I was pretty sure they were going to nail this as soon as it was announced. Treks always played around with music and characters with musical aptitude so this was inevitable eventually.

I'm not really a musical fan unless it's something I'm already interested in like this or, say, Pick of Destiny, thought this was great though, simple sci-fi justification, then all in on the concept. Thought the songs and "musical rules" were a good way of packing an episode with dense character work across the whole cast in an era when you only have ten episodes a year to play with.