For the second year in a row, the Trek Track and the unofficial Dragon Con Theater and Performing Arts Lovers have worked together to present “Subspace Rhapsody Picture Show & Sing Along” Friday at 7PM in the Marriott Imperial Ballroom. More than a sing along, a full shadow cast performed the episode “Subspace Rhapsody” for the excited and full audience.

There were more than a few surprises for this year’s sing along, as director Sara Rose pulled in references from the current season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and kept everyone on their toes with some subtle comedy. For one thing, the mustache sported by Sam Kirk (played by Loren Collins) kept getting more and more elaborate. Erica Oretgas (played by January Sterling) sported a pair of aviator sunglasses so no one could mistake her for anything but the pilot of the ship. Most impressively though was Uhura (played by Lianne “Panda” McDonnell) who executed several costume changes throughout the show to evoke all of the different eras of Uhura, from Nichelle Nichols to Zoe Saldana to Celia Rose Gooding. It was a wonderful feat of stage craft.

One highlight that stayed the same from last year, however, was the embodiment of The Enterprise (played by Vulva Va-Voom). The ship danced and twirled through the music of the opening credits and shuddered and shook when hit with the improbability field. Bringing the ship to life like that, as the character we all know her to be, is a brilliant and engaging touch to the shadow cast.

Rose said that her goal with producing the show is to give a truly original theatrical performance. “While I love shadow casts as an audience member, starting from last year’s debut, and more strongly this year, I wanted to bring something to the stage that could stand up on its own without the rigid constructs of traditional shadow casts.”

This approach was fortuitous because there was a technical issue that didn’t allow for the video of the episode to be shown. In Rose’s opinion, it allowed the performers to be freer with their performances. However, the plan for the future is still to show the episode alongside the cast performance.

All of this came together in a relatively short period of time. Auditions ended on May 14, and then Rose started having one on one online rehearsals with the actors, who also received choreography videos to work from. But they didn’t all come together in person to work until Wednesday of con week from 10:30AM to 7:30PM and then again on Thursday from 11AM to 3:30PM. It was clear that the cast was having as much fun as the audience. Hopefully that means this sing along will become a well-loved staple of the convention for years to come.