Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Musical Episode: EPs Reveal the Klingons’ Boy Band Number Was Almost an Opera
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Klingons have a brutal reputation as fearsome warriors, but this week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds proved they could also be fierce singers and dancers.
The usually gruff humanoids made a brief but memorable appearance in the musical episode — with a surprise cameo from Hemmer portrayer Bruce Horak as General Garkog — reluctantly performing a catchy boy band number after being hailed. According to co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman, a different version of that fun segment exists somewhere in the ether.
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“One day, in the deleted scenes, you will see there’s an alternate version of that, which is opera,” Goldsman tells TVLine. “But [co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers] and I were very much married to the boy band thing.”
Klingons thrusting their swords in beautifully synchronized movements while crooning to a funky beat is a far-fetched idea that the Strange New Worlds EP admits took some convincing.
“Our partners trust us well enough. Still, often we will see on the other end of Zoom people staring back at us wondering if somehow somebody had overdone their medication last night,” he explains. “We say things like, ‘Yeah, that would be fun. A boy band is a really good idea,’ and we think it is, but it didn’t smoothly sail into the show.”
The Klingon bit might have been an odd, though entertaining, choice, but Spock’s melancholy number felt like a perfect fit for the character. During the hour, the science officer sang a sorrowful song about his breakup with Chapel, aptly reflecting his Season 2 journey of exploring his human emotions.
“This is younger Spock, who is going through things. He’s not ready to be the person that he becomes,” Myers notes of the Starfleet officer. “He is half-human, and he is half-Vulcan, and he’s got a lot on both sides that he’s got to work out. That’s the stuff we haven’t had a chance to see as much, so that’s part of the joy of writing for that character.”
Meanwhile, Celia Rose Gooding blew us away with a powerful number that spoke to Uhura’s gifted vocal abilities, as seen in the original Star Trek series.
“Uhura is a character who could sing, and we knew this from the history, and so it was something that came up when we were going through casting,” Myers shares. “We wanted someone who was capable of that, [and] we found someone who’s particularly good.”
When it comes to Uhura’s captivating number — about her underlying insecurity while trying to solve the crew’s musical problem — Myers notes that there are “a couple songs that made me cry, and that is one of the ones that just gets me.”
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