In honor of the new Star Trek movie coming out this weekend and while I’m procrastinating on my review of The Great Gatsby soundtrack, I thought I’d revisit Star Trek in its original form – television.
Through the years, we’ve had the pleasure of experiencing Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ehhh), Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise. Some lovely person on YouTube happens to have already compiled the themes in one video here (there are 2 themes each for TNG and DS9, then 3 for Enterprise, because they changed slightly):
I like to think of the themes as siblings (to make it simpler, let’s have them all be brothers) in a single Star Trek TV family.
Star Trek: TOS – The eldest brother, and the hippie of the family. He’s constantly going on about how, like, space is so tubular and, like, deep and stuff. He likes to invite you over to hang out and talk about philosophy. His sound also gets stuck in your head easily. Ahh ahhh, aaaaahhh aaaahhh…
Star Trek: The Next Generation – The second oldest brother is a little more grounded, but also has a lot of pomp and energy. (Listen to those trumpets!) He kind of had a hyper phase when he was younger (Season 1), but then he mellowed out a little and gained some more awesome points by slowing down. His theme is all about hopping to the Enterprise’s continuing mission, and it’s exciting, people! He’s one of my favorite theme brothers.
Deep Space Nine – He’s the third brother, and is chilled out like the first brother, but in that “plays you nice music to wake up to in the morning” kind of way. He’s got some style, it’s true, but he’s not too dynamic in comparison with the others. Unlike the second brother, he had to put some pep in his step as he got older (Season 4) because his music was putting the other brothers back to sleep in the morning. His theme also makes me think of Mount Olympus for some reason.
Voyager – The fourth brother, and my top favorite. This dude’s got class. I mean, seriously, he’s got those gorgeous French horns on his side, and the music he plays is like the audio version of what it would be like to travel through space, accurately capturing the wonder and almost regal feel of exploration. He’s complex and interesting, with some nice drums, cymbals and strings thrown in along with many variating melodies in his theme. Yeah…the other brothers are probably a little jealous of how boss he sounds. Think “The Most Interesting Man in the World” of Star Trek themes. “Stay curious, my friends…and boldly go where no one has gone before…75,000 light years away from Earth. *clinks glass*”
Enterprise – The youngest brother in the Star Trek theme family, and…he went acoustic. He’s the sit-on-a-corner-and-play-guitar-for-his-art brother. His sound is very pretty, but he may be trying a little too hard to be more modern than his brothers by nixing the instrumentals. This brother is definitely all about the power ballad and the feels included therein. As he got older though, he tried to go retro or…something, and it just…didn’t work. (Season 3, whaaat?) Then there was a point where I think he got tired of his brothers haranguing him about the lack of instrumental music in his repertoire, but it led into his dark “episode,” and they let him go back to the power ballads afterward. They don’t like to talk about it.
I find it funny that TNG‘s theme was slowed down, whereas DS9‘s was sped up. If you listen to them though, the first TNG theme is pretty “OMGHI-IAMSTARTREKTNGHIHIHIHIEXPLORESPACETRUMPETSOMGTRUMPETSSSOKAYBYE!!!” while the first DS9 theme is a bit “*yaaaaaaawn* Mmm…oh right. Space…station…time.”
In case you were wondering, Alexander Courage composed the original Star Trek theme, Jerry Goldsmith did the themes for TNG and Voyager, Dennis McCarthy penned DS9‘s music, and Diane Warren was the mind behind Enterprise‘s intro.
Concerning Soundtracks 