My Five Definitive Star Trek Cues (At Least If You Asked Me Today, Which I Know You Didn’t)

Or

Yet Another Star Trek Related Blog Post on a Subject That’s Undoubtedly Been Covered Numerous Times Already on the Message Boards, Plus A Tangential Non-Film Score Related Item

With a new Star Trek score now playing on cd, most of my other Trek music has been dusted off and been getting a lot more play lately. While listening to Star Trek III, It struck me that the delightful "Stealing the Enterprise" cue is pretty representative of Horner’s overall contribution to the films. And then I thought I’d spit out a brief list of cues I felt covered the range of the series, cues that I can listen to again and again and again.


Star Trek: The Motion Picture / The Enterprise
As iconic as Goldsmith’s entire ST:TMP score is, this track sums up the whole film for me. I’d been reading about and waiting for a return of Star Trek for nearly my entire conscious life when ST:TMP finally arrived. I know some folks complain about the Enterprise sequence as being overlong and I feel sure this is one of the bits that contributed heavily to Harlan Ellison dubbing the film Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. But I don’t care. I loved it. And I still love it. The Enterprise was the first spaceship I really remember thinking was “cool” and the version unveiled here remains, to me, the best design. It’s gorgeous and they could have flown around that thing looking at all the intercoolers for five more minutes and I wouldn’t mind at all.  And Goldsmith’s music is simply peerless, from the slow build to the big reveal of the front of the ship followed by the swelling triumph of the full blown theme as Kirk arrives in his ship to a thundering bass roar. Crank this one up.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock / Stealing the Enterprise
A few months ago I heard the opening bars of this track on the classical music station. I was thrilled until I realized the music was diverting from what I remembered and finally understood that once again Horner had liberated some signature material from a great Russian composer. Oh well. It doesn’t diminish the joy found in the opening bars of the track and the subsequent tour through most of Horner’s major motives for the series. The sequence itself was great fun and one of the highlights of Star Trek III and the music remains a satisfying listen on its own.

Amok Time / The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah
Simply stated, this Gerald Fried track defines the musical sound of the original series. Ultimately used to accompany scores of fight scenes, the music in its original setting is thrilling, otherworldly and familiar all at once. It’s since appeared wherever Star Trek fight scenes are parodied, whether it’s the Cable Guy or This American Life, but the original retains its power. Come on, everybody hum it with me now: buh buh BAH BAH BAH BAH BAH buh buh BAH BAH DRUMMYdrummyDRUMMYdrummyDRUMMYdrummyDRUMMYrummyDRUM

The Cage / True Love
There are so many iconic musical moments from the original series it’s hard for me to not just list them all, and  as much as I wanted to try to figure out something from the Next Generation era to include here, I just can’t. I’m just not even familiar enough with it to be able to pick a standout track. So I return to the original series, my original love, the first TV show I really loved, and I present to you the wordless love theme that debuted in The Cage and reappeared in nearly every episode (I exaggerate) when Kirk first spied another attractive female. Alexander Courage helped define the Star Trek sound and even as I’m embarrassed not to include anything by the brilliant Fred Steiner, I stand by this choice. Again, I know we can all hum it in our sleep.

Star Trek / Enterprising Young Men
I’m a Star Trek nerd. And while I’m nowhere near Mark Altman or even Jeff Bond territory I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten more about Star Trek than most people will ever know. It took me along time to warm up to the Next Generation, I never did watch Deep Space Nine, gave up on Voyager when they encountered a pickup truck in space (although I did start tuning back in when Seven of Nine arrived – yes, because she was hot. So sue me). (And yes, I realize that I have said nothing about the so-called Enterprise tv show.) I loved the original cast movies, not so much the Next Gen movies. By the time of Insurrection I wasn’t bothering to arrive on opening night and I almost didn’t bother to see Nemesis at all (as it is I remember next to nothing about it). When they announced the reboot I was extremely leery. But I tried to withhold judgment until I’d actually seen the film. And I loved it. It was tremendous fun. And this cue from Giacchino’s score neatly summarizes his take on the material for me. It’s got a nice build to open, resulting in a big statement of his main theme. Then there’s some quieter material capped with a nice big brassy/percussiony fanfare thing to close it out. It’s short enough not to wear out its welcome and long enough to give it some definition. This score’s been growing on me and so far this is my favorite track.



And now this.

As I mentioned above, I tried not to find out too much about the new Trek movie. I wanted to see it with as little foreknowledge of plot and characters and such as possible. But I read a couple of times that Bruce Greenwood was playing Captain Pike. And that made me nervous. Because when I read that name, I pictured this face:

So I thought that Pike was going to be portrayed as, well, a bit of a cowardly weasel.

Needless to say, I was thinking of Bruce Davison instead of the actual Bruce Greenwood, who looks like this.

Whew.