The soundtrack from the original 'Star Trek' was big and bold; 'We don't have music like that anymore'
By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
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Everett CollectionNO, SPOCK! The fight scene from 'Amok Time,' with its memorable music, was later parodied.
The theme music is unmistakable: Four mysterious, tentative notes descend in pings, building to a fanfare that heralds the slowly approaching vessel. As the brasses gather excitement, the giant ship gathers speed, cruising past the starry backdrop, an exhortation to venture on to strange new worlds. And then the voice-over: "Space, the final frontier…"
It is, of course, the opening of the original "Star Trek," the most famously cultish TV series of all time. When it debuted in 1966, it was unlike anything previously seen on the small screen, and the music was no exception. In fact, on a show that had an average per-episode budget of less than $200,000, music was often essential to evoking the necessary sense of wonder.
In a testament to the music's endurance, La-La Land Records has just released a $225, 15-CD set, "Star Trek: The Original Series Soundtrack Collection," with 17-plus hours of every piece of music from the show's three seasons, restored and remastered. Even non-Trekkies will likely recognize some of the more memorable passages—like the tyrannical horn motif of the treacherous Romulans in the episode "Balance of Terror." Or the screaming trumpet threat of the mindless, planet-destroying berserker in "The Doomsday Machine."
"The music has penetrated the public consciousness, but in an unconscious way," said Jeff Bond, author of "The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style," who wrote the liner notes. "Everyone memorizes the dialogue and moments from the show, but they don't realize they've also memorized the music."
"Star Trek," a product of the 1960s, unflinchingly explored prejudice, tolerance, war, love and other big themes of the day, and the jarring chords and ominous overtones of the music reinforced this boldness. As a result, perhaps, that soundtrack has had little influence on today's TV and movie scene, which tends to favor subtler strains.
Why, then, should the music endure? Precisely because it is so over the top, said David Gerrold, who wrote the popular comedic episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." "Look at all the great film scores," he said. "Look at 'Gone With the Wind,' 'King Kong,' 'Jaws' or 'Jurassic Park.' Those are blow-you-back-in-your-seat scores. We don't have music like that anymore. It's like the composers are afraid to stand up and be noticed."
The music still echoes for another reason. For all of its visions of weird life-forms, "Star Trek" was at heart a drama about human beings. So creator and executive producer Gene Roddenberry elected to depict their emotional states through time-honored and accessible means—with instruments and orchestras, not synthesizers, theremins or other trendy electronic gimmicks.
"I thought, my God, I had better keep as many things as possible very understandable to my audience," he recalled in 1982. "I was afraid that if, on top of bizarre alien seascapes, I had beep-beep-beep music, then I would be in trouble."
"Star Trek" had only a handful of composers. But they covered virtually every imaginable scenario—and they devised work so versatile that it was often tracked for very different uses in subsequent episodes. The seductive Lorelei call of planet Rigel VII in the pilot episode was used again for a seance in "Wolf in the Fold"—and then again when a witchy medicine woman formed a blood bond with a feverish Captain Kirk in "A Private Little War." Such endless recycling further imprinted the music on a generation.
Crushed as they were by production deadlines, "Star Trek" composers weren't able to give too much thought to their work. Alexander Courage, who composed the iconic opening theme, once dismissed science fiction as "marvelous malarkey," but he still managed to write all of the pilot episode's half-hour or so of music in just a week.
Today, the show's last surviving original composer looks back on his labors with satisfaction. An Emmy winner and Oscar nominee, Gerald Fried scored five episodes, among them "Amok Time," which included a harsh, driving theme for Vulcan hand-to-hand combat that was later spoofed in "The Cable Guy" and "The Simpsons."
"I'm aware of that because of my Ascap royalty checks," said Mr. Fried, 84, laughing during a telephone interview from his home in Santa Fe, N.M. "When people ask me what I've done, I say 'Star Trek' and they come to life."
The durability of "Star Trek" music, Mr. Fried suggested, lies in its unique tension between "human universal experience" and guesswork "at what space and the future will be like." A Scottish fan once approached him about his poignant flute-and-string piece in the episode "Shore Leave," which signaled the appearance of Captain Kirk's lost love, re-created by aliens out of his memories. The fan asked Mr. Fried if it could be played at his funeral.
"That's as touching a compliment as I ever got," said the composer.
—Mr. Vinciguerra is the editor of "Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs From the New Yorker."A version of this article appeared December 7, 2012, on page C2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Music That Lives Long and Prospers.
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