Strange New Worlds did a musical episode and I loved it.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds keeps knocking it out of the park for me. I'm an avid "Trek" fan, but this episode (which aired last week) took me a bit by surprise. Here's your obligatory "spoiler warning," as I'm going to discuss the episode. So, if you haven't seen it, you may want to come back after viewing it.

The Enterprise finds a sub-space fold that may enable instantaneous communications across vast distances. In testing whether or not this could be true, the crew sends a song through it and unwittingly creates an expanding reality that makes people break out in song every time their emotions grow too complex for mere words. The result is that we are treated to song after song, many of which are performed by the crew (according to official sources in the know like Variety). Anyway, it turns out that the musical numbers were constructed around the actor's natural vocal range. But the thing I was most impressed with is how it appears to be so easy (for some gifted people) to turn regular dialogue that one might have in a situation into a song.

Look, I've never been musically inclined. I only barely attended my first karaoke experience. I did like it; however, I realize that the world is a better place if I don't sing and let professionals take that on. I do appreciate music a lot, and I've always been mystified at how people like Lin Manuel Miranda can seemingly churn out endless songs. Sometimes I wonder if their head is just a never-ending stream of melodies, and what that must be like.

Also, Spock is a strange character to see singing--doubly so for Klingons! I never thought I'd see that, but Strange New Worlds knows how to surprise. Somewhere in the back of my mind though, I have a question about the musical anomoly/subspace fold: was it created by the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind? If so, that would make a lot of sense.