going and if they have to break up, cool. This really devastates Spock and solidifies his role as The Stoic.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The well-discussed Techno Babble solution to closing the subspace fold completely backfires. Of course, it's a Foregone Conclusion that they won't end the Musical Episode before the halfway point.
- Wham Line: "Captain, can we have a private conversation, in a more discreet location, about our canceled vacation?" This reveals that the subspace fold's effects are spreading beyond the Enterprise.
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Klingon K-pop rappers, no less, after the incoming ship is affected by the Negative Space Wedgie and breaks into the middle of the Crowd Song at the Grand Finale.
- World of Ham: The musical reality brings out the inner ham of pretty much everyone affected (except Spock, of course). Pike in particular drops to his knees and holds out a hand dramatically during his duet with Batel.
- You Didn't See That: The Klingons break into the Crowd Song at the climax for a random K-pop rap number, only to evidently realize what they're doing and get so embarrassed they just wordlessly end the hail.
