Star Trek's Anson Mount Put A Little Shatner Into His Subspace Rhapsody Performance [Exclusive]
If "Star Trek" has abided by any one rule over its 50-plus years of existence, it's this: "Go big or go home." That's the sort of mindset that living in the shadow of "Star Wars" will do to a property, though this approach has been aided more so by the perfect combination of vastly different expectations, the (relatively) looser constraints of television syndication, and the benefits of pioneering sci-fi as a genre that encouraged the writers to go to some seriously wacky places. Time travel, a weird goo monster, and baby Clint Howard barely even scratch the surface of what "Trek" is capable of, but "Strange New Worlds" seems fully intent on shattering the limits of what fans can expect from their favorite franchise.
Hot on the heels of its crossover with "Lower Decks," "Strange New Worlds" has somehow managed to one-up itself with an all-out musical episode, featuring practically the entire cast belting their hearts out in its most exuberant and unabashedly theatre kid-appealing hour yet. As episode director Dermott Downs knew too well, there were many ways this ambitious risk could've fallen flat on its face, but viewers will likely find themselves completely charmed by the heart-on-their-sleeve emotions the Enterprise crew are finally allowed to display. But of all the cast members, Anson Mount in particular had the most trouble fully getting into character as this suddenly-singing version of Captain Christopher Pike.
In an interview with /Film, Downs opened up about the surprising directing note he used to coax Mount out of his shell — by evoking a bit of franchise legend (and /Film contributor) William Shatner.
'Just don't let the music get in the way of that'
When in doubt about a "Star Trek" musical episode, look to ... William Shatner? Of all the musically-inclined franchise stars to be inspired by, most filmmakers might've looked to Leonard Nimoy and his downright immortal rendition of "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins." Instead, well, we'll let "Strange New Worlds" director Dermott Downs explain it in his own words. In an interview with /Film's Jacob Hall, Downs responded to a question about which actor expressed the most reticence with the singing aspect of the intimidating episode:
"Well, I mean, I think Anson was like, 'Yeah, look, I'm not a singer. Maybe I did a musical once in college or something.' But I was like, 'Yeah, but the great thing about you is Pike is, one, the expression of the song. This is more spoken word to music.' So you think of, I mean, crazy comparison, but when [William Shatner] does 'Rocket Man,' it's like he's not really singing it. He's compelled to have this conversation. So I said, 'Just don't let the music get in the way of that.' And even when we recorded his version that he would sing the playback, I just was like, 'Just focus on performance.' He's such a great actor that unless the performance was coming out as the primary intent, then we were not going to honor the sort of grounded template of what the show is, so that was always foremost."
The Shatner performance he's referring to, of course, comes from the 1978 Saturn Awards ceremony when the man, myth, and legend delivered a spoken-word rendition of Elton John's "Rocket Man" — seriously, it needs to be seen to be believed.
The Shatner effect
Watching the episode, viewers can recognize a little of that Shatner influence in the opening number, particularly with Pike exasperatingly watching the chaos unfold around him on the bridge of the Enterprise before finally demanding of the heavens, "But why are we singing?!" To the actor's credit, Anson Mount does end up getting into the action in a big way later on and acquits himself extremely well with "Private Conversation" — and nobody less than Pike himself would be proud of such an effort. Fans will undoubtedly get into fierce debates over which members of the cast ended up most deserving of adding new musically-inclined highlights to their personal acting reels (Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura is an obvious frontrunner, but allow me to give Ethan Peck's Spock some serious flowers for his baritone and especially his soulful singing of "I'm the X"), but nobody ought to sneeze at Mount.
It's easy to understand why several "Strange New Worlds" actors might have balked at the idea of an hour-long musical diversion, as much fun as everyone obviously seemed to have during filming. One significant point in the episode's favor, however, comes from the fact that several of the show's slow-burning relationships go through some serious development as the plot-driven excuse to have everyone break out in song — something to do with a subspace rift, an ill-placed song message messing with frequencies, and a whole lot of suspension of disbelief — has the added effect of forcing characters who would normally bottle up their emotions to bare their souls to the people who matter most to them. Here's hoping Shatner himself takes the time to catch this episode, too.
The aptly-named "Subspace Rhapsody" episode of "Strange New Worlds" is currently available to stream on Paramount+.