MUSIC IN STAR TREK

The tensions between utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties permeate science
fiction as a genre, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Star Trek.
This book breaks new ground by exploring music and sound within the Star Trek
franchise across decades and media, offering the first sustained look at the role of
music in shaping this influential series. The chapters in this edited collection
consider how the aural, visual, and narrative components of Star Trek combine as
it constructs and deconstructs the utopian and dystopian, shedding new light on
the series’ political, cultural, and aesthetic impact.
Considering how the music of Star Trek defines and interprets religion,
ideology, artificial intelligence, and more, while also considering fan interactions
with the show’s audio, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of
music, media studies, science fiction, and popular culture.

Jessica Getman is an Assistant Professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology at

California State University, San Bernardino, and a film musicologist focusing on
music in television and science fiction media.

Brooke McCorkle Okazaki is an Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton

College in Northfield, Minnesota. She specializes in opera of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, film music, and the music of modern Japan.

Evan Ware is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at California

State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His scholarship focuses on reinterpretation
and meaning in popular and film/television music.
MUSIC IN STAR TREK
Sound, Utopia, and the Future

Edited by Jessica Getman,

Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware
Cover image: sabelskaya/Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki and Evan Ware to
be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
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without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Getman, Jessica, editor. | Okazaki, Brooke McCorkle, 1980-
editor. | Ware, Evan, editor.
Title: Music in Star Trek : sound, utopia, and the future / edited by Jessica
Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware.
Description: [1.] | New York : Routledge, 2023. |
Series: Routledge music and screen media series | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029218 (print) | LCCN 2022029219 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138615243 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138615250 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780429463228 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Star Trek films‐‐History and criticism. | Star Trek
television programs‐‐History and criticism. | Motion picture
music‐‐History and criticism. | Science fiction in music.
Classification: LCC ML2075 .M8759 2023 (print) | LCC ML2075
(ebook) | DDC 781.5/42‐‐dc23/eng/20220622
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029218
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029219
ISBN: 978-1-138-61524-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-61525-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46322-8 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228

Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
CONTENTS

List of Examples viii

List of Figures xii
List of Tables xiv
List of Abbreviations xv
Series Foreword xvi
Preface: Jay Chattaway xviii

1 Introduction: Hearing Utopia in Star Trek 1

Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

2 Star Trek: The Original Series, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces,

and Music 16
Amanda Keeler

3 The Trouble with Trebles: Orchestration and False

Utopias in Star Trek: The Original Series 28
Reba A. Wissner

4 Tracks for Trek: Music in Network Ads for Star Trek: The
Original Series 41
James Deaville
vi Contents

5 From Spock with Love: Fan Audio, Participatory Media,

and Circulating the Materials of Star Trek Fan Culture 62
Kate Galloway

6 Loving Lwaxana, Trek’s Sonically Disruptive Diva 86

Josh Morrison

7 I, Musician: Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence

in the Star Trek Franchise 108
Jessica Getman

8 Not Logical, but Often True: The Evolving Role of

Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 134
Naomi Graber

9 Sinatra in Space: Music for Hope and Loss Beyond the

Final Frontier 154
Tim Summers

10 Markers of Utopian Difference: Music in Deep Space Nine

(1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 177
Paul Sommerfeld

11 No, They’re Not Gonna Change My Mind: Anti-Fandom

and the Enterprise Title Cue 199
Evan Ware

12 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek

Film Scores 232
Louis Niebur

13 Songs of the Final Frontier: Listening to Whales in Star

Trek IV: The Voyage Home 246
Sarah Rebecca Kessler

14 Days of Utopia Past: Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009)

Soundtrack 259
Brooke McCorkle Okazaki
 Contents vii

15 Epilogue: The Conflicted Utopias of Star Trek’s

Renaissance (2017–) 280
Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

Contributors 293
Index 297
EXAMPLES

3.1 Gerald Fried, “Olde English,” mm. 1–6 from “Shore Leave.”
Transcribed by author 33
3.2 Gerald Fried, “Pine Trees,” flute solo, mm. 1–8 from “The
Paradise Syndrome.” Transcribed by author 36
3.3 Gerald Fried, the Tahiti Syndrome theme from “The
Amerinds,” mm. 7–9 from “The Paradise Syndrome.”
Transcribed by author 36
4.1 NBC stock action cue, from “First ever Star Trek Promo
(1966).” Transcribed by Adrian Matte, with thanks 50
4.2 Enterprise theme, from “NBC Previews - 1965–1966 TV
Season.” Transcribed by Adrian Matte 52
4.3 New fanfare music, from “NBC 1966 [sic] Star Trek
Promo - 60 sec.” Transcribed by Adrian Matte 56
7.1a The “Big Ruk” theme by Fred Steiner, from the TOS episode
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Transcribed by author 111
7.1b From the cue “Android Kirk” (M22) by Fred Steiner,
demonstrating Steiner’s use of his “Kirk’s Theme,” from
the TOS episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
Transcribed by author 111
7.2a From the cue “Data’s Brother” by Ron Jones, from the TNG
episode “Datalore.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 113
7.2b From the cue “Data’s Beginning” by Ron Jones, from the
TNG episode “Datalore.” Transcribed by author, Andrew S.
Kohler, and Evan Ware 113
7.3a From the cue “Yellow Alert” by Ron Jones, from the TNG
episode “Q, Who?” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 115
 Examples ix

7.3b From the cue “Borg Engaged” by Ron Jones, from the TNG
episode “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I.” Transcribed by
author and Evan Ware 115
7.3c From track 13, “Borg Montage,” from the soundtrack to Star
Trek: First Contact, composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Joel
Goldsmith. Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 115
8.1 Gerald Fried, “Fight Music,” block two, from the TOS
episode “Amok Time.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 140
8.2 Dennis McCarthy, “Orbosity,” from the DS9 episode “The
Circle.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 143
8.3a David Bell, theme from “The Followers Throw the Pills” in
the DS9 episode “Covenant.” Transcribed by author and
Evan Ware 145
8.3b Dennis McCarthy, opening fanfare from the DS9 title cue.
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 145
10.1 Jay Chattaway, cue M11, mm. 34–37. From the DS9 episode
“The Collaborator” (1:35). Transcribed by author 180
10.2 Jerry Goldsmith, opening of the TNG title theme. Transcribed
by author 181
10.3 Dennis McCarthy, DS9 title theme. Transcribed by author 181
10.4 Dennis McCarthy, from the DS9 episode “Emissary” (5:37).
Transcribed by author 183
10.5 Dennis McCarthy, from the DS9 episode “Emissary”
(1:28:10). Transcribed by author 184
10.6 Jay Chattaway, cue M11, mm. 1–2. From the DS9 episode
“The Adversary” (0:40). Transcribed by author 185
10.7 Dennis McCarthy, from the DS9 episode “What You Leave
Behind” (1:14:52). Transcribed by author 187
10.8 Jay Chattaway, from the VOY episode “Caretaker” (15:30;
1:10:25). Transcribed by author 189
10.9 Jay Chattaway, cue M84Rev2, mm. 46–49. From the VOY
episode “Caretaker” (1:29:20). Transcribed by author 189
10.10 Jay Chattaway, cue M42, mm. 5–8. From the VOY episode
“Tuvix” (28:30). Transcribed by author 191
10.11 Jay Chattaway, cue 54, mm. 34–35. From the VOY episode
“Tuvix” (44:45). Transcribed by author 192
10.12 Jay Chattaway, cue M65, mm. 1–11. From the VOY
episode “Endgame” (1:06:40). Transcribed by author 193
10.13 Jay Chattaway, cue M66Rev, mm. 17–20. From the VOY
episode “Endgame” (1:09:00). Transcribed by author 193
11.1 “Faith of the Heart” (ENT) beginning of the first verse (time
code 0:00:00–0:00:07). Transcribed by author 205
x Examples

11.2 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) introduction, prior to

main title theme (time code 0:00:00–0:00:47). Transcribed
by author 206
11.3 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) introduction, prior to main
title theme (time code 0:00:00–0:00:36). Transcribed by
author 207
11.4 Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) introduction, prior to main title
theme (time code 0:00:00–0:00:16). Transcribed by author 208
11.5 TNG transition to main title theme (time code
0:00:47–0:00:50). Transcribed by author 209
11.6 DS9 transition to main title theme (time code
0:00:34–0:00:36). Transcribed by author 210
11.7 VOY transition to main title theme (time code
0:00:13–0:00:17). Transcribed by author 210
11.8 ENT main title verse, pre-chorus, and chorus (time code
0:00:00–0:01:06). Transcribed by author 211
11.9 VOY main title A section period form (time code
0:00:17–0:0:44). Transcribed by author 213
11.10 VOY B and A’ sections (time code 0:00:54–0:01:27).
Transcribed by author 214
11.11 TNG main title A section antecedent phrase (time code
0:00:50–0:00:58). Transcribed by author 214
11.12 TNG A section departure phrase (time code
0:00:59–0:01:07). Transcribed by author 215
11.13 TNG main title overall form. Transcribed by author 216
11.14 TNG B and A’ sections (time code 0:01:25–end).
Transcribed by author 216
11.15 DS9 main title theme form (time code 0:00:36–end).
Transcribed by the author 217
11.16 ENT main title verse, and pre-chorus (time code
0:00:00–0:31). Transcribed by author 218
11.17 ENT verse and pre-chorus, melodic-harmonic divorces
marked with boxes (time code 0:00:00–0:00:31).
Transcribed by author 219
11.18 ENT chorus melody with melodic-harmonic divorce in box
(time code 0:00:31–0:00:45). Transcribed by author 220
11.19 ENT choruses and coda (time code 0:00:31–end).
Transcribed by author 220
14.1 The fanfare from the original Star Trek television series’ title
cue by Alexander Courage. Transcribed by Jessica Getman,
“Music, Race, and Gender.” Used with permission 266
 Examples xi

14.2 The space theme from the original Star Trek television series’
title cue by Alexander Courage. Transcribed by Jessica
Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender.” Used with permission 266
14.3 The beguine from the original Star Trek television series’ title
cue by Alexander Courage. Transcribed by Jessica Getman,
“Music, Race, and Gender.” Used with permission 266
14.4 The main theme from Star Trek (2009) by Michael Giacchino.
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 267
14.5 Spock’s theme from the original Star Trek television series by
Gerald Fried. Transcribed by Jessica Getman, “Music, Race,
and Gender.” Used with permission 270
14.6 Spock’s theme from Star Trek (2009) by Michael Giacchino.
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 271
15.1 The Discovery title cue. Transcribed by Evan Ware 282
15.2 Opening bars from the Picard title cue. Transcribed by Evan
Ware 284
15.3 Cello solo from the Picard title cue. Transcribed by Evan Ware 285
15.4 Opening bars from the Lower Decks title cue. Transcribed by
Jessica Getman and Evan Ware 288
FIGURES

3.1 Vaal’s Cave in “The Apple” 34

4.1 Screenshot of the Chariot, from “Lost in Space TV promo
(1965)” 45
4.2 Screenshot of the Seaview, from “Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea Promo Season One #1” 45
4.3 Screenshot from James Bama’s Poster Art for Star Trek 50
4.4 Screenshot of the Enterprise, from “NBC Previews - 1965-1966
TV Season” 51
4.5 Screenshot of the Enterprise, from “Remember Next Year: A
Lighthearted Look at NBC’s Coming Season. 1967” 55
4.6 Screenshot of the Enterprise, from “NBC 1966 [sic] Star Trek
Promo - 60 sec” 56
5.1 Episode stills of Captain Picard Day from “The Pegasus” 64
5.2 The panels of the Kirk and Spock Birthday Card as performed
on YouTube 69
5.3 “Star Trek Hallmark Bday Card 02” as performed on
YouTube 72
5.4 “Hallmark Star Trek Birthday Card 04” as performed on
YouTube 73
5.5 U.S.S. Enterprise Door Chime unboxing video performed on
YouTube 76
5.6 The opening frames of “Pony Trek Trailer” (with voice-
acting annotations by author) 78
7.1 Two Kirks, one human and the other android, from the TOS
episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” 111
7.2 The androids Data and Lore from the TNG episode “Datalore” 112
 Figures xiii

7.3 Borg drones from the TNG episode “Q Who” 114

7.4 Data with Mr. Holmes’s violin on the holodeck of Enterprise-
D, from the TNG episode “Elementary, Dear Data” 117
7.5 The EMH singing “Rondine al nido” in the VOY episode
“Virtuoso” 117
7.6 Seven of Nine as she first appears in the VOY episode
“Scorpion, Part II,” as a Borg drone 124
7.7 Seven of Nine and the Doctor duetting “You Are My Sunshine”
in the VOY episode “Someone to Watch Over Me” 125
7.8 Craft (Aldis Hodge) and the holographic Zora (portrayed by
Sash Striga) dancing to “S’Wonderful” from Funny Face
(1957) in the Short Trek “Calypso” 127
8.1 Major Kira faces the Orb of Prophecy. Screenshot from the
DS9 episode “The Circle” 142
9.1 The heist crews in Ocean’s 11 (top) and Deep Space Nine
(bottom). Screenshots by the author 168
14.1 James T. Kirk admires the unfinished U.S.S. Enterprise as he
prepares to join Starfleet. Screenshot from Star Trek (2009) 268
TABLES

7.1 Western art music used diegetically in the Star Trek franchise 119
9.1 Popular songs associated with Vic performed in Deep Space
Nine 157
10.1 Comparison of episodes scored by Chattaway and McCarthy
to total number aired 178
11.1 Prototypical Star Trek title cue family resemblance taxonomy 222
11.2 ENT title cue’s anti-prototypical taxonomy 224
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TOS Star Trek: The Original Series

TAS Star Trek: The Animated Series
TNG Star Trek: The Next Generation
DS9 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
VOY Star Trek: Voyager
ENT Star Trek: Enterprise
DSC Star Trek: Discovery
PIC Star Trek: Picard
LDS Star Trek: Lower Decks

ST:TMP Star Trek: The Motion Picture

ST:WOK Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
ST:SFS Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
ST:VH Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
ST:FF Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
ST:UC Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
ST:GEN Star Trek Generations
ST:FC Star Trek: First Contact
ST:INS Star Trek: Insurrection
ST:NEM Star Trek Nemesis
ST09 Star Trek (2009)
SERIES FOREWORD

While the scholarly conversations about music in film and visual media have
been expanding prodigiously since the last quarter of the twentieth century, a
need remains for focused, specialized studies of particular films as they relate
more broadly to genres. This series includes scholars from across the disciplines
of music and film and media studies, of specialists in both the audible as well as
the visual, who share the goal of broadening and deepening these scholarly
dialogues about music in particular genres of cinema, television, videogames,
and new media. Claiming a chronological arc from the birth of cinema in the
1890s to the most recent releases, the Routledge Music and Screen Media
series offers collections of original essays written for an interdisciplinary
audience of students and scholars of music, film and media studies in general,
and interdisciplinary humanists who give strong attention to music. Driving the
study of music here are the underlying assumptions that music together with
screen media (understood broadly to accommodate rapidly developing new
technologies) participates in important ways in the creation of meaning and
that including music in an analysis opens up the possibility for interpretations
that remain invisible when only using the eye.
The series was designed with the goal of providing a thematically unified group
of supplemental essays in a single volume that can be assigned in a variety of
undergraduate and graduate courses (including courses in film studies, in film
music, and other inter-disciplinary topics). We look forward to adding future
volumes addressing emerging technologies and reflecting the growth of the
academic study of screen media. Rather than attempting an exhaustive history or
 Series Foreword xvii

unified theory, these studies—persuasive explications supported by textual and

contextual evidence—will pose questions of musical style, strategies of rhetoric,
and critical cultural analysis as they help us to see, to hear, and ultimately to
understand these texts in new ways.

Neil Lerner
Series Editor
PREFACE
Jay Chattaway

It is quite an interesting challenge to discuss the origins of my musical contributions to

the Star Trek franchise, especially in terms of utopian and dystopian comparisons. I
have read many of the wonderful essays in this book and am amazed that scholars have
actually delved into the theory and mechanics of the music with such great detail. I
was not a Trekkie, but the sounds and music of Star Trek (the original series) were
played on a television outside my dorm room while at college. Perhaps subliminally,
that music permeated my vocabulary. I had no idea that many years later I would
become one of the main musical contributors to the Star Trek franchise.
When I was asked to do a guest musical appearance on Star Trek: The Next
Generation (TNG), the music supervisor encouraged me to not listen to what other
composers were writing, but to compose my version of what a space epic should
sound like. My background in scoring films was quite traditional and it probably
was not a coincidence that many of my recent films starred actors who didn’t speak
much: Missing-in-Action with Chuck Norris and Red Scorpion starring Dolph
Lungren. It was very much up to the music to help tell the story and actually
telegraph to the viewers what the actors might be pondering. The scores became a
tone poem, where it was possible to listen to the music and figure out the story
without watching the film or hearing the dialogue. This was also the vision of the
films’ director, Joseph Zito. Recently I watched the latest Star Wars film and reacted
in a similar fashion. The music was so beautifully motive-driven that I could close
my eyes and figure out the plot based on John Williams’ well-crafted score.
My first experience scoring Star Trek: The Next Generation was for an episode called
“Tin Man” (Season 3, episode 20). I naturally took the motivic route and wrote
themes for the various cultures represented in the show. I composed both Klingon
and Romulan themes, motives for the sentient spaceship—Tin Man—and, of
course, I reprised Alexander Courage’s famous fanfare. Since this was my first score
 Preface xix

for the producers of Star Trek, they attended the scoring session in force. We used to
record the entire score for each episode in one day with a full symphony orchestra. In
approximately six hours, we recorded and mixed around thirty minutes of complex
music. None of the music had been rehearsed previously. Studio musicians are
excellent sight readers, and recording engineers are also amazingly proficient in
getting the score to sound great in a manner of minutes.
My score was a bit more complicated in that I utilized a “whale chorus,” a
digitally-sampled chorus of whales that could be performed and tuned to match
the orchestra by a musician triggering the sounds on an electronic keyboard. I
also employed an electronic wind instrument playing samples derived from some
non-Western instruments such as South American pan flutes.
Naturally, I chose one of the most complicated musical cues to begin the recording
session, a six-minute action piece that represented all the various motives I had
composed. The orchestra (and the whales) performed flawlessly and I was elated.
Most of my previous scores were recorded in layers, so I never really heard the end
result until after we mixed all the elements together. Not so this time, as the luxury of
having a large orchestra to record our music meant that we had to complete it in a
limited time-frame, mostly because of budgetary and scheduling restraints.
After completing the recording, I went into the recording booth expecting
some “high fives” and congratulatory remarks from the producers. Instead, I
witnessed a lot of discussion, which was not at all what I had envisioned. Finally,
one of the producers said, “Okay, that’s fine. Now let’s hear something
different!” What? I had just performed a six-minute epic piece with themes
incorporating all my best ideas, and they wanted something different on the spot?
This was a piece of music nearly 250 measures long for full orchestra; it had taken
me nearly three days to compose and orchestrate it.
I asked them to be a bit more specific, as my mind was already spinning about
how I might reconstruct a six-minute action cue on the spur of the moment.
That is when I got the lecture on why the “new” Star Trek music should be
different than the Star Wars approach and the previous Star Trek scoring that I had
referenced in my first attempt.

Jay, all those melodies and stuff, we don’t really like those. What if you took
them out? And the music sort of tells the story without needing to watch the
film. Don’t do that. Those chords everywhere really telegraph the intent of the
characters. Could you change them? And by the way, we really don’t like all
that percussion. [I had three percussionists and three electronic keyboards.] We
believe that the Star Trek audience should be able to make up their own minds
as to what might be going to happen and not be telegraphed as to the outcome
or intent of the characters. In other words, the music should remain somewhat
neutral, as we believe the Star Trek audience to be very intelligent and capable
of making up their own minds.
xx Jay Chattaway

Interestingly enough, they really liked the whale chorus.

Perhaps this was a test of my flexibility—my ability to make changes and be a
team player. I imagine other composers might not have been as apt to please such
demanding producers. I spoke to the orchestra and we removed some of the
melodic elements. Harmonically speaking, I asked the players, if they were playing
what appeared to be the third of a chord, to please move it to either the root or the
fifth. I reserved the more active low percussion for various sections of the cue.
Some theorists believe this could have been the genesis of the new Klingon sound:
parallel fifths and percussion with limited melodic contours. I approached the
remainder of the cues in a similar manner, and we finished on time.
The music was mixed into the show and was soon heard by millions of fans, who
made favorable comments regarding it. I guess I passed the test, as soon afterwards I
was hired as a regular composer and remained a major musical contributor to Star
Trek for sixteen years. This rather “linear atmospheric” style continued for many
years. Once the Borg became a prominent feature in the franchise, I developed a
“collective swarm motif” which was employed in subsequent episodes.
The exceptions to these rules were the scenes that occurred in the Holodeck.
There, most constraints were lifted and the composing was a bit more related to the
actual holographic experience, without much regard to the TNG musical doctrine.
One of my first Holodeck challenges was in the episode “A Fistful of Datas”
(Season 6, episode 8). At the music spotting session I was warned not to go over the
top with the Western motives. Being somewhat prepared for this, I tracked part of
the episode with some music from Ennio Morricone’s score for Once Upon A Time
In The West (1968). The producers seemed to enjoy this but warned me to remain
true to the revamped musical approach to the Trek franchise at proper moments. As
a result, an interesting hybrid—which incorporated motivic/topic and atmospheric
approaches—developed, with the music switching back and forth between styles
at the proper moments. This technique was also used in the Deep Space Nine
episode “Our Man Bashir” (Season 4, episode 10), which features a James Bond-
esque storyline and music. Deep Space Nine also incorporated a highly intuitive
lounge singer named Vic Fontaine. This enabled the composers to write in a jazzy
style reminiscent of the Rat Pack era.
An interesting note regarding the use of music in Star Trek was the point of
origin of the musical cue itself. In a high percentage of musical entrances, the
music signified something was wrong. The camera operator shook the camera,
the actors seemed out of balance, and the music entered in a discordant fashion.
Rarely did the music signify positivity at its introduction. However, in the final
cadence of each episode there was a slightly disguised hint of a future that could
be considered more utopian. The main exception to this was my approach
to scoring the award-winning episode “The Inner Light” (TNG Season 5,
episode 25). I was asked to compose a folk-like melody for Patrick Stewart to
perform on his “Ressikan flute.” This melody was utilized in the episode’s score
(as well as in later episodes), and the episode concluded with the solo flute playing
 Preface xxi

this theme as the Enterprise flew off to another adventure. The theme has become
one of the most popular of all the music in the Star Trek musical world, and
remains my favorite composition.
I am delighted to know that live orchestral music continues to be such an
important part of the Star Trek franchise. This was another of Gene Roddenberry’s
visions for a utopian future, and I am hopeful that scoring that vision with organic
orchestral musicians will continue far into the future.
1
INTRODUCTION
Hearing Utopia in Star Trek

Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

“Maybe we weren’t meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way
through. Struggle. Claw our way up. Scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we
can’t stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.”1
Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) proclaimed this lonely edict on the
dimmed and quiet bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise near the end of the original series
(TOS) episode “This Side of Paradise.” Sweeping sensor pings and busy computer
chatters—the near-constant sonic specters of Star Trek’s technology—have been
silenced as Kirk faces mutiny. The orchestral underscore creeps in soft and low,
accompanied by a distant snare drum, underscoring Kirk as he records a troubled
captain’s log about his crew’s decision to leave Starfleet and remain on the sup-
posedly utopian planet below, Omicron Ceti III. A swelling cello line accompanies
him as he reflects on his isolation. Absent is the romantic theme—performed on
flute, harp, and strings—that underscores the relationship between first officer
Lieutenant Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and the woman for whom he has left the
Enterprise. The electronically modified sound of a plucked guitar that had become
associated with the alien plant whose chemicals conjured the illusory paradise
below is likewise gone. Instead, the snare drum continues its military drill as Kirk
resolves to recover his crew.2
This episode captures the tension between utopian dreams and dystopian
anxieties that permeates science fiction media. In the twentieth century and
beyond, authors have been dismantling the classical utopian model of Thomas
More and H. G. Wells in favor of stories that challenge it. Increasingly, science
fiction literature and screen media have grappled with the dystopian probabilities
inspired by bleak political, social, and environmental realities. From Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis and George Orwell’s 1984 to the more recent Hunger Games series and
the BioShock video games, we find that utopia is often either a mirage, an erasure,
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-1
2 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

or a harsh anti-utopia for all but the elite.3 Yet Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek has,
until recent years, fairly consistently presented an optimistic view of humanity’s
future. This is a primary characteristic of the franchise put in place by
Roddenberry, who envisioned an end to bigotry, poverty, and the nation-state
system in favor of a world government inspired by socialist ideals. In its multiple
incarnations, Star Trek embraces a future that depicts humanity transcending
its baser qualities. Star Trek’s dream is an “inherently collective” one in which, as
Carl Freedman has noted of utopia, “the future is the object of hope, of our
deepest and most radical longings.”4
Still, Star Trek—like most science fiction—has a complex relationship with the
notion of utopia. Originally conceived as an Earth-centric (but outer-space-facing)
universe in which capitalism and war have been left behind in favor of Marxist
internationalism and post-scarcity socialism, this long-lived franchise nevertheless
recursively scrutinizes and critiques the notion of the “ideal” society.5 In episodes
like “This Side of Paradise” and “Justice” (Star Trek: The Next Generation [TNG]),
the franchise tantalizes its audiences with the possibility of perfection and plenty
even as it dismantles those hopes.6 Utopian stories and narrative devices in Star Trek
are useful for highlighting the “barriers of the status quo that utopia works to
transcend.”7
This reliance on and yet critique of the notion of utopia has been part and
parcel of science fiction, a genre that has generally tended to create more perfect
societies through scientific and technological imagination.8 To be clear, the re-
presentation of true utopias in science fiction tends to be rare, as a utopian society
is a static society and science fiction as a whole is more interested in challenge,
progress, and change.9 The 1960s and ’70s were a hotspot for science fiction
utopias in literature, film, and television as a response to the social movements of
the time; in that light, the abundance of utopian societies visited in TOS (and the
relative lack of them in future series and films) makes sense. M. Keith Booker and
Anne-Marie Thomas have noted that, in the 1980s and beyond, the conservative
retrenchment of the Reagan years darkened science fiction’s outlook.10 In the
post-9/11 world, the perspective seems even grimmer, as evidenced through
television series like the revised Battlestar Galactica and the compilation series Black
Mirror.11 Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn, however, still find “tantalizing
fragments” of utopian vision in science fiction’s relentless pursuit of progress and
its willingness to explore new directions.12 Utopian societies in science fiction,
therefore, tend to be dismantled in the pursuit of “struggle and progress,” but the
utopian spirit remains.13 The struggle and progress of this utopian spirit may be
technological, biological, environmental, social, or political.
In dealing with utopian dreams, Star Trek has been, and remains, a political
text. George A. Gonzalez, in his book Star Trek and Politics, notes that the
franchise’s utopian ideals (the making of human society into “a classless, pros-
perous and thriving one—free of want and gender/ethnic biases”) are based on
two assumptions, first that a one-world government is necessary for a “peaceful
 Introduction 3

and sustainable society,” and second that all of humanity’s cultures and societies
would benefit from assimilation into the “modern Western political culture.”14
This utopic vision has eventually become the object of critique in series like Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) and Star Trek: Picard (PIC), which have quite clearly
pointed out the flaws in the Federation’s foundation. The franchise’s music assists
in this critique, as music and sound provide an important dimension by which to
dissect Trek’s ideologies and interpret its contentious relationship with the idea of
a perfect world and a perfect social system.

Studying the Music and Sound of Star Trek

A collection of published essays on music in the Star Trek franchise has been a long
time coming, as there have been few publications on Star Trek’s soundtrack
components (music, sound effects, and voice). Most have appeared either as articles
in journals (Journal of the Society for American Music; Music, Sound, and the Moving
Image; Music and the Moving Image; Science Fiction Film and Television; and Journal of
Fandom Studies), or as essays in compiled editions (such as Routledge’s Music in
Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future).15 There have been two dissertations on
music in the franchise (by Jessica Getman [2015] and Paul Sommerfeld [2017]), but
academically useful books on the topic are scarce; in fact, defining such works
liberally, there are only three.16
The first is Jeff Bond’s book, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style (1999).17
A film music critic who specializes in science fiction and fantasy flicks, Bond saw
the need for an “official fans [sic] guide to the composers of Star Trek.” This book
is primarily a collection of interviews with the franchise’s composers and includes
some discussion of specific cues from the television series and films, starting with
the original series and moving through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The second
work is a chapter by Ron Rodman in his book Tuning In: American Narrative
Television Music (2009): “‘Beam Me Up, Scottie!’: Leitmotifs, Musical Topos, and
Ascription in the Sci-Fi Drama.”18 This chapter treats the TOS episode “Shore
Leave” as a case study on how music in television parallels or differs from film
music, particularly in its use of leitmotivs (musical symbols and signs specific to a
film or franchise) and musical topics (conventional musical idioms that have
acquired meaning by re-use in similar contexts, such as “romantic” music and
“fight” music). The final book of interest is Music in Science Fiction Television:
Tuned to the Future, edited by Kevin Donnelly and Philip Hayward (2013).19 As
the title suggests, this is not a book about Star Trek itself, but rather a collection of
essays on the scoring of science fiction television series. The value of this book is
that it addresses the particularities of writing music for television and the science
fiction genre in particular. The chapter of greatest relevance here is Neil Lerner’s
“Hearing the Boldly Goings: Tracking the Title Themes of the Star Trek
Television Franchise, 1966–2005.”20 Still, science fiction has engendered a un-
ique set of moves for the scoring of technology, outer space, aliens, time travel,
4 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

and more, and collections such as these highlight these trends. Two other
compiled editions fulfill the same role in identifying musical moves fundamental
to this genre without, however, discussing Star Trek: Off the Planet: Music, Sound
and Science Fiction Cinema by Philip Hayward (2004), and Sounds of the Future:
Essays on Music in Science Fiction Film by Mathew J. Bartkowiak (2010).21
Several journal articles on music and sound in the franchise stand out, and
probably the most important of these is by Fred Steiner, one of the composers for
TOS who later switched careers to academia with a research focus on music in film
and television. His 1983 article on the music of Star Trek outlines scoring proce-
dures for the original series and provides background information on the series’
composers and musical crew.22 Little else was penned about music in the Star Trek
franchise between that point and the 2010s, save for Jeff Bond’s book. Articles from
within the last decade, however, delve into the Star Trek soundtracks in greater
depth. Jessica Getman’s “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title
Cue” explores the ideological foundations of Alexander Courage’s main theme for
TOS.23 Tim Summers’ “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other”
addresses the orientalist and exoticist scoring of aliens within the franchise.24 More
recently, Summers has also written about music in the trailers for Star Trek Beyond
and on the music of the Star Trek video games.25 Finally, Craig Owen Jones has
released an article on the nostalgic use of jazz in the TNG holodeck experience.26
Though publications on music in Star Trek are few, there have been several
books written on politics, religion, and philosophy in the franchise. These more
closely consider the ways in which societies in Trek have been built by their
creators, especially Gene Roddenberry. By nature, they touch on the franchise’s
representations of utopia over the decades. Recent books on this topic include
George Gonzalez’s The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future, which
examines the franchise’s narratives surrounding neoliberalism, the Cold War,
American military policy, world government, and, of course, utopian thought.27
Matthew Kapell’s Exploring the Next Frontier: Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek and Utopia
in 1960s and 1970s American Myth and History, on the other hand, focuses on
American ideologies surrounding the myth of the “frontier.” It centers on 1969 and
contemporary discourses about the Vietnam War, NASA missions, academic
scholarship, and Star Trek.28 The Ultimate Star Trek and Philosophy, edited by Kevin
S. Decker and Jason T. Eberl, is a comprehensive collection of essays that covers
everything from reading Star Trek according to philosophers (Aristotle, Kant,
Confucius, Mead, Nietzsche, etc.), to considering moments in the franchise in
terms of moral relativism, identity theory, theology, and secularism.29 Other recent
academic books on Star Trek include Star Trek Psychology: The Mental Frontier; To
Boldly Go: Essays on Gender and Identity in the Star Trek Universe; Exploring Star Trek:
Voyager: Critical Essays; and The Voyages of Star Trek: A Mirror on American Society
Through Time.30
In short, examining the politics and social institutions of Star Trek through a
scholarly lens, with an eye on how the franchise contends with contemporary,
 Introduction 5

real-world philosophies and cultural issues, is in academic vogue. This book,

therefore, not only fills a tremendous gap in the study of music in media, and
particularly in science fiction, but also engages with current scholarship on
the franchise. Moreover, the authors in this edited volume bring both strands of
scholarship together as they explore the utopian and dystopian elements present
in the Star Trek franchise as they relate to music and sound. How does audio
affect, enhance, or contest the politics of the Star Trek universe? How has
the music of Star Trek become emblematic of utopian ideals in the minds of
producers, composers, and fans? How might sound challenge the utopian, or
even hint at the dystopian truths hidden behind an idealistic façade? As a
franchise spanning over sixty years and several different incarnations, Star Trek
provides a compelling case study for understanding how ideas of utopia and
dystopia have transformed in concert with aesthetic, political, and social trends.
Such an endeavor is only possible by drawing on a wide variety of disciplines.
When put in conversation with theoretical frameworks and analytical tools
for music in multimedia, the combination can shed light on how sound,
music, and utopia relate across the dizzying array of analytical perspectives Star
Trek offers.

Theories of Music in Multimedia

As a multimedia franchise, Star Trek manifests for audiences in a great many ways.
It is live-action television, animated television, live-action television shorts,
animated shorts, feature films, audio dramas, video games, immersive theme park
experiences, soundtrack albums, novels and graphic novels, fan art, fan and media
criticism, material ephemera, and much more. One of the reasons a book on the
music of Star Trek has been so long in coming is that undertaking a broad analysis
of a franchise of this magnitude requires the scaffolding of an equally broad range
of theoretical approaches and analytical tools for the study of music in multi-
media. Not only must these serve to describe a variety of different musical genres
present in Star Trek whose norms might vary widely (classical, popular, film/
television, non-Western, etc.), they must also be able to connect music with
audio/visual analysis, and then to an interdisciplinary web of fields that can shed
light on how the franchise uses music and sound to create and nuance its utopian
visions. This web of interdisciplinary work is complex and requires many dif-
ferent approaches to understanding music and multimedia. In this respect,
Claudia Gorbman’s Unheard Melodies (1987) remains pertinent to the study of
music in the Star Trek franchise. In her book, Gorbman views meaning as arising
in the nexus between the cinematic, cultural, and musical meanings (or “codes”)
that comprise a film. By grouping film codes into her three categories—all as
much a part of Star Trek as any multimedia—Gorbman provides scholars a
baseline from which to analyze how music in multimedia is working. Moreover,
her tripartite paradigm is a useful framework in which to consider the analytical
6 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

approaches scholars have used to theorize music in multimedia, as each individual

tends to focus more on one of her coding categories above the others.
“Cultural codes” encompass intertextual musical meanings, ones that bear
cultural associations outside of the text of a film. These codes are broadly, though
not uniformly, shared across a culture and point to non-musical concepts. The
classic fight music from TOS’s “Amok Time” episode, for instance, draws on
dissonant, percussive hits that have a long history in Western music of evoking
the “primitive.”31 Philip Tagg’s analysis of “musemes,” individual musical ges-
tures that gain meaning by virtue of being reused in similar audio/visual contexts,
could be used to find comparisons in other works with similar connotations.32
For “Amok Time,” one obvious comparison would be the “Dance des ado-
lescentes” from Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps (1914), which uses similar
percussive dissonances to evoke an “early Russian pagan ritual” (see Chapter 8).
Style topics take insights similar to Tagg’s and apply them to a whole passage of
music. They are thus generally thought of as a stylistic cross-reference in music,
or what Danuta Mirka (2014) elegantly calls “musical imitations of other
music.”33 These can most readily be observed in the title cues from various Star
Trek series which include musical references such as “beguine” in TOS, “march”
in TNG, and “fanfare” in DS9, each coming with its own history and sets of
extra-musical connotations.34 Although musical topics have been used to analyze
film and, increasingly, video game genres like superhero media, first-person
shooters, and high fantasy, surprisingly little has been written on this subject with
regard to science fiction in general, and even less on Star Trek in particular.35
Just as theories of extra-musical meaning are essential to a study of music in the
Star Trek franchise, so are theories that examine “cinematic codes.” These are the
intratextual relationships between music and film that are of formal concern, such
as the diegetic or non-diegetic status of music (whether or not it is audible in the
world of the film), how music is associated with characters or ideas, and whether
music is congruent with a given scene.36 Where Star Trek is concerned, some of
the most important work in this area has been Robyn Stillwell’s concept of the
“fantastical gap” (2007), the liminal space between diegetic and non-diegetic
sound that gives rise to notions of the sublime, the fantastic, and the uncanny.37 A
clear example of this is the diegetic pitches of Chekov’s tricorder—and other
environmental sounds of Ceti Alpha V, like the wind—in Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan; James Horner uses this material to organize pitch and gesture in his
underscore.38 The uncertain boundary between sound and music becomes a
device for making audiences feel the horror Chekov feels as he comes face to face
with the film’s villain.
“Musical codes” are the more traditional objects of musicological and music
theoretical analysis, encompassing elements of musical structure and syntax (chord
progressions, musical forms, key relationships, melodic development, etc). Two
relatively recent bodies of work along these lines are essential to understanding
music in Star Trek (and film music in general) as they focus on its founding
 Introduction 7

influences: popular music and Western classical music at the turn of the twentieth
century. To begin with popular music, analyses of the genre helped scholars de-
velop ways of unpacking the host of different musical syntaxes, including chord
loops, modal harmonies, and non-acoustic timbres.39 These components com-
monly found in popular music are also evident in many of the Star Trek television
series title cues from TNG all the way to PIC, a fact that is unsurprising as many of
the composers who worked for the franchise had backgrounds in popular music.40
In the realm of Western classical music, Neo-Riemannian Theory (NRT for
short, a theory of how distantly related chords connect outside of traditional tonal
syntax), originally intended for the chromatic music of late nineteenth-century
composers like Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner, has been adopted as an es-
sential method of analysis.41 Arguing that it is cinematic and not musical logic that
determines musical events in film, Frank Lehman has shown, along with James
Buhler and Scott Murphy, how NRTs focus on degree of change from chord
to chord is well-suited to the moment-to-moment scoring of film.42 Moreover, the
connotations of awe and the fantastic that permeate these progressions make them
standard choices for Star Trek composers. In Lehman’s Hollywood Harmony: Musical
Wonder and the Sounds of Cinema, he presents an analysis of the cue “The Cloud” from
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, one of the few published music-analytic texts to attend
to the music of Star Trek. With the Enterprise going deeper into V’ger’s visually
dazzling magnetic outer cloud, the music’s syntactical “aimlessness” and strongly
juxtaposed harmonies reinforce the abstract visuals on the viewscreen.43
While this survey is hardly meant to be comprehensive, it gives a sense of the
scope of work done in theorizing music in multimedia over the last fifty years.
More importantly, however, this overview details which tools and theories are
most important in unpacking the interactions between music, sound, and utopia
in Star Trek. Beyond these ideas there are a whole host of other disciplines that
music scholars draw on in analyzing music in multimedia. In this volume alone,
authors use the above approaches in conjunction with fan studies, marketing stu-
dies, psychology, queer studies, sound studies, technology studies, and material
history—among others—to address different aspects of the Star Trek’s visions of
the future. It would be impossible to give a complete accounting of these inter-
disciplinary bridges because the ways of understanding Star Trek are infinite.
Indeed, new interpretive angles might recruit any interdisciplinary approaches in
order to shed light on aspects of this complex web of different media, stakeholders
(fans, producers, actors, composers, etc.), genres, eras, ideas, and, of course, music
and sounds that make up the utopias of Star Trek.

Why Now?
Although work on music in multimedia has expanded over the past fifty years,
scholarship related to music and sound in the Star Trek franchise has been con-
spicuously limited. Considering how enmeshed its sounds and music are in
8 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

popular culture and how familiar some aspects of these are to non-fans—to say
nothing of people who have never otherwise engaged with the franchise in any
way—this is perplexing. While biases against commercial entertainment might
have played a part in Trek’s absence from early film music scholarship, with the
establishment of fields of study on Hollywood cinema music, popular music, and
video game music this seems an unlikely scapegoat for the present scarcity.
Another possible reason might be the lack of proper analytical tools suited for the
franchise. But this is not a wholly satisfying answer because it glosses over
scholarship like Lerner’s much earlier chapter on Star Trek title cues.44 If Lerner
was able to make the case for analyzing Trek in the 1990s, and—for that
matter—if Buhler and Neumeyer demonstrated how traditional analytical ap-
proaches might be applicable to film music at around the same time, it is not clear
what would possibly have stopped anyone.45 Why is this book only coming out
in the 2020s, nearly sixty years after the premiere of TOS? Beyond our own
interest in writing and compiling it as longtime Trek fans and scholars of music,
there are certain cultural forces at work that make this time more propitious.
One of the more immediate and compelling reasons for this volume is that Star
Trek is once again current. Although there are a mere four years between the end
of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005 and the Star Trek (2009) film, there is nonetheless
an extremely wide aesthetic gulf between the two, caused by a complete chan-
geover in production personnel.46 Rick Berman, who had helmed the franchise
since the early days of TNG, was no longer the lead producer. J. J. Abrams, with
Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci on the production team, began overseeing the
return of Star Trek. The 2009 film revived the franchise, and brought with it a
new generation of Trek fans. With sequel films in 2013 and 2016—the latter
marking Star Trek’s fiftieth anniversary—the franchise kept itself in the spotlight.
But it was Star Trek’s return to its home on television in 2017, with CBS All
Access’s flagship Star Trek: Discovery (2017–), that truly heralded the franchise’s
renaissance. As main showrunner Kurtzman has noted, Star Trek undergoes a
rebirth every ten to twelve years, an observation that holds true—in the case of
the television series at least—from ENT to DSC.47 What followed was a rapid
expansion of offerings, all building off of DSC’s success: Star Trek: Picard (2020–),
Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020–), and Short Treks (2018–).48 In a symbolic move
that is nevertheless quite revealing of its intentions, CBS rebranded the franchise
as the “Star Trek Universe” in 2020.49 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (a return to
episodic storytelling featuring Captain Pike and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise
pre-Kirk) and Star Trek: Prodigy (an animated series for young viewers created for
Nickelodeon) represent further extensions of this universe.50 As of this book’s
publication, new Trek shows are more abundant than ever, even taking into
account the franchise’s previous heyday in the mid-1990s. Trek’s return to tel-
evision has ushered in a rich, varied, and rapid expansion of the franchise in a way
the films were never able to achieve. Without a doubt, all of this signals that Trek
is here, it is popular, and it is relevant to contemporary audiences.
 Introduction 9

Moreover, Star Trek has become mainstream. The franchise’s popularity is a

microcosm of a larger phenomenon: the growth in popularity of science fiction,
fantasy, and superhero genres. Previously niche markets mostly relegated to low-
budget, straight-to-video releases, these genres have become box-office and
ratings powerhouses in the twenty-first century. The most obvious example is
that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is, by far, the highest grossing
film franchise in cinema history.51 Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy
demonstrated that fantasy could also succeed with large audiences and be prof-
itable.52 This has further translated to television, where fantasy was shown to
be viable in limited series like HBO’s Game of Thrones, which became one of
the network’s biggest hits.53 Science fiction has also been enjoying a surge in
mainstream popularity, with a number of broadly popular series on primetime
and streaming, including the revival of Doctor Who (2005–), The Expanse
(2015–2022), Stranger Things (2016–), Westworld (2016–), The Orville (2017–), and
The Mandalorian (2019–).54 What all of these shows have in common is what has
come to be called “nerd culture” or “geek culture.” Having previously treated
fans of comic books, fantasy, or science fiction as outcasts, society’s view of
“nerds” has changed to the point where their interests have been normalized and
even celebrated.55 With the mainstreaming of nerd culture, the study of Star Trek
has become about understanding a franchise in which music has always been
of central importance, one that not only spans nearly six decades, but whose
audience has grown and whose cultural impact is felt widely, immediately, and
eminently in the zeitgeist.
Finally, Star Trek’s particular brand of utopia is perhaps more relevant and ne-
cessary now than it has ever been. The rise of right-wing populism in the United
States and around the world has borne witness to policies and actions that are in
many ways the antithesis of the values espoused by the franchise’s United
Federation of Planets. Politicians’ deliberate use of racist and divisive rhetoric,
challenges to LGBTQ+ rights, the treatment of immigrants and refugees as
criminals, and the blatant engagement in corruption and anti-democratic actions,
have collided with other global threats such as climate change and pandemics. The
ghosts of these real-life events appear in Star Trek’s current revival. Both DSC and
PIC highlight the work of Black women, both on screen and behind the camera.
The former has featured loving homosexual partnerships as well as non-binary
characters; the latter makes clear the non-heteronormativity of two main characters.
Picard’s displaced and impoverished Romulans, as well as the plight of the
synthetics—beings that have been declared illegal—echo a variety of issues re-
garding immigration keenly felt in the United States. For anyone who identifies
not only with the entries in the Star Trek franchise but also with its underlying
morality, there is no question that its utopia is more desirable than our current
predicament. There is also no question that Star Trek, for all of its problems—like
Amero-centrism and its celebration of white heteropatriarchy—provides a unique
solution out of humanity’s predicament. As Kurtzman explains,
10 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

[Star Trek] gives you a roadmap to the possibility and the potential of
human beings and what we can accomplish if we stop thinking the way
we’ve been thinking. Because if we keep thinking this way, we’re not
going be around. And I think that’s the beauty of Star Trek is it actually
gives you a positive for the future [sic].56

It is perhaps truer now than ever that Star Trek’s utopia is both a necessary escape
from—and a helpful model for—our damaged world. It enables us to dream of
a better future.

This Book
This volume of essays on Star Trek’s use of sound and music is thus timely. The
franchise is now part of the mainstream of popular culture discourse, but moreover,
its message about a utopic future is resonating broadly at a time of profound dys-
topian reality. As this book makes apparent, there is no way a single volume could
address all that could be said about Star Trek. The contributors to this book,
however, do point to the ways various epistemologies can unpack the utopic ideals
embedded in the relationships between sound, music, and voice throughout
the franchise. We have organized the book largely along chronological lines. The
television series are the primary focus of Chapters 2 through 11, and Chapters 12
through 14 delve into some of the films.
Amanda Keeler’s contribution, “Star Trek: The Original Series, Utopian/
Dystopian Spaces, and Music,” explores the TOS pilot episode “The Cage” and
its subsequent transformation both visually and musically into the two-part epi-
sode “The Menagerie.” Keeler reflects on how the original depiction of
the Talosians’ world as a dystopic realm upholds ableist conceits as it becomes
a utopic one for an injured Christopher Pike. Reba Wissner’s chapter, “The
Trouble with Trebles: Orchestration and False Utopias in Star Trek: The Original
Series,” digs into several TOS episodes that depict societies that only seem utopian,
highlighting how orchestrational choices signal to viewers the danger of these
elysian planets. “Tracks for Trek: Music in Network Ads for TOS,” by James
Deaville, addresses the ways 1960s promotional materials for TOS attracted
viewers through music and sound.
Kate Galloway’s “From Spock with Love: Fan Audio, Participatory Media, and
Circulating the Materials of Star Trek Fan Culture” serves as a pivot point in the
book as she explores YouTube videos of fans performing their emotional and
financial investment through the franchise’s ephemera. Galloway unpacks how
musicking and materiality intersect in online participatory platforms, highlighting
the ways we might think about Trek and utopia as lived communal experiences. In
“Loving Lwaxana, Trek’s Sonically Disruptive Diva,” Josh Morrison emphasizes
the ways Majel Barrett-Roddenberry’s visually and acoustically iconic performance
as Lwaxana Troi champions queer values.
 Introduction 11

Jessica Getman’s chapter, “I, Musician: Humanity, Music, and Artificial

Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise,” outlines the ways Star Trek has upheld its
Euro-American values via characters that mediate between the organic and the
mechanical. In Chapter 8, “Not Logical, but Often True: The Evolving Role of
Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia,” Naomi Graber traces Star Trek’s shifting depiction
of religion and music from the secular-oriented TOS to more nuanced portrayals
of faiths and their believers in DS9 and ENT. Tim Summers continues the in-
vestigation into the music of DS9, concentrating specifically on the ways the Rat-
Pack-era music associated with the holographic character Vic Fontaine provides a
cathartic balm for characters and viewers. “Markers of Utopian Difference: Music
in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001),” by Paul Sommerfeld,
draws on Jay Chattaway’s musical sketches to interpret how, why, and to what ends
the topic of the heroic fanfare appears in relation to the shows’ protagonists. Finally,
Evan Ware wraps up the volume’s foray into the television series via a deep analysis
of music and ideology in the main title theme to Star Trek: Enterprise in “No,
They’re Not Gonna Change My Mind: Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue.”
The final three chapters in the volume focus on elements of sound, music, and
utopia in some of the Star Trek films. Louis Niebur provides a historical analysis of
the different approaches to composing for science fiction found in Star Trek: The
Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
in “Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores.” Sarah
Kessler looks to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home to open a broader discourse on
listening and biopolitics. In “Songs of the Final Frontier: Listening to Whales in Star
Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” Kessler examines the history of whale song recordings,
providing crucial nuance to this particular sound and its use in the film. In “Days of
Utopia Past: Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack,” Brooke McCorkle
Okazaki argues that Michael Giacchino’s score reinforces some of the more
troubling components regarding patriarchy and race evident in TOS.
This collection of chapters presents a web of studies that point to the infinite
diversity of music and meaning in the Star Trek universe. We acknowledge that not
all of the franchise’s films, television series, and media are addressed—nor are they
covered from all scholarly perspectives. In assembling this volume, however, our
intention was to finally begin the long overdue conversation about how music
contributes to the franchise. Trek as a whole both uplifts and challenges its audience’s
utopian dreams, and its music and sound play an important role in this dimension of
the franchise. Through the soundtrack, we can investigate Star Trek’s ideologies—
and the changing ideologies of the society and times from which it has come.

Notes
1 Star Trek, Season 1, episode 24, “This Side of Paradise,” directed by Ralph Senensky,
aired March 2, 1967, Paramount, 2004, DVD.
2 “This Side of Paradise.”
12 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

3 Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang (New York: Kino Lorber Films, 2010), DVD;
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949); Suzanne
Collins, The Hunger Games (New York: Scholastic, 2008); BioShock, directed by Ken
Levine (Novato, CA: 2K Games, 2007).
4 Carl Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 2000), 64. Emphasis original.
5 George A. Gonzalez, The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 32–33.
6 “This Side of Paradise”; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1, episode 8, “Justice,”
directed by James L. Conway, aired November 9, 1987, https://www.paramountplus.
com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/video/2F0eZL2_JnOS9nk_s2DmvE78kQ
NA4yHS/star-trek-the-next-generation-justice/. The franchise both extols and tears
down the idea of utopia in its many “worlds of the week”—which may at first seem
utopic but are ultimately proven false (see Wissner’s chapter in this book)—and through
the United Federation of Planets, as the revered and noble principles of the Federation
are challenged and dismantled, especially in newer series like Picard and in Season 3 of
Star Trek: Discovery. Star Trek: Picard, created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon,
Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman (2020–; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/
star-trek-picard/); Star Trek: Discovery, created by Brian Fuller and Alex Kurtzman
(2017–; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/).
7 Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, 67.
8 Edward James, “Utopias and Anti-Utopias,” in The Cambridge Companion to Science
Fiction, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 227.
9 M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas, The Science Fiction Handbook (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 77; James, “Utopias and Anti-Utopias,” 222.
10 Booker and Thomas, The Science Fiction Handbook, 82.
11 Battlestar Galactica, created by Ronald D. Moore (2004–2009; https://www.amazon.
com/Battlestar-Galactica-Season-1/dp/B000UU2YKE); Black Mirror, created by Charlie
Brooker (2016–2019; https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888).
12 James, “Utopias and Anti-Utopias,” 219.
13 James, “Utopias and Anti-Utopias,” 222.
14 Gonzalez, The Politics of Star Trek, 32, 37.
15 Jessica Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue,”
Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (2015): 293–320; Tim Summers, “Star
Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” Music, Sound, and the Moving
Image 7, no. 1 (2013): 19–52; Tim Summers, “From ‘Sabotage’ to “Sledgehammer’:
Trailers, Songs, and the Musical Marketing of Star Trek Beyond (2016),” Music and the
Moving Image 11, no. 1 (2018): 40–65; Craig Owen Jones, “‘Acolytes of History?’ Jazz
Music and Nostalgia in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Science Fiction Film and Television
9, no. 1 (2016): 25–53; Brooke McCorkle, “Fandom’s New Frontier: Star Trek in the
Concert Hall,” Journal of Fandom Studies 4, no. 2 (2016): 175–92.
16 Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender in the Original Series of Star Trek
(1966–1969) (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2015); Paul Allen Sommerfeld,
“Scoring Star Trek’s Utopia: Musical Iconicity in the Star Trek Franchise, 1966–2016”
(Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2017).
17 Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle Publishing
Company, 1999).
18 Ron Rodman, “‘Beam Me Up, Scottie!’: Leitmotifs, Musical Topos, and Ascription in
the Sci-Fi Drama,” in Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), pp. 102–131.
19 K. J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward, eds., Music in Science Fiction Television (New York:
Routledge, 2013).
 Introduction 13

20 Neil Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings: Tracking the Title Themes of the Star Trek
Television Franchise, 1966–2005,” in Music in Science Fiction Television, pp. 52–71.
21 Philip Hayward, ed., Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 2004); Mathew J. Bartkowiak, Sounds of the Future: Essays on
Music in Science Fiction Film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010).
22 Fred Steiner, “Keeping Score of the Scores: Music for Star Trek,” Quarterly Journal of
the Library of Congress 40 (1983): 4–15. A later version of this article can be found in
Fred Steiner, “Music for Star Trek: Scoring a Television Score in the Sixties,” in
Wonderful Inventions: Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound at the Library of
Congress, ed. Iris Newsom (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1985), 287–310.
23 Jessica Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue.”
24 Tim Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other.”
25 Tim Summers, “From ‘Sabotage’ to ‘Sledgehammer’”; Tim Summers, “Music Across
the Transmedial Frontier: Star Trek Video Games,” in Intermedia Games—Games Inter
Media: Video Games and Intermediality, ed. Michael Fuchs and Jeff Thoss (New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), pp. 207–230.
26 Craig Owen Jones, “‘Acolytes of History?’”
27 Gonzalez, The Politics of Star Trek.
28 Matthew Kapell, Exploring the Next Frontier: Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek and Utopia in
1960s and 1970s American Myth and History (New York: Routledge, 2016).
29 Kevin S. Decker and Jason T. Eberl, eds., The Ultimate Star Trek and Philosophy
(Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).
30 Travis Langley, ed., Star Trek Psychology: The Mental Frontier (New York: Sterling,
2017); Nadine Faghaly and Simon Bacon, eds., To Boldly Go: Essays and Gender and
Identity in the Star Trek Universe (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2017);
Robert L. Lively and Lincoln Geraghty, eds., Exploring Star Trek: Voyager: Critical
Essays (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2020); K. M. Heath and A. S.
Carlisle, The Voyages of Star Trek: A Mirror on American Society Through Time (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).
31 Star Trek, Season 2, episode 1, “Amok Time,” directed by Joseph Pevney, aired
September 15, 1967, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/
1226104276/star-trek-the-original-series-remastered-amok-time/
32 Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida, Ten Little Title Tunes: Toward a Musicology of the Mass
Media (Montreal: Mass Media Music Scholar’s Press, 2003) 93–154.
33 As such, they are often referred to as “style topics.” Danuta Mirka, The Oxford Handbook
of Topic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 35–36. Leonard Ratner pio-
neered this form of analysis, but focused on eighteenth-century music; see Leonard G.
Ratner, Classical Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer, 1980). James
Buhler and David Neumeyer were among the first to apply topic theory to film music in
David Neumeyer and James Buhler, “Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film
Music I,” Film Music: Critical Approaches, ed. K. J. Donnelly (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2001); and later in David Neumeyer and James Buhler, Meaning and
Interpretation of Music in Cinema (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2015).
34 Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry (1966–69; https://www.paramountplus.com/
shows/star_trek/); Star Trek: The Next Generation, created by Gene Roddenberry
(1987–94; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/);
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller (1993–99;
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_deep_space_nine/).
35 This is curious since science fiction as a genre, and thus Star Trek as a franchise, relies
on the representation of difference (human vs. alien, biology vs. technology, the
present vs. the future, us vs. them, Self vs. Other) in order to make its social and
political points. Because of this, topical scoring can be especially useful, as cultural
codes tied to music tell the audience how to relate to the characters and situations on
14 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

the screen. Tim Summers provides an excellent overview of the scoring of difference
in Star Trek in Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other.”
Video game music analysis has become an important locus of topic theory, as seen in
Tim Summers, “Epic Texturing in the First-Person Shooter: The Aesthetics of Video
Game Music,” The Soundtrack 5, no. 2 (2012): 131–51; William Ayers, “Analyzing
Narrative in Video Game Music: Topic Theory and Modular Design” (North
American Conference on Video Game Music, Texas Christian University, January 13,
2015); and Sean Atkinson, “Soaring Through the Sky: Topics and Tropes in Video
Game Music,” Music Theory Online 25, no. 2 (2019), https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.
19.25.2/mto.19.25.2.atkinson.html
36 James Buhler gives an exhaustive accounting of analytical approaches to these codes in his
book Theories of the Soundtrack, drawing on the work of artists and scholars from film,
music, linguistics, critical theory, and more. James Buhler, Theories of the Soundtrack
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
37 Robyn Stillwell, “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic,” in Beyond
the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer,
and Richard Leppert (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 184–203.
38 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1983), DVD. This example is from Jessica Getman and Evan
Ware, “Scanning the Fantastical Gap: The Tricorder as Diegetic Boundary in Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (American Musicological Society and the Society for
Music Theory Annual Meeting, San Antonio, November 2, 2018).
39 Some notable titles among many are Nicole Biamonte, “Triadic Modal and Pentatonic
Patterns in Rock Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 32, no. 2 (2010): 95-110; Drew Nobile,
“Form and Voice Leading in Early Beatles Songs,” Music Theory Online 17, no. 3 (2011),
accessed August 6, 2021 https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.3/mto.11.17.3.
nobile.html; Asaf Peres, “The Sonic Dimension as Dramatic Driver in 21st-Century
Pop Music,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2016); Brad Osborn, “Rock
Harmony Reconsidered: Tonal, Contrapuntal, and Modal Systems of Voice-Leading in
Radiohead,” Music Analysis 36, no. 1 (2017): 59–93; and Christopher Doll, Hearing
Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2017).
40 Alexander Courage’s first work as orchestrator for MGM was for popular music pro-
ductions like Funny Face, Guys and Dolls, Showboat, and My Fair Lady. See AllMusic,
“Alexander Courage | Biography,” accessed August 5, 2021, https://www.allmusic.
com/artist/alexander-courage-mn0000073236/biography. Dennis McCarthy started his
career as a pianist, conductor, and arranger for country star Glen Campbell. See Feenotes,
“Dennis McCarthy (1945–Present),” accessed August 5, 2021, https://www.feenotes.
com/database/composers/mccarthy-dennis-1945-present/. Jeff Russo began his career
as a founding member of the Grammy-nominated rock band TONIC. See Jeff Russo,
“Biography—Jeff Russo,” accessed August 5, 2021, http://jeffrusso.com/biography/
41 David Lewin, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1987); Richard Cohn, “Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory: A
Survey and a Historical Perspective,” Journal of Music Theory 42, no. 2 (1998), 167–80.
42 Frank Lehman, Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018); Scott Murphy, “Transformational Theory and the
Analysis of Film Music,” in The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, ed. David
Neumeyer and James Buhler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 471–99;
Buhler and Neumeyer, “Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music I”;
Neumeyer, Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema.
43 Lehman, Hollywood Harmony, 80.
44 Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings.”
45 Buhler and Neumeyer, “Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music I.”
 Introduction 15

46 Star Trek, directed by J. J. Abrams (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2009), DVD;
Star Trek: Enterprise, created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (2001–2005; https://
www.paramountplus.com/shows/enterprise/).
47 Tawny Newsome, Paul F. Tompkins, Alex Kurtzman, “Alex Kurtzman is Building
the Star Trek Universe,” Star Trek: The Pod Directive, 14 June 2021.
48 Star Trek: Picard; Star Trek: Short Treks, created by Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Fuller, Michael
Chabon, Kirsten Byer, and Akiva Goldman (2018–; https://www.paramountplus.com/
shows/star-trek-short-treks/).
49 “Alex Kurtzman: Expanding Slate of Star Trek Shows is About ‘Exploring Different
Corners of the Universe,’” TrekMovie.com, August 24, 2020, accessed August 3, 2021,
https://trekmovie.com/2020/08/24/alex-kurtzman-expanding-slate-of-star-trek-
shows-is-about-exploring-different-corners-of-the-universe/
50 Star Trek: Prodigy, created by Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman (2021–; https://
www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-prodigy/); Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet, and Gene Roddenberry
(2022–; forthcoming).
51 Statista, “Highest Grossing Film Franchises and Series Worldwide as of November
2020,” accessed July 27, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/317408/highest-
grossing-film-franchises-series/. For an overview of the many Marvel Cinematic
Universe films and television shows released since 2008, see Daisy Phillipson, “How to
Watch the Entire Marvel Cinematic Universe in Order of Release: From Beginning to
Endgame (and Beyond …),” November 5, 2020, accessed August 6, 2021, https://
www.digitalspy.com/movies/a28084501/mcu-release-order-marvel-movies/
52 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson (Burbank,
CA: New Line Cinema, 2001), DVD; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, directed
by Peter Jackson (Burbank, CA: New Line Cinema, 2002), DVD; The Lord of the
Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson (Burbank, CA: New Line
Cinema, 2003), DVD.
53 Game of Thrones, created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss (2011–2019; New York:
HBO Entertainment, 2019), DVD.
54 Doctor Who, originally created by Sydney Newman, revival created by Russell T. Davies
(2005–; https://www.amazon.com/Rose/dp/B003LQ3YXU/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&
keywords=doctor+who&qid=1628200202&s=instant-video&sr=1-1); The Expanse,
created by Daniel Abraham, Mark Fergus, Ty Franck, and Hawk Ostby (2015–; https://
www.amazon.com/The-Expanse-Season-1/dp/B08B49T8TZ); Stranger Things, created
by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer (2016–; https://www.netflix.com/search?q=stranger
%20things&suggestionId=70170287_video&jbv=80057281), DVD; Westworld, created
by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (2016–; https://www.amazon.com/The-Original/dp/
B01N05UD06/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=westworld&qid=1628200750&s=in-
stant-video&sr=1-1); The Orville, created by Seth MacFarlane (2017–; https://www.
amazon.com/Old-Wounds/dp/B074SY51TB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the
+orville&qid=1628200717&s=instant-video&sr=1-1); The Mandalorian, created by John
Favreau (2019–; San Francisco, CA: Lucasfilm, 2020), DVD.
55 Sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes not, “nerds” and “geeks” are generally
defined as socially-awkward individuals whose scientific expertise or need for con-
nection with like-minded persons drive them to become devoted fans of the science
fiction, fantasy, and superhero genres. For a more detailed discussion, see Andy Matrix,
“Is Geek Culture Becoming Mainstream? The Rise of Nerd Culture—This is Why,”
Andy Art TV, February 22, 2020, accessed August 3, 2021, https://andyarttv.com/is-
geek-culture-becoming-mainstream-the-rise-of-nerd-culture-this-is-why/#How_
Did_The_Take_Over_Started
56 Newsome et al., “Alex Kurtzman is Building the Star Trek Universe.”
2
STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES,
UTOPIAN/DYSTOPIAN SPACES,
AND MUSIC
Amanda Keeler

Many accounts of the making of Star Trek: The Original Series (NBC, 1966–69)
describe the numerous obstacles that Gene Roddenberry and his associates en-
countered as they negotiated with Desilu Productions and the National
Broadcasting Company (NBC) to bring the series to television. Although Star
Trek later became a phenomenal success that sparked an unprecedented, fifty-
year-long media franchise, a close look at its beginnings reveals a legacy that
“almost failed to launch.”1 After spending $615,751 dollars [$5.136 million in
2021 dollars] to create a pilot for the series, Gene Roddenberry delivered
“The Cage” to NBC executives in February 1965.2 Directed by Robert Butler,
“The Cage” follows the starship Enterprise and its crew members as they struggle
to save Captain Christopher Pike ( Jeffrey Hunter) from the Talosians, a tele-
pathic species who have captured him.3 The Talosians are manipulating Pike into
participating in a series of hallucinatory, interactive visual and aural projections
partially crafted from his memories. While Gene Roddenberry would later claim
that the network “liked the pilot,” NBC nonetheless rejected it, suggesting
that the story was “too cerebral.”4 In an unprecedented move, NBC allowed
Roddenberry to produce a second pilot but insisted on several story changes. As
Robert Justman recounts, NBC requested some casting and character changes,
and told Roddenberry and his producers, “don’t be so smart.”5 The new pilot,
“Where No Man Has Gone Before” (September 22, 1966), cast William Shatner
to play Enterprise Captain James Kirk, with Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as his
second-in-command.6 These changes proved successful when NBC accepted the
pilot and ordered the production of Season 1.
While rejected as the program’s pilot, “The Cage” nonetheless became a part
of the first season of the original series of Star Trek (TOS). Since NBC had already
invested a large amount of money into its production, Roddenberry wrote a new
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-2
 TOS, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces, and Music 17

script that would use scenes from “The Cage” to form the two-part episode “The
Menagerie” (November 17 and 24, 1966).7 While the use of scenes from “The
Cage” in “The Menagerie” might suggest that the two-part episode that aired in
1966 would simply recount the same story as the failed pilot, this is not the case.
Instead, “The Menagerie” transforms the “cerebral,” dystopian nightmare pre-
sented in “The Cage,” shifting the overall sentiment of the two-part episode into
one where Spock works to convince Captain Pike to return to Talos IV many
years after his initial imprisonment on the planet. In “The Menagerie” Captain
Pike has been severely injured as a result of an accident after leaving his command
on the Enterprise. Pike’s movement and communication are now facilitated by a
device that encases his body up to his neck. Talos IV, which was once viewed as a
“cage,” now creates a different possibility for Pike’s future.
Despite this tonal, ideological shift from the failed pilot to its piecemeal inclusion
in “The Menagerie,” one element remains the same: the program’s music.
Composer Alexander Courage wrote all of the music for “The Cage,” including
the opening title theme, and many pieces of his composition later appear as musical
cues across all three seasons of the program.8 The music that accompanies the scenes
in “The Cage” remains intact in “The Menagerie,” tethered to the original
emotional intensity of the failed pilot episode. Yet, by the premiere of “The
Menagerie,” several other composers had contributed music to the program,
including Frederick Steiner and Sol Kaplan, both of whom wrote cues that appear
alongside Courage’s compositions.9 This chapter explores the stark contrast be-
tween these two episodes—“The Cage” and the two-part “The Menagerie”—and
how each episode’s story benefits from Courage’s musical composition.
The enduring popularity of the Star Trek franchise has inspired scholars to
analyze and investigate many facets of the franchise, exploring different topics and
discussions with myriad methodological approaches. As such, many scholars of
musicology have explored the musical compositions created for TOS and how
music and sound function as elements of the overall storytelling.10 However, this
body of scholarship has yet to explore fully the unusual path that led from “The
Cage” to “The Menagerie.” These two episodes offer a fascinating case study of
how Star Trek’s writers, editors, and directors were able to repurpose existing
footage from the unsuccessful first pilot into “The Menagerie,” thereby crafting a
tonal transformation from dystopian nightmare to utopian dream.

“The Cage”
Like all television programs with complex narratives, Star Trek required an ef-
fective pilot episode to introduce itself. This foundational episode had to craft a
believable future world in which intergalactic space travel was an everyday oc-
currence. It needed to convince NBC that the program had enough material to
sustain a full season of twenty-nine discrete episodes exploring the complications
and politics of human–alien interactions. The composers and foley artists would
18 Amanda Keeler

be tasked with creating music and sounds for objects, futuristic technology, and
alien beings. It was essential that the pilot visualize space exploration, new pla-
nets, and alien life forms—all on an extremely limited budget. Although this first
attempt, “The Cage,” managed to introduce the starship Enterprise and its crew in
the midst of their adventures in space, it failed to convince NBC of its potential
for drawing a broad audience. As Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry
recount in their co-authored book Star Trek: The Making of the TV Series, NBC
was concerned that the “show would go over the heads of most of the viewers”
and that “it required too much thought on the part of the viewer in order to
understand it.”11
One of the primary concerns among executives at NBC was the gender of the
“emotionally repressed” female character Number One, portrayed by actress Majel
Barrett, who served on the Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike.12 Rather
than demonstrate a future in which women assumed positions of power, “the
network had doubts about a female second-in-command.”13 As Jan Johnson-Smith
notes, network executives felt that “the public of 1966 was unprepared to see a
woman in such a position of authority.”14 However, casting concerns extended
beyond the ship’s second-in-command. Executives were also concerned about
Mr. Spock’s character as played by Leonard Nimoy. As Herbert F. Solow and
Robert H. Justman recount, “the unspoken reason … dealt more with the manners
and morals of mid-1960s America. NBC was very concerned with the ‘eroticism’
of the pilot and what it foreshadowed for the ensuing series. … NBC Sales was
equally concerned with the Mr. Spock character, him being seen as demonic by
Bible Belt affiliate-station owners and important advertisers.”15 The character
Number One was removed from the story presented in the second pilot, but
Roddenberry told NBC that he “would not do a second pilot without Spock.”16
As Ina Rae Hark explains, Roddenberry subsumed the “emotional repression” of
Number One into Spock’s character, tempering “the Otherness of the pilot’s alien”
and refining Spock into an iconic character that Nimoy would continue to portray
for decades to follow.17
In retrospect, “The Cage” presents a particularly interesting window into a
version of Star Trek that would not continue, one that felt more serious and that
depicted its crew as dissatisfied with their chosen careers in space. Jeffrey Hunter’s
performance as Captain Pike projects a vastly different tone than William Shatner
would later as Captain Kirk. In terms of sound, “The Cage” represents at least
one experiment that would become a permanent part of the series, but utilized in
a different context. As Jessica Getman notes, the sound used to create the planet’s
aural atmosphere, emanating from the shimmering blue plants on the surface of
Talos IV, later becomes the sound effect assigned to the Enterprise’s transporter.18
After the Enterprise receives an “old style distress signal,” Captain Pike makes
the decision to transport several crew members down to Talos IV. Once on the
surface they discover the shipwrecked crew from the S.S. Columbia, which dis-
appeared eighteen years earlier, and Vina (Susan Oliver), a young woman born
 TOS, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces, and Music 19

just before the crash. However, the presence of the crew and their camp is merely
an illusion. Unbeknownst to the Enterprise crew, the Talosians have created
astral projections of the surviving crew, all of whom disappear except Vina.
The Talosians used this fantasy scene to help Vina find her “perfect specimen,” a
mate to join her as another “zoo specimen.” After kidnapping Captain Pike, the
Talosians probe his mind in search of pleasant memories in order to convince him
to seduce Vina. Back on the Enterprise, the crew continues to try to save their
Captain. Despite Vina’s acceptance of her situation, Captain Pike wants to return
to his ship. Number One and Spock head back to Talos IV to rescue Pike. The
Talosians soon recognize that humans have “a unique hatred of captivity. Even
when it’s pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death. This makes you too violent
and dangerous a species for our needs.” With this in mind, they release Captain
Pike. Vina remains, and the Talosians tell Pike that they have given her what
she truly wanted anyway. They show her retreating below the surface with an
illusion of Captain Pike, telling him, “she has an illusion, and you have reality.
May you find your way as pleasant.” Captain Pike and the crew then return to
the ship, ready for their next adventure in space.
During the audience’s introduction to the characters in “The Cage,” no
music accompanies the scene on the Enterprise’s bridge. The only sounds present
are character dialogue, the diegetic background noise produced by the ship’s
computer systems, and the shrill warning siren indicating danger ahead. The
lack of nondiegetic underscore connotes an important moment of character
development, devoting full attention to the introduction of the Enterprise’s
crew. This musical silence also marks the bridge as sterile, cold, and somewhat
hostile, not unlike the portrayal of Captain Pike by actor Jeffrey Hunter. Pike is
introduced sitting in his chair on the ship’s bridge, looking absent-mindedly
into space, with a furrowed brow as he and the crew attempt to decipher an
unknown “old-style distress signal.” Aside from the theme music composed
by Courage that opens “The Cage,” the first underscore composition appears
several minutes into the episode, midway through a conversation between
Captain Pike and Dr. Phillip Boyce (John Hoyt). Pike expresses his dis-
satisfaction with serving as the Captain of the starship, telling Boyce that he
sometimes wishes he were back home, having a picnic lunch instead of em-
barking on intergalactic travels. Here, the instrumental background music rises
in volume as their conversation continues, until it is interrupted abruptly by the
sound of an incoming message from Spock.
Though the lack of music defines the opening sequence, Alexander Courage’s
compositions populate the remainder of “The Cage.” At Gene Roddenberry’s
request, the musical style created by Courage differed from what commonly
appeared in other science fiction films and television series in this era, which
“placed a heavy emphasis on ‘other-worldly’ sounds such as those created by the
theremin.”19 Courage’s score instead utilizes multiple wind instruments, in-
cluding flute, oboe, and clarinet, as well as several brass instruments, percussion,
20 Amanda Keeler

and harp. According to Tim Summers, Courage’s score in “The Cage” creates
“different levels of alterity,” aurally differentiating the Talosians as alien “Others”
from the humans through musical cue choices.20 These musical choices create
motives, or music themes, that define different situations, pivotal moments, and
individual characters’ thoughts and emotions. Claudia Gorbman writes that
musical themes “can be extremely economical: having absorbed the diegetic
associations of its first occurrence, its very repetition can subsequently recall that
filmic content.”21 Not only were these reused pieces of music economical, as
motives they served as thematic, aural shorthand for characters and situations that
became highly recognizable to audiences over time. These motives had another,
more economic function. At the time of production of TOS, production
companies were legally permitted to reuse music composed for previous episodes
“without having to pay the recording musicians a second time.”22 Using musical
cues repeatedly, reusing already shot footage, inventing the transporter to avoid
having to build additional sets of the crew landing each week on a new
planet—many celebrated and beloved aspects of the original series exist because
of the economics of the television industry in the 1960s.
Once on the surface of Talos IV, music appears more regularly, introducing
what will become a series of musical motives that define certain characters and
situations. An important motive begins as the Enterprise crew on Talos IV dis-
covers the “survivors” of the S.S. Columbia. As the crew spots the planet’s human
inhabitants, the sound effect of the planet’s atmosphere shifts to music, first with a
stark, heavy note that quickly transitions into a gentle-sounding piece, with
several woodwind instruments, communicating a triumphant melody that mat-
ches the happiness of the crew now that they have been rescued. As Lieutenant
Tyler (Peter Duryea) spots something offscreen, he stops speaking mid-sentence,
and in the next shot the music changes as Vina appears onscreen for the first
time. Her movement, as she steps delicately and deliberately toward the Enterprise
crew, mirrors the fluidity between the notes of the instruments playing and
immediately entrances Captain Pike. This musical cue marks the moment at
which these two characters seem to fall in love.23
Variations on Vina’s motive appear throughout the episode, each one marking
a moment she shares with Captain Pike in which they learn more about each
other. In one Talosian-created scenario, Pike is back on Rigel VII and tasked
with saving Vina from a creature she calls “the killer.” After stopping “the killer,”
the two return to Pike’s cage, where Vina’s musical cue appears again as she
lovingly embraces Pike. Vina’s motive appears next in a long scene in the middle
of the episode. Here, Vina and Pike are a married couple on a picnic near Pike’s
childhood home, the same setting Pike told Dr. Boyce about during their ap-
pointment earlier on the Enterprise. Vina’s theme appears for the final time in a
scene that provides closure to her quest for the “prime specimen,” after the
Talosians agree to free Captain Pike. The Talosians grant Vina her wish to have
Pike, although it is only an illusion of him. Here, the musical cue, harkening back
 TOS, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces, and Music 21

to their moments of (forced) intimacy, exudes a sense of happiness and triumph,

indicating the full realization of her utopian fantasy of romantic love.
Before Vina begins her new life, however, another important musical motive
appears, one with a darker and more sinister tone. This new motive marks
the appearance and psychic meddling of the Talosians in Pike’s life and memories,
first appearing during the scene in which the Enterprise and Columbia crews
meet. The bright, warm tones of Vina’s theme contrast with the “Talosians’ theme,”
created with the sounds emanating from an “echoplexed guitar and the
Heckelphone,” a double-reed woodwind instrument, lower in octave than its oboe
relative.24 After Vina first appears, the next shot is a close-up of Captain Pike, as
he gazes at her while listening to her crewmate introduce her to the group. While
appearing to show Pike as he first becomes entranced with Vina, this shot proves
more complex. In what becomes a process shot, the shot appears to zoom out to
reveal Pike’s face on some sort of monitor, continuing to meet the Columbia crew,
with the screen flanked by the visible arms of two alien beings. The next shot reveals
the watchers to be three Talosians, and as they appear framed in a menacing-looking
low-angle medium shot, the music again shifts abruptly to the Talosians’ theme. This
musical motive returns repeatedly to indicate the moments in which the Talosians are
observing Pike or probing his mind, such as when he first wakes up in captivity,
before the Talosians create the illusion of Pike and Vina on Rigel VII, and again later
before their fantasy picnic lunch.
Though these two motives structure the episode thematically around moments
of affection between Vina and Pike, and around fantasy situations created by the
Talosians, one scene complicates their relationship. During their picnic, Pike admits
that he is attracted to Vina, but he is not interested in playing along with the
illusions that Vina has come to accept as her life on Talos IV. Vina tells Pike,

I’m beginning to see why none of this has worked for you. You’ve been
home, and fighting as on Rigel, that’s not new to you either. A person’s
strongest dreams are about what he can’t do, yes, a ship’s captain, always
having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper. You must wonder
what it might be like to forget all that.

At the conclusion of this comment, the Talosians immediately submerge Pike

into a new illusion, radically different from the previous ones designed to spark
love for Vina. In this new scenario, Vina now appears as a green Orion slave girl,
an exotic dancer attempting to seduce her audience. The music here, like the
drastic difference between these two scenes, shapes this Orion illusion. As Jeff
Bond notes, “Courage’s ‘Vina’s Dance’ is a quintessential Trek moment, a va-
guely Easternized bit of exotica,” crafted with the use of a heckelphone and
several other woodwind instruments.25 Here, Pike’s guests make a series of
comments about Vina:
22 Amanda Keeler

Patron 1: Nice place you have here, Mr. Pike.

Pike: Vina?
Patron 2: Glistening green. Almost like secret dreams a bored ship captain might
have.
Patron 1: Funny how they are on this planet. They actually like being taken
advantage of. Suppose you had all of space to choose from and this was only
one small sample?
Patron 2: Wouldn’t you say it was worth a man’s soul?

Though these men are entranced by Vina’s dance, it horrifies Pike. He moves
quickly away from the scene and finds himself back underground, ending the
illusion. However, Vina has followed him, no longer the blond haired and blue-
eyed prisoner seeking Pike as her mate. Rather, she appears as the green Orion
dancer. Though still in her Orion dancer costume and makeup, several seconds of
Vina’s theme accompany her presence, creating a tension between the notion
that Vina’s original, chaste musical theme represents a woman Pike is attracted to
and could love, and an exotic dancing green alien whom he finds appalling. The
use of Vina’s motive here creates a complex understanding of her character,
though in both images she is equally held captive and sexualized by the Talosians.
The thematic complexity revealed in this close analysis of musical cues may help
explain NBC’s accusation that “The Cage” was “too cerebral.” Over the course of
an hour, the failed pilot explores numerous complex themes—freedom, duty, love,
hate, and free will—through a series of conversations between characters. Each of
these thematic explorations plays out through the use of music, particularly the stark
contrast in tone between the two musical motives that define the individual screen
presence of Vina and the Talosians. Depending on the character’s perspective, these
thematic threads frame the world in both dystopian and utopian terms. The very
title of the episode, “The Cage,” elicits several questions, beginning with “What
exactly is the cage in this episode?” Based on the story, “the cage” could refer to the
planet on which Pike is trapped, or to the literal cage that imprisons him under-
ground as a zoo animal for the delight of the Talosians. Metaphorically, “the cage”
could refer to numerous cages, traps, or shortcomings in the characters’ lives and
intellectual abilities. For one, the planet’s inhabitants suggest that Pike’s “limited”
intellect traps him into feeling only primitive emotions:

Talosian 1: It appears, Magistrate, that the intelligence of the specimen is

shockingly limited.
Talosian Magistrate: This is no surprise since his vessel was baited here so easily
with a simulated message. As you can read in its thoughts it is only now
beginning to suspect that these survivors and encampment were a simple
illusion we placed in their minds. … You will note the confusion as it reads
our thought transmissions. … You’ll now see the primitive fear threat
reaction. The specimen is about to boast of his strength, the weaponry of his
 TOS, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces, and Music 23

vessel, and so on. Next … frustrated into a need to display physical prowess,
the creature will throw himself against the transparency. … Despite its
frustration, the creature appears more adaptable than our specimens from
other planets. We can soon begin the experiment.

The metaphor of the cage defines other aspects of Pike’s character as well. He
presents numerous cages in which he feels trapped, including his stressful and
unfulfilling role as a starship captain, and the expectations placed on him by Vina
and the Talosians in their desire to imprison him indefinitely on Talos IV. Yet the
Talosians offer Pike what they feel is a utopian existence on their planet, where
he can step away from the unrelenting stress of life as a captain, something for
which he expressed a desire in his conversation with Dr. Boyce at the beginning
of the episode.
The concept of the cage as dystopian is not limited to Captain Pike. Vina is
caged in her role as pawn to the Talosians. She tells Pike that she is there “to
please” him, and that she can change to be anything he desires. She says, “I can
wear whatever you wish, be anything you wish. … I can become anything, any
woman you’ve ever imagined.” It is only in the last minutes of “The Cage” that
she reveals to Pike that her physical form is an illusion projected to hide her
injuries that resulted from her ship crashing on the planet, and that she wants to
stay on Talos IV to preserve this illusion. Conversely, when provided with the
last piece of her fantasy life, an “illusion” mate in the form of Captain Pike, they
walk away happily, accompanied by the warm, ethereal tones of her recurring
musical cue.
The Talosians are also caught in a figurative cage of their own making. When
Vina agrees to answer some of Captain Pike’s questions, she tells him why the
planet’s inhabitants now live underground:

Vina: War, thousands of centuries ago. … The planet’s only now becoming able
to support life again.
Pike: So the Talosians who came underground found life limited here and they
concentrated on developing their mental power.
Vina: But they found it’s a trap, like a narcotic. Because when dreams become
more important than reality you give up travel, building, creating. You even
forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit,
living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought record.

The Talosians themselves are ensnared, first as a warring society that destroyed its
planet and were forced to move underground to survive, and later as creatures
addicted to the drug-like quality of their projected illusions. However, as with
Pike and Vina, it is possible to read a utopian existence into their present si-
tuation. The Talosians seem deeply content with their underground world of
vicarious fantasies, and even after declaring humans unsuitable as zoo specimens,
24 Amanda Keeler

they give no indication that they plan to stop psychically probing and manip-
ulating their captives.

“The Menagerie”
One of the most interesting aspects of this examination of “The Cage” is how Gene
Roddenberry, in repurposing this footage into the two-part Season 1 episodes “The
Menagerie,” radically shifts the story away from dystopian interpretations towards
a somewhat more utopian ending. Musically, Courage’s compositions in “The
Cage” remain as the underscore of the “historical record” scenes shown to Captain
Kirk. However, the new story parts of “The Menagerie” contain music cues by
Courage, Frederick Steiner, and Sol Kaplan.26 This inclusion of different music cues
written by different composers gives the new episode a musical autonomy, allowing
the Courage cues for Vina, Pike, and the Talosians to remain intact, while also
creating new motives for the characters and events introduced in Season 1 episodes.
In reimagining the existing footage from “The Cage,” “The Menagerie” crafts
an equally complex story. The Enterprise, now under the command of Captain
Kirk, travels to Starbase 11, responding to “a subspace message” that turns out to
be a message that Spock rigged in order to lure the Enterprise there. Through a
series of complex maneuvers, the episode slowly reveals that Spock has brought
them to the Starbase to kidnap Captain Pike, who has been gravely injured in an
accident many years after leaving his command on the Enterprise. Pike now exists
“in a mobile life-support metal box on casters,” able to communicate by an-
swering yes or no through the machine.27 Spock, though half-Vulcan and highly
rational, proceeds to convince his superior officers to deliver Pike back to
Talos IV, where he can live out the life that the Talosians promised him many
years ago. However, in the mythology of TOS, Starfleet created General Order
Seven, which made travel to Talos IV forbidden and punishable by death. From
afar, Spock utilizes the Talosians’ skill for creating illusions to demonstrate to
Captain Kirk the most positive aspects of life on Talos IV, particularly Pike’s
future alongside Vina.
Scenes from “The Cage” appear frequently in part two of “The Menagerie.”
The Talosians tell Kirk, “Captain Pike is welcome to spend the rest of his life
with us, unfettered by his physical body. The decision is yours … and his.” Uhura
(Nichelle Nichols) passes along to Captain Kirk a message from J. I. Mendez
(Malachi Throne), the Commodore of Starbase 11: “General Order Seven
prohibiting contact Talos IV is suspended on this occasion. No action con-
templated against Spock. Proceed as you think best.” Kirk asks Pike, “Chris, do
you want to go there?” and Pike answers yes. The Talosians then show Captain
Kirk the scene from “The Cage” in which Vina walks away, holding hands with
Pike, to retreat to their underground life on Talos IV, accompanied musically
by Vina’s musical motive. Vina’s theme now connotes a shared utopian space.
In this repurposed version of “The Cage” the ending is clear—Talos IV is no
 TOS, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces, and Music 25

longer a cage meant to force Captain Pike to live as a zoo specimen, but a
reprieve from an injury suffered in the line of duty. It is now an offer of a future
utopian existence, a mutually agreed-upon shared illusion between two humans,
Pike and Vina. At the same time, though, Pike’s status at the end of this episode
creates a complex notion of utopia. Pike chooses to live “in an induced reality in
which he experiences full health” rather than remain in his physical body.28
Choosing to end Pike’s story on Talos IV with the images of him retreating into
the cave with Vina, accompanied by their utopian musical motive, speaks to the
contradictory way that TOS dealt with characters with differently abled bodies.29

Conclusion
Music has been at the center of this exploration of “The Cage” and utopian/
dystopian readings of Star Trek. This thematic exploration of utopia and dystopia
through story and music connects with a body of existing literature that attempts
to decipher the inherent ideological framework of TOS and the shifts in tone and
subject matter in the subsequent films and television programs of this prolific
franchise. Many scholars have explored the notion that Roddenberry’s original
intention for the show was to create a future world as a successful social utopia. As
Norma Jones notes, “Roddenberry explained that he had created the original series
‘to show humans as we really are. We are capable of extraordinary things.’”30 As
with the multiple interpretations of “The Cage” presented in this chapter, different
iterations of Star Trek have explored these ideas, with writers frequently responding
to the present political climate of the real world as they craft shifting notions of
peace, prosperity, and utopian existences.
The very notion of utopia suggests the finality of a search for the perfect life in
some ideal place in the universe. It speaks to a person content with the status quo,
as long as it provides the basic needs of survival available without constant toil.
This interpretation of utopia, in fact, defies the very core tenets of the series, as
told through Captain Kirk’s opening monologue: “… to explore strange new
worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has
gone before.” While representing successful technology that propels humans
through space, and the ability to have peaceful interactions with species on other
planets, the mission of the crew on the Enterprise and its sister ships speaks to the
constant search for a better place, not an acknowledgement that the perfect,
utopian existence has already been established. At the same time, Star Trek fulfills
a need to envision a more perfect, utopian world in the image of our own, one
where racism, poverty, and war are in the past, not the future. Like other tele-
vision writers at the time, Roddenberry saw science fiction storytelling as a way
“to bypass the content limitations placed on network television shows by dressing
social and political commentary in the outlandish guise of science fiction.”31
Only time will tell if Roddenberry’s science fiction storytelling has moved us
closer to a world in which humans and other species coexist peacefully.
26 Amanda Keeler

Notes
1 Stephen Benedict Dyson, “How Star Trek Almost Failed to Launch,” The
Conversation, September 6, 2016, accessed September 1, 2017, http://theconversation.
com/how-star-trek-almost-failed-to-launch-64789
2 Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York,
NY: Pocket Books, 1996), 60.
3 Star Trek, original pilot, “The Cage,” directed by Robert Butler, unaired, CBS
Paramount International Television, 2001, DVD.
4 Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Making of the TV Series
(London: Titan Books, 1991), 107; Ina Rae Hark, Star Trek (New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 41.
5 Robert H. Justman, quoted in Roberta Pearson and Máire Messenger Davies, Star
Trek and American Television (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014), 25.
6 Star Trek, season 1, episode 3, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” directed by James
Goldstone, aired September 26, 1966, Paramount, 2004, DVD.
7 Star Trek, season 1, episode 11, “The Menagerie Part I” directed by Marc Daniels, aired
November 17, 1966, Paramount, 2004, DVD; Star Trek, season 1, episode 12, “The
Menagerie Part II” directed by Marc Daniels, aired November 24, 1966, Paramount,
2004, DVD.
8 Neil Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings: Tracking the Title Themes of the Star Trek
Television Franchise, 1966–2005,” in Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the
Future, eds. K. J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward, pp. 52–71 (New York, NY: Routledge,
2013): 54–55.
9 Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style (Los Angeles, CA: Lone Eagle, 1999),
13–19.
10 See Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010); K. J. Donnelly, The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and
Television (London: BFI Publishing, 2005).
11 Whitfield and Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Making of the TV Series, 107.
12 Hark, Star Trek, 14.
13 Hark, Star Trek, 14.
14 Jan Johnson-Smith, American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005), 80.
15 Solow and Justman, Inside Star Trek, 59–60.
16 Whitfield and Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Making of the TV Series, 111.
17 Hark, Star Trek, 14.
18 Jessica L. Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender in the Original Series of Star Trek
(1966–1969)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2015), 75.
19 Nicholas Meyer, “Foreword,” in Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style,
pp. 7–8 (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle, 1999): 7.
20 Tim Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” Music,
Sound, and the Moving Image 7, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 22.
21 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987), 26–27.
22 Janet K. Halfyard, Sounds of Fear and Wonder: Music in Cult TV (London: I.B. Taurus &
Co. Ltd., 2016), 28–29.
23 For the musical transcription of Vina’s motive please see Summers, “Star Trek and the
Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 27.
24 Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 24, 26.
25 Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 14.
26 Desilu Music Department Music Cue Sheet for Film Program, Star Trek, “The
Menagerie” Part 1, author’s personal collection.
 TOS, Utopian/Dystopian Spaces, and Music 27

27 Ken Monteith, “From Supercrip to Assimilant: Normalcy, Bioculture, and Disability

in the Star Trek Universe,” in To Boldly Go: Essays on Gender and Identity in the Star
Trek Universe, eds. Nadine Farghaly and Simon Bacon, pp. 106–25 (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland & Company Inc. Publishers, 2017), 110.
28 Monteith, “From Supercrip to Assimilant,” 111.
29 For a discussion of how disability and difference are constructed and portrayed in the Star
Trek universe, please see Ken Monteith, “From Supercrip to Assimilant: Normalcy,
Bioculture, and Disability in the Star Trek Universe.”
30 Gene Roddenberry, quoted in Norma Jones, “Rebooting Utopia: Reimagining Star
Trek in post-9/11 America,” in The Star Trek Universe: Franchising the Final Frontier,
eds. Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 185.
31 Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 13.
3
THE TROUBLE WITH TREBLES
Orchestration and False Utopias in
Star Trek: The Original Series

Reba A. Wissner

Star Trek’s social mission is obvious: to encourage a utopian future in which there
is no war or famine, and in which people of all races work and live together in
harmony. On the whole, as musicologist Paul Allen Sommerfeld writes, the series
“provides hope by imagining for its viewers a future in which social and political
issues have largely been solved,” and this applies on both a local and a global
level.1 There is no shortage of utopian or Edenic episodes, with at least thirteen of
the series’ seventy-nine episodes set in utopian environments.2 As is often the case
in Star Trek, however, things are not always as they seem. Although the lead
character, Captain Kirk, sometimes fully embraces the notion of paradise, he very
often rejects it as well. Music plays an important role in the depiction of paradise
and Kirk’s reaction to it. It is notable that when he accepts a utopian setting, he is
accompanied by non-diegetic music that makes the place seem more paradisiacal
than it really is.3
This chapter examines the use of orchestration to depict false utopias in four
original-series episodes: “Shore Leave” (comp. Gerald Fried, 1966), “This Side
of Paradise” (tracked score, 1967), “The Apple” (tracked score, 1967), and “The
Paradise Syndrome” (comp. Gerald Fried, 1968).4 The scores for most of the
episodes in this chapter were composed by Gerald Fried, the composer most
often hired for such narratives, and from whom the music editors drew already-
composed music for other utopian stories.5 Through an examination of these
episodes and their orchestrations, I will show that the music accompanying
these false utopias can inform viewers that the utopia is false before the characters
even realize it themselves. It does so through three techniques—pastoral mo-
tives, changes in timbre, and alterations in range. In each of these episodes,
upper-register music plays at moments when the environment is depicted as a
paradise. Later, when this paradise is revealed as false, the upper-register music
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-3
 Orchestration and False Utopias in TOS 29

does not return—intimating that it was all a farce. Combined with musical style,
electronic manipulation, and musical topoi, upper-register music fosters the
initial illusion of utopia.
Generally, it is not uncommon for filmic scenes of heaven (the ultimate
imagined utopia) to include music in the upper registers of the harps and flutes.
The original series of Star Trek transfers such scoring to terrestrial utopias which
are ultimately revealed as false. Star Trek uses range to do this in two ways: it
places the original range of a theme in the high winds and strings, and then drops
that theme’s range as the paradise’s sinister truth is made known. The latter is
achieved either through a change in orchestration or through a simple change in
the register of the theme’s original instrument.
I have chosen to discuss “Shore Leave,” “This Side of Paradise,” “The
Apple,” and “The Paradise Syndrome” because they all feature orchestrations
that emphasize false utopias. These Star Trek episodes have one primary nar-
rative aspect in common: their utopian environments are compared either to
Earth or to a mythical paradise such as the Garden of Eden. And their scoring is
similar as well. The utopian society is most often represented by upper-register
instruments like violins, which mislead the listener into thinking that the world
in which the episode occurs is a true utopia. Musicologists Philip Tagg and Bob
Clarida note that registral extremes of both high and low are representative
of open spaces and bucolic settings; it seems natural that a utopia would be
connected with such registral heights.6 Likewise, pastoral motives are common.
In addition, Star Trek’s composers and music editors use unique tone colors,
including electronic instruments and instruments treated with reverberation,
as they score these settings.7 Utopic topoi in Star Trek eventually reveal
themselves to be false via shifts in timbre; this becomes apparent as each episode
progresses.

What Is a False Utopia?

False utopias are, as scholar Donna Spalding Andréolle defines them, “spaces that
have somehow gone wrong.”8 To be sure, Roddenberry lived through events
that initially seemed to have the potential to create a better world (such as the
advent of atomic power), but which were eventually revealed to be less than ideal
and even destructive.9 Author Harry Ross, in the context of Aldous Huxley’s
novel Brave New World, describes a false utopia as “not so much a Utopia as a
nightmare and warning to all who would plan a Utopia.”10 Scholars Jon Wagner
and Jan Lundeen, writing about Star Trek specifically, further define false utopias
as extensions of dystopia: a false utopia is “not simply a bad or evil society, but
one that is evil in spite of, or specifically because of, its utopian claims.”11 And, in
order to emphasize its moral claims, Wagner and Lundeen note that Star Trek’s
utopian episodes usually include a “concluding soliloquy about the shortcomings
of ‘Paradise.’”12
30 Reba A. Wissner

In the episodes of Star Trek discussed in this chapter, paradise is viewed

through the lens of Captain Kirk and his crew. Kirk finds paradise to be a
paradox; it is a place that is ideal for many but also stagnant and without progress,
therefore making it flawed. These utopias, therefore, are dystopic according to
Kirk. We see this in episodes such as “The Paradise Syndrome,” where Kirk only
believes that the place he is visiting is a utopia because of his amnesia; he later
rejects it. In other episodes, such as “This Side of Paradise,” it is a substance
(in this case, air-born spores) that makes the environment seem utopian to the
Enterprise crew, though Kirk seems to be immune for a time. Without the in-
fluence of the spores, the society’s sheen is diminished.

“Shore Leave” and “This Side of Paradise”

As film theorist Michel Chion has written,

[Timbre] links to an auditory image formed in the memory on the basis of

variable and acoustically heterogeneous givens, and this image is often the
result of an extratemporal—as it were, carved up—apprehension of sounds
that, once heard, are reassembled and grasped in the form of their overall
unfolding.13

Because timbre is linked with aural memory, we as listeners have come to as-
sociate certain timbres with certain events or places. But this also facilitates how
music can work in the imagination. Timbre allows us to see with our mind’s ear.
Music can also work with our imagination through the use of clearly identified
musical tropes. These tropes or topoi have been established in the Western art
music tradition and have close associations with specific events and environments.
These musical meanings appear in film and, while they are well established
on their own, how they are read in the context of a film is important. As music
theorist Kofi Agawu has noted, musical meanings are contingent on their context
and, as a result, the same musical topic can have different meanings in different
situations.14 The four episodes that this essay discusses use topics to channel
false utopia.
In “Shore Leave,” the Enterprise crew, on vacation on an alien planet, enter a
storybook utopia where they each see their greatest desire through what is likely a
mirage. It is a place that—as Doctor McCoy tells Lieutenant Sulu—“you have to
see to believe.” Their desires range from reuniting with lost loves to battling it
out with old foes, and the music for much of the episode, as author Jeff Bond
describes it, “retains a mood of good humor” and is “bright and optimistic.”15 As
the crew’s desires are revealed to them, they are told: “Only imagine your fondest
wishes—love, triumph, anything that amuses you can be made to happen.” The
melodies used in the episode serve as musical signifiers for characters and events,
drawing on well-worn tropes to identify each fantasy separately.16
 Orchestration and False Utopias in TOS 31

Bond interprets the music for “Shore Leave” as giving “a musical clue to the
episode’s eventual outcome.”17 In this episode, ambidiegetic (music or sound of
which it is unclear if it is part of the narrative or only the audience can hear it)
chimes highlight the environment’s wind and draw attention to the planet’s
unusual qualities. We first experience the planet’s magic after McCoy tells Sulu
that it is like something out of Alice in Wonderland, and McCoy is soon greeted by
a large white rabbit and a little girl, who we assume is Alice. The music, per-
formed on the flute, is a playful and jaunty cue called “White Rabbit.” A little
later, we hear a harp. Combined with whole-tone glissandos, the timbre of the
harp in Hollywood scoring tends to not only represent dreams or fantasy but also
to sonically heighten the viewer’s anticipation for the scene’s events.18 The harp
plays whole-tone glissandi as Spock describes the planet as “peaceful, full of
sunshine and good air.”
The main crux of “Shore Leave” is that the fantasies to which the crew of the
Enterprise subscribe are nostalgic and false. Nostalgic memory often takes on a
quality of its own that is very different from past realities.19 Composer Gerald
Fried remarked that he wrote nostalgic music for the crew’s fantasies, and de-
scribed the romantic flute melody that he composed for Kirk’s youthful love
interest Ruth in this episode as a specifically nostalgic theme.20 The cue, “2nd
Ruth,” is a lyrical flute melody that functions very much as a romantic cliché,
which sonically depicts a female character’s femininity in film through its context
rather than through specific musical characteristics such as keys, tempos, or
melodic figures.21 The second time that we hear the Ruth melody it remains
unchanged, and Kirk notes that it is impossible for her to be standing before him
because she has not aged in over twenty years. This is one of our first indications
that the planet is not what it seems, and this music reinforces his statement.
“Shore Leave” opens with a pastoral cue called “New Planet” as the crew beams
down into the paradise. The upper winds in this cue (flute, oboe, and French horn)
create an idyllic sound, though this theme returns several times throughout
the episode with a different orchestration each time. Musically, episodes like this,
which deal with false utopias, mimic the society’s state of equilibrium—it remains
static. Themes repeat, often using the same instrumentation each time with few if
any variations, until the register or instrumentation changes.
In “Shore Leave,” I read the flute as representing a love that seems idyllic but
is not. Here, false utopia and false love are musically and narratively related.
Ruth’s love theme, “2nd Ruth,” is written for flute with a violin countermelody,
and its lyricism, timbre, and smooth contour misleads the viewer into believing
that the love the characters share is pure. It also evokes the rhythm of the siciliano,
typically equated with the pastoral in early modern music, though here hinting
through parody that the planet is not what it initially seems.22 The information
conveyed through these cues is expressed as much through their orchestration as
the rhythms. This melody is not only dedicated to Ruth in the Star Trek series,
but her flute melody from “Shore Leave” is reused in “This Side of Paradise” for
32 Reba A. Wissner

Spock’s love interest, Leila. “2nd Ruth,” for instance, is employed to represent
Spock’s ardor for Leila, which only occurs because of the intoxicating effect of
the planet’s spores; his love is not real. The combination of the cue’s pastoral
character and its instrumentation mislead the audience into thinking the love
between these two characters is true, when in reality it is an illusion.
Fantasy in the Star Trek universe is not limited to amusement-park planets like
the one visited in “Shore Leave.” Sometimes, drug-like substances affect the
crew’s perceptions. As scholar Chris Gregory writes, “This Side of Paradise” has
an obvious connection to LSD and 1960s drug culture, and it is the first episode
to deal with this issue. Here, the moral is that drugs produce false utopias through
altered states of perception.23 The episode’s mind-altering spores, shot into the air
by an indigenous plant on the paradisiacal Omicron Ceti III, strongly evokes the
mind-altering effects of LSD, and the crew is now on what might be colloquially
termed an acid trip.24
In “This Side of Paradise,” Elias Sandoval, the leader of a human colony
housed on Omicron Ceti III, explains his seemingly perfect environment to the
Enterprise’s crew: “We have harmony here. Complete peace.” The choice of
instruments as he speaks—trombones, trumpets, horns, and woodwinds—are not
the only thing that reveals the false utopia; they are combined with the use of
reverberation and a specific style of music that is lyrical and almost romantic-
sounding. It is especially the technological mediation of the instruments that
reveals that the harmony experienced on this planet is not natural or real. After
Sandoval comments that the planet is completely peaceful, we hear a chord
punched by the brass and winds, releasing into a jagged and almost shrill flute
melody. We then see the swaying, spore-giving plants, which are accompanied
by an electric guitar treated with heavy reverb and pitch bends; this same music is
heard when the crew enters the barn, musically depicting that the planet is not
what it seems.
These sonic effects are also used when Kirk and one of his men talk about the
planet’s perfection, noting that, for an agricultural planet, it strangely lacks
agriculture—there are no animals or insects. At this point, the audience hears a
Hammond organ and pizzicato cellos which emphasize the subtle barrenness of
the landscape. This pizzicato motive is repeated when Sandoval mentions to Kirk
that the planet gives life, peace, and love; the cue used at this point—“Olde
English,” originally composed for “Shore Leave”—is employed yet again as
Spock swings, carefree, on a tree branch as Leila watches. It is at this point that
the strings play double stops, with all of them in their upper register. While this
gives the illusion of glee, the use of the upper register also represents the artifi-
ciality of Spock’s—and by extension the rest of the colonists’—joy. In the end,
the audience learns that the planet only seems like a utopia because of the spores;
in reality, the Berthold rays experienced on the planet can kill anyone who stays
there for too long. These rays have prevented the colonists from raising animals
or planting an extensive amount of plant life.
 Orchestration and False Utopias in TOS 33

EXAMPLE 3.1 Gerald Fried, “Olde English,” mm. 1–6 from “Shore Leave.” Transcribed
by author 25

Timbre plays an important role in clueing the audience in before the narrative makes
this clear, however. These timbres—the flute in “2nd Ruth” and the vibraphone and
strings in “Olde English”—tell us that perfection and conflict-free love are an illu-
sion; in the case of Leila and Spock, only the spores allow them to be together.
In Hollywood scoring, paradises are traditionally depicted by pastoral tropes; this
can be heard in films like The City, scored by Aaron Copland in 1938.26 Several
television shows contemporaneous with Star Trek, such as The Virginian
(1962–1971), use the pastoral trope in this way as well.27 It is this trope that Star
Trek’s composers and editors exploit in thwarting our expectations before even-
tually telling us that the lands traveled are not utopias. According to Hermann Jung,
in his book on pastoral music, the pastoral is dichotomous, representing both
heavenly paradise and brute peasantry.28 As writer Raymond Monelle summarizes,
the heavenly pastoral uses “the celestial tone of the flute, which imitated the ancient
syrinx”; in fact, the pastoral topic and the flute’s timbre are connected.29 Musically,
the “heavenly” pastoral can be defined as employing (most often) a 6/8 meter,
upper woodwinds (especially flute and oboe), legato phrasing, and an andante
tempo.30 Unlike the siciliano rhythm, the “earthly” pastoral, in contrast, uses
“modern rustic instruments: the bagpipe, […] cowhorns, cowbells, as well as
the cries of real shepherds and cowherds.”31 It is the characterization of the hea-
venly pastoral, with which this section has been concerned.

“The Apple” and “The Paradise Syndrome”

Stale equilibrium is a common theme of several of the series’ false utopia episodes,
and is a situation of which Kirk is highly critical.32 In Star Trek, paradise begets
stagnation.33 As historian Matthew Kapell writes, “In the ‘final frontier’ of Star
Trek progress is such a necessary good that, without it, members of any society are
actually living in a false paradise—by whatever name it might be called.”34 The
episode “The Apple,” for instance, features a society that has achieved a perceived
utopia and that has remained in a state of stasis in order to maintain it. Kirk is
34 Reba A. Wissner

fervently against communities such as this because they stop working toward
progress, content to remain as they are forever.35 Kirk’s stance is not unusual
since, as Robert Elliott writes, utopias in literature and the arts often tend “to-
ward complete stasis.”36 Star Trek, interested in depicting social and technological
progress, therefore has no desire to valorize utopian societies.
In “The Apple,” a computer named Vaal keeps the inhabitants of the planet
Gamma Trianguli VI in an artificial state of innocence and, as a result, they
believe that they are living in a paradise.37 The Enterprise crew also believes that
Gamma Trianguli VI is a paradise until they discover two things: first, Vaal
forbids romantic love among his people; second, and more crucially, the land is
dangerous—moving flowers shoot smoke and kill crewmembers. As the flowers’
spores begin to kill people, and as the crew speculates that “paradise must have
looked like this,” the upper woodwinds in the underscore shift to brass, revealing
a sound we have yet to encounter in the episode, emphasizing that this place is
different from non-paradises. Thus, the music undermines the danger of the
flowers’ spores by making us consider that the place is actually a paradise.
The planet’s beautiful vegetation is a disguise for its social dangers.38 The serpent-
shaped cave in which Vaal resides overshadows the land. We can interpret Vaal as a
tempter and harbinger of doom given that his cave is shaped like a serpent, the
animal biblically responsible for the moral fall of humanity. Although the society
appears otherwise idyllic, Kirk determines that the people there cannot possibly be
living in paradise since they are in stasis. He is determined to rescue them.39

FIGURE 3.1 Vaal’s Cave in “The Apple”

 Orchestration and False Utopias in TOS 35

In “The Apple,” Vaal’s music is mechanical in style, revealing not only the fact
that he is a computer but also the fact that the planet is a false utopia overseen by a
false god.40 The illusion is emphasized sonically, with thick brass chords un-
derscoring the description of the flowers as “artificially produced,” highlighting
their manipulative beauty and their very real hazard. Poisonous flowers and
exploding rocks are seen as Kirk calls the planet “a Garden of Eden with land-
mines,” and the music tells us something is wrong. Flute lines connoting an
idyllic setting play before the rocks explode, but their low register indicates that
the planet is not as paradisiacal as it appears. Other musical clues of trouble
abound: reverb in the score accompanies the flowers as they shoot smoke and
spores, the oboes play a melody in their upper register as the crew wander around
the planet, and the camera shows them in their new house as Chekhov says, “A
while ago, this planet was trying to kill us.” The oboe playing in its upper register
combined with the previous low-register music and Chekhov’s statement tells us
that the planet is not as nice as it appears, and that its attempt to give them a house
is contrary to its true motives—to destroy them. Vaal’s people have disappeared,
but they return with serial music played on the piano as they attack the crew. The
combination of the reverb, the flute in its low register, the oboe in its upper
register, serial composition, and dissonant brass chords all contribute sonically to
telling us that this is a false utopia.
Music theorist Ron Rodman notes in his discussion of Gerald Fried’s Star Trek
scores (which includes “Shore Leave” and “The Paradise Syndrome,” among
others) that Fried used leitmotifs that served a dual purpose as ascriptions,
“identifying and designating the characters and objects while also signifying the
traits of these characters … through topics and expressive genres.”41 Change in
orchestration and range allows for a change in these leitmotifs’ signification, so
that the themes develop and take on new meaning. Just as leitmotifs in film
develop through musical elements such as structure and orchestration as a
character or situation develops, so they do in Star Trek’s revelation of false uto-
pias. As the orchestration changes, the meaning behind the music also changes.
Typically, instrumentation that uses the upper winds and upper strings tends to
mislead us the most about the planet’s actual political environment, appearing in
scenes where the planet seems the most like paradise. The pitch range of the
musical themes change, however, as we determine that the paradise is a lie.
Another episode about the falseness of a portrayed paradise is “The Paradise
Syndrome.” In this episode, the Enterprise crew land on an Earth-like planet
inhabited by Native Americans (transplanted from Earth centuries earlier). On
the planet is an obelisk, which erases Kirk’s memory. This amnesia helps the
people of the planet hail him as a god—he does not question it. “The Paradise
Syndrome” opens with a flute solo in the first cue, “Pine Trees,” as the camera
pans over water and forest. (This flute solo also appears in the “Amerinds” cue
discussed below.) The flute melody emphasizes the idyllic landscape of the planet
through its timbre and range, reflecting both the location and the peacefulness
36 Reba A. Wissner

often associated with utopian environments. An ominous-sounding French horn

then enters when we are shown the obelisk—an asteroid deflector made to ensure
the survival of the humans who live there. This horn music, on the heels
of the flute melody, reveals the counterfeit nature of the planet, though the flute
enters again when the camera pans to the Native American characters on screen
(referred to as “Amerinds” in series documentation). It also sounds very similar to
the Hollywood musical use of the “good Indians” in film, illustrating that this is a
place of peace rather than war.42

EXAMPLE 3.2 Gerald Fried, “Pine Trees,” flute solo, mm. 1–8 from “The Paradise
Syndrome.” Transcribed by author 43

In “The Paradise Syndrome,” Spock and McCoy identify Kirk’s preference for this
planet-of-the-week as Tahiti Syndrome (explained as the way that twentieth-
century humans would react to paradisiacal places) and, unsurprisingly, this concept
has its own theme. As musicologist Jessica Getman notes, the Tahiti Syndrome
theme—found, for instance, in “The Amerinds” cue—is played by the strings, but
melodically contains chromaticism that alludes to the danger that the planet holds
for Kirk.44 Though the cue’s use of the strings in their upper register seems to
indicate that the planet is a paradise, the melody undermines that interpretation.

EXAMPLE 3.3 Gerald Fried, the Tahiti Syndrome theme from “The Amerinds,” mm.
7–9 from “The Paradise Syndrome.” Transcribed by author 45
 Orchestration and False Utopias in TOS 37

In composing the score for “The Paradise Syndrome,” Fried referenced Polynesian
and Native American musics. He later noted that he chose to use folk and “all-
purpose native” music for the episode’s score.46 He also specified that he used
native instruments such as Polynesian flutes and drums, but that he did not use the
ukulele (also a Polynesian instrument), since he wanted to avoid giving the episode
“a tropical nightclub feel.”47 One of the most telling orchestrations in the episode is
connected to Kirk’s internal musings, in which the Tahiti material is played on
the strings. Just as humans from the twentieth century would describe places that
seem like paradise using romanticized language, the use of the legato strings here,
which are typically connected to the idea of romance and emotional excess, sen-
timentalizes what Kirk feels about the place where he currently resides.

“It’s Paradise, My Friend” (Or is it?)

Regardless of the Enterprise crew’s directive to refrain from interfering with alien
life (referred to as the “Prime Directive”), in each of these episodes they do so
anyway in the belief that they must save these societies from themselves. Still, the
crew are unable to interact with the people of these planets in a meaningful way,
and they ultimately destroy the local societies’ ways of life without providing a
better solution. This is why these are false utopias.48 It is unsurprising that several
of the series’ false utopia episodes are thinly-veiled allegories for the proper ap-
plication of American values in other cultures, and for American intervention in
underdeveloped countries.49 The show supports the role of the Federation—and
by extension, America—as the world’s police, but a well-meaning, good police
that is morally beyond reproach.
High woodwinds are often used to instill in the audience a false sense of
utopia, as listeners associate these sounds with the perfection of the lands and the
people onscreen. However, as is soon revealed in every case, the music is mis-
leading. Switches to bass instruments, and alterations of timbre and range
(through the use of pizzicato or reverberation, for instance, or through transitions
into lower pitch areas), illustrate the dark truth about the environment depicted
on the screen.
As film historian Bruce Isaacs writes, conceptions of utopia in Star Trek tend to
be particularly humanist; those that communicate our most important values are
“on one level an abstraction from reality.”50 That is, the ideas in the episodes are
representative of what could be real, but only with some minor differences from
reality itself. Ultimately, Wagner and Lundeen caution that “that the cost of such
life is prohibitively high and that once in Paradise we will become trapped there.”51
This point calls into question whether the utopias in these episodes are truly false, or
whether they are only false to Captain Kirk and his crew—and to Western viewers.
But the music obviously agrees with Kirk. It is the music that warns us of Star Trek’s
false utopias—societies into which the crew dares not venture for fear of entrap-
ment. To hear the series’ ideological stance, all we must do is listen.
38 Reba A. Wissner

Notes
1 Paul Allen Sommerfeld, “Scoring Star Trek’s Utopia: Musical Iconicity in the Star Trek
Franchise, 1966–2016” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2017), 39.
2 William Blake Tyrrell, “Star Trek as Myth and Television as Mythmaker,” Journal of
Popular Culture 10, no. 4 (1977): 713; Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, Exploring the Next
Frontier: Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek, and Utopia in the 1960s and 1970s American History
(New York: Routledge, 2016), 147.
3 Kapell, Exploring the Next Frontier, 149.
4 Tracked scores, sometimes also referred to as composite scores, are scores that are built
from pre-existing library cues. In the case of “This Side of Paradise,” for instance, most
of the cues come from “Shore Leave.” Star Trek, season 1, episode 15, “Shore Leave,”
directed by Robert Sparr, aired December 29, 1966, Paramount, 2004, DVD; Star
Trek, season 1, episode 24, “This Side of Paradise,” directed by Ralph Senensky, aired
March 2, 1967, Paramount, 2004, DVD; Star Trek, season 2, episode 5, “The Apple,”
directed by Joseph Pevney, aired October 13, 1967, Paramount, 2004, DVD; Star
Trek, season 3, episode 3, “The Paradise Syndrome,” directed by Jud Taylor, aired
October 4, 1968, Paramount, 2004, DVD.
5 Jim Henrikson for “This Side of Paradise” and “The Apple,” Robert H. Raff for
“Shore Leave,” and Richard Lapham for “The Paradise Syndrome.”
6 Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida, Ten Little Title Tunes: Towards a Musicology of the Mass
Media (New York: Mass Media Music Scholars Press, 2003), 500.
7 Ron Rodman, “‘Coperettas’, ‘Detecterns’, and Space Operas: Music and Genre
Hybridization in American Television,” in Music in Television: Channels of Listening, ed.
James Deaville (New York: Routledge, 2011), 51.
8 Donna Spalding Andréolle, “Paved with the Best Intentions? Utopian Spaces in Star
Trek, The Original Series (NBC, 1966–1969),” Revues 2 (2012), accessed January 12,
2020, https://tvseries.revues.org/1376
9 Mary McAuley, “Roddenberry’s Star Trek Galaxy,” in The Routledge Companion to
Imaginary Worlds, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf (New York: Routledge, 2017), 386.
10 Harry Ross, Utopias Old and New (London: Nelson Publications, 1938), 197.
11 Jon Wagner and Jan Lundeen, Deep Space and Sacred Time: Star Trek and The American
Mythos (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 119.
12 Wagner and Lundeen, Deep Space and Sacred Time, 123.
13 Michel Chion, “Dissolution of the Notion of Timbre,” trans. James A. Steintrager,
Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 22, nos. 2–3 (2011): 237.
14 Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 4.
15 Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle Press, 1999), 17.
16 Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 123.
17 Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 17.
18 Frank Lehman, Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018), 31.
19 For more on the use of music and nostalgia in 1950s and 1960s television, see Reba
Wissner, “No Time Like the Past: Hearing Nostalgia in The Twilight Zone,” Journal of
Popular Television 6, no. 1 (2018): 59–80.
20 Fred Steiner, “Music for Star Trek: Scoring a Television Show in the Sixties,” in
Wonderful Inventions: Motion Pictures, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound at the Library of
Congress, ed. by Iris Newsome (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1985), 301.
21 Rebecca Naomi Fü lö p, “Heroes, Dames, and Damsels in Distress: Constructing
Gender Types in Classical Hollywood Films” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan,
2012), 31.
 Orchestration and False Utopias in TOS 39

22 The siciliano is a rhythmic trope consisting of a dotted eighth note followed by a

sixteenth note and an eighth note in 6/8 time, typically equated with the pastoral in
early modern music. See Raymond Monelle The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and
Pastoral (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006): 215 ff.
23 Chris Gregory, Star Trek: Parallel Narratives (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 30.
24 Gregory, Star Trek, 30. This idea of plants that shoot spores that cause side-effects
might have be drawn from The Outer Limits episode “Specimen: Unknown” (1964),
where the plant spores are deadly.
25 Transcribed from manuscript score, Gerald Fried, Star Trek, “Shore Leave,” Gerald
Fried Papers, 1956–1980, MSS 02883, Box 7, American Heritage Center, University
of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.
26 Neil Lerner, “Copland’s Music of Wide Open Spaces: Surveying the Pastoral Trope in
Hollywood,” The Musical Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2001): 490.
27 Tagg and Clarida, Ten Little Title Tunes, 561.
28 Herrmann Jung, Die Pastorale: Studien zur Geschichte eines musikalischen Topos (Bern:
Francke Verlag, 1980). For the purposes of this essay, I will be using Raymond
Monelle’s interpretation of the text.
29 Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2000), 191.
30 Tagg and Clarida, Ten Little Title Tunes, 533.
31 Monelle, The Sense of Music, 191.
32 Kapell, Exploring the Next Frontier, 150.
33 Kapell, Exploring the Next Frontier, 153.
34 Kapell, Exploring the Next Frontier, 150.
35 A similar storyline occurs in the episode “Return of the Archons.” Star Trek, season 1,
episode 21, “The Return of the Archons,” directed by Joseph Pevney, aired February
9, 1967, Paramount, 2004, DVD.
36 Robert C. Elliott, The Shape of Utopia (New York: Peter Lang, 1970), 106.
37 Gregory, Star Trek, 33–34. This is not the first science fiction television episode to
feature inhabitants of a town serving a computer. In The Twilight Zone episode “The
Old Man in the Cave” (1964), the survivors of an atomic bomb follow the directions
of an old man (through the translation of Mr. Goldsmith [John Anderson]) in order to
remain alive and avoid radiation poisoning. Once the inhabitants learn that the old
man is a computer, they defy his orders and die, leaving Goldsmith as the sole survivor.
The Twilight Zone, season 5, episode 7, “The Old Man in the Cave,” directed by Alan
Crosland Jr., aired November 8, 1963, Paramount, 2020, DVD.
38 Patricia Vettel-Becker, “Space and the Single Girl: Star Trek, Aesthetics, and 1960s
Femininity,” Frontiers 35, no. 2 (2014): 171.
39 Kevin M. McGeough, “Victorian Archaeologies, Anthropologies and Adventures in
the Final Frontier: Modes of Nineteenth-Century Scientific Exploration and Display
in Star Trek,” Science Fiction Film and Television 9, no. 2 (2016): 240.
40 This contradicts some science fiction in which machines, through technological de-
velopment, can create utopias. See Robert Asa, “Classical Star Trek and The Death of
God: A Case Study of ‘Who Mourns for Adonais?’” in Star Trek and Sacred Ground:
Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, eds. Jennifer E. Porter and
Darcee L. McLaren (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), 50.
41 Rodman, Tuning In, 123.
42 It is worth noting that the word Indian here is used in the literature to mean Native
American. It remains a problematic term. For more on the music of the “good
Indian,” see Claudia Gorbman, “Scoring the Good Indian: Music in the Liberal
Western,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representations, and Appropriations
in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2000), 234–53.
40 Reba A. Wissner

43 Transcribed from manuscript score, Gerald Fried, Star Trek, “The Paradise Syndrome,”
Gerald Fried Papers, 1956–1980, MSS 02883, Box 7, American Heritage Center,
University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.
44 Jessica Leah Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender in The Original Series of Star Trek”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2015), 149.
45 Transcribed from manuscript score, Gerald Fried, Star Trek, “The Paradise
Syndrome,” Gerald Fried Papers, 1956–1980, MSS 02883, Box 7, American Heritage
Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.
46 Star Trek Staff, “Exclusive Interview: TOS Composer Gerald Fried,” StarTrek.com,
June 15, 2013, accessed April 3, 2018, http://www.startrek.com/article/exclusive-
interview-tos-composer-gerald-fried/
47 Gerald Fried, “Interview,” Archive of American Television, accessed May 22, 2018,
http://interview.televisionacademy.com/interview/gerald-fried/
48 Jacob Barber, “Star Trek and the Anthropological Machine: Eliding Difference to Stay
Human,” Geographical Bulletin 58, no. 1 (2017): 42.
49 George A. Gonzalez, The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 23, 51.
50 Bruce Isaacs, “A Vision of a Time and Place: Spiritual Humanism and the Utopian
Impulse,” in Star Trek as Myth: Essays on Symbol and Archetype in the Final Frontier, ed.
Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2010), 189, 191.
51 Wagner and Jan Lundeen, Deep Space and Sacred Time, 126.
4
TRACKS FOR TREK
Music in Network Ads for Star Trek:
The Original Series

James Deaville

The second half of the 1960s brought an explosion in the production of fantasy/
science fiction serials within American network television. Beginning with the
pioneering shows The Twilight Zone (1959–1964) and The Outer Limits (1963–1965),1
the “big three” ABC, CBS, and NBC competed in producing programs that ex-
tended the frontiers of the known universe, whether in outer space (Star Trek
[1966–69], Lost in Space [1965–68]) or inner space: underwater (Voyage to the Bottom of
the Sea [1964–68]), the distant past (Time Tunnel [1966–67]), or among us (The
Invaders [1967–68]). The considerable demand for science fiction television (and film)
reflected the nation’s excitement over the space race and extraterrestrial exploration,2
while also invoking tropes of the Cold War.3 On the other hand, the genre’s pop-
ularity manifested the desire to escape a planet despoiled by pollution and warfare.4
The number and diversity of programs created a highly competitive environment for
the networks, which needed to expand their tactics for reaching potential audiences.
One of the promotional vehicles that television broadcasters mobilized was the
“promo,” defined as a short video (thirty seconds or less) that advertises a TV pro-
gram through moving image, music, sound effects, dialogue, and graphic lettering.5
Shorter than a two-minute trailer, and thus more suited for the mediascape of tel-
evision, the promo served both informational and branding promotional purposes.
In fact, recent research has established that “ultra-short” audiovisual advertising
(two to six seconds) can be more effective in brand recall than longer forms,6 such as
the standard cinematic trailer that typically lasts over two minutes.7
As a new audiovisual medium for advertising television, the promo of the late
1960s had yet to adopt a standard format with regard to length, images, and
narrative content. It stands to reason that networks would be reluctant to devote
valuable advertising time to previewing new shows that might not survive the
season. Moreover, the promo could be constrained by the amount of footage
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-4
42 James Deaville

available for advertising purposes—a pilot episode might comprise the only
source for promotional material, as was the case with promos for Lost in Space
(September 1965)8 and Star Trek (September 1966).9 Other limiting factors for
the nascent promo included actor contracts that prohibited their appearance in
promotional materials10 and music licensing agreements that prevented a theme
song from being used in an advertising context.11 Considering all of these factors,
the TV promo from the late 1960s might not bear much visual or audio re-
semblance to the show it ostensibly promoted, and networks would not invest
considerable resources into the production of such marketing media.
Nevertheless, as Jonathan Gray argues, promos count among the important
paratexts for the televisual product, “serving as the first outpost of interpretation.
Promos often take the first steps in filling a text with meaning.”12 Upon attending
to the promo, audiences can form an opinion of the series based on genre, narrative,
and/or characters, and then decide whether or not to partake of the program itself.
The effective promotional paratext should compel potential listener/viewers to the
text of the show, at which point they could assess whether the expectations pro-
duced by the paratext were realized in the program itself. In contrast, slipshod and
inconsistently deployed promos could undermine the show’s chances for long-term
survival. Thus Gray speculates that “many texts fail and get canceled in part because
of a poor marketing campaign, and hence because of paratextual dismantling. Many
a show’s death may be predetermined at birth by its previews and trailers.”13

Television Promos of the Late 1960s

When evaluating television promos from the late 1960s, the scholar should be careful
not to apply recent standards upon these pioneering paratexts; conventions for such
advertising did not yet exist and the home audience would not have had much
experience with small-screen promos for television programming. The industry
recognized the desirability of such audiovisual promotion yet did not dedicate re-
sources beyond those that were readily available (i.e., in studio). Indeed, these
paratexts were considered ephemeral even at the time of their creation, so the net-
works would not have had any reason to archive them beyond their usefulness, which
could be limited to the month (usually September) in which the show premiered.
Fortunately, single promos for most of the major serials have survived in various
locations on the Internet (primarily YouTube), although typically without dating—
the researcher needs to rely on the promo’s footage to determine the season.14
Individual promos from the late 1960s adopt a variety of forms depending on the
show’s genre. Nonetheless, essential elements in the pitch for audience include
moving images and dialogue of well-known lead characters (e.g., Elizabeth
Montgomery in Bewitched or Don Adams in Get Smart). In the case of plot-driven
serials like procedurals and fantasy/science fiction shows, effective screen promo-
tion typically involves action shots with sound effects (gun shots, car tires squealing,
monsters bellowing, etc.). Film promotions specialist Robert Marich describes such
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 43

extracted footage as the “money shot,” the “most gripping scene in a trailer or
television spot that, in terms of pacing, is the climax or payoff.”15 Enabling the
public to see and hear stars in action scenes counts among the most compelling of
advertising tactics available to the networks.16
Above and beyond the dialogue of actors, the sonic dimension of promos is
also represented by voice-over narration and the musical score. The reliance
upon the announcer serves two major purposes in the promos for a new show:
the voice-over explains the overarching narrative premise while fostering a sense
of anticipation through hype.17 Music functions to support the promo’s narrative
as one of the most economical means of creating affect in temporally compressed
media forms—the musical selection would conform to standards of genre, which
as Jason Mittel has argued, figures as a defining feature of television paratexts.18
All of this incoming sensory information can overwhelm the listener-viewer
screening the promo for the first time.19 Indeed, visual/aural overdetermination
and the heightened saturation and compression of image and sound are audio-
visual strategies from film advertising that boutique trailer houses would exploit
in later years.20 Promo (and trailer) makers count on the potential audience
member not being able to respond to its details through cognition but rather
through the affect they have attempted to create in this super-condensed form.21
If the promo creates impressions of story settings, characters (including creatures),
and types of action, that should suffice to fashion a hook for the interested public.
However, the networks began to explore other ways to promote their new
shows already in the 1950s; for example, they provided television audiences with
“fall previews,” which were essentially a string of promos connected by means of
voice-over narration. Individual promos could be excerpted from the preview reel
as need arose. In 1955, CBS provided its primary affiliates with a preview of its fall
lineup “via closed-circuit,” in the format of a “one hour show … featuring excerpts
from new programs.”22 NBC and ABC followed suit in September 1958 with their
own fall preview specials, the NBC closed-circuit, ninety-minute program
reaching an audience of 10,000 in forty cities.23 According to Television Obscurities,
the “very first true fall preview special may have been a CBS special titled ‘Seven
Wonderful Nights’ that promoted the network’s new shows for the 1961–62
season.”24 What set this and subsequent preview shows apart from the earlier ex-
amples is the use of one or more well-known hosts for a narrative frame involving
some unifying conceit, whether a circus (CBS, multiple hosts, 1961),25 espionage-
comedy (CBS, Don Adams, 1965),26 or a taxi ride (NBC, Jack Burns and Avery
Schreiber, 1966).27 As the format of the fall preview developed over the course of
the 1960s, the presentations of programs became less dependent on the narrational
structure and the format of excerpted scenes and more on the style of promos that
could stand on their own and be screened independently during the season.
Because the scenes in the fall previews were lifted directly from the shows and
generally not edited into a stand-alone format, the listener-viewer might not hear
any recognizable music for a given show (if there was any in the clip to begin
44 James Deaville

with). Music figured most prominently at the higher level of the fall preview as a
whole, which needed to bind the disparate promos into a compelling narrative
frame. Nevertheless, the television audience could at least gain an impression of
the music for a particular series, and might also hear the theme music of the show
close to the series premiere or in second- and subsequent-season promotional
materials.28 This is the situation of the Star Trek promos from 1966, where a very
brief initial preview from the summer contains no music from the series, while a
promo from the beginning of September features snippets of music from the
second pilot (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”), and promos from later
seasons feature the Alexander Courage theme and other music from the series.

Science Fiction Television Promotion

Turning to the science fiction series of the time, some of them could be classified as
“space operas,” such as Lost in Space or Star Trek, both of which qualify as a “colorful,
dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure.”29 Others involved fantastic epic
explorations of inner space, including the serials of Irwin Allen: Voyage to the Bottom of
the Sea, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.30 They all involved ensemble casts
who were placed in threatening situations, exploring “the various ways people react
when faced with unusual circumstances” while reflecting real-world political de-
velopments and social issues.31 Lost in Space was aimed at a juvenile audience, reflected
in the youth of central characters Will and Penny and the level of writing and plots.32
In contrast, Gene Roddenberry, and above all the creative and promotional forces at
NBC, desired Star Trek to distinguish itself as adult science fiction.33
The promos for these shows exploited visual references to the explorers’ ad-
vanced technology, clips of their adversaries—especially hostile creatures—and
samples of the program’s special effects. The severely constrained time frame dic-
tated a quicker pacing of shots (even in comparison with trailers), and the greatest
threat to the voyager-explorers is reserved for the last frames. Science fiction promo
visuals should by definition convey to the potential viewer the diversity of settings,
of worlds, but the pragmatics of low-budget television advertising at the time meant
that the promo’s mise-en-scène would typically originate in the show’s pilot epi-
sode.34 Still, there was enough moving-image material to feature action sequences,
close-ups of leading characters, and establishing shots for contexts, all important
factors behind the marketing strategies for this type of program.
The narration for science fiction promos reveals a certain uniformity in style and
content: a resonant, authoritative male voice introduces the listener-viewer to the
series’ underlying adventure. For Lost in Space (CBS), for example, the 1965 promo
relies upon the narrator not only to provide necessary narrative information, but
also to create a sense of hype through both words (“thrilling,” “amazing”) and
intonation (Figure 4.1). The same is true for another Irwin Allen production,
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (ABC), which presents a similarly boosted in-
troduction to the series, where the voice-over undergoes a transformation from
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 45

calm fact-giving to agitation (Figure 4.2). This promo invites the prospective tel-
evision listener-viewer into the diegesis of the submarine from the safety and
comfort of the living-room armchair, which is important considering the ostensibly
horrifying threats presented on screen.

FIGURE 4.1 Screenshot of the Chariot, from “Lost in Space TV promo (1965)” 35

FIGURE 4.2 Screenshot of the Seaview, from “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Promo Season One #1” 36
46 James Deaville

To enhance the science fiction promo’s impact and appeal, its producers would
include the scenes’ original sound effects and musical score if they were legally
and practically available. Music is particularly important in science fiction as a
“guide to navigating strange, new places, and to encountering new people and
forms.”37 Music possesses the quality of subtly “making the strange familiar,”
accomplishing its work without us noticing it, and it is mobilized in science
fiction audiovisual paratexts so that the serial’s novel creatures and scenarios do
not scare the public away from consuming the actual text of the show.38 At
the same time, the producers of science fiction television need to render the
dangers of space travel believable and tangible, which puts music in the
awkward position of having to reconcile the contradictory roles of familiarizing
and menacing.
The music in science fiction promos would typically feature the show’s
branding theme for established series, but for newcomers, the network’s pro-
motional department might need to draw on library tracks that at least loosely
correspond to the action on screen. Thus the September 1965 promo for Lost in
Space presents visual footage and sound effects from the show’s unaired pilot
(1965), but it features no music from the series (and no dialogue either). In
contrast, a fall 1964 promo for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea deploys the show’s
trademark theme—a minor seventh leap upwards, followed by a third down to
the dominant—right at the beginning, as a clear branding gesture.39 However,
promos from later seasons of a serial are more likely to use its trademark musical
theme, recognizable by the public, which is the case with audiovisual advertising
for Star Trek: The Original Series.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Promo (1964)

A closer examination of the two aforementioned promos for Voyage to the Bottom
of the Sea and Lost in Space helps situate the Star Trek promos. From contextual
clues we can determine that the Voyage promo dates from the beginning of
September 1964, before the series debut on September 14, 1964.40 Undoubtedly
in the desire to present as many action scenarios as possible, the one-minute
promo takes video and audio from the first two post-pilot episodes, “The City
Beneath the Sea” (September 21) and “The Fear Makers” (September 28), as well
as from the eponymous 1961 film, creating a narrative that proceeds from one
crisis to the next. As supported by the music, the narrator explains what we are
seeing: “Come aboard the Seaview, every week, for a fantastic journey into the
not-too-distant future, into the unknown depths of earth’s mighty oceans, into
the realm of uncharted danger and high adventure.” Significantly, as listener-
viewers are invited to board the Seaview, we are presented images of the sub-
merging vessel while the series theme music plays—music that does not return
again during the promo. The music then becomes sinister in wave-like half-steps,
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 47

ebbing and flowing to create the impression of the ocean’s surface, even as we
observe a crew member wrestling with a monster, synchronized with the voice-
over’s words “realm of uncharted danger.”
In a touch of marketing savoir-faire, the voice-over drops out and the audience
sees and hears the various characters respond with desperate and panicked voices
to crisis situations in rapid succession. First Kowalski (Del Monroe) and Admiral
Nelson (Richard Basehart) shout about a boobytrapped device, then Captain
Crane (David Hedison) calls for full emergency power and delivers a heated
diatribe against Nelson. Each of these shots receives its own tense, agitated un-
derscore, which continues as the dialogue ceases and the scene is given over to
underwater explosions, providing opportunities for visual and sound effects.
When the narrator returns, we hear, “Don’t miss Richard Basehart and David
Hedison aboard the world’s most powerful submarine, the Seaview, for another
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.” The voice has taken on an urgency lacking in the
introduction, as the crew battle a monster on the surface and the frenzied score
comes to a dissonant, unresolved close.
The hooks here conform to our expectations of promos for science fiction
from the era: we observe the Seaview’s advanced technology in action, witness the
hostile creatures and dangerous situations its crew faces, and are presented with
samples of the program’s special effects. Furthermore, we see and hear the lead
characters and are brought close to the contexts in which the crew works and the
environments that the Seaview explores. After the recognizable Voyage (or actually
Seaview) theme,41 the music does its work in lending invisible believability to the
action on screen. At the same time, the listener-viewer cannot help but also sense
in the promo something of the claustrophobia inherent in a serial about life in a
submarine and adventures under the ocean’s surface, even though at times entire
acts of episodes took place on firm ground.

Lost in Space Promo (1965)

In the Lost in Space promo, Irwin Allen and CBS present the dangerous and
exciting adventures of a family of explorers as they interact with the hostile fauna
on the planet where they are marooned.42 The CBS logo and a shot of the space
center on earth support the announcer, whose narration consists of the following
(up to the only break in his voice-over):

From the world of tomorrow comes a thrilling new television series: Lost in
Space. [Reverb added to the narration of the title.] Here are the amazing
adventures of a group of space pioneers, marooned on an uncharted planet.
Adventure as challenging as tomorrow, as far out as the stars. Spectacle
beyond imagination as the astronauts struggle for survival in a strange new
world, where incredible dangers seem to wait at every turn….
48 James Deaville

This hyped description of the show’s underlying science fiction premise is

much like that for Voyage and the other space operas: the adventurer into the
unknown will experience inhospitable environments and encounter hostile
creatures.43
The promo footage derives from the show’s unaired pilot “No Place to
Hide,” which also provided visual material for the first five episodes of the series.
Unlike the Voyage promo, that for Lost in Space places greater emphasis on the
planetary environment and the technologies available to the explorers. We
experience just one alien horror, a giant cyclops, whose threat is neutralized by a
laser weapon, one of the engineering marvels at the family’s disposal. From the
opening still shot of the control center to the closing shot of the ship’s descent,
the images do not threaten but rather aim at evoking amazement in the (young)
audience: the technologies of the control center and ship, Major West’s (Mark
Goddard) jet pack, his laser gun (as it hits the bellowing beast), and the chariot
vehicle are all wondrous. For such devices, the promo foregrounds the sound
effects to enhance believability and create compelling sonic hooks for the au-
dience. As a result, the sounds of devices—whether vehicles or weapons—take
on the role traditionally assigned to music; even in the one non-technology-
based shot of Professor Robinson (Guy Williams) scaling a cliff, the sound design
foregrounds the desolate wind rather than an orchestral track.44 And we never
hear sounds from the characters themselves, who are neither named nor visually
profiled in the promo.
Possibly the most striking sonic feature of the promo is its music at the be-
ginning and end, which bears a resemblance to Marius Constant’s theme for
another science fiction property of CBS, The Twilight Zone.45 The electric guitar
notes in the first seconds have the timbre of the Twilight Zone theme and are
elaborated upon when the guitar returns at 0:45. Granted that CBS had already
enjoyed success in the same genre with The Twilight Zone, the similarity might
be more than coincidental: the network could have intended to forge that
particular association for a new series that likewise presented the fantastical. In
any case, the very opening presents a defamiliarizing electronic tone in a re-
peating half-step pattern that forms the foundation for the guitar and piano notes
and—rather incongruously—the harp glissando at the receding graphic lettering
of the show’s title. That electronic tone continues until the sound effects
take over at 0:20. The music returns at a visual wipe at 0:40, as we witness two
aliens spying on the ship at the words “intriguing, thrilling, challenging.” The
promo ends with images of the Robinson ship crash landing, accompanied by a
virtual maelstrom of sound: voice-over narration (“These are the adventures
you’ll share, lost in space”), music (the electric guitar and piano are timbrally
augmented by glissandos on the harp and other instrumental sounds), and sound
effects (the ship’s engines increase in volume as it passes the camera’s vantage
point).
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 49

The promo may not use any music from the actual program, including the
John Williams contributions, but it does establish the sonic environment for Lost
in Space.46 The electronic tone at the outset sonifies the show’s futuristic space-
age technology, while the electric guitar sonorities call to mind the network’s
successful past in the genre of science fiction. No part of the promo is particularly
frightening—even the threat from the cyclops is neutralized by the major’s timely
and accurate shot, which appears not to kill the creature. The promo’s emphasis
on technology-based exploration by a family (rather than the military) positioned
Lost in Space as a family-friendly adventure series,47 a designation that translated
for its critics—who counted Star Trek founder Gene Roddenberry among their
ranks—into juvenile space opera.48

First Season Promos for TOS

NBC’s programming for the 1966–67 season began in January of 1966, when the
network determined shows for replacement according to the Nielsen ratings.
Once it made these changes, the executives turned their attention to the new
season and screened the pilots, which numbered thirty, for NBC.49 On February
28, Broadcasting announced the new season, which included Star Trek, on Friday
nights at 10:00,50 which then changed to Thursday evenings at 8:30 in the final
fall schedule released at the beginning of March.51
With the schedule set, the network could begin promoting its new series
during the summer, “filling any unsold commercial minutes with its own
spots”52—it started airing promos and releasing promotional posters for new and
returning shows. According to Tilotta and McAloney, one of these posters be-
came the basis for much of NBC’s print and audiovisual promotion for Star Trek:
“Not long after TOS was picked up as a series, NBC commissioned [artist James]
Bama to paint a piece of promo art,” which served as the only source of visuals
for the first promo and as the cover art for James Blish’s book adaptation of scripts
from the early episodes (Figure 4.3). In the thirteen-second first promo,53 the
network took stills from the poster, using sophisticated cinematographic devices
to convey the impression of a dynamic show and set of characters.54 It focused on
different parts of the poster at variable distances and in quick succession: a staged
zoom-in of Spock, a stable image of the Enterprise, and a quick zoom-out of
Kirk’s face which becomes a dissolve. The narration for this part of the promo
was “Soon the galaxy premier of Star Trek,” with the verbal reference to the series
title synchronized to the ship’s appearance on screen. The music for the character
portion of the promo is a standard NBC action cue foregrounding the brass,
serving to highlight the first part of the visuals and to amaze and already immerse
the audience before the voice enters at 0:02 (Example 4.1). The track’s accents
are coordinated with the changing images, and then the music fades under the
narration.
50 James Deaville

FIGURE 4.3 Screenshot from James Bama’s Poster Art for Star Trek 55

EXAMPLE 4.1 NBC stock action cue, from “First ever Star Trek Promo (1966).”
Transcribed by Adrian Matte, with thanks

The first four seconds mediate the briefest sensory foretaste of the adventure to
the television audience and are followed by the communication of product in-
formation: “… rocketing in on NBC Week. The first adult space adventure blasts
off Thursday, September 15.” Graphic lettering—all caps, in a font and context
suggesting a computer screen—reinforces the voice-over with “NBC WEEK”
and “THURSDAY SEPT. 15 8:30 7:30 CENTRAL.” Between the two sets of
lettering we see a zoom-out to the full poster image with the series title, while the
music first features a held chord with an electric guitar riff above, and then we
hear the antecedent phrase as the spot ends. The identification of the series as the
first adult space adventure is an obvious pejorative reference to Lost in Space,
through which Roddenberry and NBC distance their more cerebral series from
the youth-oriented show. In the course of the promo, however, we neither see
moving images nor hear music from Star Trek, indicating an early date for
this preview.
Prior to September, NBC produced a second promo for the series, which
appeared embedded in the fall preview “Two in a Taxi,” starring comedy duo
Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber—the special was nationally broadcast on
Sunday, September 4, from 3:00–3:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.56 In
comparison with the first promo, this one presents both video and audio
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 51

footage from the series, albeit exclusively from the second pilot episode,
“Where No Man Has Gone Before.” This pilot had been available since July of
1965,57 and would be broadcast, re-edited, as the series’ third episode. The
promo takes up almost two minutes, an unusual length for this type of preview
yet comparable to the coverage afforded the other new shows for the season.
Burns narrates over the first seconds, which is a segue without break from a
succession of returning shows; he begins, “Daniel Boone, followed by a brand-new
full hour drama series Star Trek. Star Trek is an adventure into the future. For one
hour each week the U.S. space cruiser Enterprise will take you into regions
far beyond our own time and solar system.” Burns initiates his voice-over at
19:42, even as images of Daniel Boone are still showing, but the sequence is syn-
chronized so that he delivers the title words just as we see the lettering appear over
starlit space, followed by the Enterprise entering from the right side of the screen
(Figure 4.4). As he has throughout the preview, Schreiber delivers several one-
liners as commentary during the course of the promo, which detracts from the
drama of the excerpted episode.58 At the same time, outside the context of “Two
in a Taxi,” this Star Trek spot could also stand on its own, within the network’s
marketing practices, although unlike the others examined to this point it does not
feature ongoing narration.59

FIGURE 4.4 Screenshot of the Enterprise, from “NBC Previews - 1965–1966 TV

Season”
52 James Deaville

In its NBC Week context, this second Season 1 promo for Star Trek is unusual for
its musical opening, which brings the collision of the network’s framing music
and a theme by Courage. According to Marc Cushman, who worked with
Roddenberry, Courage originally composed the subdued rising five-note theme
as a theme for Captain Kirk (Example 4.2), which here and in later episodes,
however, seems more closely associated with the Enterprise.60 The upbeat, generic
action music—with a period feel in the resonant string and brass sonorities—fades
out under the five-note theme, which takes over behind the synchronized vocal
and visual title reveal. The narration continues over images of and the music for
the Enterprise, the clip taken from the opening of the pilot. The Enterprise theme
continues as we suddenly jump to a medium shot of Kirk (William Shatner)
giving the order, “Flash the bridge, put all decks on the alert!” Even as the track
comes to its end, we hear Lieutenant Kelso’s (Paul Karr) voice booming over
the intercom, “Bridge to all decks. Condition: alert,” which then is repeated. The
scene is one of an orderly emergency, calmed by the music despite the an-
nouncement, the blaring of the warning signal with its quickly rising pitch, and
images of crew in various uniforms scurrying through the corridors. On top of
these sonic layers—the music cue, the voice from the intercom, and the alert
alarm—we perceive what we suspect are normal ship noises: beeps, which help to
establish the realism of the situation and position the audience on board the ship.
The overall effect of this scene is to create the sense of action-filled drama and
excitement in the face of an as-yet unidentified danger. Promo editors height-
ened the perception of a dynamic ship through a tracking shot of crew scurrying
in a hallway, panning from above through a grating.

EXAMPLE 4.2 Enterprise theme, from “NBC Previews - 1965–1966 TV Season.”

Transcribed by Adrian Matte

At 20:11 (of the thirty-minute promo compilation), the scene cuts to a medium
shot of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) on the bridge as he informs us: “Force field
of some kind.” The continuation yet foreshortening of the Enterprise theme
carries us into the nerve center of the action while its dynamic and motivic in-
tensification reflect the heightening crisis. Through deft edits, the promo makers
managed to compress the attack on the Enterprise to essential action dialogue on
the bridge:

Lt. Cmdr: Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood): We’re coming up on it fast.

Lt. Lee Kelso: Whatever it is, contact in twelve seconds.
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 53

The scene cuts to outer space as we see the ship approaching the force field,
whereby the dialogue ceases and the music cue reaches its climax. The tension is
palpable, leading to a series of explosions we see and hear on the bridge—the
sound takes over narrational functions, and we hear a different alarm, potentially
musical, as the control panel flares. While Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (Sally Kellerman)
and Mitchell are zapped by some kind of charge or ray, there are non-melodic
tones in the horns, and then the ship looks and—through the pitched engine
noise—sounds as if it were falling (20:44).
At this point in the promo, the story seems clear even without narration: the
ship has come under attack and two crew members have been assaulted by an
unknown force. The aftermath of the targeted strike reveals a silvery glowing
in the eyes of both Mitchell and Dehner—the unexpected disclosure of their
alien possession through close-ups is synchronized to an unsettling, high-
pitched musical statement (a stinger) that accompanies such moments of
surprised revelation in other episodes. A sustained dissonant chord bridges
between shots of the two exhibiting their new powers and identities as aliens
inhabiting human bodies. Further edits bring Mitchell and Dehner to planet
Delta Vega’s surface:

Dehner: It would take almost a miracle to survive here.

Mitchell: Behold!

Mitchell exercises, to a dissonant accompaniment, his god-like powers to create a

more hospitable environment.
The promo’s third important musical idea—a battle-like sonority of col-
liding half-steps in low brass—masks the dissolve that takes the television au-
dience to the final confrontation, visualized through Kirk’s ineffectual ray gun
and the superhumans’ outstretched hands. Mitchell and Dehner are shown
aiming beams of power at each other, and they both sink under the increased
intensity of the cue. However, this is not the pilot’s culminating fight scene
between Kirk and Mitchell as found in the episode itself—the promo editors
have made it appear and sound like the ultimate combat pits one superhuman
against the other. Moreover, as the powerful battle seems to be draining both
combatants, the scene visually and musically dissolves under Burns’s renewed
voice-over: “When the viewers are brought down to earth, it’s for another
next Thursday program.” The sound editing leaves us on a musical cliffhanger,
cutting off a sequence of rising and intensifying half-step motives (that call to
mind [J.S.] B-A-C-H), even as the promo’s visuals and dialogue cut away at the
climax of the combat.61
This promo ending may seem abrupt (and ultimately misleading), but it does
leave the home audience wanting more (as abetted by the unresolved music at
the end). Considered independently from the pilot episode itself, the promo
54 James Deaville

did its job as promotion for the show by selling Star Trek as an action-packed
science fiction adventure full of hazards, but it had to do so by divesting the
episode of its complex characterization, human drama, and wit. As a result,
the promo visual elements (replete with images of conflict) and the soundtrack
(full of barked commands, alarms, and aggressive music) convey an impression
of a show essentially opposed to what Roddenberry desired to create: “an adult
science fiction television program that would reflect his [utopian] view of the
future.”62

Second Season Promos

The 1967–68 season occasioned several promos, undoubtedly in the hopes of
bolstering the show’s unspectacular market share at the end of the first season.63
Apparently, NBC was willing to renew the series because of its viewership. As
cited by Walter Spencer in Television magazine, Paul Klein, the network’s vice-
president for audience measurement, remarked that “‘quality audiences’ are what
helped Mission: Impossible and Star Trek survive another season.”64 Star Trek
figured in two previews for the coming season and had at least one stand-alone
promo.
Danny Thomas hosted the 1967 season preview under the title “Remember
Next Year? A Lighthearted Look at NBC’s Coming Season,” which based itself on
the premise of a look back from the year 1987, with Thomas interviewed by
Sabrina Scharf.65 Thomas’ narration begins after a wipe to the series title and
footage: “From the nature world of Tarzan we went to the far-out world of Star
Trek.” The promo lasts less than twenty seconds and presents the climactic scene
from the fifth episode of the first season, “The Enemy Within,” where Kirk
confronts his evil doppelgänger. The music, however, is what Jessica Getman has
identified as the “Good Kirk theme,”66 which serves to situate the seriously cur-
tailed drama of the two Kirks in dialogue:

Evil Kirk: I’ll kill you.

Kirk: Then we’ll both die.
Evil Kirk: Please … I don’t want to. Don’t make me.

Just before this most intense moment and right after Thomas’ narration, we hear
Scharf’s voice-over against footage of Spock and Kirk on the bridge: “Gee, I’d
almost forgotten what those old-fashioned spaceships were like.” This light-
hearted interjection serves to undercut the passion of the interchange, the context
of which the home audience could glean from the dialogue and quick shot-
reverse-shot visual imagery. Still, we experience Kirk’s compassion when we see
his good side take the phaser without force, thus reflecting the show’s moral
compass more effectively than the first season’s promos.
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 55

FIGURE 4.5Screenshot of the Enterprise, from “Remember Next Year: A Lighthearted

Look at NBC’s Coming Season. 1967”

Over all of this we hear the episode’s Good Kirk theme, not edited to hit the
action but rather conveying something of the dignity and grandeur of the un-
derlying principles behind Star Trek. The music’s effect is to bring out the nobility
of the good Kirk’s response to his other side’s threat and then entreaty. This
version of the theme brings it to a close after its two statements, with a low brass
statement in the tonic rather than the wordless soprano continuation from the
title’s music.
One further promo from 1967 merits attention for the variety it presents in
terms of voice-over narration, the scenes represented, and the music.67 The footage
derives from the first-season episodes “This Side of Paradise” (aired March 2, 1967),
“Arena” (January 17, 1967), and “Devil in the Dark” (March 9, 1967), in that
sequence. The narration intones:

Here among a billion stars, a lonely ship streaks along an endless path. It’s the
mammoth starship Enterprise. Follow her trackless journey each week on Star
Trek. William Shatner stars as Captain James Kirk, starship commander, and
Leonard Nimoy stars as science officer Spock, half Earthling, half Vulcanian.
There are hazards that beset the Enterprise and its crew, on board ship [several
second pause at 0:26] and on alien planets [pause between 0:30 and 0:35].
Don’t miss Star Trek, in color. [No narration between 0:38 and 1:00.]
56 James Deaville

The narration ceases at a close-up of the Gorn (from “Arena”) threatening Kirk,
which cuts to the scene where Spock makes contact with the Horta (in “Devil in
the Dark”), again without commentary. The scenes from all three episodes in-
volve conflict of some sort, as reinforced by the voice-over, but the last excerpt is
misleading, for, as revealed in the full episode, Spock’s cry of pain arises from
contact with the Horta, not from an attack by the creature.

FIGURE 4.6 Screenshot of the Enterprise, from “NBC 1966 [sic] Star Trek Promo - 60 sec”

EXAMPLE 4.3 New fanfare music, from “NBC 1966 [sic] Star Trek Promo - 60 sec.”
Transcribed by Adrian Matte

However, the most curious aspect of the promo is its music (Example 4.3), which
bears no connection with any cues from the series, sounding instead like a fanfare
that might approximate Courage’s opening gesture if not for the timbre of a
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 57

synthesizer, rather thin and high-pitched. It develops a two-voiced imitative tex-

ture and then contrasts with a quick, repeated-note gesture until the fanfare returns
at a higher pitch level and comes to a close. All available versions of this promo
feature the same strange, atypical music, which serves more as a distraction than a
suitable underscore, yet no YouTube commenter mentions its music or sound
aspects.68 Of course, the reasons could be varied: licensing issues, an attempt to give
the show a more up-to-date sound, or simply the desire to be different.
NBC changed its preview format for the fall 1968 lineup, replacing the half-
hour preview show with short snippets on the network’s new and best-performing
programs.69 The standalone promos had versatility so that they could be inserted
into the advertising schedule at the appropriate point in the programming day for
the target audience. Entering its third season, Star Trek had experienced its share
of setbacks from the network, including a move to the difficult 10:00 p.m. Friday-
night slot and a budget reduction, which indicated NBC’s lack of confidence in
the show.70 Thus the network does not appear to have created a new standalone
promo for Star Trek’s third season, although it could easily have used one from the
previous season.

Conclusions
Studying the music used in the paratexts for the original Star Trek series helps to
situate the show within network promotional practices of the time. One guiding
principle was to present Star Trek to home audiences as appealingly as possible,
which in the case of science fiction television meant to portray it as an action-
filled series of dangerous encounters with hostile aliens (and to sideline con-
siderations of the program’s more humanistic and thought-provoking aspects).71
Of course, finding the appropriate visual and musical cues for promos was
contingent upon their availability, which limited the editors’ choices in assem-
bling the short promotional videos. And within the world of audiovisual paratexts
for television in the late 1960s, the promo was perhaps one of the most ephemeral
media forms, considering the quantity and speed of production necessitated by
the networks that were competing for audience share. As a result, they typically
reflect the haste with which they were assembled, not as considered manifesta-
tions of underlying ideals but rather as snapshots of the show’s visceral pleasures.
These observations notwithstanding, Jonathan Gray’s argument about the
paratext “serving as the first outpost of interpretation” merits further con-
sideration.72 As brief and inauspicious as they may be, the two Star Trek promos
from 1966 studied above served as the curious public’s initial point of contact
with the sights and sounds of the new show, with the longer second spot in-
troducing the ship, the mission, and the types of danger and action the home
audience could expect. It also illustrates the principles of utility and availability for
television promos, since it presents footage from the second pilot episode, for
which shooting had already begun in July of 1965.73 It should be kept in mind
58 James Deaville

that although this promo gave viewers the earliest glimpses of William Shatner as
James T. Kirk, the paratext appeared in a half-hour preview surrounded by ten
other promos for new NBC programs, not treated by the network any differently
than series that lasted only one season and have subsequently disappeared from
the annals of television history. As we have observed, the second season promos
drew on audiovisual material from a much broader range of episodes, which
enabled them to touch on the emotional aspects and conflicts of lead characters
Kirk and Spock while introducing some of the creatures with whom they came
into contact. Compared with TV spots of today, the promos from the late 1960s
may look and sound undeveloped and hence unconvincing, yet they represent a
crucial stage in the emergence of television advertising for television shows. The
analysis of audiovisual promotional material for the first Star Trek series illustrates
its role in the broader context of advertising during a vital period of growth and
competition in the genre of science fiction television.

Notes
1 Reba Wissner, We Will Control All That You Hear: The Outer Limits and the Aural
Imagination, Music and Media Series V, Vol. 3 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2016);
Wissner, A Dimension of Sound: Music in the Twilight Zone, Music and Media Series V,
Vol. 1 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2013).
2 J.P. Telotte, The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader (Lexington, KY: University
Press of Kentucky, 2008), 30.
3 Robynn Stilwell, “Manifest Destiny, the Space Race, and 1960s Television,” in The
Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, ed. Miguel Mera, Ronald Sadoff, and
Ben Winters, pp. 176–189 (New York: Routledge, 2017): 187.
4 Lincoln Geraghty, American Science Fiction Film and Television (Oxford: Berg Publishers,
2009).
5 The researcher is hard pressed to find a definition or terminus post quem for the use of the
designation “promo,” so a description based upon its deployment in diverse contexts
must suffice.
6 “Ultra-Short Ads Land with Consumers,” World Advertising Research Council: News,
February 12, 2020, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/
news/ultra-short-ads-land-with-consumers/43227
7 Of course, compared with the television public of the late twentieth century, listener-
viewers of the twenty-first have become accustomed to ever shorter advertising
messages. Fifteen- or thirty-second spots in the late 1960s would have spoken to
living-room audiences quite differently than audiovisual advertising of comparable
length in the 2020s.
8 “Lost in Space TV promo (1965),” YouTube, May 7, 2018, video, 1:19, accessed May
25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h3Iz2Ox8Yo
9 “NBC 1966 Star Trek Promo - 60 sec.,” YouTube, October 10, 2016, video, 1:03,
accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCZLU7qlpYk
10 Martin Brooks & Laurel Meredith, “Business Rights Management: A Primer,” Journal
of Digital Asset Management 6, no. 4 (August 2010): 196–209.
11 Bob Kohn and Al Kohn, Kohn on Music Advertising (New York: Aspen Publishing,
2010), 1327–46.
12 Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New
York: New York University Press, 2010), 48.
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 59

13 Gray, Show Sold Separately, 62.

14 The ubiquity of film- and sound-editing programs that are accessible to fans necessitates
further caution when approaching trailers and promos on the Internet, which may feature a
new score or altered visual track. See Deaville, “Creating Big-Screen Audiences through
Small-Screen Appeals: Film Marketing on Television through Music and Sound,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, eds. James Deaville, Siu-Lan Tan, and Ron
Rodman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 303–321.
15 Robert Marich, Marketing to Moviegoers: A Handbook of Strategies and Tactics, 2nd ed.
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 305.
16 See for example, J.P. Telotte, “What Is this Thing: Framing and Unframing the
Science-Fiction Film,” Film History 31, no. 1 (April 2019): 56–80.
17 Gray, Show Sold Separately, 3. The voice-over in promos also avoided the costs and
legal issues arising from the promotional use of actors’ voices from the series.
18 Jason Mittell, Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture
(New York: Routledge, 2004), 9.
19 Torben Grodal, “Docudrama and the Cognitive Evaluation of Realism,” in Cognitive
Theory and Documentary Film, eds. Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer (Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 81.
20 James Deaville and Agnes Malkinson, “A Laugh a Second? Music and Sound in
Comedy Trailers,” Music, Sound and the Moving Image 8, no. 2 (2014): 124.
21 Anahid Kassabian, Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Distributed Subjectivity
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 13.
22 “CBS-TV Closed Circuit to Preview Fall Shows,” Broadcasting 49, no. 8 (August 22,
1955): 78.
23 “NBC-TV Closed-Circuit Showcases Fall Season,” Broadcasting 55, no. 10 (September
15, 1958): 50.
24 Robert Jay, “History of the Fall Preview Special,” Television Obscurities, last modified
April 22, 2018, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/
history_fall_preview/.
25 “CBS Fall Preview Show for 1961 Part 1/3,” YouTube, August 2, 2009, video, 9:42,
accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlxdaTrQya0
“CBS Fall Preview Show for 1961 Part 2/3,” YouTube, August 2, 2009, video,
9:54, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E3FEWBHJaM
“CBS Fall Preview Show for 1961 Part 3/3,” YouTube, August 2, 2009, video,
8:28, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdO1WVb9mcc
26 “NBC NETWORK–1965-66 Season Preview Ad Sales,” YouTube, January 3, 2007,
video, 24:43, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJwGB-
eitpw
27 “NBC Previews - 1965 - 1966 TV Season,” YouTube, June 2, 2019, video, 29:22,
accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQri4kcOv2I&t=
1322s. (The YouTube poster mislabeled this as 1965–66, when it is actually 1966–68.)
28 The practice for the annual NBC Week specials in September was to devote the most
footage and time to new programming, customarily only briefly referencing returning
shows.
29 David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds., The Space Opera Renaissance (New York:
Tor Books, 2006), 10.
30 Petru Iamandi, “A Bird’s-Eye View of American and British Science Fiction
Television,” Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views 7, no. 17 (2014): 54–61.
31 Iamandi, “A Bird’s-Eye View,” 57.
32 Jonathan Cohn, “A Bumbling Bag of Ball Bearings: Lost in Space and the Space Race,”
in The Galaxy Is Rated G: Essays on Children’s Science Fiction Film and Television, eds.
R.C. Neighbors and Sandy Rankin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011).
60 James Deaville

33 Allen Steele, “All Our Tomorrows: The Shared Universe of Star Trek,” in Boarding the
Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek,
eds. David Gerrold and Robert J. Sawyer (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2006), 43.
34 Barbara Selznick, “Branding the Future: Syfy in the Post-Network Era,” Science Fiction
Film and Television 2, no. 2 (2009): 177–204.
35 “Lost in Space TV promo (1965),” YouTube, May 7, 2018, video, 1:19, accessed May
25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h3Iz2Ox8Yo
36 “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Promo Season One #1,” YouTube, March 9, 2009,
video, 0:57, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKg88_jYR-k
37 Mathew J. Bartkowiak, ed., Sounds of the Future: Essays on Music in Science Fiction Film
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010), 1.
38 Juliet Hess, “A ‘Discomfortable’ Approach to Music Education: Re-Envisioning the
‘Strange Encounter’,” Philosophy of Music Education Review 26, no. 1 (2018): 32.
39 As an example of intertextuality, the television promo not only uses footage from early
in the first season, but also from the eponymous feature film of 1961.
40 “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Promo Season One #1,” YouTube, March 9, 2009,
video, 0:57, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKg88_jYR-k
41 Paul Sawtell composed this theme. See Jeff Bond, “King of Outer (and Inner) Space:
The Musical World of Irwin Allen,” Film Score Monthly 6, no. 2 (2001), 25.
42 The narrative of a family of castaways has a long pedigree under the title Swiss Family
Robinson; it began with the 1812 novel by Johann David Wyss, was adapted as a film
most prominently in 1940 and 1960, and then became the television series Lost in
Space, which in turn served as the basis for a feature film in 1998 and a new television
series in 2018.
43 See Mike O’Connor, “Liberals in Space: The 1960s Politics of Star Trek,” The Sixties
5, no. 2 (2012): 185–203.
44 Guido Heldt, “Raumpatrouille’s ‘New Astronautic Sound’,” in Music in Science Fiction
Television: Tuned to the Future, eds. Kevin Donnelly and Philip Hayward (New York:
Routledge, 2012), 98; Trace Reddell, The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History
of the Science Fiction Film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).
45 The Marius Constant theme has received considerable attention in the literature about
science fiction film music. A short description of its history appears in Barry Keith
Grant, The Twilight Zone (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020), 15.
46 That the voices of the actors are missing from this promo has its basis in the decision to
highlight the sounds of technology and the narration, quite in contrast with the promo for
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which introduces the voices of various leading characters.
47 Ronald Rodman, “John Williams’s Music to Lost in Space: The Monumental, the
Profound, and the Hyperbolic,” in Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future,
eds. K. J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward (New York: Routledge, 2013), 44.
48 Mark Clark, Star Trek FAQ (Unofficial and Unauthorized): Everything Left to Know About the
First Voyages of the Starship Enterprise (New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers,
2012), 233.
49 “Hollywood shifts into high gear for ’66–67 TV pilots,” Broadcasting (January 10,
1966): 29.
50 “Here’s how the network programs shape up for next fall,” Broadcasting (February 28,
1966): 24.
51 “Fall line-ups keep changing,” Broadcasting (March 7, 1966): 76.
52 Jay Roberts, “Building NBC’s 1966–67 Season,” Television Obscurities, last modified
April 18, 2018, accessed May 20, 2020, https://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/nbc_
1966_schedule/
53 “First ever Star Trek Promo (1966),” YouTube, July 14, 2014, video, 0:13, accessed
December 29, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1z7mlLKqOw
 Music in Network Ads for TOS 61

54 The practice of panning and zooming over still photographs is known as the “Ken
Burns effect.” My thanks to Adrian Matte (Carleton University) for this observation.
55 David Tilotta and Curt McAloney, Star Trek: Lost Scenes (London: Titan Books, 2018).
56 “NBC Previews - 1965 - 1966 TV Season,” YouTube, June 2, 2019, video, 29:22,
accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQri4kcOv2I&t=
1216s. The Star Trek segment begins at 19:42.
57 Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York:
Pocket Books, 1997): 85.
58 The premise of the various network fall previews tended toward the lighter side, with
the emphasis on providing entertainment rather than information.
59 Roberts, “Building NBC’s 1966-67 Season.”
60 Mark Cushman and Susan Osborn, These Are the Voyages, Vol. 1 (Los Angeles: Jacobs
Brown Press: 2013), cited by Mark R. Kelly, “Notes on Trek Music, Season One,”
accessed May 25, 2020, http://www.markrkelly.com/Blog/2017/08/25/notes-on-
trek-music-season-one
61 The use of the four notes B flat – A – C – B natural (B-A-C-H in German notation)
may be incidental here, yet it does reflect a long-established tradition of working the
chromatic musical cryptogram for the composer’s name into a composition, not in-
frequently for a climactic moment in the score.
62 Sherry Ginn and Louise S. Napier, Our Space, Our Place: Women in the Worlds of Science
Fiction Television (Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 2005), 108.
63 Robert Jay, “A Look at Star Trek,” Television Obscurities, last modified April 22, 2018,
accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/star_trek_look/
64 Walter Spencer, “TV’s Vast Grey Belt,” Television Magazine, August 1967, 74.
65 “Remember Next Year: A Lighthearted Look at NBC’s Coming Season. 1967,”
YouTube, August 13, 2014, video, 26:15, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=JiTXpLAGfSM. The Star Trek promo begins at 22:05
66 Jessica Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue,”
Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (2015): 314–317.
67 “NBC 1966 Star Trek Promo - 60 sec.,” YouTube, October 10, 2016, video, 1:03,
accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCZLU7qlpYk. (YouTube
indicates 1966, but this is really the promo from 1967, according to the footage used.)
68 The promo postings consulted for comments include “Remember Next Year: A
Lighthearted Look at NBC’s Coming Season. 1967”; “NBC 1966 Star Trek Promo -
60 sec.”; “Star Trek TOS Promos 1966, 68 and 67!!!,” YouTube, December 9,
2014, video, 1:32, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
W4zHZBX2KfY
69 See “First Showdown at the Ratings Corral,” Broadcasting (September 30, 1968): 32.
70 It is interesting to compare the network’s position on Star Trek with that on other NBC
properties, which is clearly reflected in the spring 1968 roll-out of the fall offerings. See
especially “Fall Line-ups Go on the Street,” Broadcasting (March 4, 1968): 23–28.
71 This is not to say that home audiences might not have also found humanism and
thought appealing, but in the world of sci-fi advertising, the show’s aspects of danger
and adventure were more readily demonstrated within the constrained time limits of
television spots.
72 Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately, 48.
73 Kenneth Bachor, “See the Trippy Look of the Long-Buried Original Star Trek Pilot,”
Time, September 7, 2016, accessed May 25, 2020, https://time.com/4480743/star-
trek-pilot-gallery/
5
FROM SPOCK WITH LOVE
Fan Audio, Participatory Media, and Circulating
the Materials of Star Trek Fan Culture

Kate Galloway

In the episode “The Pegasus” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-
Luc Picard disapprovingly surveys a table of fan art created by the children on the
Starship Enterprise in honor of Captain Picard Day.1 Picard exhales a great sigh: “I
don’t see why we have to do this every year.” Counselor Deanna Troi replies,
“Captain Picard Day is one of the children’s favorite school activities. They look
forward to it all year.” The banner above them reads “Captain Picard Day” in
bright, child-like printing on reflective silver paper filled with drawings of pla-
nets, stars, and other celestial bodies. Picard, Troi, and Commander William
Riker survey the array of Picard fan art, a collection of drawings, paper dolls,
busts, and full-figure models of Picard’s likeness.
Picard’s iconic vocality and the material dimensions of his voice (its regal,
mesmerizing, rich, full, and deep sonorous resonance) highlight the importance of
fan objects that produce sound, and particularly those that actually sound like him.
Like deep water, the current of his sonorous voice pulls the listener under the
surface and into the sonic world of the series. Picard stares at the table—which
displays a not-to-scale paper Picard doll—dismisses the fan work, and asks, “Why
does it have to be me [who is celebrated]?” He concludes that the children (and by
extension, his fans in the real world) have a “rather exaggerated impression” of him.
Riker, however, thinks otherwise. The children on the starship are avid fans who
admire Picard as both an iconic figure and someone they admire for his actions. The
same can be argued of actual-world Star Trek fans who gravitate to Picard. Riker
then assumes the role of ventriloquist, voicing and puppeteering a miniature replica
of Picard. Putting on his best imitative performance, he declares: “I don’t know. I
think the resemblance is quite striking. Wouldn’t you agree, Number One?”
Riker’s imitation of the timbre, nuance, and materiality of Picard’s voice here
is significant.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-5
 From Spock with Love 63

The fidelity of a fan object is contingent on its ability to emulate key features
of the original, including its sonic profile. The fidelity of fan objects is important
because their relationality to or replication of the original brings the fan closer to
the object of their fandom. In the case of Star Trek fan objects that produce sound
and music, the fidelity of their sonic content has the ability to transport the fan
back into the sound worlds of Star Trek and the starship Enterprise, providing fans
with a sense of sensory proximity and sonic intimacy each time they revisit their
collection and press play. Fan objects are collected, but they are also cherished
and cared for by their curators, shared among communities built for group en-
joyment of a chosen aspect of popular culture. At the close of this key moment in
“The Pegasus” that highlights Picard’s elevated status among the children, Riker
heads to the bridge with the miniature paper Picard cradled under his arm, il-
lustrating that this fan object resonates with Riker and his relationship with
Picard. Troy, however, reminds him to leave the piece of memorabilia behind.
This episode self-reflexively comments on the materiality of Star Trek fandom and
gestures toward the creative potential of fans.2
In this chapter, I offer reflections on the sonic aesthetics and paradoxes of Star
Trek collectibles and the material relations these objects have with the fan audio
they perform and play back to their collector. I focus specifically on how
YouTube is used to perform Star Trek-branded fan objects, or in the case of
participatory digital maker practices (e.g., remixes, covers, or fan-made videos),
how YouTube videos and other forms of fannish creative labor become fan objects.
Using modes of digital fieldwork, I examine how the materiality of Star Trek fan
audio culture is circulated, shared, and consumed in participatory ways by taking
advantage of the innovation of digital culture. Virtual performances of fan audio
culture through fan-created DIY videos repurpose, replay, and remix iconic
audio, but they also archive these sounds for infinite replay and enjoyment. This
chapter presents three object lessons that touch on some of the social, material,
and sonic lives of select Star Trek collectible fan objects from across the Star Trek
franchise. The three objects through which I examine Star Trek fan musicking
include greeting cards that play sound and music; unboxing videos; and Pony Trek
videos that remix visuals, music, sound effects, voice acting, and plot content
from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with those from the Star Trek franchise.3
For this research, I engaged in digital ethnography, which involved the careful
process of observing and participating in the digital fan culture surrounding Star
Trek, examining the communicative strategies and maker practices of the online
fan community. In analyzing the interactions of Star Trek’s fan community
with—and its performances of—the material and media objects of the fan culture
on digital platforms, I focus on the fans’ behavior, communications, collection
and curatorial activities, and performances on YouTube. In the past decade,
YouTube has operated as a key space for making and sharing DIY user-generated
videos. I examine how the materiality of Star Trek fan audio culture is circulated,
shared, consumed, and archived in participatory ways, with a focus on the aurality
64 Kate Galloway

FIGURE 5.1 (a) and (b) Episode stills of Captain Picard Day from “The Pegasus” 4
 From Spock with Love 65

of social forms of making, sharing, and performing online. Content-sharing

platforms like YouTube operate as a stage for participatory digital performance.

On the Materiality of Online Fan Culture

Talking action figures, Christmas ornaments, replica starships and technological
devices enhanced with sound effects, a My Little Pony Star Trek spin-off medley,
and greeting cards that perform sound and music are all forms of musicking
fandom that foster community when shared and consumed through digital
creativity and Internet circulation. Drawing on examples of musicking fandom
from the Star Trek franchise, this chapter focuses on issues of circulation, sharing,
and sociality in social media dedicated to the materiality and audio of Star Trek fan
culture. I use these examples of musicking fandom to argue that social media
platforms are affecting connections among sonic culture and fans. They reveal
how creative and social fan labor is an emotionally-engaged form of con-
sumerism, sociality, and memory work bound up in practices of making, sharing,
performing, and circulating fan objects. I illustrate how fans choose to engage in
DIY maker practices using digital media in order to circulate performances of
their fandom. Fan audio includes the dialogue, environmental sounds, sound
effects, and music of fan culture objects remediated and replayed from the original
site of fandom (e.g., sound effects sampled from the Star Trek original series are
emitted from a replica hand phaser).
The inception of online digital communication platforms has transformed
audience–performer relations, providing new creative and complex modes of
active participation for both the artists and their online fan communities.5 The
Internet has offered up a productive and dynamic space for the performance and
performativity of fandom, but when we listen to aural fan performances, an array
of musicking is revealed, providing additional insight into the multisensory
ecology of fandom circulated and consumed online.6 In the digital space of the
Internet, each Star Trek DIY YouTube video posted to personal fan accounts,
the content fans share on these accounts, the additional Internet content they link
to, and the comments made in response to their videos are all performances.
Everything that a fan posts, shares, and creates online is a type of performance.7
As Nancy K. Baym has argued, online forms of digital fan and artistic behavior are
intimate forms of connection that invite users to be raw, personal, and intimate
on platforms that were initially perceived as impersonal as users interacted from a
distance through the connectivity of the Internet.8 As of 2020, however, the
situation is reversed, with nearly every platform imagined and framed as “social.”
Fans now live much of their lives online, cultivating affinity networks and social
connections while also participating in new forms of fan labor like planning,
filming, posting, sharing, and commenting on DIY user-generated videos.9
The intensity of YouTube’s fan culture is on display and readily accessible to
both fan and non-fan users. YouTube allows them to upload, view, rate, share,
66 Kate Galloway

report, and comment on videos; to add videos to playlists; and to subscribe to the
accounts of other users. For several years, the platform has been central to fannish
passions and creativity, as well as the circulation of fan-produced objects (e.g.,
fan-created DIY videos in which fans share and perform their collections, par-
ticipatory remixes, and response videos). YouTube has been most widely known
for enabling users to post user-generated videos that highlight their personal
interests. The intensity of fan culture becomes clear as content creators from
various fan communities deftly illustrate the power of participatory culture. These
content creators may be physically distanced from each other in their offline lives,
but they are intimately connected with each other through social media sites, fan
forums, and digital dialogic spaces, such as the comments sections of YouTube
videos. In the fan-created videos I examined for this research, online fan perfor-
mance of fandom and fannish behavior also extended to the varied forms of fan
labor behind the scenes and on display in these YouTube videos. These videos
illustrate that fans are at the center of cultural production in their fan communities,
and that these forms of fan labor and creativity contribute in significant ways to the
circulation of fan objects as social, material, and sonic actors in fandom.
The online performance of their collections of Star Trek objects and partici-
patory media-making is one facet of Star Trek fandom. However, it is striking that
self-identified Trekkers share specific video posts that exclusively focus, for in-
stance, on the performance of their Star Trek greeting card collections while other
Trekkers share more predictable forms of sound- and music-producing fan ob-
jects, such as model starships and action figures.10 While there are other videos
where Trekkers carefully comb through their collections and play show-and-tell
with viewers on the other side of the screen, the videos where they concentrate
solely on the presentation and performance of unexpected Star Trek-branded fan
objects—Star Trek-branded greeting cards, a Star Trek door chime, and partici-
patory Star Trek/My Little Pony Friendship is Magic remixes—reveal to scholars of
fandom, music, and media studies that this kind of object is selectively repurposed
by the Trekker community as a site of interaction where Trekkers can articulate
the multimodal dimensionality of their fandom. DIY Star Trek fan-made videos
curate and perform an array of collectible artifacts that are presented both as
objects of desire and as material objects.

Lessons in Listening to Star Trek Fan Objects

Web 2.0 circulatory technologies (e.g., YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook) play
an important role in creating a sense of fan utopia through acts of screen-media
fandom that participate in community building using performances of the ma-
teriality of fandom. Participatory acts of fandom in this context are acts of virtual
performance. The digital performativity of fan objects draws attention to the
objects’ physicality and sonic qualities (particularly the differences in timbre when
fan-object sound samples are compared to their onscreen counterparts) and
 From Spock with Love 67

highlight the tactility of their mechanisms and the activation of their visual and
sonic special effects since, as Roy Shuker has noted in his study of gendered fan
collection practices, many rare and highly desirable fan objects are often collected
and remain boxed.11
Fans use an array of digital audiovisual media to perform their fandom identity
for others, both inside and outside the fan community, who watch and listen to
them on the other side of the screen. Fan-created DIY videos, however, chal-
lenge Roy Shuker’s examination of record-collecting culture and gendered fan
behavior, where male collectors are assumed to be knowledgeable aficionados
who avoid using valuable objects of fandom and, instead, preserve and catalogue
them. In contrast, female fans are assumed by Shuker to actively use and reuse
their valuable fan objects, and visible and audible traces of love, desire, and value
adorn these objects. In fan videos, however, fans who can be audibly identified
as male-identifying continue to curate, catalogue, and preserve their collections,
but they also perform and use these fan objects with care, drawing from Shuker’s
“feminine” practice. Their efforts and dedicated online fan practices also satisfy
members of the fan community who might not have physical or socioeconomic
access to the object of desire, or who perhaps are preservationist collectors who
want to both safeguard their own collection while watching someone else per-
form and use the same item from their own collection. The creators of these
interactive media guide audioviewers through performances of their carefully
collected and gifted Star Trek memorabilia, including musical greeting cards,
action figures, toys, and other collectible objects.
Fan objects, such as those created commercially for Star Trek, frequently se-
parate iconic audio samples from their original narrative context, remediating
these sound bites in action figures, greeting cards, and other collectible objects,
and are further remediated in online fan sites focused on the franchise’s sound
worlds. While the digital sound samples on these websites continue to replay after
each click on the play button by the listener, the iconic audio programmed into
collectible fan objects will eventually wear out; perhaps the object’s irreplaceable
battery will die after repetitive playback. It is for this reason that some collectible
fan objects that have the ability to sound are purposefully never played, essentially
silenced by their collector as a means of preserving their value through the
preservation of their sounding capabilities. In the case of the fan-created DIY
YouTube videos examined in this chapter, these objects are played just once in
order to be digitally archived, with the video posted to the fan’s personal
YouTube account for infinite re-playability.

Object Lesson One: Talking and Musical Greeting Cards

Musical greeting cards are performative. They have instrumentality. They cir-
culate. They are participatory. When a person receives a greeting card that has the
ability to play a sound effect or a snippet of music, they are a participant in a
68 Kate Galloway

performance every time they open the card. (The card doesn’t play until the
recipient interacts with it and explores its interior.) While some musical greeting
cards are a bit thicker in their width because of the sound-recording chip
technology embedded inside, many are unassuming, providing the recipient with
a musical surprise when opened. After looking at and reading the image and text
on the front of the card, the recipient opens it up looking for both the conclusion
of the printed message and their personalized text from the card’s sender. They
instead receive sound. These performances are intimate, as the receiver listens
while reading the inside of the card, receiving alongside the audio recording a
message for only their eyes. There are many reasons one might choose to send
a musical greeting card to a colleague, friend, or loved one. For many Star Trek
fans, however, they were given Star Trek greeting cards because of their de-
voted fandom. Once these cards are gifted to an avid fan, they are usually not
discarded or stored away in a junk drawer filled with forgotten things. Instead,
they are usually meticulously saved as keepsakes—collected, archived, treas-
ured, and, on rare occasions, carefully performed in ways that preserve the
quality of their sound and their physical appearance. These Star Trek-branded
cards (and other fan belongings like them) do not simply illustrate what these
fans care about; they also demonstrate who they are as fans and as members of
the online fan community.
For example, the YouTube videos made of the elaborate tri-fold Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan greeting card perform for the fans on either side of the screen
even after the greeting card has replayed its final celebratory exchange between
Kirk and Spock.12 In the video, two hands maneuver the intricate folds of this
multi-paneled card while using a no-hands video recording set-up.13 The front of
the card says, “Do Your Birthday by the Book,” and the inside of the second fold
continues, “It’s The Logical Thing To Do.” The sound is finally activated upon
opening the third fold of the card, revealing all three panels. Two panels feature
stylized images on the far left and right, respectively, of Kirk and Spock. The
center panel reads, “May Your Birthday Be the Best Time Ever” (see Figure 5.2).
As the recipient reads their birthday message, Kirk and Spock converse:

Kirk: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Message Spock?
Spock: None that I am conscious of. Except, of course, Happy Birthday. Surely
the best of times.

The text of the greeting card and the sound sample for this dialogue are both
taken from the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In this scene, Kirk and Spock
are discussing the efficiency rating Kirk plans to give Spock’s cadets. Their col-
legial exchange of pending business is broken by a subtle aside where Kirk thanks
Spock for the gift he received from him, a hardcover copy of Charles Dickens’
A Tale of Two Cities.14
 From Spock with Love 69

FIGURE 5.2 The panels of the Kirk and Spock Birthday Card as performed on
YouTube 15

In the comments section of this YouTube video, fans share with each other how
they watch this scene every year on their birthday, highlighting the empathy and
“humanness” Spock exudes, illustrating the sentimental value of this moment for
fans, and illuminating why it is an appropriate sample to remix, recontextualize,
and include in a Star Trek-branded birthday card. In other musical Star Trek
greeting cards, iconic sounds are derived from key episodes and film scenes,
thematic fragments of the underscore, and iconic diegetic sound effects. These are
sounds and sound worlds that fans of the franchise recognize as important parts
of the Star Trek soundscape, but also that everyday listeners with less familiarity
with the series will recognize and connect back to the franchise. In this brief
exchange between the characters of Kirk and Spock, archived in both this par-
ticular greeting card and its fan-created YouTube video, the greeting card re-
mixes signature vocality and dialogue excerpts with the sentiments of birthday
greetings.
Hallmark has produced a number of talking and musical Star Trek-branded
greeting cards, as well as other ephemeral collectible objects, which provide to
friends and family members of Trekkers the opportunity to gift fan objects
70 Kate Galloway

upon their loved ones. Since 1991, Hallmark has produced many licensed Star
Trek “keepsakes,” ranging from greeting cards to Christmas ornaments, and
from sticker sets to plush toys. What is significant about these wide-ranging Star
Trek-branded fan objects is that Hallmark draws directly from actual characters,
starships, props, artwork, and scenes that are readily recognizably by both fans
and non-fans. According to the Hallmark site:

Shields up! Phasers on full power! Boldly go into the exciting, futuristic
worlds of Star Trek with gifts you will find just right for fans of any age.
[…] Capture memories of your favorite Star Trek characters and moments,
and share those memories with friends and family, with Star Trek gifts and
collectibles from Hallmark. […] You can beam up the pop-culture power
of Star Trek gifts for family, friends and fans like you. Hallmark has gift
ideas every Star Trek fan will find logical for celebrating any birthday,
anniversary or important moment.16

The company frequently uses recorded music and samples of actors’ voices taken
from iconic Star Trek scenes for the electronic audio features in their greeting
cards, as well as in their Christmas ornaments and other sight- and sound-
activated collectibles. Hallmark also casts actors from Star Trek productions in
their commercials and the advertisements for their products to further align their
products with the Star Trek franchise and the fan community. One example of
this is Hallmark’s 1992 Christmas TV spot advertising their latest holiday orna-
ment release, a replica of the shuttlecraft Galileo from the starship Enterprise that
lights up and plays sound. In the commercial, Leonard Nimoy (as himself rather
than in character as Spock) walks into a Hallmark store. He approaches the
Hallmark store clerk, inquiring after their new seasonal collector’s ornament. She
immediately recognizes Nimoy and knows precisely the ornament he is looking
for, replying with a slight exhale of excitement, “Ah, the shuttlecraft Galileo from
the starship Enterprise.” The TV spot asks viewers to listen as the sound clip is
activated: “Shuttlecraft to Enterprise, Spock here. Happy Holidays. Live long
and prosper.”17
Hallmark is remixing Star Trek characters and moments as holiday greetings,
providing multisensory objects for those who want to share these specific
memories with friends and family. In turn, Star Trek fans are making YouTube
videos that perform these moments of remembering to a shared community of
fans who connect with the audiovisuality of the Star Trek franchise and the series’
themes of advanced technologies, alien cultures, humanity’s future, and the ac-
ceptance of difference and rapid change.
These fan-created DIY YouTube videos share a similar audiovisual structure
among them. The digital camera or webcam is focused on the card, zoomed in
 From Spock with Love 71

so that the card occupies almost the entirety of the frame. The background that
the object is placed upon is a neutral color and nondescript so that it does not
distract the viewer from the object being performed. In some videos, the maker
of the video provides a brief narration to contextualize the object. For instance,
in the video “Birthday,” the narrator shares that he received this card featuring
Spock and Kirk from his sister, reading the text on the front of the card before
opening it and allowing Spock’s voice to complete the card’s birthday
greeting.18 In contrast, in other musical greeting cards—like “Star Trek
Hallmark Bday Card 02”—the YouTube videographer opts to let the video
title, description, and performing object collectively speak for themselves.19
This video, uploaded by the fan account “whataslacker,” is one in a series of
archived and performed sight-and-sound Hallmark Star Trek cards from this fan’s
collection. In this particular video, the camera is zoomed in on the frontispiece
of the card for six seconds, allowing the viewer to fully read the text, which is in
bold, capital-case, sans-serif type (Figure 5.3). Below an image of Kirk and
Spock framed by a 1960s television set, the card reads, “Analysis, Spock. If all the
candles on that cake were to be lit simultaneously …” and leaves the recipient
and viewer hanging on Kirk’s sentence fragment. The camera, which is likely
handheld, as evidenced by the shaky movement of the videography throughout
the video, continues to catalogue the card as the video maker’s left hand opens
it to reveal the inside message and resulting sound. We hear Spock speak
(accompanied by an orchestral stinger), completing Kirk’s thought and
responding to his request for analysis: “Annihilation, Jim. Total, complete,
absolute annihilation.” The card’s inside text reads “HAVE A SAFE AND
HAPPY BIRTHDAY.” This dialogue and its accompanying suspense-inducing
orchestral cue is an iconic moment of exchange between Kirk and Spock
sampled from the original series’ episode “The Alternative Factor” and re-
contextualized as a birthday greeting.20
Not every Hallmark Star Trek card includes repurposed spoken dialogue. In
the video “Hallmark Star Trek Birthday Card 04,” which demonstrates another
Star Trek greeting card, viewers read Kirk’s line, “When I’m on the bridge, all
eyes are set on stunned,” stylized in a cartoon thought bubble in a font that looks
handwritten (Figure 5.4).21 When the card is opened, an extended twenty-five-
second clip of the title score to Star Trek: The Original Series plays. This music is
accompanied by the written text, “Your Birthday. Your Fantasy.” The card
reimagines the Star Trek universe with the card recipient (and by extension, the
YouTube viewer) as a part of it.
These YouTube videos are fan objects that highlight the curatorial efforts of
the Star Trek fandom, and they operate in a networked digital space (YouTube)
where new and old media, analog and digital fan objects, collide. These collision
spaces are productive environments in which fans can experiment with forms of
72 Kate Galloway

FIGURE 5.3 (a) and (b) “Star Trek Hallmark Bday Card 02” as performed on YouTube 22
 From Spock with Love 73

FIGURE 5.4 (a) and (b) “Hallmark Star Trek Birthday Card 04” as performed on
YouTube 23
74 Kate Galloway

online fan networking, circulating, and maker culture. Jody Berland’s predictions
of how new technologies might shape our listening habits propose that “[t]he
increasing mobility of music technologies, and the seemingly paradoxical em-
phasis on Identity that surrounds analysis of music consumption today, reveal
how much the ongoing (re)shaping of listening habits is tied to our changing
sense of location: where we are, where we belong.”24 YouTube is a digital space
of connection and belonging that is used to broadcast these fan objects and fan-
made videos to the user’s followers—followers who are likely also fans—who
then leave comments, listen to video content (both the narration and the sounds
produced by fan objects), and enter into a conversation about the user’s collection
and about Star Trek. The voices, music, and sound remediated in these sounding
Star Trek greeting cards will one day slow, glitch, and stop singing, and these fan-
generated YouTube videos will be the only record of the ephemeral aurality of
these fan objects.

Object Lesson 2: Sound-Making “Unboxing” Videos

The YouTube genre of “unboxing” videos is popular among children and online
fan communities. These narrated videos guide viewers through the unpacking, and
sometimes the assembly, of toys, games, and collectible objects. The process of
unboxing to reveal what, exactly, is inside a package is captured on video and
uploaded to the Internet, most often as a post to the maker’s YouTube account.
Viewers tune in to see the reveal of sometimes rare objects, though most often it is
the narration that maintains the viewer’s attention. The narration is further
heightened by the embodied gestures of the video-maker’s body exploring and
interacting with objects, their material dimensions, and their sensory features.
Typically, the people making and narrating unboxing videos do not have a con-
nection to the company manufacturing and distributing the featured project. If they
do, these affiliations are (supposedly) clearly articulated in the introduction to the
video or in the descriptions that accompany the video post or the maker’s account.
In the unboxing videos representative of this Internet digital video genre, the
narrator is a disembodied voice or set of hands who builds excitement, shows off
the cool features of an item, identifies flaws and potential improvements, explains
the reasons for selecting the object in the first place, and articulates the char-
acteristics of the object that make it valuable. Performance in unboxing videos is
situated in vocal texture, characterization, declamation, and how the creator/
narrator of the video handles and explores each object with one or more of their
hands in front of the camera. Most importantly, the creator provides detailed
sensory descriptions of the object’s materiality so that the viewer can virtually
experience the object as fully as possible from the other side of the screen. In each
unboxing video of a Star Trek collectible, the object is carefully handled and
performed in ways that preserve the integrity of the object and the quality of its
sound and physical appearance.
 From Spock with Love 75

Star Trek unboxing videos are particularly notable because they often include
the assembly of the object, specifically in cases where the collectible is a special
edition model kit for a signature vessel from the fleet of Star Trek spacecraft. In
these instances, the unboxing is commonly followed by a sequel video doc-
umenting the assembly of the model and providing an extended tour of its details
and interactive functions (e.g., lights, sound effects, and the micromovements of
the ship’s parts). These sequels also include an evaluation of the object’s realism as
a miniature replica of the spacecraft seen on screen.
While some unboxing videos focus on expected objects in Star Trek
fandom—such as the video from the user account “The Review Spot” that looks
at the Diamond Select Toys Star Trek: The Original Series Mr. Spock collectible
figure—others, including ThinkGeek’s Star Trek Door Chime are unexpected
but sonorous fan object inclusions.25 The video “Star Trek Door Chime from
ThinkGeek,” posted to Robert Kirkwood’s YouTube account, follows the ex-
pected aesthetics and structure of online unboxing videos. At the beginning of
the video, we see only partial views of Kirkwood’s hands as he holds the fan
object in its box. (In unboxing videos, the performance of each object by the
YouTube user is primarily aural, and all we usually see of the user’s body is their
fingers, hands, and sometimes forearms; Figure 5.5).26 At the start of his “very
quick review” of the Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Door Chime, we see Kirkwood’s
fingers holding the box as he first confirms that the object is in the box, and then
narrates the box’s contents and turns the box over to reveal and read to the
audience the text on the back. This text outlines what the object is, how and
where to install it, how it functions, its special features, its sensory content
sampled from the Star Trek universe, and the object’s authenticity as a licensed
Star Trek collectible.
The predominantly adult male voices who narrate these videos and perform
the collectibles deliver their detailed information in a matter-of-fact manner
with little emotional inflection in their voices.27 Examples of digital fandom
performed online by young people, particularly tweens or teens, however, do
exist; these are often characterized by the media as fanatic and superficial, but
are in actuality used by fans as empowering moments where they actively
negotiate their identity.28 In contrast, the adult male fans in these YouTube
unboxing videos perform their fandom in a grounded, serious, and completist
way that demonstrates their encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Trek universe
and the material culture that surrounds the series. Although their performances
are largely emotionally distanced from their collectibles, there are brief mo-
ments in which their passion for Star Trek and its memorabilia—and their pride
in their collection—is audible, either in the form of a pitch modulation when
discussing a unique feature of the object, in a shift in tempo during their object
narration, or in an extended pause to highlight the personal and franchise value
of the item.
76 Kate Galloway

FIGURE 5.5 (a) and (b) U.S.S. Enterprise Door Chime unboxing video performed on
YouTube 29

In many of the other YouTube videos demonstrating the aurality and functionality
of this particular motion-sensitive door chime, the fan object has already been
unboxed and prepared for online performance (prepared in that three AA batteries
have been placed in the device to power the sound and light mechanisms of the
object).30 The audiovisual structure of unboxing videos typically delays viewer
gratification by slowly leading up to the reveal of the object through its careful
unwrapping and removal from its original packaging. Rather than dedicate re-
cording time and the viewer’s attention span to the removal of packaging, the
 From Spock with Love 77

unboxers in these Star Trek door chime videos begin immediately with the object,
drawing the viewer’s attention to the chime’s multi-modal components. Several
fans have created DIY videos that demonstrate their recent purchase of this officially
licensed Star Trek collectible in ways that combine satisfying sensory content from
Star Trek: The Original Series with everyday function.31 Modeled after the com-
municator panels aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series, this
motion-sensitive door chime replays a series of sound effects: the “swoosh” sound
of the Enterprise doors as they open, a boatswain’s whistle, and the red-alert klaxon
accompanied by a flashing red light. As many of the fans note in their video nar-
rations, the chime registers motion from either side of the panel and a volume
switch on the back of the unit allows the user to control the loudness of the chime
by setting it to a low or high volume.

Object Lesson 3: Pony Trek Participatory Remixes

Fandom and fan objects are also performed and circulated via YouTube in the form
of participatory digital remix videos that often take the form of user- or fan-
generated digital videos in which the makers creatively engage with and make
mediawork (e.g., video montages, remixes, response videos, or vlogs [video blogs])
with pre-existing audiovisual materials, and which they then post to their personal
(or fan) account on streaming platforms (e.g., YouTube). In “Pony Trek Trailer,”
Star Trek receives a “ponified” remix in which the Star Trek (2009) film trailer audio
is juxtaposed against a montage of visuals taken from various My Little Pony:
Friendship is Magic episodes.32 Viewers watch as ponies lip-sync the lines of text
voiced by Chris Pine, Bruce Greenwood, and the other actors that appear in
the 2009 Star Trek film. In the opening moments of the “Pony Trek Trailer,” we
are introduced to Twilight Sparkle, who has been recast as the young and reckless
James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). He has been discovered by Captain Christopher Pike
(Bruce Greenwood), played by a hooded Zecora, who reveals to Kirk his lineage
and encourages him to enlist in Starfleet (Figure 5.6). In this video, lip-syncing My
Little Ponies articulate the voice acting from the original Star Trek film trailer. The
structure and content of the Star Trek trailer’s voice acting, music, and sound effects
remain unaltered, but epic action and adventure visuals from across the My Little
Pony: Friendship is Magic series have been recut to line-up with the structure and
dramatic arc of the original trailer’s soundtrack. At first glance, it may appear to
outsiders as though fans are not visibly or audibly performing in these films, but
their practice of remixing audiovisual materials from the Star Trek franchise with
other sampled audiovisual materials (in this instance, My Little Pony: Friendship is
Magic) is indeed an act of performance.33 They are also performing their intimate
knowledge of the Star Trek franchise; the network of identifiable narrative, visual,
and aural references that signify Star Trek to fan and non-fan YouTube viewers; and
their understanding of how non-Star Trek samples can effectively operate within
the Star Trek universe.
78 Kate Galloway

FIGURE 5.6 (a)–(e) The opening frames of “Pony Trek Trailer” (with voice-acting
annotations by author) 34

In “My Little Pony: Star Trek,” another fan video mash-up of Star Trek and My
Little Pony, the ponies of Equestria, the fictional pony nation that serves as the
setting for the Friendship is Magic series, are embarking on new challenges and
journeys in the Star Trek universe, battling Klingons and assuming new iden-
tities.35 Pinkie Pie is Lieutenant Uhura, Twilight Sparkle is Mr. Spock, Fluttershy
is Doctor McCoy, Rainbow Dash is Captain Kirk, and Applejack is Mr. Scott.
The montaged episode clips are set to the 1987 parody song “Star Trekkin’” by
British band The Firm; its film clips are drawn from moments in My Little Pony:
Friendship is Magic that suit the narrative of the song’s text and include moments of
animated lip syncing that align with the lyrics and dialogue of the song. The
drama and characterization of Star Trek are rearranged and recontextualized.
Pinkie Pie is seen preparing for action in front of a mirror, admiring her fash-
ionable army fatigue helmet; Twilight Sparkle emerges from her house prepared
 From Spock with Love 79

for adventure and danger in heavily padded football gear; and Fluttershy dips his
hooves into a rainbow stream, ritualistically painting his cheeks with rainbow war
paint. The Firm’s “Star Trekkin’” parodies Star Trek: The Original Series and
includes recognizable sound clips from the franchise as well as comical voice
caricatures of the original Star Trek characters provided by members of the band, a
studio technician, and the wife of one of the songwriters.36
In both the original “Star Trekkin’” parody song and the “Pony Trek” remix,
listeners are exposed to a fan community that shapes the range of accepted remixes,
responses, and retellings of Star Trek materials.37 In the “My Little Pony: Star Trek”
parody, select vocal parodies from “Star Trekkin’” sound as if they are also par-
odying the voices of main-character ponies as heard on the series My Little Pony:
Friendship is Magic. In addition, the selected clips are structurally placed to make it
appear as though the movement of the ponies’ mouths is synchronized with the
new dialogue as the ponies lip-sync along to the newly composed and sampled
soundtrack. However, the creator of this fan remix also chose to retain rough DIY
media-making moments that clearly signal to the viewer that this is a fan remix; for
example, there are instances in which the ponies appear to be voiceless, lip-syncing
to nothing as the song continues to play in the background.
When these Star Trek/My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic participatory fan
remixes, frequently referred to online by fans and commenters as Pony Trek vi-
deos, were first made and posted to fan YouTube accounts, much of YouTube’s
traffic was still driven by and linked to direct searches within the platform.
Because of the search and retrieval functionality of the platform in early 2011,
creators of referential YouTube videos (e.g., cover versions, remixes, and re-
sponse videos) often included the full or partial title of the referenced video in the
title of their response or remix. This manifests in many of the video titles for Pony
Trek remixes that respond to the intersections among these fandoms and their
audiovisual culture; the post titles frequently include main character names or the
words “Star Trek” (e.g., “Captain Picard Watches My Little Pony #2” and “My
Little Pony: Star Trek”).38 This textual matching makes the videos more likely to
be listed in algorithmically-selected search results and Related Videos listings,
thus connecting fans, their remixes, and their performances of online fandom.
The character Discord, voiced in the Friendship is Magic series by John de
Lancie, is a pony-dragon hybrid (a “draconequus”) villain. The character is in-
troduced in the show’s second season premiere as a cunning manipulator with
powerful magical abilities. De Lancie, who is also known for playing the om-
nipotent trickster Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, is a nexus point between
the Star Trek and My Little Pony (and Brony) fan cultures.39 Following the first
Discord episode, aired on September 18, 2011, de Lancie was intrigued yet
skeptical of the sudden surge in attention he was receiving from My Little Pony
fans, particularly those who self-identified as members of the Brony community.
When he was first approached to participate in the Brony documentary Bronies:
The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (2012), de Lancie was
80 Kate Galloway

hesitant until he met some Bronies at a convention. Once he met the fans, many
of whom were also avid Star Trek fans, he began to make connections between
Brony and Star Trek fandom, and became a co-producer on the Kickstarter-
funded documentary.40 These intersecting fan communities influenced the
production of an array of participatory Star Trek/My Little Pony: Friendship is
Magic remixes, made and uploaded to YouTube fan accounts and fan sites fol-
lowing this unexpected fan-favorite actor crossover.
Following its 2012 theatrical release, the official trailer for the film Star Trek: Into
Darkness received a My Little Pony fan remix with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
episode footage, recut and rearranged to fit with the plot details, musical structure,
and voice acting of the Star Trek: Into Darkness film trailer.41 With “My Little Trek
Into Darkness,” YouTuber EquesTron, formerly known as FFF1987RETURNS,
continues the participatory digital making practice of remixing the narrative,
music, and voice acting of current movie trailers with images from My Little
Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In “My Little Trek Into Darkness,” EquesTron uses the
voiceover from the film trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness to stage a revised science
fiction narrative starring ponies from Friendship is Magic. In this version, uploaded
to YouTube months before the theater release of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into
Darkness, James T. Kirk is played by Twilight Sparkle, Lieutenant Pavel Chekhov
is Applejack, Lieutenant Commander Spock is Fluttershy, Translator and
Communications Commander Nyota Uhura is Rainbow Dash, and the mysterious
villain Khan is King Sombra.42 Members of both online fan communities praised
these casting choices, noting the surprising similarities and overlap between the
characterization of the ponies and members of the Enterprise crew.
Among the wide variety of fan responses to the Star Trek franchise and its fan
objects, several DIY fan-created videos covering and remixing Star Trek narrative,
visual, and sonic content fit Theodore Gracyk’s definition of “cover” as consisting
of an “illocutionary act of constructing an interpretation” of a familiar original,
conveying a particular attitude or critique to a knowing audience via the song as
medium.43 Many of the remix reimaginings that have received the most attention,
in terms of views, YouTube “likes,” and inclusion into various YouTube playlists
and media compilations, are participatory media that can be categorized under
Michael Rings’s definition of “generic resetting” or “genre-reset”—remixes and
covers that present “a song in a genre different from that of the original.”44
The original trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness and the episode excerpts from
the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series that are used in the remix are available
online. Through processes of remixing, recontextualization, and recirculation
alongside materials from an adjacent fan community, these original audiovisual
materials (used in this Pony Trek remix and in My Little Pony/Star Trek fan re-
mixes) are reaching an audience far broader in scope than the video’s creators had
anticipated or intended. This affordance of the social, searchable, and identity-
linked Internet—in which a creator of content might expect, create, and post
content for one set of consumers, while accidentally reaching a very different
 From Spock with Love 81

audience with widely different assumptions and expectations—is a phenomenon

termed “context collapse,” a concept credited to sociologists and media theorists
danah boyd, Alice Marwick, and Michael Wesch.45 When this content reaches
members of both the Star Trek and My Little Pony fandoms, they are combined,
recontextualized, and remixed in creative and unexpected ways that respond to
and perform the knowledge of both franchises and their fan communities, while
also providing entertainment to both fan and non-fan viewers. Pony Trek fan-
created videos highlight the ways that fandom can be approached as a powerful
cultural phenomenon, how it can open up opportunities for creative inter-
pretations of preexisting visuals and sounds that fans find meaningful, and how
technological developments are impacting some of its practices and processes.

Epilogue: Socializing and Sharing the Sound of Star Trek

Online Through Fan Objects
Like many online fan communities, the Star Trek community uses YouTube as a
platform to perform their fandom through displays of their collected fan objects
and ephemera. In these participatory fan-made YouTube videos, the perfor-
mances of both musical and sounding Star Trek-branded fan objects are parti-
cularly striking moments of online fan musicking. But what does it mean to listen
to the materiality of fan culture online? As I have highlighted in my survey of
three online Star Trek fan object lessons, examples of Star Trek musicking fandom
reveal issues of circulation, sharing, and sociality in social media dedicated to the
materiality and aurality of Star Trek fan audio culture. Fan audio culture includes
the sounds made by the franchise, enjoyed by fans, and used by fans in various
ways through fan-made participatory mediawork.
Although Captain Picard had misgivings regarding the annual “Captain Picard
Day,” and about judging the children’s (his fans’) creative work based on his image,
he acknowledged how these processes of making and sharing brought joy to
those participating, particularly Riker. In response to Riker’s overly enthusiastic
pleasure in “The Pegasus,” and to wind him up, Picard arranges to hold the first-
ever “Commander Riker Day” the following month. Picard even suggests to Riker
he might join in on the festivities and enter the art contest, where he would be
creating participatory fan objects of his own. The celebration of “Captain Picard
Day” by the residents of the U.S.S. Enterprise—and by fans offline and online across
the globe—highlights the fact that fan objects, their materiality, and their multi-
modal features are central to fan sociality, creativity, and community. Participatory
acts of fandom in this context are acts of virtual performance and the fans who
create these interactive media guide the online public through their carefully
collected, purchased, or gifted Star Trek musical greeting cards, Christmas orna-
ments, starship model kits, character figures, and other collectible objects. In their
fan-created YouTube videos they perform each object’s materiality and musicality
while also enforcing connections between the object, Star Trek, and the fan. Most
82 Kate Galloway

notably, these YouTube videos reveal insight into the posting fan’s personal ap-
proach to Star Trek fandom, as illustrated through their narration, interactions
with the physical objects, and their manipulation (or remixing) of the collectibles
and media texts (e.g., through fan-made episode montages, parody songs, and
response videos). The use of digital Internet circulatory technologies that promote
sociality and creativity (like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr) in acts
of screen-media fandom build community through performances of fandom’s
materiality—performances like these fan-made YouTube videos displaying and
replaying the music, sound effects, and iconic voices of Star Trek fan objects.

Notes
1 The episode “The Pegasus” first aired on television on January 10, 1994, and was
unofficially referred to as “Captain Picard Day” by fans. See, for example, the entry on
the Fandom wiki and its special page on the Star Trek website, “Captain Picard Day,”
Memory Alpha, Fandom Wiki, accessed September 10, 2019, https://memory-alpha.
fandom.com/wiki/Captain_Picard_Day; StarTrek.com Staff, “Celebrating Captain
Picard Day,” Star Trek.com, June 16, 2015, accessed September 10, 2019, https://
www.startrek.com/article/celebrating-captain-picard-day. Since 2007, fans have an-
nually celebrated Captain Picard Day on June 16 by circulating fan art, memes, videos,
and other forms of creative digital media that celebrate both the character Picard and
the actor, Patrick Stewart, who portrays him. Fans selected June 16 because they
calculated that it is the equivalent to Stardate 47457.1, which was mentioned in the
episode. Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Pegasus,” Season 7, episode 12, directed
by LeVar Burton, written by Ronald D. Moore, aired January 8, 1994, in broadcast
syndication, Paramount, 2007, DVD.
2 In the series Picard (2020–), Picard visits his storage room at Starfleet’s Quantum Archive.
Ephemera of importance across his career are housed there, including his book of
Shakespeare that he had kept in his Ready Room aboard the Enterprise, his personal
shuttle, and the “Captain Picard Day” banner students made in “The Pegasus”. Despite
Picard’s lackluster response to the holiday in “The Pegasus,” the fact that he has archived
and revisited this piece of memorabilia signifies that it is important to him.
3 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). Small famously coined the term “musicking”
to highlight that music is not a static thing (e.g., the musical “work”), but rather a
broad and inclusive “activity, something that people do” (2). He wrote, “to pay at-
tention in any way to a musical performance, including a recorded performance, even
to Muzak in an elevator, is to music” (9).
4 Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Pegasus.”
5 See, for example, Kyra Gaunt’s account and analysis of the vast, complex, and often
contradictory archive of user-generated videos in the digital ecology of the YouTube
video-sharing platform of young girls twerking. Central to Gaunt’s study is her exploration
of how the appropriation of twerking by non-black artists, such as in the case of Miley
Cyrus’ now infamous twerking spectacle alongside Robin Thicke in “Blurred Lines” at
the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, affects black girls’ socialization online. Gaunt ex-
plains, “Miley (Cyrus) used YouTube twerking as an ethnic marker to transform her brand
identity, while black girls were twerking as a different kind of self-presentation of ethnicity
and gender on YouTube’s popular video-sharing platform” (245). See further Kyra D.
Gaunt, “YouTube, Twerking & You: Context Collapse and the Handheld Co‐presence
of Black Girls and Miley Cyrus,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 27, no. 3 (2015): 244–73.
 From Spock with Love 83

6 See further Jessica Getman and Aya Esther Hayashi, “Introduction: Musicking in
Media Fandom,” The Journal of Fandom Studies 4, no. 2 (2016): 135–40.
7 Lucy Bennett and Paul J. Booth, “Performance and Performativity in Fandom,”
Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 18 (2015), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015
.0675. See also, Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley, eds., Fan Culture:
Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013).
8 See further Nancy K. Baym, Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate
Work Connection (New York: NYU Press, 2018).
9 Social media and other forms of Web 2.0 participatory sharing platforms, as Jeremy
Wade Morris has argued, have changed and continue to shape the roles and kinds of labor
performed and expected of artists and fans. See further Jeremy Wade Morris, “Artists as
Entrepreneurs, Fans as Workers,” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 3 (2014): 273–90.
10 A Trekker is a fan of the U.S. science fiction television program Star Trek. A Trekker can
be either a fan of the entire Star Trek franchise or a fan of a specific series or film within
the franchise.
11 Roy Shuker, “Beyond the ‘High Fidelity’ Stereotype: Defining the (Contemporary)
Record Collector,” Popular Music 23, no. 3 (2004): 311–30; Shuker, “Record Collecting
and Fandom,” Popular Music Fandom: Identities, Roles and Practices, ed. Mark Duffett,
pp. 165–85 (New York: Routledge, 2013), 165; Shuker, Wax Trash and Vinyl Treasures:
Record Collecting as Social Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016).
12 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA: Paramount
Pictures, 1982).
13 TrekMovie, “New Talking Star Trek Birthday Card,” YouTube, July 15, 2009,
video, 0:32, accessed September 15, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
G9A_P-Ux1mc
14 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
15 TrekMovie, “New Talking Star Trek Birthday Card.”
16 Hallmark, “Star Trek™ Ornaments and Gifts,” accessed September 10, 2019, https://
www.hallmark.com/shop-star-trek/
17 musickeys8, “Hallmark Star Trek Commercial,” YouTube, March 3, 2013, video,
0:41, accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4pP0ci6RTQ.
18 PaulCollegio, “Birthday Card,” YouTube, July 25, 2009, video, 0:32, accessed
February 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRCnyf_7En4
19 whataslacker, “Star Trek Hallmark Bday Card 02,” YouTube, March 30, 2008, video,
0:13, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUjeM7nHzks
20 Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Alternative Factor,” Season 1, episode 27, directed
by Gerd Oswald, written by Don Ingalls, aired March 30, 1967, in broadcast syndi-
cation, Paramount, 2015, DVD.
21 whataslacker, “Hallmark Star Trek Birthday Card 04,” YouTube, September 1, 2008, video,
0:33, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqPPKAH7Leo
22 whataslacker, “Star Trek Hallmark Bday Card 02.”
23 whataslacker, “Hallmark Star Trek Birthday Card 04.”
24 Jody Berland, “Locating listening: Technological Space, Popular Music, and Canadian
Mediations,” in The Place of Music, ed. Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, and George
Revill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1998), 133. See also Steve Jones, “Music and
the Internet,” Popular Music 19 (2000): 217–30.
25 The Review Spot, “Collectible Spot—Diamond Select Toys Star Trek The
Original Series Mr. Spock,” YouTube, August 23, 2013, video, 15:41, accessed
February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diuITVkFv2s&t=544s;
ThinkGeek, “Star Trek Electronic Door Chime from Think Geek,” YouTube,
February 29, 2012, video, 1:28, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=WMfcdlAXw5k&t=4s
84 Kate Galloway

26 Robert Kirkwood, “Star Trek Door Chime from ThinkGeek,” YouTube, May 12,
2012, video, 1:46, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
x_luEO__8lg
27 In my research on musicking fan objects from the Star Trek fan community, I have yet
to encounter a woman-performed video or a fan object performance video that can be
clearly attributed to a fan who identifies as a woman.
28 Sharon R. Mazzarella, ed., Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity
(New York: Peter Lang, 2005); Roberta Pearson, “Fandom in the Digital Era,” Popular
Communication 8, no. 1 (2010): 84–95.
29 Robert Kirkwood, “Star Trek Door Chime from ThinkGeek.”
30 Several of the fans reviewing the chime note that it can still operate as a chime when off
battery, but that if you desire the full sensory experience, the chime is power-efficient
and the batteries last for several months with normal chime use. IoMGeek, “Aaron Gets a
Star Trek Electronic Door Chime,” YouTube, May 15, 2016, video, 1:46, accessed
February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUjeM7nHzks
31 The three that I examined for this study were Robert Kirkwood’s review of the Star
Trek door chime “Star Trek Door Chime from ThinkGeek,” posted on May 12, 2012
(Robert Kirkwood, “Star Trek Door Chime from ThinkGeek,” YouTube, May 12,
2012, video, 1:46, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
x_luEO__8lg); IoMGeek’s “Aron gets a Star Trek Electronic Door Chime!,” posted
on May 12, 2016 (IoMGeek, “Aaron Gets a Star Trek Electronic Door Chime,”
YouTube, May 15, 2016, video, 1:46, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=CUjeM7nHzks); and graz1701’s “Star Trek Door Panel
Chime,” posted on March 14, 2012 (graz1701, “Star Trek Door Panel Chime,”
YouTube, May 14, 2012, video, 0:49, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=LCGAO3bx5VU). These videos were selected because they
were my first three hits following a YouTube search with the key phrase “Star Trek
door chime fan videos.” As of writing, these videos have received 58,141 views, 6,060
views, and 21,432 views, respectively.
32 JustUploading This, “Pony Trek Trailer,” YouTube, July 20, 2011, video, 2:12, ac-
cessed February 6, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCDizYXp80U
33 My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, created by Lauren Faust (2010–2019; https://www.
amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00FQDAS9Y/).
34 JustUploading This, “Pony Trek Trailer.”
35 Gurido Gurido, “My Little Pony: Star Trek,” YouTube, June 2, 2012, video, 3:39,
accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=San9QFeRjxg
36 The Firm - Topic, “Star Trekkin’ (Original Radio Version),” YouTube, November 20,
2014, video, 3:35, accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
M1pzN3CgANE; Kevin Wuench, “Begin your Star Trek weekend with this ’80s classic,”
Tampa Bay Times, July 22, 2016, accessed September 25, 2016, https://www.tampabay.
com/blogs/80s/begin-your-star-trek-weekend-with-this-80s-classic/2286443/
37 Henry Jenkins, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual
Poaching,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107.
38 Wiltbloococo, “Captain Picard Watches My Little Pony #2,” YouTube, December 3,
2012, video, 0:57, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Aq6Mu7czyT8; Gurido Gurido, “My Little Pony: Star Trek,” YouTube, June 2,
2012, video, 3:39, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
San9QFeRjxg
39 The Brony fan culture is a community of fans—most often adults—who identity as
male and who are fans of the My Little Pony television program, toys, and other formats
of My Little Pony collectibles and ephemera. Brony fan culture has been the subject of a
number of documentaries, including A Brony Tale (2014). A Brony Tale, directed by
Brent Hodge (New York, NY: Virgil Films, 2014), DVD.
 From Spock with Love 85

40 Karl Keily, “John de Lancie Talks ‘Star Trek,’ ‘My Little Pony’ and Brony
Phenomenon,” CBR.com, April 7, 2013, accessed February 6, 2020, https://www.cbr.
com/eccc-john-de-lancie-talks-star-trek-my-little-pony-and-brony-phenomenon/
41 Draft the Filmmaker, “Pony Trek Into Darkness,” YouTube, December 18, 2012, video,
1:51, accessed February 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5IDjhaJmmU
42 Star Trek Into Darkness, directed by J. J. Abrams (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
2013), DVD.
43 Theodore Gracyk, “Covers and Communicative Intentions,” The Journal of Music and
Meaning, 11 (2012/2013): 22–46; 24. See also Kurt Mosser, who discusses covers and
remixes within the context of familial connections and networks of connection. Kurt
Mosser, “‘Cover Songs’: Ambiguity, Multivalence, Polysemy,” Popular Musicology
Online 2 (2008), accessed January 21, 2021, http://www.popular-musicology-online.
com/issues/02/mosser.html
44 Michael Rings, “Doing It Their Way: Rock Covers, Genre, and Appreciation,” The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 1 (2013): 55–63; 55.
45 See Alice Marwick and danah boyd, “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter
Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience,” New Media & Society 13, no. 1
(2011): 114–33; Allison McCracken, “Tumblr Youth Subcultures and Media
Engagement,” Cinema Journal 57, no. 1 (2017): 151–61; Michael Wesch, “YouTube
and You: Experiences of Self-Awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording
Webcam,” EME (2009): 19–34.
6
LOVING LWAXANA, TREK’S SONICALLY
DISRUPTIVE DIVA
Josh Morrison

This essay is dedicated to Majel Barrett and José Esteban Muñoz, (queer) luminaries
who, through their promises of something more and something better, have had an
indelible impact on me as a scholar and a person.

“Hello, Little One!” rings through the halls of the Enterprise D, heralding the
arrival of the most fabulous character to grace the Trek universe with her es-
teemed presence: Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the
Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. Played by Majel
Barrett (also frequently referred to as Majel Barrett Rodenberry), Lwaxana is one
of Barrett’s several roles that permeate Trek and have allowed her the unique
honor of being the only person to appear in all six pre-2010 TV series and in
three eras of Trek movies (she recorded voiceover work as the computer for the
2009 Star Trek relaunch film but died before its release).1 Beyond Lwaxana and
the computers on Federation starships across the franchise, Barrett also played first
officer Number One in the first original series pilot, Nurse Chapel in the original
series of Star Trek (TOS), and Lieutenant M’Ress (and other voices) in Star Trek:
The Animated Series (TAS).2 Lwaxana is a character beloved by many Trek fans,
despite only nine appearances in the entire TV/film franchise (six in Star Trek:
The Next Generation [TNG], three in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [DS9]). For
example, author Meg Elison paid tribute to her in a piece for startrek.com called
“How Lwaxana Troi Became Our Space Aunt.”3 In this essay, Elison positions
the Troi matron as the “‘Auntie Mame of the galaxy’” (apparently Rodenberry
himself described the character this way), suggesting she fills the role of the
fabulous aunt that let queer kids dress as they wanted, explore their gender and
sexuality, and be outrageous and joyful in a way normal life wouldn’t.4 As is
proper in a chapter about a diva, this essay is also a love letter to Lwaxana: as a
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-6
 Loving Lwaxana 87

young queer, I fondly recall watching Lwaxana on screen and adoring her sense
of style and her over-the-top nature, while being comforted by her loving be-
havior. Lwaxana, despite her brashness and the fact that other characters fre-
quently make jokes at her expense (especially about how loud or annoying she is),
forms loving bonds with those around her, including many characters with
emotional difficulties of their own. This understanding of Lwaxana as a fabulous
chosen family member and vehicle for queer imaginings serves as the entry point
for this chapter. Like her ubiquitous computer voice, Majel Barrett’s Lwaxana is
sonically pervasive and insistent. Her sonicity simultaneously contributes to the
aseptic, heteronormative utopia of the Trek universe and also ruptures that utopia
with her flamboyance, telepathy, and distinctly queer divahood. It is the com-
bination of an insistent rupture tempered and driven by love that marks Lwaxana
as a truly disruptive force in Trek’s otherwise muted (sonic) utopia.
If there’s one characteristic that defines Lwaxana Troi, it is that she doesn’t
quite fit in with Starfleet’s culture and expectations. Lwaxana’s interactions with
the Enterprise computer stand as an excellent example of how she is slightly out of
place in this universe. Despite being a Federation ambassador and someone who
has clearly lived a life of privilege with all the comfortable conveniences offered a
woman of noble heritage and important station, modern technologies frequently
confound her. In the TNG Season 2 episode “Manhunt,” for example, when
Lwaxana searches for Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), she knocks
awkwardly on the wall of the Enterprise, summoning the computer for directions
in an overly formal and stilted manner.5 Her interactions with technology betray
her Otherness in the slick, convenient world of Starfleet, while exuding diva-
ness. She even thanks the computer for its help. The characterization of Lwaxana
as a disruptive presence haunts all of her intrusions into Trek, across both TNG
and DS9. For example, in the opening of the later episode “Cost of Living,”
Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) begins her personal log with “My mother
is on board” in a dire tone; Picard, in the same episode, conspicuously checks
the hallways before exiting the turbolift in an uncharacteristically rude attempt to
avoid Lwaxana.6
A fabulous diva-ness characterizes Lwaxana’s unruly persona. This is especially
true when framed through the relationships queer and other minoritized subjects
often have to divas. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Michael Moon remind us in
their “Dossier on Divinity,” it is the image of a fabulous, over-the-top diva con-
fidently and fabulously refusing to fit in that often promotes connection between
the personality of the diva and Othered subjects.7 Moon, for example, cites his own
experiences as a fat, young, gay man feeling a connection to divas that empowered
him in a world where he didn’t fit in.8 This is an experience not dissimilar to my
own young, gay, fat self idolizing Lwaxana as a teenager. But to properly under-
stand Lwaxana’s queer, disruptive divahood, it’s important to further explain
the world she refuses to conform to. From her over-the-top costuming and make-
up, to her explosive and excessive emotionality, Lwaxana contrasts sharply with
88 Josh Morrison

Starfleet’s largely muted aesthetic and standards of behavior. Both TNG and DS9,
in particular, clarify this aesthetic by defining both what it is, and what it is not.
Trek’s utopia is also one rooted in assuming and promoting normative hetero-
sexuality as standard and desirable. Lwaxana’s inability to maintain or create
“normal” relationships is central to her queerness, and another vector through
which she disrupts Starfleet’s emotionally constrictive utopia.
I’d like to offer some notes on the concept of canon, Trek’s canon specifically,
and the reasons we must be careful of treating canon as the best or only source for
determining the validity of fan theories and artistic output or of their production
or consumption practices. The Trek canon is first and foremost controlled
by CBS/Viacom. For example, upon the launch of the new TV series led by
Discovery, the deep and rich novels that expanded the Trek universe were retro-
actively de-canonized (though there will be the “finale” trilogy, Star Trek: Coda, to
close that universe’s stories off in a lovely gesture to fans of the novelverse like
myself).9 This means that one of my major sources for this essay, the novel The
Battle of Betazed, is now non-canonical from a corporate perspective, though a fan
like me could argue it exists in a grey area as its plot takes place entirely within the
timeframe of Deep Space Nine and expands upon the still-canon invasion of Betazed
by the Dominion. On top of this, canons are often written about like they are
immutable edifices, but they develop over time and tend to be very confusing,
especially in large franchises that span decades across old and new media, like Star
Trek and Star Wars. Trek’s canon, in particular, goes through constant revision in the
plot and off screen (including through various dubious uses of time travel, like the
thin explanation of an alternate universe splitting from the original one in the 2009
film Star Trek). Kotsko even argues that parts of the Trek universe that were ori-
ginally considered to be of dubious canonicity and were generally poorly received
by fans have now become core parts of it, such as Star Trek: The Animated Series and
Star Trek: Enterprise.10 Canon is an always-shifting target ruled by tensions between
fans and corporate media interests, revisions over time that move certain texts in
or out of favour (or de-canonize them entirely), and the continued grappling
of culture with historically non-existent, tokenizing, or deeply offensive parts of
canon as they’re viewed through present mores.
These tensions are indicative of how “canon” means different things to dif-
ferent people and that the canon is, in fact, greatly influenced by fans. The efforts
and productions of fans were essential in making the idea of an in-universe canon
a common one that has now been seized by corporate media interests as so many
other fan products have been. TV genre theorist Jason Mittel, for example, ex-
plores the Lostpedia as a site of canon creation and contestation driven by freely
given fan labour—in this instance creating the wiki that tracks the canon (and the
intertwined, complex storylines) of the show Lost.11 Similar wikis exist in the
Trek universe, most notably Memory Alpha.12 Before the Internet, Trek fans en-
gaged in many examples of fans building out the Trek world. Rehak, for example,
explores the unauthorized miniatures-driven war games like Star Fleet Battles
 Loving Lwaxana 89

(1979) and the fan-made Starfleet Technical Manual and Star Trek Blueprints (both in
1975).13 (It’s worth noting that there would later be authorized texts similar to
these, like the authorized technical manuals released for both TNG and DS9,
showing again how fan production and consumption can influence corporate
media concerns.)14
The most important reason to be at least suspicious of official canons (and their
gatekeepers, whether official or within fan communities) has to do with how
traditional canons rarely represent diverse stories or subjectivities, including for
the queer fans like myself with whom this essay is in dialogue. A key contention
of fan studies is to take unofficial fan productions seriously, especially as they
represent minoritized or oppressed subjectivities, communities, and ideals.
Therefore, many scholars have focused on fanfiction—the writing of stories using
elements and characters from favourite media to tell new stories—which often
creates new relationships, changes characters’ sexualities or gender orientation,
and serves as a way for fans to write themselves and people like them into the text
they adore (much as I’m doing in this essay!).
Henry Jenkins’ ground-breaking work Textual Poachers focused on Trek fans in
particular as a hotbed of this kind of production, though it’s present in all kinds of
fandoms.15 Coppa builds further on this work, exploring how women fans of
Trek, beyond spearheading the famous letter-writing campaigns which kept TOS
on the air in the late 1960s, were also at the forefront of using (at the time) new
media technologies to create new stories through Trek in the form of vids
made on VCRs using taped copies of episodes.16 This does not mean that all
fan productions on queer issues (or any others, really) are inherently “good” or
progressive. Kyra Hunting explores how homoerotic fan fiction in already-queer
franchises, in their example the original 2000–2005 Queer as Folk on Showtime,
can actually lead to a conservatizing of radical media; in this example many fanfics
promoted a much more homonormative ending for the series’ main couple,
Justin and Brian, even after the show kept to its original sex-radical politics with
their relationship (the other main characters all end up in very homonormative,
monogamous relationships, or on their own, with the show’s lesbian couple even
driving off to get married in Canada in a station wagon, likely the most stereo-
typical vehicle attached to lesbian families in popular culture).17
Essentially, canon is a fraught terrain that serves as a field for the negotiation of
identity, community norms, and social issues, just like the universes and texts they
reference. Therefore, this essay’s relationship to canon is loose: I don’t eschew it
entirely, but I also cannot pretend to be fully in step with the canon in an essay
that criticizes the conservative, colonial, and heteronormative elements of the
Trek universe (elements that canon can reinforce or be used as a tool to police).
These are parts of viewing contemporary media with which queer fans like
myself have always had to disidentify, to borrow a term from Muñoz that de-
monstrates how queer subjects so rarely see themselves on screen unless its as a
stereotype or a bit player, leading to the process of being both drawn into the text
90 Josh Morrison

while it simultaneously disincludes us.18 In many ways, queer spectatorship and

fandom is like flying a starship through a murky nebula, using the light and the
gravitational pull of the glimpses of queerness we see in figures like the diva,
Lwaxana Troi. We find her through the gas to guide our course and our scho-
larship as we engage with fans from minoritized or oppressed communities, and
must be ready to follow where they lead, including outside the well-traveled
paths of “canon.”

The Federation: An Aseptic, Straight Utopia

The Federation, and by extension Starfleet, operates within an aesthetic defined by
muted colors, emotions, and interpersonal relationships that is central to the utopia
Trek evokes. The smooth lines and muted color palettes of Starfleet design and the
minimalist aesthetic of the innards of starships like the Enterprise-D visually support
the notion of an unpolluted utopic future. Even DS9’s Cardassian architectural
grittiness, demonstrated through darker color palettes and jagged contours, only
serves as a foil to Starfleet’s aesthetically unembellished utopia. In contrast to the
station itself, its complement of runabouts and the Starfleet warship Defiant serve
as a reminder of Trek ideals, making plain to the Bajorans the choices they face in
the future as they grapple with post-colonial transition and rebuilding. The
Federation’s aseptic utopia will cleanse Bajor’s past experiences of colonial violence,
ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity brought by Starfleet and its clean, neat
ships. Starfleet is a force sent in to clean up other places, be it in long-term missions
like Captain Benjamin Sisko’s (Avery Brooks) goal of bringing Bajor into the
Federation (which does not occur in the show itself, but does take place at the
pinnacle of the DS9 official relaunch novel series) or the short-term missions of
TOS and TNG where the Enterprise serves as the galaxy’s cleaning service.19
Thus, despite DS9’s explicit engagement with what happens after a colonized
culture gains independence, the Federation and Starfleet remain invested in a
colonialist aesthetic. This critique of Starfleet and the Federation does appear in
the show, but only through villains like the Maquis and their leader Michael
Eddington, a former Starfleet officer who betrays Sisko to become a freedom
fighter.20 This criticism of Trek’s utopia is as important as ever today, as slogans
like “Make America Great Again” have become a central part of life in North
America. As Caryl Flinn argues in Strains of Utopia, while discussing the nostalgic
and romanticized utopic elements evoked by classic Hollywood film music, many
utopias are actually rooted in past- and present-day ideology.21 In a moment
where our world is seeing a distinct uptick in proto- and pseudo-fascistic regimes
coming to power, with many world leaders trading in the language of past
greatness and promises of a utopic tomorrow, it is important to explicitly address
the ways that nostalgia, utopia, and aesthetics are part of these projects.
Like the aesthetic elements of previous fascistic and colonial projects, the
utopia evoked by Starfleet and the Federation is also a straight utopia. I invoke
 Loving Lwaxana 91

the word straight first in the sense of “straight time,” a concept borrowed from
queer theory and explained by authors including Elizabeth Freeman and
Lee Edleman. They describe straight time as projecting contemporary politics,
ideologies, and institutions into the past and future as natural, desirable, or es-
sential to the social order, but also tending to erase the voices of Othered peoples
who don’t fit into this temporal regime. Straight time is related to historical tel-
eology in that it seeks to have history conform to a particular narrative and engages
in practices of erasing disruptive voices and stories, but it is more specifically focused
on the ways in which elements of heteronormativity are central to narratives that
erase sexual and gendered differences. For example, Freeman discusses the ways that
queer sexualities trouble and threaten the projected life cycle of straight time and its
major benchmarks: marriage, home ownership, child-raising, and so on.22 Straight
time purports to offer stability and continuity of relationships, social institutions,
and politics, all of which Lwaxana bends, breaks, or ignores. I also invoke straight as
part of Trek’s utopia for how it implicitly draws a straight, connective line between
colonial practices of the past, through the present in which the show aired, and into
the future of Trek’s narrative universe, using a nostalgia for order and simplicity
(both literal and relational) as a dog whistle for colonialist and heteronormative
ideologies and narratives.
The soundtrack contributes to the development of Trek’s uncontaminated
utopic ideals. For example, Barrett’s own computer voice employs a steady, level
tone with little inflection. The voice is calming: the computer remains a steady,
unchanged element, even when chaos and violence rock the rest of Trek’s sonic
environment. In addition to the computer voice, gentle white noises suffuse Star
Trek’s aural world, populating Federation spaces with quiet beeps from computers,
and the constant hum of a warp drive. These sounds add warmth to austere Starfleet
ships, providing a sense of tranquility and consistency to the world of Trek.
Starfleet’s soundscape, in other words, sonically promises the order the Federation
brings to a chaotic universe.
In this vein, the Federation’s utopia relies on heteronormativity to show its
universality (and elide queer contestations of its moral order). Openly queer
characters were not part of the main cast until Star Trek: Beyond briefly ac-
knowledged Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu’s (John Cho) queerness.23 Later, Star Trek:
Discovery featured a gay leading character in Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets
(Anthony Rapp) and his marriage to one of the ship’s doctors, Hugh Culber
(Wilson Cruz).24 In fact, until Beyond, representations of explicit queerness or
implicit transness, especially surrounding the Trill, and particularly DS9’s
Lieutenant Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), are treated as oddities, or one-episode
moral issues to be played out, yet always resolve in a way that doesn’t challenge
the Federation’s heteronorms. The most famous example of this comes
from DS9’s episode “Rejoined,” in which Jadzia encounters Dr. Lenara Kahn
(Susanna Thompson), who now carries the symbiont, and thus memories, of her
former host’s ex-wife.25 The two briefly rekindle their love affair, and they kiss
92 Josh Morrison

on screen (but with the mitigating circumstance that their memories are of a
straight, married couple, as Dax was joined to Torias, a man, during their initial
relationship). But because of Trill cultural injunctions against rekindling ro-
mances from previous lives, Dax and Kahn choose to suppress their queer desires
and avoid any discussion of the possible parallels between Trill and trans or queer
experiences.26
The TNG episode “The Outcast” also represents a moment when Trek
brushed against engaging queer and trans lives, only to hastily withdraw into
heteronormativity. In the episode, Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes)
falls in love with a person from an androgynous or agender species.27 It is later
revealed that his paramour is a member of an underground movement who feel
specifically gendered; this “twist” is a bizarre trans(ish) scenario that comes closer
than any property before Discovery to representing an actual trans and/or non-
binary storyline at all, though hardly in a positive way.28 In particular, the way the
episode’s narrative proceeds, Riker’s attraction is, at the end, to someone who
identifies as a woman, meaning that the episode works very hard not to question
Riker’s status as TNG’s Kirk-esque heterosexual space lothario, while also closing
the episode’s story by positioning the person who rejects their society’s mono-
gendered system for a traditional cisgender and heterosexual positionality as the
real victim. Alas, these queer and trans “issue” episodes typically present instances
where Trek’s utopia conflates heteronormativity with colonialism. European
Christian colonial powers worked hard to convert Indigenous populations in North
America, Africa, Latin America, and Asia (among other places), a process which
included demonizing any non-heterosexual, non-binary-based, and non-marriage-
based sexualities, genders, and family configurations both through exoticization and
violence (rhetorical, theological, sexual, physical, and Imperial).29 Trek’s exotici-
zation of queer and trans experiences actively Others them as part of its mission of
exploration, further tying its utopic convictions to nostalgia for deeply violent,
misogynistic, and queer- and transphobic ideologies and histories.
Trek also privileges heterosexual marriages and families as both normative and
desirable, presenting only heterosexual unions as viable in the long term for its main
characters. Sisko’s long-term romance and eventual marriage to Captain Kassidy
Yates (Penny Johnson), and Picard’s, Kirk’s, and Janeway’s various brief love in-
terests all illustrate heteronormativity as preferential for the franchise’s heroes and
leads. Beyond heterosexual romantic relationships, the Trek franchise prioritizes
childbearing and -rearing. Both DS9 and Star Trek: Voyager feature storylines with
pregnant primary cast members (Major Kira Nerys [Nana Visitor] and Lieutenant
B’Elanna Torres [Roxann Dawson], respectively), and Deanna Troi experiences
pregnancy as a form of contact with an alien species. Additionally, the frequent
appearance of child characters such as Alexander Rozhenko, Wesley Crusher,
Molly and Kirayoshi O’Brien, Jake Sisko, Nog, Naomi Wildeman, and Icheb
indicate the priority Trek puts on procreation and the centrality of normative family
structures to Starfleet’s cultural commitments. Queer theorist Lee Edleman argues
 Loving Lwaxana 93

forcefully in No Future that the figure of the child-as-the-future is central to het-

eronormative ideological and political projects, and it is used as a foil to calls for a
different future that might allow for more diverse, queer-friendly configurations
of the self, family, and (social) reproduction.30 In Trek, the concern for the future-
as-child is literalized through its constant push to present children as the future of
Starfleet. Only Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) and Alexander Rozhenko (Brian Bonsall
et al.) really escape this, as they don’t desire a career in the fleet nor do they work on
a starship, though Alexander does end up joining the Klingon Defense Forces
during the Dominion war, a betrayal of his character’s initial path away from the
military. Wesley Crusher’s (Wil Wheaton) unfortunate reappearance in a Starfleet
uniform during Star Trek: Nemesis, despite his character leaving TNG having re-
jected a life in Starfleet to find his own path, reinforces the idea of children as the
future of Starfleet.31 Thus, the aesthetic elements and heteronormative values
evidenced in the ideal future embodied by the Federation and Starfleet prop up a
dangerous utopia. While seemingly benevolent, the Federation utopia flirts with
sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic histories of colonialism that rely on the
continuation of heteronormative straight time.
Lwaxana Troi serves as a diva foil to this trajectory who superficially fits the
heteronormative ideals of Star Trek (she is straight, after all, and constantly
looking for a husband, and in her final televised appearance is pregnant with a
son). Despite this, I read her as a disruptive character who threatens Trek’s utopic
portrait. Lwaxana evokes a queerness that is more capacious than a mere de-
scription of a sexuality or sexual identity. Both visually and sonically, Lwaxana
offers a shimmering glimpse of a very different, much queerer utopia.

Diva Disruptor
An expansive, room-filling, charismatic aura is central to a diva’s appeal and their
emotional pull on their fans. Sedgwick and Moon explore the various ways that a
diva, and divinity more broadly (remembering that the term diva is derived from
the same root as divinity and originally referenced the divine sublimity, beauty, or
presence of the adored diva subject), pull attention and emotion to them because
of their allure, brazenness, mystery, or sheer force of personality. I extend this
thinking into the realm of science fiction by likening the diva’s charm to a gravity
well; the diva is a divine figure, akin to stars in the night which puncture
an otherwise bland or blank backdrop with light and presence. As with a star or
another interstellar phenomenon, the diva, in their very being, seems to bend
the space around them, demanding attentiveness with their light, mystery, or
gravitational pull. The diva’s insistence on being seen and heard has a special
appeal in queer circles, and in the symbolic order of Trek, Lwaxana the diva is an
unexpected stellar phenomenon. As such, she, like abnormal space phenomena,
symbolizes something the crew of the Enterprise must investigate and “fix” in
order to return the universe to its proper order. Lwaxana Troi is a queer anomaly
94 Josh Morrison

that continually swings back into the Enterprise and Deep Space Nine’s orbit, never
quite “fixed” into the strictures of Trek’s straight utopia.
Lwaxana’s ungovernable sonic presence, and especially her voice, exemplifies
her fabulous gravity well. She speaks loudly and with great inflection, with a wide
variety of cadences, tonal ranges, attitudes, and rhythms. Vocally, Lwaxana oscil-
lates quickly between emotions, pleasantly charging through situations (and often
running roughshod over polite convention), sighing loudly with displeasure,
speaking in deep, frustrated tones, laughing, and crying, often all within one epi-
sode. “Half a Life” stands out as a remarkable example of Barrett’s depth and range
in portraying Lwaxana Troi, something that becomes especially noticeable in
contrast to Patrick Stewart’s stoic, measured Jean-Luc Picard.32 The episode also
elicits a wonderful performance from Marina Sirtis as Lwaxana’s daughter, Deanna.
In the episode, Lwaxana falls head over heels in love with Dr. Timicin (David
Ogden Stiers) just before he’s about to undergo the ritual ending of his life, what his
people call the “Resolution.” Lwaxana runs the gamut of emotions over the course
of the story; she ricochets between flirting, expressing genuine love, sobbing
in anguish, reckoning with her own age and mortality, offering kindness, and fi-
nally espousing a resigned supportiveness for her new, lost love. In “Half a Life,”
Lwaxana truly comes into her own, not just as a joke character but as a fully realized
presence in Trek’s universe, bringing more vibrancy to a single episode than most of
the main cast of TNG do in an entire season.
Lwaxana’s small actions are also part of the allure and energy of her presence: she
calls to people from afar to get their attention (something we do not see others in
Star Trek do unless in an emergency) and addresses captains and commanders in-
formally and with a louder volume than seems to be polite on a starship. Because of
this, the Enterprise-D and Deep Space Nine seem to be more Lwaxana’s personal
playgrounds than a starship or a military installation. By her mere presence,
Lwaxana changes what is possible in a scene, in a space, in a conversation, or in a
relationship.
Even Lwaxana’s clothing ruptures the sonic quietude and white noise order of
Trek’s sterilized utopia. Her costumes are made of garish, shimmering fabrics that
vividly contrast with the Federation’s color scheme of beiges, earth tones, and
pastel eggplant chairs. Her wardrobe is imbued with a sonicity all its own: her
clothes crinkle and crunch, drawing attention to Lwaxana’s embodied presence
and audiovisual fabulousness in a world of quiet, sleek jumper uniforms and
counselors in catsuits.
Delightfully, though, Lwaxana’s most daring outfit choice among all her Trek
appearances is arriving naked to her own wedding in “Cost of Living.” Betazoids
are traditionally married in the nude to celebrate the openness and honesty of
their relationship, but Lwaxana meets her betrothed, Minister Campio (Tony
Jay), via Star Trek’s version of Internet dating and sees him for the first time on
the Enterprise in the few days preceding the wedding. Upon meeting Campio,
and with the help of her new young friend Alexander Rozhenko, Lwaxana
 Loving Lwaxana 95

realizes she’s settling because of her age and loneliness. Campio, obsessed with
protocol to the point of bringing a protocol master with him, demands Lwaxana
take part in a wedding ceremony from his world. Her arrival to the ceremony nude
ends the match and leaves her free and happy once more. So, despite being the
queen of crinkle, Lwaxana’s most silent outfit elicits the most vocal reactions from
the buttoned-down members of the Enterprise crew, shocking their staid selves into
exhalations and gasps. Even when her clothing isn’t a sonic disruption, its very lack
causes one: though Lwaxana’s clothing is usually part of her gravity well’s disruptive
effects, this anomaly also incites the bodies in its grasp to excitement.
Lwaxana’s Betazoid heritage is also central to her disruptive nature. In the
American-style melting pot of the Federation, Lwaxana’s insistence on re-
presenting her culture and traditions, and even forcing others to take part in
them, is treated as an annoyance or imposition by Starfleet officers like Picard
who otherwise preach tolerance and curiosity about alien cultures. In “Haven”
and “Manhunt,” we witness the Betazoid tradition of rhythmically chiming a
small gong during a meal as a sign of thankfulness for what one has.33 This is one
of many practices that rankles Captain Picard, breaking the serious veneer of the
Enterprise’s role model and father figure, shaking him out of his usual confident,
lawgiving nature. Lwaxana makes her emotions plainly known to others, con-
trasting with Starfleet’s value of stoic professionalism (and frequently making
main characters uncomfortable). According to dialogue in the novel The Battle of
Betazed, Betazoids developed a very open and emotionally honest society because
of their telepathy.34 When one can hear everyone else’s thoughts, and knows
what everyone is feeling, it makes sense to either build walls to keep others out
(the path Deanna has chosen, prioritizing her human half and the comfort of
those around her) or embrace emotionality and extreme honesty as a way of life,
as practiced on Betazed. But Lwaxana isn’t content to live a Betazoid life only on
Betazed: she’s here, she’s emotional, get used to it!
And yet, Lwaxana’s open emotionality, her straightforward and voracious
sexuality and desires (especially as a woman in middle age), and her emotional
need for love and companionship, are treated as uncomfortable breaches of social
norms by the Enterprise and Deep Space Nine crews. Lwaxana’s rich emotionality
exposes the limits of this straight utopia’s acceptance of difference. For example,
in “Manhunt,” Lwaxana leaves a trail of bemused officers behind her as she
whisks through the ship evaluating every male main character as a potential mate.
All the while, Captain Picard hides from her to avoid turning her down and then,
as a joke, lets her flirt with a hologram. This sexist and ageist joke reads more like
a petty, passive-aggressive punishment for Lwaxana daring to want him (and one
which Riker and Lieutenant Commander Data [Brent Spiner] allow to happen,
watching for entertainment). When Constable Odo (René Auberjonois) first
meets Lwaxana in the DS9 episode “The Forsaken,” he is made very un-
comfortable by her explicit sexual and romantic advances towards him, though
unlike Picard, the reticent Odo is able to open up to Lwaxana in the turbolift
96 Josh Morrison

they’re trapped in, letting her hold him in his gelatinous state as he regenerates, an
intimacy he’s never shared with a “solid” before.35 The scene demonstrates how
Starfleet and the Federation haven’t entirely tamed the Bajoran frontier quite yet;
it still has room for non-conformists of many different stripes.
In a great diva, artifice and honesty combine to create an organic, compelling
whole. Many studies of divas and their fans assert this; from the filthy honesty of
the artificial drag queen Divine,36 to the rapturous bliss of the opera diva’s aria,37
to the affinity fans of Lady Gaga feel for the emotional honesty of her supposedly
empty or shallow pop songs,38 the queer diva embodies these two seemingly
opposing states. This combination of contradictions in one living vessel offers
comfort to queer and trans fans, who are themselves forced to navigate frequently
between their artificial public selves and their inner emotional selves to protect
themselves lest they face queer- or transphobic persecution (a process similar to
that of disidentification with media mentioned above, where the object of dis/
identification is oneself and the personae one must inhabit for safety and security).
I posit that divas, in a very emotional and affective way, represent the trials of the
closet and other queer and trans experiences of having to live a lie all too often.
As seen with Odo, in “The Forsaken” and their continued emotionally intimate
friendship, Lwaxana hides a great depth of emotion behind her flashy appear-
ances, including pain, loneliness, and the desire for acceptance that is so familiar
to many queer and trans viewers.
From the never-ending cycle of new, outrageous wigs and outfits to the fact that
unlike most guest stars, Lwaxana often has several costume changes within an
episode (as is Barrett’s ironclad right as the First Lady of Star Trek), she is a bastion of
attention-grabbing aesthetic artifice, while also receiving some of the most sincere,
heartfelt, and moving storylines in the franchise. For example, in her final TNG
appearance, Season 7’s “Dark Page,” Lwaxana’s appearance and attitude become
more subdued as she begins having flashbacks of her first daughter, Kestra, who
died in an accident when Deanna was an infant.39 Lwaxana was so traumatized she
repressed the memory of her elder child entirely. Unfortunately, for the telepathic
Betazoids and their complex brains, repressed memories can literally kill, and in this
episode Barrett as Lwaxana delivers an honest and harrowing account of dealing
with trauma and the horrors of losing a child. From her awkward, stilted manners
with computers to her big hair and wild looks, Lwaxana uses sonic and visual
artifice as conduits to channel her intense, genuine emotions. She embodies the gap
between self and the (defensive) public image that is central to so many queer and
trans diva fan attachments.
Aesthetic artifice is central to theorist José Esteban Muñoz’s conception of
queer utopia as a promise of something better on the horizon: it is in artifice that
classical utopian theorists like Ernest Bloch (who also informs Flinn’s thinking on
musical utopias) identify the aesthetic excess and surplus that suggest something
else could irrupt from the here and now in the soon-to-be then and there.40 This
understanding of queer utopia helps uncover the reasons behind the cleanliness
 Loving Lwaxana 97

and minimalism of the Federation’s aesthetic: artifice rejects the clean lines and
aseptic functionality of Trek’s straight and colonially-ordered utopic regime by
promising excess, surplus, and even chaos. Lwaxana’s artifice and emotionality
repudiate the aseptic sonic utopia of the Federation in multiple ways. She lets her
emotions run free, flying in the face of Starfleet discipline; she is willfully ready
and willing to disregard the prime directive to fight for what and whom she
loves; and she lives in an anachronistic, kitschy world that is anathema to the
clean lines and white noise of the Federation’s future that has progressed past
the wild passions and conflicts of Earth’s past.

Lwaxana and Divadom

Lwaxana is both tragic and loving, but above all she is excessively emotional, and
elicits great emotion from others. Like the operatic diva that Farmer explores in
his reflections on the film Philadelphia (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1993), despite even
the most tragic of circumstances—a dead daughter, unrequited love, loss and
death and ageing, the conquest of her home world—Lwaxana offers queer
subjects succor in her emotionality. Farmer reminds us how queer diva fans are
often accustomed to feeling lost and alone, identifying with tragic heroines to
explore and revel in these feelings and in the identification that emotional art
offers them. The heroine, despite her tragic life, still espouses and promises love,
passion, and a promise of life beyond the stultifying, straight, normative situations of
the now.41 Farmer identifies this quality as the diva’s sublimity: “like queerness,”
sublimity “is effectively a project of categorical rupture, a breaching of conven-
tional subjective boundaries that encounters and images the obscene or excluded
otherness of discursive normativity. … The sublime enacts a constitutive process of
border crossing, a breaching and renegotiation of the definitional divisions that
order hegemonic taxonomies.”42 Lwaxana lives heightened emotions in perfor-
mative, yet deeply connective, ways, drawing emotions out of herself and those
around her. She is a cacophonous catalyst of feelings in a world desperately trying to
tame expressiveness.
As such, Lwaxana becomes a cipher for everything repressed by Trek’s (sonic)
utopia. Her sonic (and) aesthetic sublimity rupture the foundations of the
Federation’s imperialistic utopia; Lwaxana queers the space and those around her
by compelling them to share their love, pain, joy, laughter, annoyance, and
sadness. In “Cost of Living,” Lwaxana reminds Alexander of the need to laugh
and love while always being honest to oneself and others, providing a much-
needed counterpoint to Deanna and Lieutenant Worf’s (Michael Dorn) obsession
with discipline and order. Without Lwaxana, I believe that Odo and Kira’s
eventual romantic relationship (realized in Season 6) would never have been
believable. From her first encounter with Odo in “The Forsaken” through to her
final televisual Trek appearance in DS9’s Season 4 episode “The Muse,” Lwaxana
acts as a facilitator for Odo’s emotional growth, helping him come to terms not
98 Josh Morrison

just with having emotions, but with the long-held love for Kira that he has kept
repressed and private, as he has done with all his emotions.43 As Odo says in “The
Muse,” before meeting Lwaxana, he kept his Otherness secret in case people
recoiled from the true him. In what is decidedly Odo’s most queerly inflected
moment, he speaks of how Lwaxana saw who he truly was and, rather than re-
coiling, asked to see more; her radical acceptance and love, given freely despite
knowing it was unrequited, allowed Odo to finally feel seen and “no longer alone.”
Like the tragic, beautiful operatic heroine, Lwaxana gives herself, and her love,
freely to others, living at the extremes of honest emotionality to the benefit of those
around her, even as her own relationships tend to fail, often before they start.
Interestingly, in a universe where even love is routinely contained within an
episodic structure and a rigid set of Eurocentric heteronorms, Lwaxana constantly
manages to fail to achieve heterosexual relational utopia. She had a perfect family
and love with Ian Troi, Deanna’s father, but that relationship was marred by the
deaths of Kestra and Ian. In “Manhunt,” Lwaxana is unable to secure a mate
despite spending the entire episode trying to seduce the men of the Enterprise-D.
With Dr. Timicin she finds brief happiness in “Half a Life,” but then his society’s
end-of-life ritual strips her of a chance for a happy, long-term relationship.
Minister Campio ends up being nothing like his compatibility profile. Odo loves
Kira without reserve or fail. The eventual arrival of Lwaxana’s new son, Barin
(seen only in non-canonical novels; Lwaxana is pregnant with him in “The
Muse”), leads to a new, happier life on Betazed, raising the boy with her valet
Mr. Homn (Carel Struycken) without a husband, but even this gesture towards
heterosexual bliss is destroyed when her home is bombed during the Dominion
invasions of Betazed. Mr. Homn tragically dies and Lwaxana embarks on a fu-
gitive existence with Barin in the Betazoid resistance.44 I argue that Lwaxana’s
pattern of failing to establish the heteronormative bliss the Trek universe insists its
denizens strive for amounts to what Halberstam calls the queer art of failure:
instances where the failure to live up to heteronormative standards of behavior,
comportment, sexuality, and identity become moments of queer rupture available
for recognition, affiliation, and identification for the self and others in situations
that can, but don’t have to, be explicitly gay or queer (in the sense of sexual
identity).45 It is often Lwaxana’s inability to live the heteronormative dream of
contented familial life that she is constantly chasing that allows her to form the
deepest, most healing connections to others.
This positions Lwaxana’s brassy, brash character as a beacon of compassion,
healthy emotional expression, and a queerly feminine energy within the fran-
chise. She is a balm to Alexander and Worf’s struggles with toxic masculinity.46
Lwaxana facilitates Odo’s earliest navigations of what it means to be an emotional
being despite his Otherness and his fear of rejection because of that Otherness.
She cracks Picard’s cold, distant veneer, humanizing him for his crew through
suggesting that he’s thinking lewd thoughts of her, or forcing him to recite
Shakespeare at her to convince the Ferengi DaiMon Tog to let her go in
 Loving Lwaxana 99

“Ménage à Troi.”47 Even as Lwaxana fails in her own relationships, she provokes
a pathos in herself and others that turns her failures into moments of beauty.48
Farmer reminds us that one of the most important “operative values” of diva
worship is how it harnesses queer pathos as “an exercise in queer empowerment,
a restorative amendment in which the aberrant excesses and life-affirming en-
ergies of divadom are harnessed to variable projects of queer authorization and
becoming.”49 Though Farmer’s focus is on how fans navigate their relationships
to textual divas, the point remains that Lwaxana’s divahood, often worshiped by
men in the show (she frequently talks about men explicitly worshiping her both
sexually and romantically) uses her “aberrant excesses and life-affirming energies”
to help those around her enact becomings that, in the strict, straight utopia of
Trek, absolutely become sites of potential queer affiliation and identification.

Lwaxana’s Queer Utopia

Having established Lwaxana as a queer diva who irrupts into the staid sonic
utopia of Trek, in this closing section I focus on her most boundary-crossing trait,
telepathy, and situate her as a harbinger of truly queer utopic impulses that could
potentially emerge from Trek’s heteronormative, straight utopia. This is especially
evident when one considers how Lwaxana’s ability to telepathically project her
feelings, thoughts, and speech to others parallels the projection of queerness and
hope into futurity that is central to Muñoz’s theorizing of utopia. According to
Muñoz, queer utopia is a presence always on the horizon. It is a space of hope,
possibility, and futurity that is not quite here, yet is evoked by things that are or
have been, especially art, aesthetics, and artifice. Utopia rests in the excessive, be
that excessive performativity (like many of Muñoz’s examples, from the Judson
Memorial Dance Troupe to Andy Warhol to Vaginal Creme Davis), excessive
emotionality, or excessive queerness. Muñoz positions utopia as explicitly queer
because the reach for utopia is the striving for an unknown, possible existence.
This striving is, thus, a methodology of hope, and specifically critical hope.
Queer utopia is the individual and collective quest for more, based on exploring,
overplaying, embracing, and recreating unchecked the surplus affect, emotion,
and aesthetics of queerness in the hopes of changing the world for the better.50 As
a sublime, failingly queer diva, Lwaxana is the irrepressible embodiment of this
methodology of queer, critical hope in a narrative universe that rarely questions
its own colonial and heteronormative frameworks.
Queer utopia is a promise rather than a thing-that-is, and it’s in this vein that I
conclude my meditation on Lwaxana, and Barrett, as the queerest diva(s) of Trek.
One important element of Muñoz’s conception of utopia is projection. He posits
queerness as a force projecting itself into the then-and-there from the here-and-
now in the hopes of producing new queer possibilities out of the strictures of
daily life. For Lwaxana, this projection is literalized as telepathic projective
powers through the magic of science fiction. It is also a connection between
100 Josh Morrison

queer utopia and diva worship; an important element of diva-ness is the diva’s
encouragement of projection and identification with her personae—fans project
themselves onto their divas as an extension of their desires and hopes and dreams. In
his study of Lady Gaga’s fans, Craig Jennex explores how fans project themselves
into Gaga’s music and personae as a way to feel recognized and part of a larger
affective sensorium (a term I find fittingly similar to the constellation of terms
Muñoz applies to queer utopia).51 Farmer explores the projection of the queer self
into the sublime through the operatic diva, while Sedgwick and Moon explore
the life-affirming project of projecting oneself into the diva’s divinity as a mode of
self-expression and healing.52 All these projections are not unlike a telepathic
connection: science fiction literalizes the ethereal bonds between diva and fan, and
diva and the subject she helps narratively and in real life—or at least the connection
they all feel and seek out as a utopic promise. Lwaxana mirrors the psychic pro-
jection of the queer diva fan through her radical openness and willingness to bring
to light the difficult affective and emotional problems that life presents but that
don’t fit neatly into the Federation’s tidy utopia, bereft of chaotic emotions in the
name of a future supposedly free of prejudice. At a metanarrative level, Lwaxana
acts as a vehicle for emotional expression and working through difficult feelings; in
a franchise that usually prioritizes tidy, quick resolution over emotional or narrative
complexity, Lwaxana is a singular celestial anomaly.
For Lwaxana, this projection of queer utopia and ideals is literalized as telepathic
projective powers in a science fiction universe. Lwaxana’s telepathy is the most
intrusive thing about her. Deanna frequently chastises her for speaking tele-
pathically, even when they’re alone, because Deanna would rather assimilate to
hegemonic human norms of entirely vocal communication, ignoring any sugges-
tion that perhaps humans could, or should, learn to accommodate non-human ways
of communication. Despite these scoldings, Lwaxana only begrudgingly commu-
nicates verbally when necessary, never backing off from her early declaration in
“Haven” that Deanna should speak with her mind, not her mouth (another subtle
allusion to her extreme honesty and intense emotionality, perhaps, as whether
verbally or psychically, Lwaxana always speaks her mind). Lwaxana frequently flirts
with Picard by telepathically projecting to the room that he is thinking of her in
sexual terms, or that she’s shocked by his lascivious thoughts. In doing so, she
breaches not just the human-centric injunction to speak verbally but also human
(read: straight) social norms of intense privacy and prudishness. This is wildly close
the social injunction queer and trans people often face to keep their identities,
desires, and true selves bottled up lest they upset polite sensibilities or other norms.
The DS9 episode “Fascination” provides the most obvious example of
Lwaxana’s telepathy breaching the boundaries of Trek’s utopic propriety.53
Lwaxana arrives on the station to celebrate the Bajoran gratitude festival and visit
with Odo, but due to a routine illness for Betazoid women “of a certain age,” she
ends up projecting her amorous and sexual feelings for Odo onto the rest of the
crew. This sets off a comedic series of sexual hijinks as various characters start to
 Loving Lwaxana 101

express intense and aggressive desires for people they are only unconsciously
attracted to. Jadzia Dax throws herself at Sisko while avoiding, and even hitting,
Vedek Bareil Antos (Philip Anglim), who has abandoned Kira to chase the Trill.
Kira and Doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), meanwhile, spend most of
the episode locked in passionate embraces. Lwaxana even manages to affect the
Ferengi Quark (Armin Shimerman), sending him into an erotic tizzy for Keiko
O’Brien (Rosalind Chao), despite the fact that “Ménage à Troi” establishes that
the Ferengis’ four-lobed brains are immune to Betazoid telepathy.54 Though the
episode ends with everyone returning to normal (both individually and returning
to their monogamous heterosexual romantic couplings), “Fascination” demon-
strates the intoxicating power of Lwaxana’s Betazoid way of life, experiencing
emotions to their fullest and living a radical queer honesty that the emotionally
stunted species around her find overwhelming. The episode displays a delightfully
queer reversal of the overwhelming nature of living in a straight world as a queer
subject, presenting a fantasy where emotional honesty becomes the norm and
painting heteronormativity as comedic in the process. This glimpse of queer
utopia may have been too much, too excessive for the boring people of Starfleet,
but it is an enticing one all the same for many fans. In a sonic utopia built on
calm, even tones, emotionless computer guidance, and the measured suppression
of intense emotionality, there is no recourse for the irruption of psychic
boundary-crossing that Lwaxana brings.
A final persuasive example of Lwaxana’s telepathy as central to her queer diva-
ness appears in the novel The Battle of Betazed. In this novel, Lwaxana is a central
figure in the Betazoid resistance against the invading Dominion forces. After
Betazed is conquered by the Dominion (DS9, “In the Pale Moonlight”), the pa-
cifist Betazoids find themselves under brutal occupation.55 Lwaxana, along with
the few political leaders left, form an underground resistance group that engages in
reconnaissance and provides humanitarian aid to the people of Betazed. Bunkered
deep in a mountain range and awaiting the day the Jem’Hadar finally track them
down, Lwaxana tries to save as many as she can, while Barin and many other
children are ill and on the verge of death. Stretched too thin to launch a proper
offensive to retake the planet, Starfleet sends Deanna Troi and a team of com-
mandos, along with the Enterprise-E and three small support ships, to save Betazed
through covert means. Deanna’s mission is to find and free Betazed’s most heavily
guarded prisoner: a man who learned how to use his telepathy to kill, an act that
violates Betazed’s most cherished cultural norms of honesty and pacifism.
Despite suggesting that a member world abandon its most core beliefs (which
would certainly trigger morality-based hand wringing were this not wartime),
Starfleet hopes that this prisoner can teach other Betazoids how to weaponize
their talents. Lwaxana, however, fights this plan at every turn, even against
Deanna’s insistence at its necessity, worried that turning her people’s greatest gift
into a weapon of death is not worth it, even if the alternative means the Betazoids
must die defending their ideals (which means that Lwaxana, ironically, takes a
102 Josh Morrison

position we would usually expect Picard or the Federation to occupy, in a re-

versal of their initial positions in “Cost of Living”). In the end, a new plan
presents itself when the Enterprise crew discover a secret Dominion lab that is
attempting to code Betazoid-esque telepathy into the Jem’Hadar to make them
even more effective hunters. The Jem’Hadar were not created with the capacity
for intense emotions. As a result, the telepathic Jem’Hadar test subjects go mad
and die when overwhelmed by the foreign experience of emotions.
Lwaxana convinces the Betazoid resistance fighters to ignore Deanna and
reject Starfleet’s proposal. Instead, the entire world coordinates a plan to drop all
their telepathic barriers at once, thus unleashing a torrent of every imaginable
emotion onto the planet’s occupying Dominion forces, decimating them and
freeing the planet. Essentially, the Betazoids decide to let the Jem’Hadar ex-
perience emotion as they do: openly, honestly, and with great intensity (just like
the diva leading them). This plan wouldn’t have worked on any species that
hadn’t been genetically engineered like the Jem’Hadar: this was a unique op-
portunity to use the Betazoid civilization’s commitment to, and love of, emo-
tional honesty and freedom to secure their planet’s freedom. The telepathic strain
of this act kills many Betazoids, but their sacrifice helps to free the planet. The
Betazoid (queer) way of life is preserved by amplifying their gift as it is, rather
than turning it into a weapon of intentional, premeditated death: extreme, radical
emotional honesty. In many ways, The Battle of Betazed represents a moment
where, even during the crisis of the Dominion War, Lwaxana charts a path back to
Rodenberry’s vision of a utopia that works to make violence a thing of the past,
though modified for a time of war and darkness. It is the literalized power of love
which destroys the forces of evil in this novel, not the decision to abandon or
modify one’s principles in learning to kill, a choice many characters in Deep Space
Nine struggle with. Lwaxana helps her people avoid this choice and find a way to
fight oppression with love and without compromising one’s principles or soul.56
In fact, as one of the strongest telepaths on the planet, Lwaxana acts as an
anchor and leader for the planet-wide effort to feel the Jem’Hadar to death. She
takes that which people throughout her TV appearances treat as a “weakness” or
source of annoyance and turns it into a strength. She re-asserts the Betazoid way
of life, which I have argued is a distinctly queer utopic vision of emotionality,
honesty, and artifice. The resolution is a beautiful culmination of her queer diva
presence. She chooses the promise of something better: a world where queerness,
radical honesty, and unbridled self-expression triumph over the dire strictures of
Trek’s straight utopia. She transforms her “socially unacceptable” excesses into the
most powerful of weapons for self-preservation and self-determination. Lwaxana
leads the charge to queer futurity and utopia by rejecting Starfleet’s plan to
militarize emotionality.
As a telepath, Lwaxana is a sonically invasive presence with ambassadorial
privilege amounting to diplomatic immunity, granting her a diva-esque super-
power: the ability to express herself without consequence and without fear of
 Loving Lwaxana 103

judicial or social retribution, knowing that she is too fabulous and important to
change herself for others. By projecting her Betazoid beliefs and sensibilities about
openness, honesty, and explicit emotionality onto others, she ruptures the straight
utopia around her in a very Muñozian way, exploding with social and emotional
excess and showing that no matter how homogenizing and culturally colonial the
Federation might be, there remain bastions of queerness somewhere beyond the
horizon of the Enterprise or Deep Space Nine. The joy of science fiction is that it
can add to Muñoz’s theory of queer utopia by showing imaginary places, cultures,
and times that contain elements of the queer utopias we can only strive for and
know are just past the horizon in our actual lives. For me, as a young queer in
the 1990s trying to fit in while figuring myself out, always too loud or brash or
emotional or honest, too smart or expressive or disruptive, Betazoids, and Lwaxana
in particular, represented a shockingly hopeful promise. She/they promised that a
world can exist where one’s desires, feelings, and needs are respected, and where
being in the closet isn’t just impossible, but unnecessary—because hiding oneself
would be a greater crime than living honestly in that world. And yet, despite re-
presenting this queer space of utopic promise, Lwaxana never tries to force her
culture on others, content to be accepted as who and what she is, and offering that
acceptance to others. Lwaxana is always ready and willing to reach for something,
someone, new and better, even if she doesn’t know what the shape of that person
or thing—that future—might be, or if it will ever fully arrive for her: a truly queer
trajectory.
Whether failing to live up to the heteronormative ideal, fighting for her home
and its emotional soul, or helping those around her evolve beyond the toxic
strictures of Trek’s emotionally repressive straight sonic utopia, Lwaxana plots a
course into the not-yet-here as a brilliant, vibrant, accepting, and honest queer diva
promising that there are ways to live and be free other than the straight, colonialist
project of Starfleet and the Federation. Lwaxana insists on love for all the weirdos
and emotionally different people around her, and by extension, for the weird and
emotionally different fans watching her. She pulls those who would resist her queer
utopic presence into her loving gravity well as she goes, blazing bright like a pulsar.
As Lwaxana Troi, Majel Barrett sublimely offered me a queer lifeline when I didn’t
even know what queer was, but I knew I was different. And like the best of divas,
she did it all in the most fabulous gowns, outrageous hair, and with a capaciously
loving nature. And, really, what’s more queer than that?

Notes
1 Star Trek, directed by J. J. Abrams (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2009), DVD.
2 Star Trek, created by Gene Rodenberry (1966–69; www.netflix.com) and Star Trek:
The Animated Series, created by Gene Rodenberry (1973–74; www.netflix.com).
3 Meg Elison, “How Lwaxana Troi Became Our Space Aunt,” Startrek.com, November 6,
2019, accessed Monday April 12, 2021, https://ca.startrek.com/news/how-lwaxana-
troi-became-our-space-aunt
104 Josh Morrison

4 Elison, “How Lwaxana Troi Became Our Space Aunt.”

5 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, episode 19, “Manhunt,” directed by Rob
Bowman, aired June 17, 1989, www.netflix.com
6 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, episode 20, “Cost of Living,” directed by
Winrich Colbe, aired April 18, 1992, www.netflix.com
7 Michael Moon and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Divinity: A Dossier A Performance
Piece A Little-Understood Emotion,” Discourse 13, no. 1 (Fall-Winter 1990–91).
8 Moon and Sedgwick, “Divinity,” 13.
9 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, “Prelude to a Coda: What You Need to Know Ahead of Star Trek’s
Most Epic Novel Trilogy,” Tor.com, September 29, 2021, accessed August 30, 2022.
10 Adam Kotsko, “The Inertia of Tradition in Star Trek: Case Studies in Neglected
Corners of the ‘Canon,’” Science Fiction Film and Television 9, no. 3 (Autumn 2016).
11 Jason Mittell, “Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia,”
Transformative Works and Cultures 3 (2009).
12 Memory Alpha, memory-alpha.fandom.com, accessed August 30, 2022.
13 Bob Rehak, “Transmedia Space Battles: Reference Materials and Miniatures Wargames
in 1970s Star Trek Fandom,” Science Fiction Film and Television 9, no. 3 (Autumn 2016).
14 Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual
(New York: Pocket Books, 1991).
Herman Zimmerman, Rick Sternbach, and Doug Drexler, The Deep Space Nine
Technical Manual (New York: Pocket Books, 1998).
15 Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture 2nd Edition
(New York: Routledge, 2013).
16 Francesca Coppa, “Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding,”
Transformative Works and Cultures no. 1 (2008).
17 Kyra Hunting, “Queer as Folk and the Trouble with Slash,” Transformative Works and
Cultures no. 11 (2012).
18 José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
19 For example, in the first episode of DS9, “Emissary,” the very first scene on the space
station itself shows a promenade in ruins with various people hunched over cleaning
up, picking up debris, etc., including Major Kira. This is our introduction to Kira, and
to Bajor’s current condition. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 1, episode 1,
“Emissary,” directed by David Carson, aired January 3, 1993, www.netflix.com.
Examples of the “show up, clean up, leave’’ narrative trope can be found throughout
all of Star Trek’s properties, such as the original series episode “The Return of the
Archons,” in which the Enterprise crew liberate the people of Beta III from an evil
computer, Landru, that has been enslaving them, and then the Enterprise is (almost)
never heard from again. The new, comedic series Star Trek: Lower Decks is subtly based
on making fun of this trope by focusing on a ship which frequently performs “second
contact,” following the “important” ships after they’ve come and gone from planets
and dealing with the (sometimes dire) fallout from Starfleet’s initial encounters. In the
season 1 finale “No Small Parts,” Lower Decks makes an explicit joke about “The
Return of the Archons,” returning to Beta III to discover that the people are starting
to follow Landru again, explicitly commenting on how ships showing up in a crisis and
leaving is part of the Federation’s larger habit of helping in crises but being bad at long-
term support and follow-through (further drawing subtle comparisons to systems of
colonialism). Star Trek, Season 1, episode 22, “The Return of the Archons,” directed
by Joseph Pevney, aired February 9, 1967, www.netflix.com; Star Trek: Lower Decks,
Season 1, episode 10, “No Small Parts,” directed by Barry J. Kelly, aired October 8,
2020, www.cbs.com/cbc-all-access.com
20 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4, episode 22, “For the Cause.”
 Loving Lwaxana 105

21 Caryl Flinn, Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostalgia, and Hollywood Film Music, “Introduction”
and “Six: Music and Interpretation” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3–12,
151–58.
22 Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2010).
23 Star Trek: Beyond, directed by Justin Lin, (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
2016), DVD.
24 Star Trek: Discovery, created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman (2017–; www.cbs.
com/cbs-all-access). Technically, at least according to Beta canon, Lieutenant Hawk,
the Enterprise-E’s pilot, was in fact gay, but no mention of this made it into the final cut
of Star Trek: First Contact. His widower, however, is a main character in the Titan series
of novels and spends time mourning the loss of his love and the trauma it has left him
as part of his character development.
Star Trek: First Contact, directed by Jonathan Frakes (Hollywood, CA: Paramount
Pictures, 1996), DVD.
25 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4, episode 5, “Rejoined,” directed by Avery
Brooks, aired October 30, 1995, www.netflix.com
26 In the more recent series Star Trek: Discovery, the Trill have re-emerged as a species
that helps Trek explore issues of gender identity, sexuality, and family bonds with
the introduction of the characters Adira Tal (Blu Del Barrio) and Gray Tal (Ian
Alexander), a human–Trill (respectively) teenage couple. After an accident leaves Gray
dying with no hope of medical rescue, his symbiont, Tal, is transferred to the human
Adira, who carries it to Discovery. Throughout the show’s third season, Adira grows
close with the resident gay couple, Stamets and Culber, developing a queer chosen
family with them, leading to Adira becoming comfortable enough to come out to the
crew as non-binary in the season’s eighth episode. They are the first character in Trek
to use gender neutral they/them pronouns. Time will tell how Discovery will deepen
our knowledge of the Trill and expand Trek’s trans, gender non-conforming, and non-
binary representation. Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3, episode 8, “The Sanctuary,”
directed by Jonathan Frakes, aired December 3, 2020, www.cbs.com/cbs-all-access.
27 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, episode 17, “The Outcast,” directed by
Robert Scheerer, aired March 14, 1992, www.netflix.com
28 The use of scare quotes in this sentence is to indicate how using sexuality, sexual
identity, or trans issues, identities, or embodiments as a plot device, episode “twist,” or
as something that can be “fixed” is, at its core, a phobic writing practice.
29 For examples, see Kim Anderson, “The Construction of a Negative Identity,” in A
Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Women’s
Press, 2016), 79–92; Michelle Cameron, “Two-Spirited Aboriginal People: Continuing
Cultural Appropriation by Non-Aboriginal Society,” Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers
de la Femme 24, nos. 2–3 (2005): 123–27.
30 Lee Edleman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2004).
31 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6, episode 3, “Sons and Daughters,” directed by
Jesús Salvador Treviño, aired October 13, 1997, www.netflix.com; Star Trek: Nemesis,
directed by Stuart Baird (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2002), DVD. It’s
worth noting that there is a deleted scene from Nemesis that includes Wesley Crusher
speaking with the other guests. Even with that scene deleted, though, Wesley is still
seen sitting at the head table at Deanna Troi and Riker’s wedding reception in a
Starfleet dress uniform with pips indicating a rank of Lieutenant, junior grade. This
item, in a canon film, has now been ignored in the official canon (or, at best, left
unresolved and unaddressed, depending on the fan fora you read), with Wesley’s
reappearance as a Traveler in the second season of Star Trek: Picard. Once again, we see
how the idea of “canon” is fraught with contradictions that leave lots of space for
106 Josh Morrison

viewers to make their own determinations about the universe and the stories they
might want to tell or imagine within it.
32 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, episode 22, “Half a Life,” directed by Les
Landau, aired May 4, 1991, www.netflix.com
33 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1, episode 10, “Haven,” directed by Richard
Compton, aired November 28, 1987, www.netflix.com
34 Charlotte Douglas and Susan Kearny, The Battle of Betazed (New York: Pocket Books,
2002).
35 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 1, episode 16, “The Forsaken,” directed by Les
Landau, aired May 23, 1993, www.netflix.com
36 Moon and Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Divinity,” 15–17.
37 Brett Farmer, “The Fabulous Sublimity of Gay Diva Worship,” Camera Obscura 20,
no. 2 (59) (2005): 165–195.
38 Craig Jennex, “Diva Worship and the Sonic Search for Queer Utopia,” Popular Music
and Society 36, no. 3 (2013): 343–59.
39 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 7, episode 7, “Dark Page,” directed by Les
Landau, aired October 30, 1993, www.netflix.com
40 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York:
NYU Press, 2009).
41 Farmer, “The Fabulous Sublimity of Gay Diva Worship.”
42 Farmer, “The Fabulous Sublimity of Gay Diva Worship,” 170–71.
43 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4, episode 20, “The Muse,” directed by David
Livingston, aired April 29, 1996, www.netflix.com
44 Keith R. A. DeCandido, “The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned,” in Tales of the
Dominion War, ed. Keith R. A. DeCandido (New York: Pocket Books, 2004), 39–60;
Charlotte Douglas and Susan Kearney, The Battle of Betazed (New York: Pocket Books,
2002).
45 Judith (Jack) Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2011).
46 Worf is an excellent example of a cultural analysis of how Black men are taught to fear
their own emotions and power, leaving him lost raising a son alone and caught be-
tween cultures. Sisko and his relationship to Jake build on this critique, presenting a
vision of black single fatherhood and masculinity that is loving, emotionally expressive,
and quite radical for television in 1990s America.
47 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, episode 24, “Ménage à Troi,” directed by
Robert Legato, aired May 26, 1990, www.netflix.com
48 It is worth noting that Lwaxana’s relationships are one place where even she may not
escape the colonialist undercurrent of Trek, as it’s entirely possible to read her as fe-
tishistic of Other men. She is never seen pursuing a Betazoid man, and in fact talks
explicitly with Deanna (in “Ménage á Troi,” among other instances) about how
delightfully malleable human men are, even framing them as possessions to own and
adore. This penchant of hers flirts with narratives of Indigenous women which prized
them as sexual objects for the taking and owning, a long and violent discursive history
still impacting missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and their families
today, as the Anderson piece cited above explores. That said, the reversal of gender
roles here does complicate this reading, as the colonial power and ownership ideol-
ogies and narratives I’m referencing were also specifically patriarchal ones and flipping
the gendered power dynamic does muddy this critique. As I’ve written elsewhere,
building on Caryl Flinn’s “The Deaths of Camp,” queer camp representations, in-
cluding queer divas, often present an incisive critique of issues regarding sexuality or
gender identity but lose focus in their humor and messaging, presenting problematic
depictions of race and class (Morrison “Cutting Camp” and Morrison “‘Draguating’ to
Normal”) or abjectifying the camped woman’s body, often along the axes of age or
 Loving Lwaxana 107

fatness (Flinn, “Deaths”). Lwaxana largely avoids these pitfalls through writing which
stays focused on one issue per episode, but it’s still worth pointing out that even in art
we love, and through which we find empowerment, there can never be a full escape from
the realities, ideologies, and symbolic order of the real world. Caryl Flinn, “The Deaths of
Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto et al,
433–57 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Josh Morrison, “Cutting
Camp with Killing: ‘Bad’ Feelings, Refusing Respectability, and Homeopathic Camp,”
Somatechnics 8, no. 1 (2018): 95–112; Josh Morrison, “‘Draguating’ to Normal: Camp and
Homonormative Politics,” in The Makeup of RuPaul’s Drag Race: Essays on the Queen of
Reality Shows, ed. Jim Daems, 124–47 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014).
49 Farmer, “The Fabulous Sublimity of Gay Diva Worship,” 173.
50 Muñoz, “Introduction,” in Cruising Utopia, 1–18.
51 Jennex, “Diva Worship and the Sonic Search for Queer Utopia,” 355–58.
52 Farmer, “The Fabulous Subliminty of Gay Diva Worship”; Sedgwick and Moon,
“Dossier on Divinity.”
53 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 3, episode 10, “Fascination,” directed by Avery
Brooks, aired November 28, 1994, www.netflix.com
54 I fully recognize that this was likely just a writing and continuity error, but I choose to
read it, as a fan, as a sign of Lwaxana’s endless ability to surprise and influence those
around her.
55 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6, episode 18, “In the Pale Moonlight,” directed by
Victor Lobi, aired April 15, 1998, www.netflix.com
56 These paragraphs are my own summary of the major events of the novel The Battle of
Betazed. Douglas and Kearney, The Battle of Betazed.
7
I, MUSICIAN
Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence
in the Star Trek Franchise

Jessica Getman

Technology makes us nervous. For all that it speeds up our jobs, helps us live
longer, and gives us access to staggering amounts of information, it also steals our
work, makes us dependent, and changes how we perceive the world. Notions of
artificial intelligence (AI) and cybernetics seem to hit us especially hard, and our
anxieties erupt into alarming fictions like HAL 9000, Skynet, the Matrix, Cylons,
and the Borg.1 Popular culture paints dynamic vistas of technology rising against
its creators in spectacular robot apocalypses. Some posthumanist scholars like
Donna Haraway, Sherry Turkle, and Katherine Hayles emphasize the transfor-
mative power of advanced technology as it destabilizes gender and body ste-
reotypes and challenges troubling hegemonies.2 Other thinkers, like Martin
Heidegger, warn that modern technology can lull us into a system of con-
sumption in which humans join nature and technology as “resources to be
exploited and harvested”—a tendency we’re already witnessing in workplaces
like the Amazon.com warehouses.3 As literary theorist Christopher Sims explains,
this tension between the perceived dangers of technology and the “saving power”
it wields as it extends and enriches our lives opens up a productive space in which
we can explore and question who we are as humans and what we believe about
who we should be.4 This is a pivotal theme in science fiction. As J.P. Telotte has
pointed out, science fiction has long been wrestling with the “problematic nature
of human being and the difficult task of being human.”5 Humanoid AI characters
in popular culture—including both those that are sentient machines and those
that transgress the borders between the biological and the technological (in other
words, cyborgs)—provide a rich space for this interrogation.6
The exploration of humanity and our technological anxieties through AI char-
acters has been a recurring trope in the Star Trek franchise from the 1960s to today.
This ideologically American science fiction franchise has featured several artificial
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-7
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 109

intelligences, both friendly and hostile. These posthuman characters reflect back to us
the aspects of humanity that we admire, as well as the aspects of humanity that
frighten us.7 On the one hand, Star Trek has given us the friendly android Lieutenant
Commander Data (Brent Spiner) from Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG;
1987–1994) and the Emergency Medical Hologram (Robert Picardo) from Star
Trek: Voyager (VOY; 1995–2001)—also known simply as the “EMH” or “the
Doctor”—both of whom reflect positively on the franchise’s representation of what
it means to be human.8 On the other hand, the franchise has also produced several
hostile AI characters that explore the failings of humanity and its connections to
technology—AIs like the androids from the original series (TOS) episode “What Are
Little Girls Made Of?” and like Data’s android brother Lore (also Brent Spiner).9
With the Borg, the franchise extended its exploration to address our anxieties sur-
rounding the infiltration of human biology by technology. In TNG, and later in
VOY, the Borg were humanity’s greatest adversaries. As cyborgs, they are an ex-
ample of humanity’s erasure through technology as they assimilate the uniqueness of
each captured human into a collective consciousness.10 Despite this, a redemptive arc
for the Borg was written through VOY’s Seven of Nine ( Jeri Ryan), a human Borg
drone rescued and nurtured back towards a human existence. Seven of Nine be-
comes a positive representation of humanity rescued from technology’s corruption.
Characters such as Data, the EMH, Lore, and Seven of Nine are part of Star Trek’s
vast and complex web of “nova,” what science fiction scholar Darko Suvin identifies
as the technological or scientific “new things” that drive science fiction narratives and
that power the genre’s speculative nature. Science fiction nova allow us to ask “what
if?”11 They allow us to explore new possibilities not only in science, but also in
philosophy and politics. Star Trek’s AIs, as key Trek nova, have been catalysts for
several generations of viewers on the issue of what it means to be human, and of what
it means for humanity to increasingly rely on technology. From the very beginning of
the franchise in 1966 (with the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”) to current
Trek series such as Star Trek: Discovery (with AI characters like the malevolent
Section 31 AI Control and the martyred Lieutenant Commander Airiam [Sara
Mitich and Hannah Cheesman]), Star Trek has been asking us to consider both the
positive and negative aspects of humanity’s relationships with artificial intelligence—
and at what point these relationships might tip us towards the inhuman.12
The Star Trek franchise explores these ideas, in part, through music. In both the
underscoring of its AI characters and the musicality with which it imbues them, Trek
tells us, as viewers, how we should feel about the AIs on our screens and lets us probe
humanity through their eyes—through their experiences. It has used its non-diegetic
underscore to tell us which AIs are friendly and represent the benefits of technology,
and which AIs are dangerous and warn us about technology’s risks. Since the 1960s,
the Star Trek underscore has held a mirror to our changing relationships with
technology and our changing opinions on what it means to be human.
Furthermore, since the 1990s (and especially in TNG and VOY), the franchise
has used diegetic music to convey its ontological exploration of technology
110 Jessica Getman

through friendly AIs—Data, the EMH, and Seven of Nine—as they pursue
humanity through the exploration of emotion, imagination, art, and interpersonal
relationships. Diegetic musical expression, whether it be sung or performed on a
musical instrument, becomes a crucial window for these characters into the as-
pects of humanity Star Trek valorizes—human excellence, ingenuity, creativity,
feelings, and social connection. Through music, both diegetic and not, Star Trek
weighs in on the definition of humanity itself—what it means to be a human
being and what it means to be.

Scoring Artificial Intelligence

How artificial intelligences are scored helps us interpret their narrative function; their
music grants the attentive listener access to their identities and inner thought processes,
and signals whether or not we can trust them. Music provides emotional and topical
cues that not only tell us a character’s role in a given narrative—whether they are
hostile or friendly, the protagonist or the antagonist—but also fleshes out a character’s
personality: his hopes, her dreams, their difficulties.13 Hostile AIs and posthuman
entities like Star Trek’s Borg are scored to indicate the danger they pose. Friendly AIs,
because they are usually a part of Trek’s regular cast, tend to be given specific musical
cues less often—unless they happen to be the focus of a given narrative. Sometimes,
the franchise’s composers score AIs orchestrally; sometimes they use electronic
instruments to emphasize an AI’s technological nature. In other instances, they em-
phasize AI artificiality through more mathematical and process-oriented composi-
tional approaches, like fugue and pseudo-serialism. But through these characters’
scoring, we as viewers know whether these AI characters are meant to stir or soothe
our anxieties, and how they are meant to relate to and mirror us, as humans.
The androids from the 1966 TOS episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
are the inaugural example of sentient, humanoid artificial intelligence in the Star
Trek franchise. This episode tells the story of androids who can be made to look
and act exactly like their human counterparts, and who are intent on using this
ability to infiltrate the United Federation of Planets, Star Trek’s governing body.
As expected, they are scored to emphasize the danger they pose, though little
points to their artificiality. As is evident in both the session recordings and
composer Fred Steiner’s sketch scores for the episode, the music for these
characters is drawn from a modest motivic cell (014) presented in several
permutations.14 For the large and ancient android Ruk (Ted Cassidy), the
music is deep and menacing. Low brass, winds, strings, and insistent percussion
accompany him, as do winding chromatic lines and nervous tremolos. When
we meet the android copy of Captain Kirk—created to insinuate himself
into the starship Enterprise’s crew—his musical cue includes both the chromatic
lines and tremolo of the android cues as well as a heroic leitmotif Steiner had
previously written for Captain Kirk, emphasizing the imposter’s cloned re-
presentation of the real Kirk.
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 111

FIGURE 7.1 Two Kirks, one human and the other android from the TOS episode
“What Are Little Girls Made Of ? 15

EXAMPLE 7.1a The “Big Ruk” theme by Fred Steiner, from the TOS episode
“What Are Little Girls Made Of ?” Transcribed by author 16

EXAMPLE 7.1b From the cue “Android Kirk” (M22) by Fred Steiner, demonstrating
Steiner’s use of his “Kirk’s Theme,” from the TOS episode “What Are Little Girls
Made Of?” Transcribed by author 17
112 Jessica Getman

These cues identify the episode’s hostile AIs through signifiers of danger:
chromaticism and dissonance. In writing music that conveyed a general sense of
menace, Steiner ensured that these cues could be reused for other, more broadly
threatening situations throughout the series’ first season, such as in the episodes
“Dagger of the Mind,” “The Squire of Gothos,” and “Tomorrow is Yesterday,”
among others.18 Steiner created these cues to underscore hostile AIs, but the
music was broadly applicable to perilous situations throughout the series’ first
season. Artificial intelligence, in 1960s Star Trek, was presented as generally
dangerous.
The first season of TNG provided more targeted music cues for its AIs, most
specifically through an exploration of Data’s backstory in the episode
“Datalore.”19 In this story, Data meets for the first time his identical android
brother Lore. In contrast to Data’s endless quest to understand humanity and
become more human, Lore dismisses human social restrictions in an ego-mad
dash for power. Lore is the corrupted, sociopathic, and evil twin who disdains
humanity—the other side of Data’s coin. Composer Ron Jones’s music for Lore
is, as journalist Lawrence Kramer describes it, “spiky and insinuating, indicating
the brother android’s dangerous potential even upon his first revelation [to us] as
a set of unassembled components.”20 Lore’s music is synthesizer-based, and
Jones’s breathy but pointed keyboard pads, with their wobbling drone, make
clear the danger Lore poses.

FIGURE 7.2 The androids Data and Lore from the TNG episode “Datalore” 21
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 113

EXAMPLE 7.2a From the cue “Data’s Brother” by Ron Jones, from the TNG episode
“Datalore.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 22

Jones’s music for Data, on the other hand, is warmer and more searching, relying
again on synthesized sonorities, but setting the two androids apart through timbre
and musical topic. Jones claimed that the music he wrote for Data was constructed
in the “Hollywood” twelve-tone style (a less strict form of twelve-tone serialism
that we hear in scores like Jerry Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes).23 Jones recalled that:

There was a lot of 12-tone in this episode. … I would write whatever the
theme was going to be, see how many notes were left over and see what
notes I hadn’t used. … I was trying to score [Data] as numbers trying to figure
this stuff out, so it wasn’t human, but it was as human as this guy gets. There’s
emotion yet there’s coldness and it’s logic clicking and firing.24

EXAMPLE 7.2b From the cue “Data’s Beginning” by Ron Jones, from the TNG episode
“Datalore.” Transcribed by author, Andrew S. Kohler, and Evan Ware 25

Jones’s music for Data doesn’t quite meet the definition of twelve-tone, either in
pitch content or use. The music often comes across as more modal than atonal.
Nevertheless, the scoring for both Data and Lore has an angular and processual
quality which, when coupled with the timbres of the synth, emphasizes each
android’s technological origins.26 Jones’s themes for these androids underline not
only the brothers’ artificiality, but also their contrasting relationships with
humanity—one hopeful and the other treacherous. In TNG, Star Trek moved
away from the TOS method of using music to express the general dangers that
artificial intelligence poses. Instead, in the episode “Datalore,” Jones’s underscore
emphasizes technology’s connections to humanity. And with the Borg, Star Trek
continued the tradition of scoring technological beings with electronic timbres
and process-oriented approaches.
The Borg received several musical themes in the fourteen years between their
introduction in the second-season TNG episode “Q Who?” and their appearance
114 Jessica Getman

in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Regeneration.”27 As a Star Trek villain par
excellence, second perhaps only to the Klingons, the Borg recurred in several Trek
series and in one film as catalysts for primary storylines. As a result, multiple
composers scored the Borg in various contexts, often with electronic instruments.
This particular enemy, as a cybernetic race with an interconnected consciousness,
represents the horror of technology corrupting and co-opting the human body
and mind. The music for these cyborgs typically emphasizes both their me-
chanical nature and their threat.

FIGURE 7.3 Borg drones from the TNG episode “Q Who” 28

When the Borg first appeared in “Q Who?,” Ron Jones gave them a melodic
synth-string motive that, according to him, spelled out their name (“BORG”).29
In the TNG two-parter “The Best of Both Worlds,” which bookended the gap
between Seasons 3 and 4, Jones then developed this motive further in synthesized
voices (see Examples 7.3a and 7.3b), retaining the oscillating minor seconds that
had also accompanied the Borg in “Q Who.”30 This electronic approach fol-
lowed the Borg into Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the blockbuster film Star Trek:
First Contact, where he invited his son, Joel Goldsmith, to compose the Borg
cues.31 Joel explained in interviews that Jerry provided him with the initial Borg
motive (see Example 7.3c), and Joel worked it into cues laden with synthesizer
and percussion, aurally indicating the mechanical and technological nature of
these networked cyborgs, as well as the threat they posed.32 In the film, we hear
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 115

this theme alternately on its own, in a foregrounded synth voice, and then as a
backgrounded ground bass, with other melodies and countermelodies woven
above. As with Data and Lore, the Borg’s scoring emphasizes this AI’s artificiality
through structure, timbre, and topic.

EXAMPLE 7.3a From the cue “Yellow Alert” by Ron Jones, from the TNG episode
“Q, Who?” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 33

EXAMPLE 7.3b From the cue “Borg Engaged” by Ron Jones, from the TNG episode
“The Best of Both Worlds, Part I.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 34

EXAMPLE 7.3c From track 13, “Borg Montage,” from the soundtrack to Star Trek:
First Contact, composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Joel Goldsmith. Transcribed by au-
thor and Evan Ware 35

The musical underscoring of AIs in Star Trek plays directly upon our anxieties:
our fears of technology and the possibility that it can surpass human ability, erase
116 Jessica Getman

creativity, and challenge individuality. Star Trek composers have marked hostile
AIs as dangerous through topical composition—dissonance, chromaticism,
atonality, and unsettling timbres—and have identified them both timbrally and
compositionally through electronic scoring and techniques that emphasize arti-
ficiality and add complexity and intrigue. In doing so, they have commented on
these characters’ relationships with humanity. But perhaps even more interesting
is that the underscore is not our only musical access to AIs in Star Trek. Several of
them—those considered friendly, like Data and the EMH—explore music die-
getically, allowing them to actively address music-making and creativity as core
human endeavors within the franchise’s narrative.

Musical AIs
Star Trek’s friendly artificial intelligences are remarkably interested in becoming
more human, or at least in gleaning the best of humanity and gaining those rights of
autonomy and self-determination that humans enjoy. From Data to the Doctor, to
the holographic Vic Fontaine in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the computer
AI Zora in Star Trek: Discovery, music serves as a way for these posthuman characters
to connect with and explore humanity.36 In particular, Data’s and the Doctor’s
explorations of music tell us what Star Trek’s creators, at least in the 1990s series
TNG and VOY, considered the most important aspects of our identity as humans.
Two examples clearly demonstrate these characters’ musicality in play.
The first is found in the Season 2 TNG episode “Elementary, Dear Data,” in
which Lieutenant Commander Data and the Enterprise’s chief engineer, Geordi La
Forge (LeVar Burton), use the holodeck (a fully-immersive media room) to act out
a scene from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.37 Data pretends to be
the eponymous detective, and La Forge, Doctor John Watson. La Forge, dressed in
nineteenth-century costume and seated in front of an impressive library of shelved
books, listens to Data play the violin and speaks aloud as he writes in Watson’s diary.

La Forge: (Gazing at Data and his violin in wonder.) Data, that’s incredible. How
can you play it like that?
Data: (Continues playing.) Merely throwing myself into the part, Watson.
La Forge: (Turning his attention to his diary and writing.) But, in the hands of
my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the violin ceases to be a musical instrument
at all and becomes … .
Data: (Interrupting.) Watson, we are about to have guests.

For Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes, the violin is a haven from both the
dreariness of the world and the details that crowd his mind.38 But this Sherlock is
Data—an android—and Geordi’s commentary (“… the violin ceases to be a
musical instrument at all and becomes …”) seems to infer something more. What
does the violin become in the hands of this Sherlock, an android?
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 117

FIGURE 7.4Data with Mr. Holmes’s violin on the holodeck of Enterprise-D, from
the TNG episode “Elementary, Dear Data” 39

FIGURE 7.5 The EMH singing “Rondine al nido” in the VOY episode “Virtuoso” 40
118 Jessica Getman

The second example is drawn from the Season 6 VOY episode “Virtuoso,” in
which the Emergency Medical Hologram—essentially a computer program
made humanoid through holographic technology—performs the 1926 romance
“Rondine al nido,” written by Italian composer Vincenzo de Crescenzo.41 Like
Data, the Doctor is one of the more musical characters in the franchise, an op-
eratic tenor who regales both diegetic and television audiences with performances
several times throughout the series. In this episode, he is considering leaving
Voyager to stay on the planet Qomar with a race of mathematically-minded beings
who have never before heard music and who, he believes, deeply appreciate him.
As the episode draws to a close, the EMH sings “Rondine al nido” on the stage of
a beautiful theater before a large crowd of admirers, including Captain Kathryn
Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), who is visibly moved by his performance.42 What is
the role of music-making for this character, a holographic AI?
Data and the Doctor are examples of what Elaine Graham identifies as the
“parvenu”—a character who moves from challenge to challenge in search of
“success and self-validation according to modernity’s unstinting standards … bom-
barded by the relentless pressure of self-improvement.”43 For the parvenu, the reali-
zation of personal identity is a “constant challenge” never fully achieved. The parvenu
both enforces and destabilizes the societal standards they pursue, standards that seem
effortless to those around them.44 As technological parvenus of humanity, newly
embodied and arguably sentient but inexperienced in being, Data and the Doctor house
a double tension. As technological posthumans they represent humanity’s salvation
and threaten its obsolescence, while also challenging and reinforcing our ideas of what
being human means. Star Trek uses this tension to interrogate human being in a way that
emphasizes the humanist values at the franchise’s core: human excellence, creativity,
emotion, social connection, autonomy, and selfhood. Note also that when the fran-
chise evokes the notion of “human” and “humanity” in its stories, it favors the
Western, the rational, and the already privileged.45
While the presence of the Doctor and Data represents our hopes that technology
could someday rival human selfhood and self-actualization, these characters rarely
challenge either human supremacy or the purity of the human body.46 As machines
almost passable as human—with Data embodied as metal and plastic and the Doctor
projected as a tangible hologram from code housed in a computer—they are
incomplete human simulacra. Star Trek tempers the discomfort they cause by em-
phasizing their continuous journey towards personhood: both demonstrate a strong
imperative to understand what it means to be human and to become more human
themselves.47 As part of this quest, they face numerous rites of passage.48 They create
families for themselves and then experience the death of these family members. They
defend their right to self-determination, to both their crewmates and the governing
Federation of Planets. They explore morality, social interaction, and human crea-
tivity. And through all of this, they are musicians. Star Trek uses Data’s and the
Doctor’s musicality to argue for its particular definition of what it means to be human,
while confining these characters to the role of parvenu to minimize their threat.
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 119

The use of musicality as a defining attribute for primary characters is common to

Star Trek, as demonstrated by other characters like Lieutenant Commander Spock
(Leonard Nimoy), Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Captain Jean-Luc Picard
(Patrick Stewart), Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Captain
Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), and Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), all of
whom either play a musical instrument or sing. The genres of diegetic music
preferred by the franchise tend to be high, drawn from the Western classical canon
of great white men, especially when the storyline emphasizes the moral and cultural
virtues of the human race.49 Variously we hear, and are often verbally introduced
to, the music of composers like Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms—Berlioz, Chopin,
and Mozart—a collection of high art tied to traditional, white, and patriarchal
power structures (see Table 7.1). Data and the Doctor also exhibit this preference
for the European masters.50 They are strongly defined by their affinity for high art.
At one point, we are shown Data analyzing four of these compositions at once in a
cacophony of sound; at another, the Doctor daydreams that he sings “La donna è
mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto to great acclaim from his friends and crewmates.51
This emphasis on European classical music is part of the franchise’s Euro-American
argument for human excellence and educational uplift.

52
TABLE 7.1 Western art music used diegetically in the Star Trek franchise

Bach, Johann Sebastian Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 (PIC);
Concerto for Two Violins, Strings, and Continuo in D
Minor, BWV 1043 (ST:INS); Third Brandenburg
Concerto, BWV 1048 (TNG)
Beethoven, Ludwig van Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor (Moonlight
Sonata), Op. 27, No. 2 (TNG); Piano Sonata No. 8 in C
Minor (“Pathétique”), Op. 13 (ST:INS); Symphony
No. 6 in F Major (“Pastoral”), Op. 68 (TNG);
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 (TNG)
Berlioz, Hector Les Troyens (ST:FC)
Brahms, Johannes Clarinet Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 120 (VOY);
Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G Minor (TNG);
Intermezzo No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 117 (VOY);
String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 182 (TNG);
Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35 (TNG)
Chopin, Frédéric Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 (VOY); Nocturne
No. 1 in E Minor, Op. posth. 72 (VOY); Prelude No. 4
in E Minor, Op. 28 (TNG); Trio for Violin,
Violoncello, and Piano in G Minor, Op. 8 (TNG)
Crescenzo, Vincenzo de “Rondine al nido” (TNG)
Dvořák, Antonín Slavonic Dance No. 8, Op. 46 (TNG)
(Continued)
120 Jessica Getman

TABLE 7.1 (Continued)

Gilbert, W. S. and H.M.S. Pinafore (ST:INS); The Pirates of Penzance (TNG;

Arthur Sullivan Short Treks)
Halvorsen, Johan Passacaglia in G Minor for Violin and Viola on a Theme
by George Friedrich Händel (TNG)
Haydn, Franz Joseph String Quartet No. 5 in D Major (“The Lark”), Op. 64
(ST:INS)
Mahler, Gustav Symphony No. 1 (VOY)
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Wedding March in C Major, Op. 61 (VOY)
Felix
Mompou, Federico Cancion y Danza No. 6 (ST:NEM)
Mozart, Wolfgang Clarinet Concerto in A Major, KV 622 (VOY);
Amadeus Divertimento in B-flat No. 2, KV Anh. 229 (439b)
(TNG); Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Serenade No. 13 for
Strings in G Major, KV 525 (TNG); Piano Concerto
No. 17 in G Major, KV 543 (TNG); Piano Sonata No.
16 in C Major, KV 545 (ENT); String Quartet No. 17
in B-flat Major (“The Hunt”), KV 458 (ST:INS); String
Quartet No. 19 in C Major (“Dissonance”), KV 465
(TNG); Symphony No. 41 in C Major (“Jupiter”), KV
551 (TNG); Symphony No. 45 in D Major, KV
95 (DSC)
Puccini, Giacomo La Bohème (TNG; VOY)
Reicha, Anton Wind Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 88, No. 2 (TNG)
Satie, Erik First Gymnopédie (TNG)
Scarlatti, Domenico Sonata in C Major (“La caccia”), K. 159 (L 104) (TOS)
Schumann, Robert Kinderszenen, Op. 15 (VOY)
Strauss, Johann Frühlingsstimmen, Op. 410 (VOY); Rosen aus dem
Süden, Op. 388 (TOS); An der schönen blauen Donau
(The Blue Danube), Op. 314 (DS9; VOY)
Tárrega, Francisco Prelude No. 4 in A Minor (TNG)
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 (VOY)
Ilyich
Verdi, Giuseppe Rigoletto (TNG; VOY); Don Carlos (VOY)
Vivaldi, Antonio Le quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons),
“Primavera” (VOY)
Wagner, Richard Lohengrin (TOS; VOY; DSC)

Source: List adapted from the Star Trek fan database Ex Astris Scientia. 52
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 121

Data and the EMH’s music-making is tied to the franchise’s idea of excellence,
and their computer-based intelligences and dexterous circuitry make them easily
virtuosic, allowing them to flawlessly perform and re-perform intricate physical
tasks to a startling degree of accuracy. They are exemplars of excellence; Data’s
abilities apparently go so far as to allow him to perform precisely like over three
hundred human concert violinists who came before him.53 But his performances
are essentially mechanical reproductions, the playback of recordings. Data does
not have to work for virtuosity; as a computer, he can be programmed for it. This
means that no matter how well he performs, Data cannot actually achieve human
excellence, which involves the process of learning and the development of an
individual and nuanced creative style—not to mention artful responses to inevitable
mistakes. The Doctor’s relationship to human creativity is a bit more ambiguous, as
certain plotlines indicate that he does develop personal artistic expression over time,
but the issue of whether he has to practice his craft, or if he simply chooses between
options in his programming, is never addressed.
But even if Data and the Doctor cannot participate in creativity in a fully
human way, music still gives them access to human emotion and interpersonal
connection. For Data, who for the most part cannot safely experience emotion
until later in the franchise (a much longer story also steeped in technological
anxiety), musical expression is a way in which he can move others emotionally. In
the Season 3 TNG episode “Sarek,” a performance by Data’s string quartet of
Brahms’ String Sextet No. 1 (Op. 182) brings the Vulcan ambassador Sarek
(Spock’s father, played by Mark Lenard) to tears.54 For the Doctor, who is
programmed with human-like emotions and desires—including a potent mix of
hubris, anxiety, and a longing to be valued by his crewmates—musical expression
lets him interact socially with, and gain acceptance from, his friends. His longing
to be valued by the crew becomes especially evident in a daydream in the VOY
Season 6 episode “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,” where (in a parody of the
“Sarek” scene) the Doctor imagines that his musical performance initiates the
Pon Farr (the peak of the Vulcan seven-year mating cycle) in Lieutenant
Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ), who begins to cry and then rage.55
Two things are happening in these scenes. First, we must recognize the role of
Vulcans in emphasizing the value of human emotion throughout the franchise as
a whole. Vulcans prioritize rational decision-making based on cold logic, and in
order to do this they must repress their emotions. They consider the expression
of emotion to be a human trait, and so when Data and the Doctor evoke
emotion from these (albeit biologically compromised) Vulcans, they are ap-
pealing to the humanity in them. These scenes also play off the Western trope
that music wields a direct line to our emotions—that it is an artform with almost
magical access to the id, with the power to move the unmovable. So through
music, these parvenus are seeking access to something the franchise considers
central and sacred to the human experience—emotion and emotional connec-
tion with others.
122 Jessica Getman

The musicality of these AIs, through which the franchise articulates the values of
human artistry, excellence, emotion, and interpersonal connection, sets the stage
for the franchise to interrogate selfhood—a mixture of ideas that include individual
distinctiveness and autonomy. One of the most prominent of these ideas is that
individuals have the right to choose how to live their own lives, unpoliced and
uncontrolled by others. The Season 2 TNG episode “The Measure of a Man”
provides a prime example.56 In this episode, Data’s personal rights are attacked
when Starfleet orders him to undergo what he believes to be ill-conceived tests by
Commander Bruce Maddox (Brian Brophy) on his positronic brain. Data refuses,
tendering his resignation. This results in the convening of a court to decide whether
Data even has the right to resign from Starfleet, or if he is, as a piece of technology
built by a human, fully the property of Starfleet instead. The episode gives rise to
one of the more poignant statements about oppressive hegemony and hierarchies of
power from Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan as she discusses the issue with Captain
Picard in a darkened Ten-Forward bar:

Guinan: He’s [Data’s] proved his value to you.

Picard: In ways that I cannot even begin to calculate.
Guinan: And now he’s about to be ruled the property of Starfleet. That should
increase his value.
Picard: In what way?
Guinan: Consider that in the history of many worlds, there have always been
disposable creatures. They do the dirty work. They do the work that no one
else wants to do because it’s too difficult or too hazardous. And an army of
Datas, all disposable … . You don’t have to think about their welfare, you
don’t think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people.
Picard: You’re talking about slavery.
Guinan: (Leading.) Oh, I think that’s a little harsh.
Picard: I don’t think that’s a little harsh. I think that’s the truth. But that’s a truth
that we have obscured behind a comfortable, easy euphemism: “property.”57

This is a significant moment in TNG’s argument for universal human rights, with
obvious and intended parallels to slavery and race-based inequities in the United
States. In the end, however, the court at hand does not fully decide the issue of
Data’s personhood. Though he is granted the right to choose whether or not to
submit to Starfleet’s experiments, the original issue of whether he is a person with
rights is left open. Data remains on the outside looking in.
The Doctor takes a similar path, and two prominent moments in which he
asserts his rights as a sentient being occur in concert with his artistic expression, first
as a musician and then as a novelist. In the episode “Virtuoso” (referenced above),
in order to remain on the planet Qomar, the EMH makes the case to Captain
Janeway for his resignation from Starfleet. She resists, citing the fact that he is not
human but a technology that Voyager cannot live without (he is their only medical
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 123

doctor). But she also acknowledges that the move may not be good for the EMH’s
emotional needs, indicating that she considers him to be more than a simple
computer program, with deep personal connections to the ship’s crew. Eventually,
to the Doctor’s dismay, the Qomar reveal that they consider the Doctor to be
merely an intriguing piece of musical and holographic technology—one that they
can recreate, in their opinion, with even greater success. In this case, the question of
the Doctor’s autonomy is left moot, as he remains with Voyager in his original
capacity as EMH.
Later, in the seventh-season episode “Author, Author,” the Doctor and the
crew testify regarding his sentience before a Starfleet panel as he sues for the rights
to his own creations—his own intellectual property.58 (In this case, the property
is a novel he wrote, which was subsequently stolen and sold by a third party.) At
the end of the arbitration, Captain Janeway summarizes her evolved opinion of
the Doctor’s personhood:

When I met him seven years ago, I would never have believed that an
EMH could become a valued member of my crew—and my friend. The
Doctor is a person, as real as any flesh and blood I’ve ever known. If you
believe the testimony you’ve heard here, it’s only fair to conclude that he
has the same rights as any of us.59

Unfortunately, as with Data, the ultimate question of the Doctor’s personhood is

patched over for the time being when the arbiter gives the Doctor copyright over
his novel but does not rule on his sentience. Both AIs—Data and the Doctor—
are condemned to remain perpetual parvenus.
Through stories like these ones, these two AIs let Star Trek present its version of
what it means to be human—they allow the franchise to choose humanity’s best
qualities and uphold them before the world: the qualities of creativity, excellence,
emotion, social connection, autonomy, and selfhood. But the version of humanity
Star Trek aspires to is safe. Data and the Doctor continue the franchise’s perceived
progressive work while simultaneously letting the members of its audience—
especially its white, middle-class, American audience—feel good about the social
progress that has already been achieved, about the version of humanity they already
believe themselves to be. Star Trek, at least in the 1990s and early 2000s, was rather
tame, rarely pushing the envelope either in terms of prime-time rules or current
social tensions.60 And Data and the Doctor themselves rarely present a threat, either
to the humans within their story worlds or to the audience. Despite the franchise’s
progressive leanings, conformity, and not diversity, was the name of the game.

The Limits of Humanity

While Data and the Doctor remain on the outside looking in, some characters
reside more fully in the margins between man and machine. The fourth season of
124 Jessica Getman

VOY introduced Seven of Nine, a human captured by the Borg as a child and
then restored to humanity as an adult. As an organic being enhanced—or, in the
view of Starfleet, tainted—by technology, she was linked with her fellow Borg
in a collective mind that valued above all the perfection achieved through the
assimilation of sentient races. In the process of assimilation into this totalitarian
culture, her distinctiveness was lost; artistic expression, emotion, and the richness
of history and culture she might have appreciated disappeared under the Borg
drive for efficiency and expansion. Where Data and the Doctor present the desire
to understand and achieve humanity, the Borg present the nightmare of losing it.
Seven of Nine lets us face that nightmare.

FIGURE 7.6 Seven of Nine as she first appears in the VOY episode “Scorpion, Part II,”
as a Borg drone 61

After being rescued from her terrifyingly posthuman existence by the Voyager crew,
Seven of Nine becomes the focus of a rehabilitative and redemptive narrative. The
path she forges back towards humanity foregrounds musical expression. With the
encouragement of the Doctor—who as a master of learning-to-be-human mentors
her in a variety of social matters—Seven first sings and then learns to play the piano.
In the Season 5 episode “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Seven experiments with
hobbies and romance, letting the Doctor guide her through finding a suitable in-
terest (music, which she enjoys due to its mathematical properties) and through the
intricacies of dating.62 A key moment in the narrative occurs when the Doctor
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 125

FIGURE 7.7 Seven of Nine and the Doctor duetting “You Are My Sunshine” in the
VOY episode “Someone to Watch Over Me” 63

discovers that Seven has a beautiful singing voice and they commence with a
harmonized duet of “You Are My Sunshine.”
Seven’s interest in music is explored further in the Season 7 episode “Human
Error,” in which she experiments with being fully human and engaging in human
social interaction on the holodeck. There, she uses the room’s holographic
capabilities to erase the appearance of her cybernetic implants and test her re-
claimed humanity in the private safety of make-believe.64 Out of uniform and
with her hair down, she opens the episode by practicing the piano to the unerring
beat of a metronome, playing Chopin’s Nocturne No. 1, Op. 72.65 The narrative
continues through a series of private holodeck scenarios in which Seven interacts
socially and romantically with simulacra of the Voyager crew; she is purposefully
running simulations that allow her to research the unexplored aspects of her
humanity. In the end, after falling into neural shock during an emotional argu-
ment with a holographic version of the ship’s first officer, Commander Chakotay
(Robert Beltran), the EMH reveals that her Borg implants are programmed to
shut down her higher brain functions when her emotions run too high. She
accepts this safety mechanism as a useful tool, one that will allow her to remain
focused on honing the ship’s functions rather than be distracted by human re-
lationships and pastimes. Music in this episode becomes a way for her to explore
126 Jessica Getman

her humanity—the creative, social, and emotional possibilities that humanity

poses for her—but one that she pushes away again for the time being. Eventually,
in the series’ final episode “Endgame,” Seven changes her mind about the Borg
fail-safe and has the Doctor remove it, allowing her to pursue a sincere romantic
relationship with the genuine Chakotay and indicating that she will slowly but
surely embrace more of her humanity, and perhaps artistic expression through
music, as time passes.66
Seven of Nine’s rehabilitation is remarkable in that the audience never expects
her to return to a fully human identity. She is dependent on Borg technology, it
enhances her, and she will always be part Borg. She might experiment with human
customs and social niceties, and she might update her implants to better fit her needs
over time, but the impression remains that her Borg past—and her cybernetic
implants—will forever remain central to her identity. (The first season of Star Trek:
Picard [2020], in fact, indicates that they do.)67 In this sense, VOY demonstrates a
loosening of Star Trek’s previous grip on humanity as a relatively pure state of
biological being—there is now a slightly larger, acceptable, and productive space
where one can exist between the biological and the technological.
At the same time, however, Star Trek: Voyager forces Seven of Nine to
conform to binary identity constructs—she is idealized as a woman (in a revealing
catsuit) and is made an object of heterosexual affection (several male members of
the crew have crushes on her). Where Donna Haraway, in her Manifesto for
Cyborgs, extolled the productive social space created by the messy, monstrous,
and dangerous boundaries found in the union of the biological and technological,
VOY limits that space and again makes it safe for viewers troubled by such
transgressions.68 Musicality plays a part in this. As with Data and the Doctor, it
becomes an important rite of passage for Seven of Nine. In singing with the
EMH and in playing the piano, the imagined process by which Seven was made
monstrous is reversed, reducing her threat and soothing our technological an-
xieties even as she remains a cyborg, letting us safely explore Star Trek’s preferred
version of humanity alongside her.
Star Trek’s anxieties regarding the sanctity of the boundaries between the
biological and the technological have eased over the years. In Star Trek: First
Contact, La Forge’s VISOR (an external prosthesis that allows La Forge, who was
born blind, to see in the infrared and ultrasonic ranges of light) is replaced by
ocular implants with extended capabilities, moving his technological augmenta-
tion from the external to the internal. Picard, whom we discover in the TNG
episode “Tapestry” has an artificial heart, moves entirely towards the cybernetic
in the final episode of Star Trek: Picard’s first season, “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2,”
when his consciousness is transferred into an android copy of himself.69 In
Discovery, Lieutenant Kayla Detmer (Emily Coutts) receives cranial and ocular
cybernetic implants after she is injured in the “Battle at the Binary Stars,” and the
human Lieutenant Commander Airiam has been converted into an almost fully
technological being after a terrible shuttle accident killed her husband and left her
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 127

seriously injured.70 Even the parody animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks has a
cyborg character in Ensign Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero).71
Plot points such as these have become more ubiquitous in the 2010s and 2020s
than they were in the 1990s series, and yet they are interestingly less explored than
in those earlier programs—these recent characters’ relationships with humanity are
not questioned, nor are the characters themselves employed as devices for onto-
logical theorization (yet). The philosophical questions about what it means to be
human, and what it means to be, are set aside, as are questions regarding the dangers
of technology infiltrating biology. Such questions in Star Trek seem to fade in an era
of smartphones, home AI systems, and augmented reality wearables, and despite
public discomfort with the data privacy issues these technologies pose, Star Trek
now seems to embrace the benefits of AI and cybernetic technologies—still
pointing out their dangers (as when Airiam is hacked by Control in “Project
Daedalus”) but extolling their life-saving and life-enhancing possibilities—their
“saving power.” The exploration of humanity through these augmented characters,
and through their connections with the human traits of creativity, emotion, au-
tonomy, and interpersonal relationships, is no longer a priority for Trek. As such,
the musicality—the artistic creativity—of these characters is mostly left undefined.
The one exception is in the Short Trek “Calypso,” created after the first season of
Discovery, in which the now-sentient U.S.S. Discovery computer (Zora, voiced by
Annabelle Wallis) is shown a thousand years in the future, demonstrating her love
of human art by dancing (holographically) through the “S’Wonderful” scene of the
1957 film Funny Face.72

FIGURE 7.8 Craft (Aldis Hodge) and the holographic Zora (portrayed by Sash Striga)
dancing to “S’Wonderful” from Funny Face (1957) in the Short Trek “Calypso” 73

Conclusion
Star Trek, especially in the 1990s, used AIs and cyborgs like Data, the Doctor,
Seven of Nine, and the Borg to explicate its thesis on what it means to be human.
How these characters are scored tells us how we should interpret them and
128 Jessica Getman

encourages us to be distrustful of AIs who challenge or threaten Star Trek’s ac-

cepted version of humanity. The musicality of friendly AIs and cyborgs, on the
other hand, highlights the qualities of humanity the franchise endorses, including
human creativity, excellence, emotion, and interpersonal connection. Their
musicality sets the stage for storylines that emphasize human autonomy and
distinctiveness—and the superiority of humanity (Star Trek’s version of humanity)
itself. But no matter how diligently Data, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine strive to
understand, experience, and claim humanity for themselves, they remain out-
siders looking in. This means that they can also challenge us—they make us
consider that maybe the boundaries between biology and technology, and between
human sentience and artificial intelligence, can be productively breached—and
they do so in a way that assures us of minimal threat, that foils the danger of a robot
apocalypse. In the hands of these posthumans, then—in the hands of Data, the
Doctor, and Seven of Nine—what is music? As a device for the franchise’s ideo-
logical pursuits, as a mediator between the audience and our anxieties surrounding
technology in the real world, and as a tool for these characters to strive for humanity
within the Star Trek stories themselves, musicality provides a way in which they
can, as Data says, “throw themselves into the part.”

Notes
1 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick (Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968), DVD; The Terminator, directed by James Cameron (Los
Angeles: Orion Pictures, 1984), DVD; The Matrix, directed by Lana Wachowski and
Lilly Wachowski (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1999), DVD; Battlestar Galactica,
created by Glen A. Larson (1978–79; Universal City, CA: NBCUniversal Television
Distribution, 2020), https://www.nbc.com/battlestar-galactica-classic; Star Trek: The
Next Generation, created by Gene Roddenberry (1987–94; Los Angeles: Paramount,
2020), DVD.
2 For writings by these authors, see Donna Jeanne Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto:
Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991),
149–181; Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1984); and N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual
Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1999). In this chapter, the term “posthuman” refers to the extension of humanity beyond
its natural state through technological means—through either cyborgian transformation
or the creation of artificial intelligence in humanity’s (thinking) image. Other notions of
the posthuman more broadly include the idea that humanity might evolve biologically
beyond its current natural state, as well as the idea that humanity should be decentered in
discourses of the natural world. Posthumanism as a theory likewise encompasses a variety
of perspectives, but as Jay David Bolter summarizes, “Posthumanist theory claims to offer
a new epistemology that is not anthropocentric and therefore not centered in Cartesian
dualism. It seeks to undermine the traditional boundaries between the human, the an-
imal, and the technological.” Jay David Bolter, “Posthumanism,” in The International
Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, eds. Klaus Bruh Jensen and Robert
T. Craig (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016), 1556; accessed January 20, 2021,
doi: 10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect220
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 129

3 Christopher A. Sims, Tech Anxiety: Artificial Intelligence and Ontological Awakening in Four
Science Fiction Novels (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013), 10. Over the
past decade, Amazon has been repeatedly accused of overworking its warehouse em-
ployees through high-impact, repetitive tasks, using surveillance and data-driven man-
agement to keep the company’s shipping arm churning swiftly and smoothly. Employees
who work well within this system have been referred to as “Amabots,” a term that
underlines the company’s well-oiled-machine philosophy and becomes especially
troubling now that workers in the 2020s are working alongside robots and are expected
to keep up with these automated coworkers. Spencer Soper and Scott Kraus, “Amazon
Gets Heat Over Warehouse,” The Morning Call, September 25, 2011, accessed
December 30, 2020, https://www.mcall.com/news/watchdog/mc-allentown-amazon-
folo-20110917-story.html; Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling
Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace,” The New York Times, August 15, 2015, accessed
December 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-
amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html; Will Evans, “Ruthless
Quotas at Amazon are Maiming Employees,” The Atlantic, December 5, 2019, accessed
December 30, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/
amazon-warehouse-reports-show-worker-injuries/602530/
4 Sims, Tech Anxiety, 10.
5 J. P. Telotte, Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1995), 1–2.
6 In this chapter, I use “artificial intelligence” to refer both to fully technological
posthumans (such as robots and androids) and to cyborgian posthumans. Though I
recognize that an argument can be made for the latter to be considered separately, the
Star Trek franchise treats both categories of characters similarly and to the same ends.
7 John Huntington, “Discriminating Among Friends: The Social Dynamics of the
Friendly Alien,” in Aliens: An Anthropology of Science Fiction, ed. George Edgar Slusser
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 69.
8 Star Trek: The Next Generation; Star Trek: Voyager, created by Rick Berman, Michael
Piller, and Jeri Taylor (1995–2001; Los Angeles: Paramount, 2020), DVD.
9 Star Trek, Season 1, episode 7, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” directed by James
Goldstone, aired October 20, 1966, CBS Paramount International Television,
2004, DVD.
10 The Borg have been read as stand-ins for Soviet-era and Chinese communism, as well
as the all-consuming forces of religious extremism, globalism, and more. Patrick
Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon, “Representation is Futile? American Anti-
Collectivism and the Borg,” in To Seek Out New Worlds: Science Fiction and World
Politics, ed. Jutta Weldes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 143–167.
11 Darko Suvin. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary
Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979.
12 Star Trek: Discovery, Season 2, episode 9, “Project Daedalus,” directed by Jonathan
Frakes, aired March 14, 2019, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/video/
fobyiyjCEwUx5doD6sO7edWFxjhCmpdv/star-trek-discovery-project-daedalus/
13 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1987), 73.
14 Star Trek: The Original Series Soundtrack Collection (Limited Edition), La-La Land
Records, LLLCD1707B, 2012, compact disc; Fred Steiner Papers, 1975–1981, MSS
2193, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young
University, Orem, UT.
15 Keith R.A. DeCandido, “Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch: ‘What Are Little Girls
Made Of?’,” May 12, 2015, accessed December 31, 2020, https://www.tor.com/
2015/05/12/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-what-are-little-girls-made-of/
130 Jessica Getman

16 Fred Steiner Papers, “Big Ruk,” cue M1017, mm. 1–5, Series 6, Sub-series 1–2,
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
17 Transcribed from Fred Steiner, “Android Kirk,” Season 1, disc 3, track 42, Star Trek:
The Original Series Soundtrack Collection (Limited Edition). For more information on
Steiner’s “Captain Kirk” theme, see Fred Steiner, “Music for Star Trek: Scoring a
Television Show in the Sixties,” in Wonderful Inventions: Motion Pictures, Broadcasting,
and Recorded Sound at the Library of Congress, ed. Iris Newsom (Washington, DC: The
Library of Congress, 1985), 298. Steiner’s “Kirk’s Theme” was originally composed
for the episode “Charlie X,” Star Trek, Season 1, episode 2, directed by Lawrence
Dobkin, aired September 15, 1966, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek/video/
804598975/star-trek-the-original-series-remastered-charlie-x-/
18 Paramount Television Music Department, “Star Trek, Music Cue Sheets for Filmed
Programs: Seasons One through Three,” 1969, author’s personal library, acquired
digitally from Jeff Bond. Composing reusable music cues for tracked episodes (com-
pilation scores that relied on pre-existing music cues) was a common practice in mid-
twentieth-century television. More generic “danger” cues such as these were common
in TOS since they were easy to reuse in multiple episodes. Star Trek, Season 1, epi-
sode 9, “Dagger of the Mind,” directed by Don McDougall, aired January 12, 1967,
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/824794824/star-trek-the-
original-series-remastered-dagger-of-the-mind/; Star Trek, Season 1, episode 17, “The
Squire of Gothos,” directed by Vincent McEveety, aired November 3, 1966, https://
www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/1169952635/star-trek-the-
original-series-remastered-the-squire-of-gothos/; Star Trek, Season 1, episode 19,
“Tomorrow is Yesterday,” directed by Michael O’Herlihy, aired January 26, 1967,
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/1179115354/star-trek-the-
original-series-remastered-tomorrow-is-yesterday/
19 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1, episode 12, “Datalore,” directed by Rob
Bowman, aired January 18, 1988, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_
generation/video/d_1KUsOfIZJOyUqFzHQ1WHELclcNVspk/star-trek-the-next-
generation-datalore/
20 Lawrence Kramer, supplemental liner notes to Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Ron
Jones Project, Film Score Monthly, FSM Box 05, 2010, p. 7, accessed January 3, 2021,
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/notes/fsmbox05_notes.pdf
21 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: TNG’ HD Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
December 31, 2020, http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=15
22 Ron Jones, “Data’s Brother,” track 12, Star Trek: The Next Generation, 2: The Battle/
Datalore/11001001, Film Score Monthly, 2011. Thanks to Andrew Kohler for his
feedback on this transcription.
23 Jon Fitzgerald and Philip Hayward, “The Sound of an Upside-Down World: Jerry
Goldsmith’s Landmark Score for Planet of the Apes (1968),” Music and the Moving Image
6, no. 2 (2013), 32–43.
24 Kramer, liner notes to The Ron Jones Project, 7.
25 Ron Jones, “Data’s Beginning,” track 11, Star Trek: The Next Generation, 2. Thanks to
Andrew Kohler for his assistance in this transcription.
26 This technique of using more mathematical or process-oriented approaches for AI
characters can also be heard in the Season 2 episode of TOS “Spock’s Brain,” in which
Gerry Fried writes a fugue as the theme for Spock mind as it temporarily resides in a
computer. Jessica Leah Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender in the Original Series of
Star Trek (1966–1969)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2015), 228.
27 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, episode 16, “Q Who,” directed by Rob
Bowman, aired May 8, 1989, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_
generation/video/7XVb7IF2WId3FbOgczVFC13Hxzd98wU3/star-trek-the-next-
generation-q-who-/; Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 2, episode 23, “Regeneration,”
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 131

directed by David Livingston, aired May 7, 2003, https://www.cbs.com/shows/

enterprise/video/1475336769/enterprise-regeneration/
28 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: TNG’ HD Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
December 31, 2020, http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=50
29 Despite Jones’s claim, I have not been able to locate the pitches that might be asso-
ciated with the letters “BORG” in this episode’s soundtrack.
30 Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 181; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, episode
26, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I,” directed by Cliff Bole, aired June 18, 1990, https://
www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/video/BtXG6o31je8a94b4ja
SsBptQ3RIvGsQO/star-trek-the-next-generation-the-best-of-both-worlds-part-1/;
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, episode 1, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,”
directed by Cliff Bole, aired September 24, 1990, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_
trek_the_next_generation/video/hdufVuzt03RdgPnF_Pxer9mATO73QUPz/star-
trek-the-next-generation-the-best-of-both-worlds-part-2/
31 Star Trek: First Contact, directed by Jonathan Frakes (Hollywood, CA: Paramount,
1996), DVD; Star Trek: First Contact, Full Cast & Crew, IMDb.com, accessed January
3, 2021, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117731/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
32 Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 158.
33 Ron Jones, “Yellow Alert/Intruder,” disc 6, track 33, Star Trek: The Next Generation,
The Ron Jones Project (1987–1999), Film Score Monthly, FSM Box 5, 2010.
34 Ron Jones, “Borg Engaged,” track 4, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Vol. 2: “The Best
of Both Worlds” Parts I and II, GNP Crescendo Records, GNPD 8026, 1996.
35 Jerry Goldsmith, “Borg Montage,” track 13, Star Trek: First Contact (Complete Motion
Picture Score), GNP Crescendo Records, GNPD 8079, 2019.
36 Vic Fontaine is a sentient holographic program on the Deep Space Nine station, an analog of
Rat Pack-era Frank Sinatra. (See Tim Summer’s chapter in this book.) Zora is the U.S.S.
Discovery’s computer, who gained sentience over the course of a thousand years after
merging with the “sphere data”—the history of hundreds of thousands of years in
the galaxy, gathered by an unknown intelligence. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6,
episode 20, “His Way,” directed by Allan Kroeker, aired April 22, 1998, cbs.com/shows/
star_trek_deep_space_nine/video/SBvCxiwDq7HJsuh6BDKNt5dHQlnMPzOZ/star-
trek-deep-space-nine-his-way/; Star Trek: Short Treks, “Calypso,” directed by Olatunde
Osunsanmi, aired November 8, 2018, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-short-
treks/video/jtw1dLB8c bhey8G_CO1Sy71rplDuvH_q/-calypso-star-trek-short-treks/
37 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, episode 3, “Elementary, Dear Data,” directed
by Rob Bowman, aired December 5, 1988, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_
the_next_generation/video/PW_DXLcy2RIoeU0cA7Cd2Y7I7SpNZAZC/star-
trek-the-next-generation-elementary-dear-data/
38 Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward Lock & Co., 1887).
39 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: TNG’ HD Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
January 1, 2021, http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=36
40 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: VOY’ Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
January 1, 2021, https://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=155
41 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 6, episode 13, “Virtuoso,” directed by Les Landau, aired
January 26, 2000, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_voyager/video/
rUC1lYUvTjV09hzleFz4NaGeZCPFUR08/star-trek-voyager-virtuoso/
42 In this scene, the EMH actor Robert Picardo lip-syncs to a performance by the
professional tenor Agostino Castagnola. Memory Alpha, “Agostino Castagnola,”
Fandom.com, accessed January 1, 2021, https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/
Agostino_Castagnola
43 Elaine L. Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in
Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 142. Graham,
in using the term “parvenu,” is building on the work of Zygmunt Bauman.
132 Jessica Getman

44 Graham, Representations of the Post/Human, 142–43.

45 Graham, Representations of the Post/Human, 141. The emphasis on the transcendent
human ideal means that differences are effaced. As Graham states, “Diversity must
never threaten the smooth functioning of the ship.”
46 Except for the few moments when they do, in order to emphasize that they shouldn’t.
47 The franchise goes further to temper Data’s threat with music in the film Star Trek:
Insurrection. As Data is malfunctioning and threatening harm to other Starfleet officers,
Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) tricks him into singing “A British Tar” from
Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, distracting him and ultimately neutralizing him.
Star Trek: Insurrection, directed by Jonathan Frakes (Hollywood, CA: Paramount
Pictures, 1998), DVD.
48 J. P. Telotte notes that “Nearly every image of the robot, android, or cyborg as a
menace or monster seems balanced by similar figures cast in harmless, helpful, and,
most recently, even redemptive roles.” Telotte, Replications, 190.
49 Graham, Representations of the Post/Human, 142; Julia Witwer, “The Best of Both
Worlds: On Star Trek’s Borg,” in Prosthetic Territories: Politics and Hypertechnologies, ed.
Mark Driscoll and Gabriel Brahm (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 272–75.
50 Data and the Doctor do, at times, perform more popular works like folk songs and jazz
standards, but they focus on classical works.
51 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, episode 9, “A Matter of Time,” directed by
Paul Lynch, aired November 18, 1991, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_
next_generation/video/zfeV2lJAsr8hiPsQdj3rZ051CUZ_K6Ci/star-trek-the-next-
generation-a-matter-of-time/; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 6, episode 4, “Tinker, Tenor,
Doctor, Spy,” directed by John Bruno, aired October 13, 1999, https://www.cbs.com/
shows/star_trek_voyager/video/1zzMId_Jb21ldLK8h5DQ9sueO1rLVLqn/star-trek-
voyager-tinker-tenor-doctor-spy/
52 Bernd Schneider and Jörg Hillebrand, “Classical Music in Star Trek,” Ex Astris Scientia,
accessed January 1, 2021, https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/database/classical_
music.htm
53 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, episode 23, “Sarek,” directed by Les Landau,
aired May 14, 1990, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/
video/tkCVZv0Vri6eX0xkIygBKfoRBMPEWfAW/star-trek-the-next-generation-
sarek/
54 Humorously, this sextet was performed visually by a string quartet in this episode.
55 This daydream lets the EMH feel admired in both of his greatest areas of expertise—
music and medicine.
56 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, episode 9, “The Measure of a Man,” directed
by Robert Scheerer, aired February 13, 1989, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_
trek_the_next_generation/video/5peN9NEF4VR1htPxpN8nhNL_lQ6lhk_H/star-
trek-the-next-generation-the-measure-of-a-man/
57 Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Measure of a Man.”
58 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 7, episode 20, “Author, Author,” directed by David Livingston,
aired April 18, 2001, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_voyager/video/
1xoUyjDcbTDWBrqDO_w_V2ovEN7HhyG6/star-trek-voyager-author-author/
59 Star Trek: Voyager, “Author, Author.”
60 Graham, Representations of the Post/Human, 135.
61 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: VOY’ Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
January 1, 2021, https://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=57
62 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 5, episode 22, “Someone to Watch Over Me,” directed by
Robert Duncan McNeill, aired April 28, 1999, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_
trek_voyager/video/_ZQRG4gWk1SPp3RCy4KmDcYK6T6FPJDH/star-trek-
voyager-someone-to-watch-over-me/
 Humanity, Music, and Artificial Intelligence in the Star Trek Franchise 133

63 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: VOY’ Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
January 2, 2021, http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=150
64 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 7, episode 18, “Human Error,” directed by Allan Kroeker,
aired March 7, 2001, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_voyager/video/
wZtSmQU6tdw61oE7NeEzr8Vh_wJ6gPYx/star-trek-voyager-human-error/
65 This pairing of the Chopin nocturne with a metronome might be considered espe-
cially representative of the cyborgian, as Chopin’s work is often considered feminine
and emotional, but Seven of Nine’s strict adherence to the metronome’s beat indicates
a machine-like control.
66 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 7, episodes 25 and 26, “Endgame Parts I and II,” directed by
Allan Kroeker, aired May 23, 2001, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_voyager/
video/_bv2e2CxLHQQ8m6XQfC9lw_iQIL3nKwp/star-trek-voyager-endgame-
parts-1-and-2/
67 Star Trek: Picard, created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Byers, and
Alex Kurtzman (2020–; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-picard/).
68 Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto.”
69 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6, episode 15, “Tapestry,” directed by Les
Landau, aired February 15, 1993, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_
generation/video/jNDq0oQhMk44LKHK_kpxAD_O89R9mHCs/star-trek-the-
next-generation-tapestry/; Star Trek: Picard, season 1, episode 10, “Et in Arcadia Ego,
Part 2,” directed by Akiva Goldsman, aired March 26, 2020, https://www.cbs.com/
shows/star-trek-picard/video/OByehBzRg7bOQxNbekLFzyoBLQ0Fwbv5/star-
trek-picard-et-in-arcadia-ego-part-2/. Star Trek: Picard also pushes back against the
binaries that limited Seven of Nine in VOY, as the series tells us that she has, decades
after Voyager has returned to Earth, left to work with the Fenris Rangers, a decen-
tralized vigilante group dedicated to protecting the weak from the “strong and un-
scrupulous.” (See “Fenris Rangers,” Memory Alpha, accessed January 10, 2021, https://
memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Fenris_Rangers.) Additionally, in Season 2 of Star
Trek: Picard, it is revealed that Seven is queer, negotiating a romantic relationship with
Raffaela “Raffi” Musiker (Michelle Hurd).
70 Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1, episode 3, “Context Is for Kings,” directed by Akiva
Goldsman, aired October 1, 2017, https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/
video/evBlu7PGiDESNi2iJiIfMyW9kGmFqwY2/star-trek-discovery-context-is-for-
kings/; Star Trek: Discovery, “Project Daedalus.”
71 Star Trek: Lower Decks, created by Mike McMahan (2020–; https://www.cbs.com/
shows/star-trek-lower-decks/).
72 Star Trek: Short Treks, “Calypso”; Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen (Los Angeles:
Paramount, 1957), DVD.
73 Trekcore.com, “TrekCore ‘Star Trek: Discovery Screencap & Image Gallery,” accessed
January 3, 2021, http://discovery.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=201
8
NOT LOGICAL, BUT OFTEN TRUE
The Evolving Role of Religion in
Star Trek’s Utopia

Naomi Graber

Towards the end of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Captain Kirk (William Shatner)
asks a seemingly simple question: “What does God need with a starship?”1
Although Kirk’s famous query comes from one of the most forgettable entries in
the Star Trek universe, his question haunts the franchise. Star Trek’s creator Gene
Roddenberry believed that religion stood in the way of humanity’s development,
and that only a secular humanist philosophy could bring about utopia.2 This view
permeates both of the series that Roddenberry oversaw: the original Star Trek
(TOS, 1966–69) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG, 1987–94).3 But after
Roddenberry’s death in 1991, a more nuanced view of religion and spirituality
emerged. Beginning with Deep Space Nine (DS9, 1993–99), the relationship be-
tween utopia and religion in Star Trek became far more complex as faith became an
important aspect of many characters’ lives, although the show still depicted faith-
based decision making as problematic in the political realm.4 The relationship
continued to evolve through Star Trek: Voyager (VOY, 1995–2001), and by the
time of the fifth live-action series, Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT, 2001–2005), writers
were exploring ways religion and spirituality could provide the foundations for a
utopian society, rather than impede it.5
An examination of the music accompanying the religious and spiritual ex-
periences of two cultures, the Vulcans and the Bajorans, illuminates how the
composers and music editors have clarified religion and spirituality’s role in utopia
throughout Star Trek’s history. The scoring increasingly Others religious char-
acters early in the franchise, but more recent shows better integrate similar fig-
ures. In each case, the alien religious experience serves as a metaphor for real-
world events. The first encounter with Vulcan religion in the TOS episode
“Amok Time” portrays spirituality as disruptive and embarrassing; we witness the
brutal Vulcan marriage, presided over by the priestly T’Pau (Betty Matsushita)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-8
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 135

and accompanied by Gerald Fried’s cue “The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd

Kroykah,” more commonly known as the “Fight Music” because of its frequent
reuse throughout the rest of the series to accompany physical confrontations.6 As
played by Leonard Nimoy, Spock represented Jews just as their role in popular
culture was becoming increasingly prominent. Spock, at his most “Jewish,” is
musically depicted as primitive, betraying Roddenberry and Star Trek’s deep
discomfort with religious difference.
In TNG, Bajorans replaced Vulcans as the Star Trek universe’s religious out-
siders.7 As the most well-developed religious culture in the Star Trek universe at the
time, the fictional history and culture of the Bajorans echoes numerous real-world
communities, individual characters, and organizations representing several aspects
of religious difference. Their history evokes the Jewish Holocaust and the
Palestinian Nabka (“disaster” or “catastrophe,” the term Palestinians use to describe
the ongoing displacement from their ancestral homelands since 1948). Enslaved in
labor camps or displaced by Cardassians in a period known as the Occupation,
Bajorans nevertheless maintain faith that the Prophets will eventually ensure a just
universe.8 Deep Space Nine takes place on a space station orbiting Bajor and begins
with the end of the Occupation, allowing for a more nuanced exploration of
religion and spirituality than either TOS or TNG provided. Still, the show takes an
ambivalent view of the relationship between religion, spirituality, and utopia, as
other characters are analogs to real-world religious extremists like Marshall
Applewhite, who led his followers in the Heaven’s Gate cult to a mass suicide in
1997.9 Faith in the Prophets gives righteous characters wisdom and strength, as it
does for Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) in the Season 2 episode “The Circle.”10
Yet the danger of religious extremism also permeates DS9, particularly in
the seventh-season episode “Covenant,” which depicts Cardassian Gul Dukat
(Marc Alaimo) becoming the leader of the cult of the Pah-wraiths (fallen Prophets),
and, like Applewhite, organizing a mass suicide.11
By the time of the prequel series ENT, writers were comfortable framing
sincere religious practice as foundational to utopian society. In the Vulcan
Reformation arc (episodes “The Forge,” “Awakening,” and “Kir’Shara”), we see
a younger T’Pau (Kara Zediker), here a Vulcan fundamentalist, defeat a corrupt
government with the strength of her faith.12 In the context of the War on Terror
of the mid-2000s, ENT used Vulcans as metaphors for Muslim populations
unfairly targeted by a deceitful group of powerful bureaucrats for nefarious po-
litical purposes. T’Pau’s scoring evolves from generalized tropes of exoticism in
TOS to tropes of transcendence in ENT as part of an argument for embracing
cultural difference beyond the surface level.

Religion and Spirituality in Star Trek

Roddenberry, a lapsed Baptist, conceived of Star Trek as a secular humanist utopia
in which humanity had moved beyond the need for religion. He told biographer
136 Naomi Graber

David Alexander that even as a teenager, he believed “religion was largely

nonsense, was largely magical, superstitious things,” and that he “just couldn’t see
any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony
and superstitious.”13 Because of Roddenberry’s views, both TOS and TNG used
religion as a contrast to the immanent, data-driven, human-made utopian world,
resulting in a simplistic depiction of religious culture, often represented by
aliens.14 Klingons, Bajorans, Vulcans, and Ferengi place their faith either in de-
ities or in an ideal (honor, prophecy, logic, or profit) rather than science. This
faith is often accompanied by a mythological tradition that surrounds the deities
or exemplary individuals, as well as rituals dedicated to the divine or ideal that
mark important life-cycle events. The goal of the faithful is spiritual transcen-
dence, whether that takes the form of a place like the Klingon heaven Sto’Vo’Kor,
or a state of being like the Vulcan Kolinahr (the ritual purging of emotion). These
characteristics (faith, mythology, ritual, and yearning for transcendence) are
drawn in sharp contrast to the utopian human culture. Although humans have
faith in science, they lack both the cultivation of a single ideal and the rituals and
mythologies that accompany the religious life of other cultures. Nor do humans
yearn for a scientifically vague notion of transcendence. For humans, the divine
lies only in the “human heart,” as Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner)
reminds us at the end of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.15
The depiction of religion can serve as a test case for how Star Trek treats cultural
differences more generally. While Lincoln Geraghty notes that “utopia, in Star
Trek, means the doing away with ethnic conflict, bigotry, cultural power struggles,
and racial prejudice,” in reality, Star Trek depicts the triumph of Western values and
often erases meaningful ethnic and cultural differences in the name of cooperation,
as scholars like Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Jessica Getman, and David Golumbia have
noted.16 Characters of color serve side by side with their white shipmates, but
diversity within humans is limited to superficial characteristics like skin pigmen-
tation, accents, fashion, or cuisine, reducing difference to a matter of taste within
the broader secular humanist worldview (though portrayals of gender and sexuality
have become more diverse in Discovery [DIS, 2017–]).17 So while the multicultural
crews of the Enterprises can encompass an African, an Asian, and a multitude of
Europeans, they cannot accommodate a sincere Christian, Muslim, or Hindu be-
cause that character would challenge secular Western thought. Real cultural dif-
ference is displaced onto aliens.
In terms of religion, humans in Star Trek often view alien cultures with sus-
picion and occasionally horror, despite professions of tolerance. Religious cul-
tures are depicted as primitive, and a scientific worldview is required to defeat or
move beyond religious devotion so that humanity can chart its own destiny.18
For example, in the TOS episode “The Return of the Archons,” Kirk and
company are horrified by the “festival” of crime and debauchery on Beta III that
marks the peoples’ devotion to the omnipotent Landru (Charles Macauley).19
This is the case even for alien Starfleet officers. After Lieutenant Worf’s (Michael
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 137

Dorn) “Day of Ascension” anniversary ritual in the TNG episode “The Icarus
Factor,” which requires him to traverse a gauntlet of “painstiks,” Dr. Pulaski
remarks, “I’m just glad that humans have progressed beyond the need for barbaric
display.”20 Beings that claim to be divine often turn out to be malevolent aliens
(as in TOS, “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” and TNG, “Devil’s Due”) or mal-
functioning supercomputers, (TOS, “The Return of the Archons”), which must
be defeated in order for alien cultures to evolve.21 If gods continually need
starships, those starships have no need for gods.
This shifted with DS9, the first series in which Roddenberry was not in-
volved. Showrunner Ira Steven Behr argued that “faith is such a fine concept for
both the religious and the secular. Faith in each other. Faith in the system. Faith
in ourselves.”22 Yet, with one important exception, faith is still largely restricted
to alien races, and the power of faith in DS9 is double-edged. When the series
begins, Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) becomes the
Emissary of the Bajoran Prophets and must balance his positions as a religious
figure and Starfleet officer, much to the dismay of the Federation hierarchy. The
Federation insists on calling the Prophets “wormhole aliens,” but the beings have
some power over Bajor, and the series equivocates on the issue of their divinity.
Still, the series emphasizes that faith-based decision-making should not play a role
in larger ethical quandaries, and orthodox clergy like Kai Winn Adami (Louise
Fletcher) are usually villainous, while more moderate practitioners like Vedek
Bareil Antos (Philip Anglim) are heroic.23 The final season reveals that Sisko was
conceived by the Prophets/aliens, rendering his series-long journey into faith
something apart from his humanity. In the end, the series does not resolve the
tensions between his roles as Starfleet Captain and Bajoran Emissary; Sisko de-
parts the earthly realm (so to speak) and joins the Prophets/aliens in the celestial
temple/wormhole, indicating that the secular Starfleet is still incompatible with a
spiritual existence.
The relationship between religion, spirituality, and utopia continued to evolve
over the course of the next two series. Although VOY lacks the broader religious
overtones of DS9, individual episodes depict religion and spirituality in a positive
light (“Sacred Ground,” “Barge of the Dead”) while others are more ambivalent
(“Mortal Coil,” “The Omega Directive”).24 Throughout the series, Commander
Chakotay (Robert Beltran) finds comfort and wisdom in Native American
spiritual practices, although the portrayal of those practices has been rightly cri-
ticized as exoticist.25 In ENT, religion and spirituality remain the domain of
aliens, most prominently the Vulcans, depicted mostly in connection with Vulcan
science officer Commander T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), whose struggles with faith
became a key part of the series. In the early episodes, Vulcan religion is depicted
as cold and hypocritical, but by the end of the series an orthodox revival of
Vulcan religion leads to the renewal of their culture and paves the way for the
utopian relationship between humans and Vulcans that characterizes the rest of
the Star Trek universe.
138 Naomi Graber

The scores for these moments are particularly important. Because explora-
tions of these issues are done through alien characters, composers and music
editors must guide the audience’s interpretation. Some races have played many
different narrative roles in the franchise’s long history, and, as Tim Summers
observes, “musical depictions of alien species can be seen to evolve as the same
aliens recur throughout the franchise.”26 As Mathew J. Bartkowiak notes,
music in science fiction shapes the audience’s perception of the moral laws of
the strange new worlds to which they are introduced.27 Thus, the Star Trek
scores draw on familiar tropes of wonder and adventure, although those tropes
evolved over the franchise’s long history.28 In TOS, composers adopted a mix
of pop, modernist, and electronic idioms, echoing broader trends in con-
temporaneous science fiction scoring. This allowed for a variety of sounds to
characterize the similar variety of cultures on the show. However, TNG’s
producer Rick Berman (co-creator of DS9, VOY, and ENT) disliked the bold
style of TOS’s scoring and wanted something less noticeable. According to
composer Dennis McCarthy, who worked on all the Star Trek shows of the
1980s through 2000s, Berman often criticized scores that were “too big,” or
“too ethnic,” and preferred a sound that “was like Mahler’s slow move-
ments.”29 The result was a soundtrack characterized by lush strings, lonely solo
instruments (often brass or reeds), and quartal, quintal, and non-functional
triadic harmonies—sounds that that are associated with ideas of “wonder” in
science fiction and fantasy in the post-John Williams world.30 Still, even within
this more restrictive paradigm, subtle changes in sound contain discreet clues
regarding the nature of characters and situations.
Ralph P. Locke’s “all music in full context” paradigm for evaluating exoticism
clarifies how the audio and visual tracks in Star Trek produce ideas of Self and
Other. As Locke notes, unfamiliar musical codes “are but one tool among many”
that shape an audience’s perception of difference; dialogue, costumes, sets, and so
forth also locate “a character or group in a given Elsewhere. The music then
marks the character or group indelibly … as ‘barbarous,’ ‘seductive,’ or whatever.
And the audience melds the two forms of information into an indissoluble
whole.”31 Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida’s idea of “genre synecdoche”—that is, “a
set of musical structures inside a given musical style that refer to another (dif-
ferent, ‘foreign,’ ‘alien’) musical style by citing one or two elements of that ‘other’
style when heard in the context into which those ‘foreign’ elements are being
imported”—also explains how Star Trek composers construct difference.32 Even
if a style might not otherwise be heard as Other, its combination with strange
visuals, or the ways the visual track activates certain genre associations, will often
make the music (and the character) sound exotic. Even a brief reference to a
common cultural code, in combination with the visual track, helps inscribe ideas
of Same and Other. A comparison of two cues from the first season of VOY
illustrates this. The gentle flute music that accompanies many of Chakotay’s
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 139

spiritual experiences is exemplified by a cue in “The Cloud” (25:20), which

combines shots of Native American spiritual objects, dialogue about Native
American spirituality, and low flute timbres to help the audience to see the
character as participating in a non-Western ritual.33 These flute timbres recall
Western depictions of Native American spirituality, drawing on that genre sy-
necdoche.34 Still, a similar cue in “Faces,” as Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres
(Roxann Dawson) recounts her childhood (17:37), uses similar timbres, but does
not evoke ideas of Other as no visual or dialogue clues indicate “exotic.”35

Primitive Religion: “Amok Time”

Spock’s role in TOS was often to provide a cool, logical solution to the emo-
tionally compromised crew and serve as the voice of Roddenberry’s
scientifically-based utopia, yet depictions of his religious life were disturbing.36
Vulcans follow the teachings of Surak, an ancient philosopher who brought peace
by advocating the purging of emotion. In the second-season episode “Amok
Time,” we learn that purging is sometimes accomplished through ritualized
violence. At the beginning of the episode, Spock experiences the debilitating
Vulcan mating instinct, called pon farr. When Spock, Kirk, and Doctor Leonard
McCoy (DeForest Kelley) beam down to Vulcan, they meet the priest T’Pau
along with Spock’s betrothed T’Pring (Arlene Martel). But T’Pring refuses
Spock, demanding the rite of kal-if-fee, in which she chooses a challenger to fight
on her behalf and selects Kirk as her champion. As Spock and Kirk fight, McCoy
realizes Spock has the advantage and gives Kirk a stimulant, but the Captain
apparently dies anyway. His bloodlust purged, Spock releases T’Pring from the
marriage agreement. Back on the Enterprise, McCoy reveals that he injected Kirk
with a sedative that only simulated death. Spock is visibly overjoyed, and the
Enterprise returns to its regular mission.
“Amok Time” is one of the few TOS episodes with a tailor-made score, in
this case by Gerald Fried.37 The “Fight Music” music that accompanies kal-if-fee
highlights the barbaric nature of Vulcan ritual. The music is built out of blocks
that can be easily shortened or lengthened through repetition. It begins with
tritone fanfares in the trumpets, echoed in lower brass (38:53). A pounding
polychordal complex constitutes the second block (39:02; see Example 8.1).
These three blocks continue to sound in various combinations until Kirk “dies”
(42:26), except when T’Pau stops the fight to allow McCoy’s intervention. The
sequence resembles Stravinsky’s “Danse Sacrale” from The Rite of Spring, which is
also constructed out of a series of short, fragmented blocks that are repeated in
different combinations.38 The polychordal complex of the “Fight Music” recalls
both the “Augurs” chord and the contour of the “Danse” fragment that first
sounds at m. 11 (generally rendered rehearsal 144), and the latter also includes a
number of trills-to-glissandos gestures, along with a pounding bassline.39
140 Naomi Graber

EXAMPLE 8.1 Gerald Fried, “Fight Music,” block two, from the TOS episode
“Amok Time.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 40

Fried’s Stravinskian primitivism reinforces the idea that the stoic Vulcan de-
meanor masks a deep well of emotion that has no place in this utopian universe.
Indeed, he said he hoped the score evoked the story’s “totally atavistic” mood,
showing the “primal roots” of Vulcan culture in “a kind of ethnic aboriginal
ceremony.”41 Fried’s use of primitivist (rather than simply threatening) tropes in
this context is in line with the larger view of religion in TOS. Only barbaric
cultures practice religion. Humanity has evolved, but Vulcans are still beholden
to their primitive past because they cannot control their basic drives.
Although Spock’s religious beliefs are fictional, his demeanor draws on deep-
seated Jewish stereotypes that echo the popular culture of the era.42 As newly
emergent members of the middle class, Jews were among the most visible re-
ligious minorities in the United States of the 1960s.43 Yet Star Trek’s insistence
on a secular future meant that they needed to be represented metaphorically.
In “Amok Time,” signifiers of Spock’s Jewishness abound. Nimoy famously
used the Jewish gesture of the shaddai as the Vulcan salute.44 Jews long held a
reputation for being highly intellectual, yet creatively sterile.45 At the same time,
stereotypes of the neurotic or hysterical Jew (a side effect of an allegedly re-
pressed or perverted sexuality) still permeated U.S. culture.46 Spock’s blend of
cerebral logic and repressed emotions hinted at the character’s Jewish roots.
Given centuries-old rumors regarding the barbaric nature of Jewish religious
and sexual practices resulting from misunderstandings of circumcision, the brutal
marriage rite depicted in “Amok Time” also spoke to lingering fears about
Jews.47
The score highlights Jewish elements through two other musical referents:
Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905) and Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Modest
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 141

Mussorgsky’s “Samuel Goldberg and Schmuyle” from Pictures at an Exhibition

(1874).48 As Anne L. Seshadri has argued, throughout Salome, Strauss deployed
Orientalist tropes in order to highlight the perverted and sexually violent Jewish
title character.49 Like the “Fight Music,” the “Dance of the Seven Veils” opens
with a plodding undertow in the low registers with a snaky chromatic melody in
the winds, full of trills and glissandos. In the “Fight Music,” the constant presence
of jangling tambourines also recalls Salome’s dance. A similar distribution of
sounds (low, thumping music alongside a high brass melody with trills) char-
acterizes the two Jews in Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piano work.
Fried’s music thus marries primitivist tropes to Jewish tropes, painting this rite as
not just barbaric, but as part of a barbaric religion.
Despite this, neither “Amok Time” nor Star Trek is more generally anti-
Semitic. Nimoy referred to the episode as “beautiful” and cited it as one of his
favorites.50 More broadly, Spock’s beloved status, earned precisely for the
character’s alienation and inner conflict, speak to the writers’ sensitive treatment
of these themes. “Amok Time” draws on the sights and sounds of the most visible
contemporary religious Other to make a larger point: religious ritual is embar-
rassing, dangerous, and has no place in utopian society. Rather than being aimed
at Jews in particular, the episode highlights TOS’s discomfort with cultural dif-
ference more generally. Spock remains apart from the rest of the crew. He can be
allied with the utopian humans, but unless he abandons his ancient “Vulcan
soul,” he can never fully integrate.

Ambivalent Religion: “The Circle” and “Covenant”

The tone of DS9 is darker than TOS or TNG, as the fallout from the
Occupation, and then the Dominion War, tests the Federation’s ideals. As Sisko
struggles to reconcile his positions as Emissary of the Prophets and Starfleet of-
ficer, he often relies on his first officer, Major Kira Nerys—a devout Bajoran—for
counsel.51 Yet he also faces enemies from within the Bajoran religious world,
especially the Cardassian leader Gul Dukat, who in the final season becomes the
Emissary of the Pah-wraiths, former Prophets who seek revenge for being exiled.
Through Kira, the writers explore how religion and spirituality can bring comfort
and wisdom in difficult times, while Dukat’s seventh-season arc shows the evils of
blind devotion.
Throughout the series, Kira seeks the Prophets’ guidance in times of distress. A
telling example occurs in “The Circle,” the middle part of the trilogy that opens
the second season. Bajoran political forces are unhappy with Kira and have
mandated a vacation. She visits a woodland monastery but becomes restless and
frustrated, so Vedek Bareil allows her to view the “Orb of Prophecy,” one of
several orbs that induce the visions through which the Prophets communicate
with the Bajorans.52 Although mildly disturbing at first, the vision eventually
142 Naomi Graber

leads Kira to a better frame of mind, and eventually to a romantic relationship

with Bareil.
The music that accompanies the moments before Kira’s orb experience
shapes the audience’s perception of her encounter. Although Kira’s expression
conveys anxiety, even fright (Figure 8.1), the music—a cue called “Orbosity,”
composed by McCarthy—reassures the viewer that this experience will be
positive (Example 8.2). It begins with a shimmering cluster implying Ebmaj7
both upper and lower registers (15:16). A gentle melody enters a moment later,
climbing ever higher to reflect an atmosphere of spiritual yearning. A brilliant
quartal chord coincides with the first shot of the orb (15:46), followed by a short
gesture in the low brass that resembles a chorale, adding a sense of profundity
to the scene as reality fades away into Kira’s vision. Although the effect is
mysterious, the familiar gestures of “opening up” and thinning textures, and
expressive dissonance evoke ideas of wonder, and indicate this experience will
provide Kira the guidance she needs. Furthermore, the cue consists of the kind of
Mahlerian materials that characterize the broader score of the series, rendering
the moment even more universalizing. The effect ameliorates Kira’s inherent
Otherness rather than highlighting it.

FIGURE 8.1 Major Kira faces the Orb of Prophecy. Screenshot from the DS9 episode
“The Circle”
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 143

EXAMPLE 8.2 Dennis McCarthy, “Orbosity,” from the DS9 episode “The Circle.”
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 53

As with Spock, the presentation of Kira (and the Bajorans more generally) re-
sonates with ideas about religious minorities in the contemporaneous United
States, although the Bajoran culture is much more varied than the Vulcans of
TOS, which allows the writers to explore a variety of stories involving religion
and spirituality. The Bajorans embody traits of numerous religious minorities,
some portrayed sympathetically, but others portrayed as dangerous. The history
of the Bajorans is introduced in TNG episode “Ensign Ro” in such a way as to
resonate with ideas of both Jews and Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian).
Admiral Kennelly (Cliff Potts) describes Bajorans as a people “chased off their
own planet,” and “forced to wander the galaxy,” evoking both the trope of the
“wandering Jew” and ideas of the Nabka.54 Throughout DS9, characters speak
about Cardassian atrocities committed on Bajor, including labor camps, ghet-
toization, and mass executions, further reinforcing the connection between
Bajorans and real-world religious persecution, both historical and contemporary.
The elision of Jewish and Palestinian culture and history echoes contemporary
rhetoric drawing comparisons between the two, often evoked in the name of inter-
religious dialogue, such as John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), whose
prologue juxtaposes the “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians” with the “Chorus of
144 Naomi Graber

Exiled Jews,” and which had the same singers play Jewish and Palestinian characters
in the original production.55 The same elision has been noted outside of music
scholarship; Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie in his address to the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA) reminded the audience that “For centuries, we Jews and Muslims
were the European ‘other.’”56 In her corresponding address to the Union for
Reform Judaism, Dr. Ingrid Mattson of the ISNA invoked the Holocaust alongside
the Nabka, saying, “I have seen the tears of elderly Palestinian men as they spoke
about being forced to leave the homes of their fathers during the founding of
the state of Israel. I have been moved by those tears just as I was moved by the sight
of numbers tattooed on the forearms of elderly men who survived the
Holocaust.”57 Still, individual episodes use the Bajorans as stand-ins for less sym-
pathetic religious minorities, such as “In the Hands of the Prophets,” which stages a
conflict over religious and secular values in an elementary school classroom; the
Federation teacher constructs a lesson on the “wormhole aliens,” but the Bajoran
religious authorities insist on referring to the beings as their divine Prophets,
echoing debates over creationism and evolution in real-world schools.58
In this, Kira’s musical Sameness represents a crucial development in the world of
Star Trek; her superficial alien features do not mark her as significantly different
from the rest of the cast. Unlike Spock in TOS or Worf in TNG (though less so in
DS9), her religious rituals are not portrayed as savage or exotic, and her colleagues
are usually comfortable participating when asked. Rather than the religious other as
outsider, as we witness in TOS, the music here frames Kira as a member of the
community, faith and all. The constellation of characteristics that Bajorans share
with real-world religious minorities means that viewers can bring their own
conceptions of what it means to be a religious minority to the show. The music,
however, indicates that Kira’s spirituality is no stranger—and perhaps even less
strange—than anything else in Star Trek’s myriad strange new worlds. Bajoran
spirituality may be a cypher, but Kira’s expression of it is politically benign and
personally fulfilling, and therefore welcome Star Trek’s moral universe.
Still, although Kira searches for answers to her professional dilemma, the vi-
sion encourages her to begin a romantic relationship with Bareil, and says nothing
about Bajor’s political upheaval. In DS9, the writers used the Bajorans’ narrative
links with religious extremists in the real world (such as creationists) to show that
characters who blend faith and politics tend to undermine utopia.59 The writers
explore this idea in the seventh season episode “Covenant.” After Dukat’s tenure
as Cardassia’s military leader ends in disgrace, the Pah-wraiths select him as their
Emissary, and he attempts to lead a political/spiritual revolution on Bajor in their
name. Dukat gathers a group of Bajoran followers, then kidnaps Kira in order to
convince her to join his cult. While Dukat demands celibacy, he has allowed
one couple to conceive. When the child is born with Cardassian features,
Dukat commands his followers to commit ritual suicide to prevent them from
learning of his transgression. Although Kira eventually foils the plot, Dukat’s
fanaticism frightens her: “I think Dukat convinced himself that he was doing
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 145

what the Pah-wraiths wanted,” she tells her partner Odo, “either way, he be-
lieves. And that makes him more dangerous than ever.”
David Bell’s score for this episode is dark and somber, with plodding ostinatos in
the low registers and interjections of dissonant chords. He also includes the theme
that is mostly associated with Dukat himself: a fanfare of a rising fifth followed by a
fourth that collapses in on itself by step, then followed by the same rising gesture,
but ending on a rising half step (Example 8.3a).60 This presents a stark contrast with
the fanfare that begins the show’s title cue, another fifth-plus-fourth gesture that
gently rises a whole step, then repeats, soaring up a further fourth (Example 8.3b).
This latter theme is associated with heroic characters, particularly Sisko, throughout
the series. The resemblance of these two themes highlights Dukat’s narrative
function as Sisko’s dark mirror image. As Emissary of the Prophets, Sisko’s faith
protects Bajor, but as the Emissary of the Pah-wraiths, Dukat’s faith heralds disaster.

EXAMPLE 8.3a David Bell, theme from “The Followers Throw the Pills” in the
DS9 episode “Covenant.” Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 61

EXAMPLE 8.3b Dennis McCarthy, opening fanfare from the DS9 title cue.
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 62
146 Naomi Graber

“Covenant” reflects the horrific cult mass suicides of the 1990s, including the
Branch Davidians (1993) and the Order of the Solar Temple (1994–1997).63
The Heaven’s Gate mass suicide (1997), instigated by the group’s leader Marshall
Applewhite, especially affected Star Trek fans and writers given that the cult was
fascinated by the franchise, often using metaphors from it to explain their
worldview. One member described life outside of the cult as comparable to life
“on the holodeck in Star Trek,” in which characters had “no idea or concept that
they are projections of a simulated environment.”64 More disturbingly, one of the
final posts on the Heaven’s Gate website referred to the members of the cult as an
“away team” who were returning to their celestial ship.65 Moreover, the brother
of Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura in TOS), was among the dead.66 Many of
Dukat’s actions in “Covenant” resemble Applewhite’s, including the emphasis on
celibacy and the idea that followers must leave behind their physical bodies to
join higher beings in the heavens. The musical emphasis on Dukat as Sisko’s dark
mirror highlights the double-edged sword of faith, capturing one aspect of the
deep ambivalence about religion and spirituality that runs through DS9. Faith,
the music reminds us, can be part of utopia as long as it remains personal, but it
can also lead to its undoing if allowed to inform political decision making.

Transcendent Religion: The “Vulcan Reformation” Trilogy

The writers of ENT dove into the prequel aspect of the series, exploring familiar
characters and themes. This included a number of episodes which revisited
Vulcan religious practices. Early episodes of the show depicted Vulcan spirituality
as hypocritical, but by the end of the show, orthodox religious practices emerged
as key to the foundation of the Federation, illustrating another shift in the utopian
ideals of Star Trek.
The first season’s “The Andorian Incident” provides a glimpse of older Vulcan
religious practices.67 Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and T’Pol visit the
Vulcan monastery of P’Jem, where they discover a hidden chamber stocked with
espionage equipment. Paul Baillargeon’s score consists of long cello lines rife with
slides, glissandos, and portamenti, timbres reminiscent of the erhu (the same in-
strument used to score Spock in the Kelvin Universe films) and low flutes, likely
meant to evoke bamboo flutes, sounds often associated with ideas of Asia in science
fiction.68 In the context of the broader Trek style of the 1980s through the 2000s,
and combined with the shots of idols and other religious relics, these timbres stand
out, marking the Vulcans as Other. Later, in the third season’s “Home,” T’Pol is
blackmailed into marrying the Vulcan Koss (Michael Reilly Burke) to save her
mother’s career, allowing the audience another glimpse at the Vulcan wedding
rite.69 Again, the ritual is exoticized, this time through composer Velton Ray
Bunch’s use of gongs and drones, also often associated with Asia.
But in the fourth and final season, the Vulcan Reformation trilogy reconciles
the hypocritical Vulcans with the culture fans had come to love in TOS. The arc
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 147

shows T’Pau’s rise to power, making it a prequel to “Amok Time.” The story
begins with the Enterprise crew investigating a terrorist attack on Earth’s embassy
on Vulcan. Initial evidence points to T’Pau, whom they are told leads a sect of
religious radicals called the Syrrannites. While searching for the Syrranites, T’Pol
and Archer encounter Syrran (Michael Nouri) himself, who claims to possess
Surak’s katra, or consciousness. Just before death, Syrran transfers the katra to
Archer, who begins to suspect that T’Pau and the Syrrannites are innocent. The
katra leads Archer to the Kir’Shara, an ancient artifact that contains Surak’s
teachings. Archer and T’Pau bring the Kir’Shara to the Vulcan high command,
exposing the conspiracy. T’Pau is installed in the government, presumably to lead
a religious and political revival.
Throughout the arc, the music cues the audience as to who is right and who is
wrong within this complex Vulcan conspiracy. Initially, the Syrrannites are de-
picted as the villains. The opening teaser for “The Forge” opens with a mysterious
Vulcan figure (later revealed to be Syrran) coming across a mysterious artifact, to
which he responds with a reverent “Surak!” (0:01).70 John Frizzell scored this
sequence with a low string melody while ghostly sounds of indeterminate origin
(they might be flutes or high voices) drift above. The effect is unsettling; there is
little visual information about the caves or the location, so it is unclear whether or
not these sounds are diegetic.71 However, the final moments of the arc in
“Kir’Shara” clarify the narrative. Archer and T’Pau burst into the high command,
accompanied by Dennis McCarthy and Kevin Kiner’s similarly low, threatening
cello and bass line. When Archer reveals the Kir’Shara, a high string drone enters,
becoming increasingly dissonant as pitches are added, echoing the increasing dis-
sonance in the upper registers that accompanied the initial archeological find
(36:53).72 However, as soon as Archer activates the Kir’Shara, the dissonance re-
solves into one of the first purely major chords of the entire arc (37:16), signaling
both the triumph of the Syrrannites and their moral righteousness.73 This is a
striking shift in the Star Trek mythos. Balance is restored, but this is not the balance
of “Amok Time,” in which Spock rejoins the secular Starfleet, leaving the barbaric
Vulcan religion behind. Instead, a religious cult brings renewal to Vulcan, enabling
the establishment of the utopian Federation. Rather than a threat to utopia, Vulcan
religion and spirituality become foundational to the Vulcan–human alliance, which
then leads to the foundation of the Federation.
In typical Star Trek fashion, the entire arc echoes contemporaneous U.S. culture.
In the previous season, Earth experiences a devastating, unprovoked attack from the
Xindi, a metaphor for the attacks of September 11, 2001.74 At the beginning of the
Vulcan Reformation arc, the head of the Vulcan High Command V’Las (Robert
Foxworth) convinces the council to launch a pre-emptive strike against Andoria on
the grounds that they are developing weapons of mass destruction based on Xindi
technology, a reference to the Iraq War, which began about two years before these
episodes aired. But with T’Pau’s help, Archer reveals that V’Las arranged the
bombing to restrict the liberties of Vulcan citizens as he prepares for war. Thus, the
148 Naomi Graber

Syrrannites represent peaceful Muslims who are caught in the crossfire of the
United States’ war on terrorism. Numerous scenes of Syrrannites hiding in caves
and fleeing from air assaults reinforce this metaphor.
Unlike “Amok Time,” however, the Vulcans’ allegorical identity as Muslims
is not audible in the score. Even in the opening sequence of the trilogy, Frizzell
employs sounds that are generically eerie but that do not evoke associations with
Otherness. By the finale, the McCarthy/Kiner cue “Kir’Shara Activated” is
“alternately mystical and kinetic” rather than exotic, marked with standard tropes
of Western transcendence.75 These sounds ease the transition from Other to
Same that the Vulcans make over the course of the story. To have employed
stereotypically Muslim sounds would have defeated the point. So while they
appear visually strange, the music tells us that the Syrrannites are on “our” side.
Instead, the cue “Kir’Shara Activated,” similar to DS9’s “Orbosity,” draws on the
same basic sounds as the general Star Trek scoring for ENT. But where Kira’s
experience in DS9 was private and personal, the revelations of the Kir’Shara have
political implications for the entire quadrant. While religious minorities of the
1960s remain somewhat apart from the humans’ utopia, and in the 1990s religion
seemed permitted only in the private realm, the score of the “Vulcan Reformation”
trilogy indicates that spiritual renewal can be part of a larger social movement
towards utopia.

Conclusion
With DIS, the relationships between religion, spirituality, and utopia have
changed once more. For the first time, a Star Trek show depicts a religious human
community without the tropes of exoticism. In the second season episode “New
Eden,” Discovery visits a remote planet where they encounter a group of survivors
from Earth’s twenty-first century World War III who have been rescued by a
being they call the “Red Angel.”76 The community has blended a variety of
human religious practices to worship this figure, but the trappings are mostly
reminiscent of Western religion: stained-glass windows, old books, and a small,
white, rectangular community church with an altar, pews, and bell tower.
Musically, there is nothing remarkable about the way these scenes are scored,
providing little help in interpreting the events. Captain Christopher Pike (Anson
Mount)—whose father, we learn, taught both comparative religion and
science—reformulates Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum that sufficiently ad-
vanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to note that any sufficiently
advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God, possibly
pointing towards a way to reconcile scientific and spiritual existence. Still, the
episode is deeply skeptical of religion, as it is revealed that the elders’ emphasis on
faith has obscured the real history of the colony.
As DIS shows, while Star Trek writers have made some token efforts to
portray a human religious culture of the future, spirituality remains largely the
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 149

domain of aliens and earthbound humans. Despite Spock, Kira, T’Pol, and
T’Pau’s clear portrayal as religious minorities, there are no Jews, Muslims,
Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists or other religious communities historically margin-
alized in the West evident in Star Trek. Religion and spirituality still seem to be
something humanity has grown out of, and while they may not be an active threat
to utopia, they are certainly still viewed with deep suspicion. This occasionally leads
to an erasure of entire cultures. Despite the writers’ sensitive treatment of the fall-
out from the Occupation, DS9 remains a non-specific representation of religious
persecution, and does not speak to the traumas of the Holocaust, the Nabka, or
other largescale tragedies.77 Compared to ways the writers directly address issues
surrounding humanity’s legacy of racism (as in TNG’s treatment of Native
Americans in “Journey’s End” and DS9’s exploration of anti-black racism in “Far
Beyond the Stars”), the reluctance of Star Trek writers and showrunners to confront
real-world issues of faith, religion, and spirituality in human characters limits the
human experiences they can explore, hinting that certain aspects of human cultures
may not be welcome in Star Trek’s utopia after all.78

Notes
1 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, directed by William Shatner (1989; https://www.
amazon.com/Star-Trek-V-Final-Frontier/dp/B000HZCZYW).
2 Ann MacKensie Pearson, “From Thwarted Gods to Reclaimed Mystery? An
Overview of the Depiction of Religion in Star Trek,” in Star Trek and Sacred Ground:
Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, ed. Jennifer E. Porter and
Darcee L. McLaren (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 14–18;
Michèle Barrett and Duncan Barrett, Star Trek: The Human Frontier (New York:
Routledge, 2001), 141–45.
3 Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry (1966–69; https://www.amazon.com/dp/
B005HED11Y); Star Trek: The Next Generation, created by Gene Roddenberry
(1987–94; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HEQ0DA).
4 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller (1993–99;
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000V5Y1SQ).
5 Star Trek: Voyager, created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor
(1995–2001; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HEVBGG); Star Trek: Enterprise,
created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (2001–2005; https://www.amazon.com/
Broken/dp/B000HL0EEE).
6 Star Trek, Season 2, episode 1, “Amok Time,” directed by Joseph Pevney, aired
September 15, 1967, https://www.amazon.com/Amok-Time/dp/B005HEE6GS;
Gerald Fried, “The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah,” track 22, Star Trek Original
Television Soundtrack Vol, 2, “Doomsday Machine” and “Amok Time,” GNP Crescendo,
B000001P0X, 2007, https://open.spotify.com/album/6fWJwXgOtBtQEESKH8zq3z
7 The Ferengi also embody distasteful anti-Semitic stereotypes, but as their religious
culture is played for comedy, they will not be discussed here at length.
8 Matthew Kapell notes the resonances with Jewish history in “Speakers for the Dead: Star
Trek, The Holocaust, and the Representation of Atrocity,” Exploration 41, no. 2 (2000).
9 Todd S. Purdum, “Comet Seen as a Sign,” New York Times, March 28, 1997, A1.
10 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 2, episode 2, “The Circle,” directed by Corey
Allen, aired October 3, 1993, https://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Part-2/dp/
B005EXD1ZO/
150 Naomi Graber

11 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episode 9, “Covenant,” directed by John
Kretchmer, aired November 25, 1998, https://www.amazon.com/Covenant/dp/
B005HEFAUE
12 Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4, episode 7, “The Forge,” directed by Michael Grossman,
aired November 19, 2004, https://www.amazon.com/The-Forge-Part-1/dp/
B005HEFDJC; Star Trek: Enterprise, season 4, episode 8, “Awakening,” directed by
Roxann Dawson, aired November 26, 2004, https://www.amazon.com/The-
Awakening-Part-2/dp/B005HEFNJ2; Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4 episode 9,
“Kir’Shara,” directed by David Livingston, aired December 3, 2004, https://www.
amazon.com/Kirshara-part-3/dp/B005HEFNJ2
13 David Alexander, Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry
(New York: ROC, 1994), 37.
14 These themes inflect TOS episodes like “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” “The Apple,” and
“For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”; and TNG episodes like “Who
Watches the Watchers?” and “Devil’s Due”; along with those already cited. Star Trek,
Season 2, episode 2, “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” directed by Marc Daniels, aired
September 22, 1967, https://www.amazon.com/Who-Mourns-for-Adonais/dp/
B005HEE60E; Star Trek, Season 2, episode 5, “The Apple,” directed by Joseph
Pevney, aired October 13, 1967, https://www.amazon.com/The-Apple/dp/
B005HEE60E; Star Trek, Season 3, episode 8, “For the World is Hollow and I Have
Touched the Sky,” directed by Tony Leader, aired November 8, 1968, https://www.
amazon.com/World-Hollow-Have-Touched-Sky/dp/B005HEFQNK; Star Trek: The
Next Generation, Season 3, episode 4, “Who Watches the Watchers?,” directed by
Robert Wiemer, aired October 16, 1989, https://www.amazon.com/Who-Watches-
the-Watchers/dp/B005HEPS6A; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, episode 13,
“Devil’s Due,” directed by Tom Benko, aired February 4, 1991, https://www.amazon.
com/Devils-Due/dp/B005HEPN06.
15 Robert Asa, “Classic Star Trek and the Death of God: A Case Study of ‘Who Mourns
for Adonais,’” in Star Trek and Sacred Ground, ed. Porter and McLaren, 46.
16 Lincoln Geraghty, “Eight Days that Changed American Television: Kirk’s Opening
Narration,” in The Influence of Star Trek on Television and Film, ed. Lincoln Geraghty
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 12, 18–19; Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Star Trek and
History: Race-Ing Towards a White Future (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1998); Jessica Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title
Cue,” Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (2015): 293–320; David
Golumbia, “Black and White World: Race, Ideology, and Utopia in Triton and Star
Trek,” Cultural Critique 32 (1995–1996): 87–91.
17 Barrett and Barrett, Star Trek, 156.
18 Peter Linford, “Deeds of Power: Respect for Religion in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,”
in Star Trek and Sacred Ground, ed. Porter and McLaren, 85.
19 Star Trek, Season 1 episode 22, “The Return of the Archons,” directed by Joseph
Pevney, aired February 9, 1967, https://www.amazon.com/The-Return-of-the-
Archons/dp/B000HKYOK0
20 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, episode 14, “The Icarus Factor,” directed by
Robert Iscove, aired April 24, 1989, https://www.amazon.com/The-Icarus-Factor/
dp/B005HEPOKU
21 Star Trek, “Who Mourns for Adonais?”; Star Trek, “Devil’s Due”; Star Trek, “The
Return of the Archons.”
22 Quoted in Barrett and Barrett, Star Trek, 150.
23 Linford, “Deeds of Power,” 90–91; Barrett and Barrett, Star Trek, 152.
24 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3, episode 7, “Sacred Ground,” directed by Robert Duncan
McNeill, aired October 30, 1996, https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Ground/dp/
B005HEVCFG; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 6, episode 3, “Barge of the Dead,”
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 151

directed by Mike Vejar, aired October 6, 1999, https://www.amazon.com/Barge-Of-

The-Dead/dp/B005HEVGVG; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, episode 12, “Mortal Coil,”
directed by Allan Kroeker, aired December 17, 1997, https://www.amazon.com/
Mortal-Coil/dp/B005HEVBTI; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, episode 21, “The Omega
Directive,” directed by Victor Lobi, aired April 15, 1998, https://www.amazon.com/
The-Omega-Directive/dp/B005HEVHDS
25 Darcee L. McLaren and Jennifer E. Porter, “(Re)Covering Sacred Ground: New Age
Spirituality in Star Trek: Voyager,” in Star Trek and Sacred Ground, ed. Porter and
McLaren, 102.
26 Tim Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” Music,
Sound, and the Moving Image 7, no. 1 (2013): 21.
27 Mathew J. Bartkowiack, Introduction to Sounds of the Future: Essays on Music in Science
Fiction Film, ed. Mathew J. Bartkowiack (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 17. See
also Summers, “Star Trek,” 22, for an example in TOS.
28 Seth Mulliken, “Ambient Reverberations: Diegetic Music, Science Fiction, and
Otherness,” in Sounds of the Future, ed. Bartkowiack, 88–89.
29 Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle, 1999), 175.
30 Frank Lehman, Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 10ff.
31 Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 61–62.
32 Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida, Ten Little Title Tunes: Towards a Musicology of the Mass
Media (New York: The Mass Media Music Scholar’s Press, 2003), 101.
33 All timings are taken from the given episodes. Star Trek: Voyager, Season 1, episode 6,
“The Cloud,” directed by David Livingston, aired February 13, 1995, https://www.
amazon.com/The-Cloud/dp/B005HEVBGG
34 See Alan Mencken’s “Grandmother Willow” cue from Pocahontas. Alan Mencken,
“Grandmother Willow,” track 7, Pocahontas: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack,
Walt Disney, 60874-7, 1995, compact disc.
35 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 1, episode 13, “Faces,” directed by Winrich Kolbe, aired
May 8, 1995, https://www.amazon.com/Faces/dp/B005HEVBGG
36 Asa, “Classic Star Trek and the Death of God,” 49.
37 There are some library cues used in the episode, but they are mostly versions of
Alexander Courage’s fanfare used for transitions and to denote the passage of time.
Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 20.
38 Summers, “Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 31.
39 Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (Garden City, NY: Dover Publications, 1989).
40 Transcribed and reduced from the sketch reproduced in Bond, The Music of Star Trek,
21. Transcription assistance from Evan Ware.
41 Quoted in Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 78.
42 Sander Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews (New York: Routledge, 2006), 4.
43 David Kaufman, Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity—Sandy Koufax,
Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, and Barbara Streisand (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press,
2012).
44 For the Love of Spock, directed by Adam Nimoy (Los Angeles: 455 Films, 2016),
https://www.netflix.com/title/80115102. The gesture debuted in “Amok Time.”
45 Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991), 128–29, 132.
46 Gilman, The Jew’s Body, 75–76.
47 On “barbarism” in Jewish ritual and sexuality, see Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews,
28–29. On barbaric, exotic Vulcan sexuality, see Wei Ming Dariotis, “Crossing the
Racial Frontier: Star Trek and Mixed Heritage Identities,” in The Influence of Star Trek,
ed. Geraghty, 67–68.
152 Naomi Graber

48 Summers, “Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 31. On Vulcans as “Oriental,” see
Wei Ming Dariotis, “Crossing the Racial Frontier,” 66. Richard Strauss, Salome
(Garden City, NY: Dover, 1981); Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition: The
Masterworks Library (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2002).
49 Anne L. Seshadri, “The Taste of Love: Salome’s Transfiguration,” Women and Music
10, no. 1 (2006): 25–26.
50 For the Love of Spock.
51 In Bajoran practice, the family name is stated first, so she is addressed as Major Kira.
52 “Vedek” is a title, and Bareil is his family name.
53 Transcribed from the cue’s recording on Dennis McCarthy, “Orbosity,” track 8, Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine Collection, Hollywood Studio Orchestra, La-La Land Records,
LLLCD1239, 2013, compact disc. Transcription assistance from Megan Eagen-Jones
and Evan Ware.
54 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, episode 3, “Ensign Ro,” directed by Les Landau,
aired October 7, 1991, https://www.amazon.com/Ensign-Ro/dp/B005HEK3JW
55 Ruth Sara Longobardi, “Re-producing Klinghoffer: Opera and Arab Identity Before
and After 9/11,” Journal of the Society for American Music 3 no. 3 (2009): 279–93. See
also Edward W. Said, “Die Tote Stadt, Fidelio, The Death of Klinghoffer,” The
Nation, November 11, 1991, 598.
56 Eric H, Yoffie, “Inaugural Address at the Forty-fourth Annual Convention of the Islamic
Society of North America,” in Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions,
and Complexities, ed. Reza Aslan and Aaron J. Tapper (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2001), 123.
57 Ingrid Mattson, “Address at the Sixty-ninth Conference of the General Assembly of
the Union for Reform Judaism,” in Muslims and Jews in America, ed. Aslan and Tapper,
130, 131.
58 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 1, episode 19, “In the Hands of the Prophets,”
directed by David Livingston, aired June 20,1991, https://www.amazon.com/Hands-
Prophets/dp/B000V5Y1SQ
59 There are some exceptions, such as when Sisko prevents Bajor from joining the
Federation based on a vision from the Prophets, but this is the overall tenor of the series.
60 The theme appears in numerous different keys and time signatures throughout the
episode.
61 Transcribed from David Bell, “The Followers Throw the Pills/Makes Him More
Dangerous,” track 17, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Collection, Hollywood Studio
Orchestra, La-La Land Records, LLLCD1239, 2013, compact disc. Transcription
assistance from Evan Ware.
62 Transcribed from music available in Bond, The Music of Star Trek, 174. Transcription
assistance from Evan Ware.
63 Sam Howe Verhovek, “Apparent Mass Suicide Ends a 51-Day Standoff in Texas,”
New York Times, April 20, 1993, A1; Gustav Niebuhr, “Deaths at Season’s Change
Echo Earlier Suicides,” New York Times, March 27, 1997, B15.
64 Quoted in Benjamin E. Zeller, Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion (New York:
New York University Press, 2014), 86.
65 Heaven’s Gate, “HEAVEN’S GATE ‘Away Team‘ Returns to Level Above Human
in Distant Space,” accessed January 23, 2021, https://www.heavensgate.com/misc/
pressrel.htm
66 Zeller, Heaven’s Gate, 6.
67 Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 1, episode 7, “The Andorian Incident,” directed by Roxann
Dawson, aired October 31, 2001, https://www.amazon.com/The-Andorian-Incident/
dp/B005HEFB6M
68 For example, see Greg Edmonson’s score for Firefly (2007), especially “Inside the Tam
House.” The show takes place against the backdrop of a U.S.–Chinese alliance. Greg
 The Evolving Role of Religion in Star Trek’s Utopia 153

Edmonson, “Inside the Tam House,” track 24, Firefly: Original Television Soundtrack,
Varèse Sarabande, 302 066 699 2, 2005, compact disc.
69 Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4, episode 3, “Home,” directed by Allan Kroeker, aired
October 22, 2004, https://www.amazon.com/Home/dp/B005HEFDJC
70 Star Trek: Enterprise, “The Forge.”
71 Robynn Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic,” in
Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music and Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence
Kramer, and Richard Leppert, pp. 183–202 (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 2007), 188.
72 Star Trek: Enterprise, “Kir’Shara.”
73 Star Trek: Enterprise, “Kir’Shara.”
74 Jeff Bond, liner notes to Star Trek: Enterprise Collection Volume Two, Hollywood Studio
Orchestra, La-La Land Records, LLLCD1397, 2016, compact disc, 13.
75 Jeff Bond, liner notes to Star Trek: Enterprise Collection, Hollywood Studio Orchestra,
La-La Land Records, LLLCD1330, 2014, compact disc, 9.
76 Star Trek: Discovery, Season 2, episode 2, “New Eden,” directed by Jonathan Frakes,
aired January 24, 2019, https://www.amazon.com/New-Eden/dp/B07G3HJLT1
77 Kapell, “Speakers for the Dead,” 109.
78 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 7, episode 20, “Journey’s End,” directed by
Corey Allen, aired March 28, 1994, https://www.amazon.com/Journeys-End/dp/
B00W11LTG0; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6, episode 13, “Far Beyond the
Stars,” directed by Avery Brooks, aired February 11, 1998, https://www.amazon.
com/Far-Beyond-The-Stars/dp/B005HEF6K8.
9
SINATRA IN SPACE
Music for Hope and Loss Beyond the
Final Frontier

Tim Summers

From time to time, Star Trek has presented music in its diegetic universe.
Sometimes, this has been in the form of music from alien cultures. We witness
Vulcans plucking their distinctively-shaped lutes, Bajorans playing woodwind
instruments, and Klingons singing opera and traditional songs. We are most likely
to hear music from non-humans when characters participate in rituals or visit
exotic alien worlds. However, Star Trek represents human music as powerful as
well, even affecting non-human characters: the Vulcan Sarek is brought to tears
by Brahms in Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), and the Qomar aliens in Star
Trek: Voyager (VOY) are entranced by The Doctor singing Verdi.1
Perhaps Star Trek’s most extensive and explicit discourse about music occurs
during the penultimate and final seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998–99;
DS9). As the series built to a dramatic climax, a new recurring character was
introduced: Vic Fontaine (James Darren). Fontaine is a hologram, a singer ex-
isting in a virtual recreation of 1960s Las Vegas within the Deep Space Nine space
station. Tuxedo-clad, crooning in his lounge bar, he is clearly modelled on Rat
Pack-era Frank Sinatra. Vic Fontaine appears during the final phase of DS9’s
Dominion War storyline to serve as light-hearted relief from the gloomy plots, a
catalyst for relationships between the main characters, and a confidant/counsellor
for those tortured by the horrors of war.
Fontaine is introduced in the episode “His Way” (1998).2 From his first
scenes, he is shown to be intelligent and self-aware: he understands that he is a
fictional hologram (or “lightbulb,” as he puts it). Moreover, Fontaine appears
to have an almost magical ability to intuit aspects of relationships between the
main cast—from their body language, he is able to perceive that Lieutenant
Commander Worf (Michael Dorn) and Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax

DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-9
 Sinatra in Space 155

(Terry Farrell) are recently married, that Chief Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney)
misses his wife, and that Constable Odo (René Auberjonois) and Commander
Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) share a deeply-held unspoken passion. In this epi-
sode, Fontaine helps Odo express his feelings for Kira. After “His Way,”
Fontaine appears in six further episodes, on each occasion singing at least
one number from the Great American Songbook (see Table 9.1).3 The crew
of Deep Space Nine visit Fontaine’s world for recreation, but the character, and
his music, mean far more to them than a trivial distraction from the on-
going war.
Fontaine was the creation of series showrunner Ira Steven Behr. Behr had long
wanted to write an episode that featured elements of 1960s Vegas in Deep Space
Nine. He recalls,

During Season 4, I decided I wanted to bring a character onto the series

played by Frank Sinatra Jr., to be a guy like Yoda who would show up
periodically. Not in every episode, obviously, but occasionally, like in the
teaser [pre-title sequence] or something where we’d find one of our
characters coming to this Vegas nightclub in the early 1960s and asking for
advice about life, love, and the opposite sex. …
Now, Frank Sinatra Jr., is a big fan of Star Trek. … When I spoke to Frank,
he thought it was very funny, but he said that he would not play a singer,
he only wanted to play an alien. And so it did not happen. …
I suddenly realized that we were in the midst of year six. And that in
terms of Deep Space Nine, more had gone behind us than there was in
front of us. I thought, “Time’s running out!” And I said to myself,
“I want to do everything that I ever wanted to do on this show! We’re
doing Vegas, baby, and we’re not doing one lousy freakin’ scene of it,
we’re doing the whole show about it. And we are going to have music!
And we are going to have song! And we are going to consummate
the relationship between Odo and Kira! That’s what the show is going to
be about.”4

Behr and the writing staff ultimately found their Sinatra in James Darren, who
had found fame in the late-1950s and early-1960s as a teen heartthrob on film and
record. He was most famous for his role in the Gidget films, for the hit single
“Goodbye Cruel World” (1961), and later for co-starring in the police series
T.J. Hooker with William Shatner. Though a generation younger than Sinatra,
Darren had first-hand experience with Fontaine’s world. He explains,

When I read the script, I thought to myself, “God I’ve lived this thing
before.” … I used to go down to Vegas just about every weekend with
156 Tim Summers

Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra, Junior, and a bunch of friends. It was
usually on Frank’s plane. We’d go to the Sands Hotel, and of course,
being with Nancy, we had front row centre. … Vic is Frank and Dean
[Martin] … and having idolized both of those guys, talking like them and
being like them and using the expressions they used was quite easy.5

In the world of Deep Space Nine, Fontaine is not Frank Sinatra, though his dia-
logue reveals that the two are supposedly acquainted. It is unclear whether
Fontaine is supposedly based on a historical figure, or whether he is the invention
of the hologram’s author.
Over the course of his career, Sinatra’s public persona encompassed several
different images. This shifting presentation was fundamental to his longevity
and ability to succeed in a variety of media. The characterization of Fontaine
draws on several different incarnations of the multifaceted Sinatra persona. He
is most closely modelled on the cheeky showman Sinatra of the 1960s Sands
Hotel and Casino Club in Las Vegas, but there are other Sinatras evident here.
Fontaine’s music is used to entertain soldiers in battle, which echoes Sinatra’s
USO shows during the Second World War.6 When Fontaine’s establishment is
taken over by mobsters, and the Deep Space Nine crew rob the casino with
Fontaine to oust the mafia, he intersects with the lovable criminal Sinatra of
Ocean’s 11 (1960) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).7 Though we do not gain
much insight into Vic’s personal emotions, he embodies the “cool” Sinatra
who returned to public prominence around 1954 with an image of vulner-
ability and mature masculinity.
Musically, Fontaine’s locus is the swinging Sinatra of the late-1950s and
early-1960s, when his career found resurgence with recordings for Capitol
Records. Fontaine asserts that the year (for him) is 1962. Table 9.1 shows the
musical numbers featured in Fontaine’s episodes, normally sung by him and
accompanied by his small band. We hear a larger ensemble than that which is
visually represented, and though the arrangements are new, they generally
follow the stylistic model of Sinatra’s Capitol and Reprise arrangers, Nelson
Riddle and Billy May. Sinatra may not be the most well-known interpreter of
some of the songs featured here, but all of Vic’s songs are also in Sinatra’s
repertoire, with the exception of the newly-composed “Alamo” and “Fever,”
sung by another holographic character, Lola Chrystal (after Peggy Lee’s 1958
Capitol single recording). All of these numbers sit comfortably in the amor-
phous canon of the Great American Songbook. Though much of Vic’s lan-
guage and world is unfamiliar to the humans and aliens of the twenty-fourth
century, these songs retain their communicative and emotional power for the
characters on the station.
 8
TABLE 9.1 Popular songs associated with Vic performed in Deep Space Nine

Episode Song Performers Sinatra Recordings

Season 6, episode 20 “You’re Nobody till Vic and band Sinatra Swings, aka Swing Along with Me, Reprise,
“His Way” Somebody Loves You” FS1002, 1961, vinyl, arr. Billy May.
“Come Fly with Me” (x2) Vic and band Come Fly With Me, Capitol, W920, 1958, vinyl,
arr. Billy May.
“I’ve Got You Under My Vic and band Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, Capitol, W695, 1956,
Skin” (x2) vinyl, arr. Nelson Riddle.
“They Can’t Take That Hummed by Odo and Sisko Songs for Young Lovers, Capitol, H488, 1954, vinyl,
Away from Me” arr. Nelson Riddle.
“Fever” Kira/Lola Chrystal with Not recorded by Sinatra. Initially recorded by
Vic’s band Little Willie John (King, 4935, 1956, vinyl); most
famously covered by Peggy Lee (Capitol, F3998,
1958, vinyl).
Season 6, episode 26 “Here’s to the Losers” Vic and band Softly, as I Leave You, Reprise, F1013, 1964, vinyl,
“Tears of the arr. Marty Paich.
Prophets”
Season 7, episode 1 “All the Way” Vic and band Single release, Capitol, F3793, 1957, vinyl, arr.
“Image in the Sand” Nelson Riddle; Academy Award Winners, Reprise,
F1011, 1964, vinyl, arr. Nelson Riddle.
Season 7, episode 8 “The Lady is a Tramp” Rom with piano Soundtrack album to Pal Joey, Capitol, W912,
“The Siege of accompaniment 1957, vinyl, arr. Nelson Riddle (cut from A
AR-558” Swingin’ Affair! Capitol, W803, 1957, vinyl).
Sinatra in Space 157

(Continued)
TABLE 9.1 (Continued)

Episode Song Performers Sinatra Recordings

“I’ll Be Seeing You” Vic and band Point of No Return, Capitol, W1676, 1962, vinyl,
arr. Axel Stordahl; I Remember Tommy, Reprise,
Season 7, episode 10 “I’ll Be Seeing You” Vic and band (recorded) FS1003, 1961, vinyl, arr. Sy Oliver; previously
158 Tim Summers

“It’s Only a Paper (repeated) recorded with Tommy Dorsey, Victor, 20-1574,
Moon” 1940, shellac.
“Just in Time” Vic and band Come Dance with Me!, Capitol, SW1069, 1959,
vinyl, arr. Billy May.
“It’s Only a Paper Moon” Vic and band Sinatra’s Swingin’ Session!!!, Capitol, W1491,
1961, vinyl, arr. Nelson Riddle. Also previously
recorded for Swing and Dance with Frank Sinatra,
Columbia, B07605R, 1950, vinyl, arr. George
Sivaro.
“I’ve Got the World on a Vic and band Single, Capitol, CL14031, 1953, collected in This
String” (x2) is Sinatra!, Capitol, T768, 1956, vinyl, arr. Nelson
Riddle.
Season 7, episode 15 “The Alamo” Vic and band New composition by Jay Chattaway (unreleased).
“Badda-Bing, Badda-
Bang” “The Best is Yet to Come” Vic, duet with Sisko, It Might as Well be Swing, Reprise, F1012, 1964,
accompanied by band vinyl, arr. Quincy Jones.
Season 7, episodes “The Way You Look Vic and band Academy Award Winners, Reprise, F1011, 1964,
25/26 Tonight” vinyl, arr. Nelson Riddle. Previously recorded as
“What You Leave single V Disc, 116, 1944, shellac, arr. Axel
Behind” Stordahl.
 Sinatra in Space 159

Deep Space Nine was noted for its treatment of dramatic themes that were not in
keeping with Gene Rodenberry’s original parameters for his utopian universe.
Interpersonal conflict, ambiguous morality, and an extended war all feature in the
latter seasons of DS9. Set in this dramatic context, and against the contemporary
swing revival in American popular culture, Fontaine draws upon, and reconfigures,
the cultural meanings of Sinatra and the swing standards he shares with the crew.9
In examining scenes in DS9 that feature swing musical performances and recordings
that are clearly modelled on Sinatra, we can better understand the significance of
the music for both the storyline and the viewers. Fontaine’s music is not merely an
amusing non-sequitur to contrast with the more serious topics of the series, but it is
part of the treatment of those themes in terms of music. Indeed, as we witness our
much-loved characters listening to this music, we are able to further understand and
empathize with them—we are drawn into the drama as we share the experience of
listening with them. Furthermore, when we see aliens and humans using Sinatra’s
music to cope with their emotional hardships and the challenges of their lives, Star
Trek models how we, as viewers, might do the same.

Music for Romance and Hope

One of the fundamental elements of the show’s presentation of Fontaine is the
apparent timelessness of the Great American Songbook and Sinatra. It claims a
universality for these songs, which are apparently able to connect emotionally
with the main characters of the series, even if they have no knowledge of 1960s
American culture, or are not even human.
In “His Way,” Vic’s first appearance, he serves as a mentor to Odo, the
shapeshifter. As noted above, Odo and Kira have had a long-held romantic at-
traction. Frustrated with the state of affairs and his own inability to develop his
relationship with Kira in a romantic direction, Odo seeks advice from Vic. The
episode begins with the crew watching Vic singing “You’re Nobody till
Somebody Loves You,” which serves as a not-so-subtle commentary on the topic
of the episode. Even here, Odo is shown to be fascinated and engaged by Vic’s
music: he nods along with the swinging groove while Kira smiles at the usually
reserved Odo’s unguarded moment of expression.
Later, Vic decides that Odo needs to “thaw” and become more emotionally
available if he is to win Kira’s affections. To do so, Vic decides to insert Odo into his
band as the pianist, miming playing at a pianola, so that he may share in the thrilling
experience of performance. Though initially awkward, over the course of a per-
formance of “Fly Me to the Moon,” Odo becomes increasingly comfortable
modelling public expressive behaviour through play-acting as the pianist. In par-
ticular, the rhythmic swing of the piece and the virtuosic improvised flourishes of
the piano part prompt him to relax into engaging with his own emotional ex-
perience. He is so taken with the moment-to-moment propulsion of the music that
he forgets himself and surrenders to the expressive joy of the performance.
160 Tim Summers

At the climax of the episode, Vic tricks Odo into having dinner and dancing
with Kira by misleading him into believing that the Kira before him is a holographic
representation. During dinner, Vic begins to sing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
This song might qualify as what Jeff Smith calls a “musical pun,” since we are
dealing with a shapeshifter who has no skin per se, interacting with what he believes
to be a hollow holographic image of the object of his romantic affections.10 More
than simple commentary, though, the song seems to express their romance to each
other in a way that the characters cannot.11 As we hear Vic croon the romantic
lyrics and we watch Odo and Kira stare at each other, the subtext becomes explicit
as the first-person expression of the song seems to speak for each to the other.
Though the ruse is ultimately discovered, it succeeds in starting their romance.
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and Sinatra’s performance in particular, has
long been recognized as having a “distinct sexual energy,” as Ira Wells puts it.12
Yet, as Wells notes, the song is more complicated than a straightforward love
ballad: “the paradoxical proximity and inaccessibility of the love object undoes
the lover’s relationship to his (or her) own self.”13 In other words, it is a song of
self-reflection as much as it is about sexual desire. This emotional honesty and
connection with self and others is central to the image of Fontaine, Sinatra, and
the American Songbook that DS9 uses. As Karen McNally describes,

In the 1950s, biographical commentary and Playboy’s celebration of Sinatra

seem to uphold the star’s image as the quintessential Hollywood version of
the magazine’s carefully constructed bachelor identity. Yet Sinatra’s physical
and class inadequacies work to complicate his swinger persona. … Sinatra’s
unconventional masculine image—virile, sexually objectified, and a chal-
lenge to traditional gender roles—represents an individualistic styling of
postwar male sexual identity that fundamentally questions prevailing images
of heterosexual masculinity.14

In the case of Fontaine, we are continually reminded that he is a construction.

Further, Sinatra’s complicated masculinity provides a way for men who are not
traditionally masculine, such as Odo, to fashion and process their own sexual and
gendered identity.
The reason that the Sinatra conceit (both in its historical form, and in its DS9
incarnation) remains compelling for us is because we trust the emotional honesty
of performance. As Wells explains,

In the 1950s, commentators frequently employed words like conviction,

authenticity, and vulnerability in praise of Sinatra recordings: they admired
his ability to sing “from the heart,” which is another way of saying that
Sinatra achieved a kind of vocal verisimilitude through which he successfully
masked the process of learning, experimentation, and memorization by
which he came to own a particular song [and] … by vocalizing something
 Sinatra in Space 161

people recognized as “interiority.” In other words, Sinatra’s craft, his art, was
to make it appear that Porter’s music had come from “under his skin.”15

Despite neither Odo nor Kira being human, they become able to express their
personal feelings to each other with the assistance of Fontaine: the music and
environment serve as a meeting place that facilitates their connection to each
other. They find their common ground through their response to the music and
person of Sinatra-Fontaine. The same is true of the audience; we understand Odo
and Kira better through the shared experience of listening to the crooner along
with them. The common responses to Fontaine provide a node for Odo, Kira,
and the audience to relate to each other.

Music for Loss and Consolation

Just as Sinatra’s repertoire is used to unlock the positive emotions of Odo and Kira,
so it is used as a catalyst for catharsis and to console those with rather more unhappy
problems. The sixth season of DS9 saw a marriage between two of the main
characters—the Trill, Jadzia Dax, and the Klingon, Worf. Though their marriage
was a happy occasion, two other characters who sought Dax’s romantic affections
had to come to terms with the unrequited nature of their love. In “Tears of the
Prophets,” the human doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), and the Ferengi
barkeeper Quark (Armin Shimerman), are left to process their feelings. Fontaine is
on hand to help them do so. When the two visit Vic’s lounge, in an effort to make
them feel better he sings “Here’s to the Losers.” Though listening to the song does
not fully heal their wounded feelings, they admit to feeling “a little better” after-
wards. Bashir is a human (albeit with a subtle degree of genetic enhancement) and
Quark is a Ferengi who is often highly critical of earthlings. Yet despite their
differences, Sinatra’s music serves as a way for them both to process their romantic
dejection. Again, the Great American Songbook transcends traditional lines of
culture and context, apparently having universal appeal.
The episode “Image in the Sand” begins Season 7 of DS9. The previous season
had concluded with the shocking death of Jadzia Dax. Worf is distraught at the loss,
though typically for his character, he initially shows little explicit emotion con-
cerning the situation. His turmoil is released through an encounter with Vic and his
music. Unable to sleep, Worf visits Vic’s lounge and demands that Fontaine “Sing
the song.” Vic attempts to stall, asking him, “Why rub salt on an open wound?”
Upon Worf’s insistence, Fontaine relents and sings the romantic ballad “All the
Way.” The script describes the action like this: “As Vic sings his heart out, he can’t
help but take surreptitious glances at Worf, as if Worf were about to explode at any
moment. Angle on Worf as he listens to the lyrics, struggling to maintain his
composure. But every fiber of his being is vibrating with anguish.”16 We see Worf
grip the tablecloth as his emotional barrier crumbles, and then buckles. He jumps
up, howls a Klingon cry of agony and smashes the table.
162 Tim Summers

In a later scene, we see that Worf has caused a massive amount of damage to Vic’s
lounge. Bashir reveals that “All the Way” was Jadzia’s favorite song, and Vic com-
plains that Worf has repeatedly followed this pattern of requesting the song and then
“busting up the joint.” Vic says, “I don’t care how much he threatens me, that’s the
last time I ever sing ‘All the Way.’ If he wants to hear it again, let him buy a Sinatra
album.” The song is particularly emotionally charged since it alludes to the depth of a
relationship and a “road ahead” which has, in Jadzia’s case, been cut tragically short.
The music prompts Worf to engage with his own feelings in a way he otherwise
seems incapable of doing, even if it comes at the expense of Vic’s furniture.
Star Trek series have typically avoided killing off members of the main cast,
even if the characters are being retired. The single example prior to Jadzia was
Lieutenant Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), some ten years earlier, in the first season
of The Next Generation.17 Even including Yar, no other character with as much
screen time and longevity as Dax had ever been killed in Star Trek on television.
When Vic sings the slow, quiet ballad, and we watch Worf’s reaction, the action
on screen is minimal. The expressive performance serves as a quiet moment for
dedicated viewers to reflect on Jadzia’s loss, sharing the moment with Worf.
(Hopefully, of course, human viewers are able to express their emotional re-
sponses in a less percussive manner than the Klingon.)

Trauma, Fear and Masculinity

“The Siege of AR-558” is one of Star Trek’s most controversial episodes. Set during
the brutal Dominion War, Sisko and his staff find themselves forced to defend a
barren rocky pass that holds a strategically important transmitter. The episode takes
a “horrors of war” approach to the story, much in the vein of siege films like Hell is
for Heroes (1962).18 Because of the gloominess of the subject matter, violence,
deaths, and a plot that sees Starfleet officers using antipersonnel mines, this episode
proved divisive among fans. Though the crew prevent the transmitter from falling
into enemy hands, they succeed at the expense of many lives and their moral purity.
At the start of the episode, prior to the crew leaving the station, Julian Bashir
visits Vic to collect recordings of Vic’s performances to take with him on the trip.

Bashir: Did you get a chance to make those audio recordings for me?
Vic: All your favorite hits.
Bashir: That’s great, Vic. Thanks.
Vic: My pleasure—but these songs are four hundred years old … you sure the
troops on the front lines want to hear them?
Bashir: The songs may be old, but when you sing them, they sound brand new.
Vic: When you put it that way, I wish I was going on the supply run with you.
… I could make some personal appearances … sing a few songs, tell a few
jokes … you know, put together a regular USO show.
Bashir: Sorry Vic, but I’m afraid there aren’t any holosuites where we’re going.
 Sinatra in Space 163

The conversation again asserts that the Great American Songbook translates
across time and space, retaining its emotional and communicative value. Further,
it suggests that continual, albeit very stylistically faithful, reinterpretation is suf-
ficient to maintain the songbook’s “timeless” qualities. Indeed, Fontaine’s covers
of Sinatra’s songs are so similar to Sinatra’s performances (particularly in the way
that hallmarks of the arrangements are retained), that they would be constitute
highly “isomorphic covers” (to use Evan Ware’s terminology).19
Later, during a reconnaissance mission on AR-558, one of the recurring
characters in DS9, the young Ferengi Nog (Aron Eisenberg), is badly injured,
ultimately resulting in the amputation of one of his legs. He is sedated and kept in
the hospital ward just behind the front line, waiting for the full retaliatory attack
by the Dominion. The Starfleet soldiers and Deep Space Nine crew share a tense
moment behind their barricade while they await the inevitable stampede of
enemies. In the quiet before the storm, the episode deploys the filmic trope of
showing scenes of tense, nervous impatience ahead of an attack.20 While they
wait, Bashir plays a recording of Vic singing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which sounds
across the battlefield and in Nog’s ward. The juxtaposition is surreal. As the script
notes, “We pan across the faces of various crewmen, the music evoking bit-
tersweet memories in all of them.” The end of the song is accompanied by the
sound of the first wave of mine explosions before the attack proper begins. Behr
describes this scene in interview:

You wonder why we have these songs in the series, and then in that
moment when they’re waiting for death, you hear this music and it’s very
haunting. This may sound pretentious, but we were trying to give the
characters an inner life greater than you would think necessary on a TV
show. By doing the music, by seeing the characters’ reaction to the music,
by telling you what they were thinking before the music started, we’re
seeing that they are scared, we’re showing you a whole bunch of things
without dialogue.21

In essence, Behr is arguing that the music provides a way for the audience to
understand the emotional life of the characters through the shared experience of
music. The characters’ reaction to the music is part of his technique of portraying
the interiority of the characters.
The effects of the events of “The Siege of AR-558” are picked up in the
episode “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” Nog has had an artificial limb fitted in place of
his leg and returns to Deep Space Nine, but he is still deeply troubled as a result of
the experience, suffering from PTSD and psychosomatic pain. He obsessively
listens to Vic’s recording of “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which serves as a kind of
emotional support. He visits Vic in his Vegas holodeck program to hear the song
from the man himself.
164 Tim Summers

Nog: I want to hear, “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Vic: Sure thing, kiddo. Any other requests?
Nog: No. Just “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
Vic: Sounds like it’s a special tune.
Nog: It is. It helped me out once when I was … unhappy.
Vic: What more can you ask from a song?

Vic obliges and performs several different arrangements of the song for Nog. (Aptly
enough, Sinatra recorded multiple contrasting versions of the song as well.)22
Though written for a largely forgotten musical, the piece became famous
during the Second World War as it was keenly appropriated by lovers separated
by war. As McNally notes, the song

resonated with the country’s sense of anxiety about the onset of war.
Though … first recorded by Sinatra in 1940, his return to [“I’ll be Seeing
You”] as a solo artist in the following years in radio shows and stage
performances connected [it] more specifically to the context of America’s
involvement in the war, and also to women’s perspective on war as those
left behind on the home front.23

Sheila Whitley also identifies “I’ll Be Seeing You” as representative of a group of

songs that became popular during World War Two, part of how “individuals and
groups made sense of, and negotiated everyday life across and beyond, the duration
of war.”24 Nog does the same. For the viewer, the song serves as an intra-textual
reference, calling to mind the grim drama of “The Siege of AR-558.” Viewers are
reminded of the horrifying events, just as Nog returns to them. We are given a
window into Nog’s experience and come to process the events along with him.
Nog becomes infatuated with the comfort of Vic’s Vegas world. He moves in to
live in Vic’s suite and becomes his business partner. The holographic playground
becomes a safe space for Nog to regain his confidence and re-acclimatize to human
interaction. He takes after Vic’s example, becoming something of an apprentice
Fontaine (minus the singing), and serving as host to patrons of the club. Though his
recovery is sufficient to return to the world outside the holosuite, Nog refuses to
leave. Vic ultimately shuts down his own program to force Nog back into the real
world. In an emotional exchange between the two, Nog reveals that it is his fear of
death that is keeping him in the comfort of the holosuite.

Vic: What is it I’m not making clear to you, Charley? You have to go.
Nog: You don’t get it. I … I can’t go out there.
Vic: Why not?
(Nog struggles, doesn’t want to admit it … but finally has to.)
Nog: I’m … scared. Okay? I’m scared.
(Nog takes a few steps around the Holosuite before continuing.)
 Sinatra in Space 165

Nog: When the war started, I wasn’t … happy or anything, but I was … eager. I
wanted to test myself … I wanted to see if I had what it takes to be a soldier.
And I saw a lot of combat … I saw a lot of people get hurt … I saw a lot of
people die … but I never thought anything was going to happen to me.
Then suddenly Doctor Bashir is telling me he has to cut my leg off.
(beat)
I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.
(beat)
If I can get shot … if I can lose a leg … anything could happen to me, Vic. I
could die tomorrow. I don’t know if I can face that. If I stay here, at least I know
what the future’s going to be like.
Vic: You stay in here, you’re going to die. Not all at once, but little by little.

Vic convinces Nog to rejoin the real world and discard the safety net of the
fictional Vegas. Nog successfully reintegrates into the station culture.
Nog’s difficulty is one of reconciling the bravado of the kind of masculine
soldier that he believes he should embody (and thinks he once did) with his fear
caused by his traumatic experience. Beyond negotiating his own performance of
masculinity, which is occurring at the same time as his adolescence, Nog is ad-
ditionally fearful of revealing his emotional state to anyone, preferring instead to
engage in physical conflict rather than express his emotions.
Sinatra’s Capitol records of the 1950s were key in establishing his mature cultural
image. In these albums, Sinatra is frequently depicted as emotionally vulnerable. He
often sings songs that were originally written for female singers in Broadway shows
(including “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “I’ll Be Seeing You”) because this
kind of romantic-expressive mode was more readily associated with female char-
acters.25 McNally suggests that Sinatra’s use and popularization of these songs re-
presents a shift in the image of popular masculinity. Though Sinatra did not serve in
combat, on film Sinatra repeatedly played troubled soldiers and servicemen re-
turning home after conflict who must negotiate their reintegration into civilian life.
Though both his films and albums, McNally argues,

Sinatra’s image of emotionally vulnerable masculinity [relates] to anxieties

over displays of emotional damage and machismo that inhibit assimilation
in America’s postwar society. … Sinatra’s World War II veterans represent
emotional vulnerability as an integral element of the postwar American
male’s identity. … Sinatra’s 1950s recordings and album covers construct a
persona that expresses emotional frailty in an urban masculine context.26

“I’ll Be Seeing You,” and the Sinatra persona that Nog finds so attractive in Vic, are
both related to the challenges of reconciling emotional feelings in the context of
war—the former in terms of loss and fear, the latter in terms of machismo and male
identity. Sinatra (or Vic) serves as a model for Nog, showing a type of masculinity
166 Tim Summers

that is both exuberant and confident (in the showman) and yet reflective, emo-
tionally available, and vulnerable. In this way, emulating Sinatra-Fontaine is a
therapeutic way of processing and negotiating his feelings and experiences in light
of his trauma. The Sinatra model allows Nog to reconcile his emotional life with his
own expectations of himself through a new model of masculinity. Vic facilitates his
rehabilitation by allowing Nog to access his feelings without fear of compromising
his masculinity. Ultimately, with the help of Fontaine, Nog is able to find a way to
integrate emotional availability into his idea of how he should behave, in such a way
that does not feel like a failing.

Race, Identity Politics and Postmodernism

“Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” is one of the episodes in which Vic Fontaine is the
primary focus of the plot. When mafia mobsters take over Vic’s establishment and
seek to oust the crew’s favorite crooner, the Deep Space Nine staff and Vic organize a
heist to rob the casino and eliminate the mob’s profiteering, in order to return the
casino to normal. The episode is an homage to Ocean’s 11 with the Rat Pack
heisters replaced by eight of the DS9 characters. While the script is generally light-
hearted, the episode emphasizes the problematic aspects of race in 1960s America.
Sinatra led an informal group of entertainers known as the “Rat Pack,” “The
Summit,” or “The Clan,” with the trio of Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy
Davis Jr. at its core. These artists performed regularly together across Vegas. One
of the problematic aspects of Sinatra concerns his relationship with race.
Nowhere is this clearer than in his Rat Pack humor. Sinatra was a vocal advocate
for Civil Rights, using his celebrity power as leverage to improve conditions for
African American performers in Vegas, mentoring Sammy Davis Jr., and starring
in a post-war anti-discrimination film.27 In his youth, he had suffered racial
discrimination as a result of his Italian American heritage, and thus considered
himself able to identify with others subjected to such prejudices. Yet, for all of his
anti-racist credentials, there remains a racist streak in his comedy; in his Rat Pack
routines, Sinatra would regularly imitate African American speech and participate
in racist humor at the expense of Sammy Davis Jr. As Dave Calvert explains,

The alienation that Sinatra experienced and observed as a consequence of

being Italian-American led to a number of public and forceful statements
advocating racial and religious tolerance. By contrast, the jokes at Sammy
Davis Jr’s [sic] expense in The Summit and later Rat Pack performances are
criticised for demeaning Davis on racial grounds. J. Randy Taraborrelli
suggests they “baffled” commentators through their “complete disregard
for the ideal of racial tolerance during their shows” and cites Davis’s later
perspective that “I had to bite my tongue a lot.”28

The Rat Pack routines involved poking fun at the racial heritage of all of
the performers. Yet, even though it is difficult to paint Sinatra as having an
 Sinatra in Space 167

“authentically racist intention” (to use Edmund N. Santurri’s phrase), the jokes
nevertheless situate Davis, the sole African American, as subordinate.29 Yet Davis
is also able to return fire in his own jibes at the heritage of the other performers,
even if the power dynamic is hardly equal. We might also note the boys-only
nature of the Rat Pack summits and the frequently less-than-flattering depictions
of “dames” in the songs, films, and jokes of the group.
By contrast, Fontaine’s world represents a revisionist presentation of Rat Pack-era
Vegas, as viewed from the perspective of the late-1990s by a television series with a
distinct awareness of issues of race, conflict, and identity politics. The problematic
racial issues of Sinatra and the Rat Pack are reformulated. The discrimination
of Vegas is erased as all—whether human, Klingon, Ferengi, shapeshifter, or
hologram—participate in Vic’s world. Initially, Sisko does not want to engage with
Vic’s world for this very reason. In a heated exchange with his partner, Captain
Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson), who is participating in the heist, Sisko explains:

Sisko: And you’re telling me that virtually my entire senior staff is a part of this
nonsense?
Kasidy: You’re supposed to help your friends when they’re in trouble. And
Vic—hologram or not—is in trouble. Not that I’d expect you to care.
Sisko: Look … This is not about Vic Fontaine.
Kasidy: Then what is your problem?
Sisko: You want to know? You really want to know what my problem is? I’ll tell
you. Las Vegas, nineteen sixty-two! That’s my problem.
(That catches Kasidy by surprise.)
Sisko: In nineteen sixty-two, black people weren’t very welcome there. Oh, sure
they could be performers or janitors, but customers? Never.
Kasidy: Maybe that’s the way it was in the real Vegas, but that is not the way it is
at Vic’s. I have never felt uncomfortable there—and neither has Jake.
Sisko: But don’t you see, that’s the lie? In nineteen sixty-two, the Civil Rights
movement was still in its infancy. It wasn’t an easy time for our people and
I’m not going to pretend that it was.
(Kasidy comes over to Sisko and gently puts an arm on his forearm.)
Kasidy: Baby—I know that Vic’s isn’t a totally accurate representation of the way
things were. But it isn’t meant to be. It shows us the way things could’ve
been. The way they should’ve been.
Sisko: We cannot ignore the truth about the past.
Kasidy: Going to Vic’s isn’t going to make us forget who we are or where we
came from. What it does is reminds us that we are no longer bound by any
limitations … (pointed) … except the ones we impose on ourselves.

In this dialogue, the episode addresses its own revisionism, which is later en-
capsulated when the crew walk along the promenade of Deep Space Nine heading
for the holosuite. Dressed in period costume and filmed in slow motion, the
168 Tim Summers

underscore plays a swing variation of the DS9 title theme, trumpets blaring. The
shot finds its parallel in the final scene of Ocean’s 11, where the Rat Pack walk
along the Las Vegas strip in front of the Sands Casino (Figure 9.1). Comparing
the two images clearly shows the revised diversity of DS9 over the historical Rat
Pack: we have a variety of genders, ages, ethnicities, and species. Similarly, one
can directly contrast the roles of the two African American males of the heist
crews in both films. Sammy Davis Jr. is the garbage truck driver in Ocean’s 11,
dressed in a boiler suit during the caper, while Sisko is the wealthy, tuxedo-clad,
high-rolling customer who provides a distraction from the robbery. Star Trek’s
knowing revisionism is a way to recognize the misrepresentation while allowing
the cross-species (-race/gender/age) cooperation that is central to Star Trek’s
espoused ethical position on a utopian future.

FIGURE 9.1 (a) and (b) The heist crews in Ocean’s 11 (top) and Deep Space Nine
(bottom). Screenshots by the author 30
 Sinatra in Space 169

The episode finishes with a duet between Vic Fontaine and Sisko, the only
complete number that Vic sings in the episode. They perform “The Best is Yet to
Come.” As De Witt Douglas Kilgore notes, “The familiar midcentury [sic] liberal
image of a black man and a white man singing together in harmony, having
overcome a historically segregated space, about a shining future is designed to
produce an emotional release for the Sisko/Yates debate.”31 Kilgore also notes
the significance of the choice of the song in terms of Sinatra’s oeuvre. Sinatra’s
most well-known performance comes from his 1964 album It Might as Well Be
Swing, a collaboration with Count Basie and his orchestra, with arrangements by
Quincy Jones. Kilgore continues,

This collaboration recalls a moment in American popular music when

prominent musicians worked to break down racially imposed barriers
between popular musical forms. The use of the song as a set piece in DS9
ties the series’ astrofuturism into the problems, ambitions, and achieve-
ments of American popular art, thus saving the glamour of an actual past for
a future in which its wrongs are righted.32

Star Trek attempts to rehabilitate the sonics of Sinatra’s numbers by divesting the
music of its original contexts, and its performer’s less attractive aspects. It is, at
least, honest about the process.
Vic Fontaine is a postmodern creation. He is self-aware and self-reflexive.
Both DS9 and its characters embrace the inauthenticity and knowingly revisionist
nature of the conceit. The swing standards are performed in an ostentatiously fake
Vegas within a space station. Umberto Eco famously described postmodernism as
a response to the “challenge of the past;” by this he means that the past casts a
shadow over modern communications.33 Eco characterizes this idea as a tension
between irony and sincerity, between quotation and originality, and between
innocence and sincerity. Kenneth Gloag draws on Eco to talk about post-
modernism as finding a way to say again what has already been said, how to say
sincerely what has become hackneyed, and so on. Gloag treats Eco as part of a
quadrumvirate of definitions of postmodernism:

[Frederic] Jameson’s “attempt to think the present historically”, Eco’s

“challenge of the present”, [Linda] Hutcheon’s “historiographic metafic-
tion” and [David] Harvey’s “new dominant ways in which we experience
space and time” … can all be read as saying something really quite similar
about how postmodernism, after modernism, makes meaningful, if at times
fictional, engagements with the past.34

Fontaine seems a direct response to these challenges of the past. Viewers of Vic
on Star Trek see a character from the past in a TV show set in the future, but who
seeks to be meaningful for the viewers’ present. By restaging, reframing, and
170 Tim Summers

revising Sinatra songs and history, the music and celebrity are made freshly ac-
cessible to us and the characters so that we may enjoy them and use them for our
own ends. This is true both of the characters in the show (Kasidy says as much)
and for the viewers (of which more is said below). Through intertextuality,
fragmentation, pastiche, quotation, and overt artifice, the songs are used to reveal
and process emotional truths—those of Nog, Worf, Quark and Bashir, Odo and
Kira, and even the soldiers of AR-558.

The Great American Songbook as a Technology of the Self

Throughout the Fontaine episodes, DS9 situates the music of Sinatra as meaningful
in terms of trauma and loss, as well as of romance. The music is shown to have a
utilitarian function: to understand and process characters’ emotional experiences. In
that sense, the songs are shown to be what Tia DeNora describes as a “technology
of self (and self-identity)”—“Music is appropriated by individuals as a resource for
the ongoing constitution of themselves and their social psychological, physiological
and emotional states.”35 In DS9, characters very obviously use music to “regulate
and constitute the self.”36 For the characters in DS9, Fontaine’s music is, as DeNora
would put it,

a device for ordering the self as an agent, and as an object known and
accountable to oneself and others. … Music is a material that [listeners] use to
elaborate, to fill out and fill in, to themselves and to others, modes of aesthetic
agency and, with it, subjective stances and identities.37

It is this “filling out” and “filling in” that allows Fontaine’s music to both serve as
part of the characters’ journeys for themselves, and allow us to better understand
the characters (as Behr described in the quotation reproduced above).
Our “Sinatra in space,” swinging with stars and aliens, has all the trappings of
what we might call anti-essentialist pluralism—that is to say, all entities are appar-
ently welcome and able to identify with Fontaine, no matter their species, beliefs, or
troubles.38 However, Fontaine also reveals the less comfortable side of many
postmodern articulations in Western popular culture. At its worst, anti-essentialism
can give way to a blurring of distinctions that becomes a kind of hegemony in and of
itself, erasing Otherness, becoming a “flattening of the cultural field” and denying
difference between cultures and identities.39 Such totalizing is not, of course, in-
nocent, and here it occurs on the foundation of an American musical culture.
Fontaine’s/Sinatra’s swing is claimed as universal when other species find their
“technologies of the self” in human musical-cultural nostalgia, adopted in pre-
ference over their own traditional musical cultures. The other protagonists
(whatever their species) all rally around and support the preservation of Vic’s lounge
as a precious cultural site. We here find a utopia which, for all of its claimed mul-
ticulturalism and universality, is anchored in a distinctly American historical fantasy.
 Sinatra in Space 171

Beyond the function that Fontaine’s music is supposed to serve for the
characters in the fiction, it aspires to become emotionally significant for
the viewers, too. Soon after Fontaine’s introduction, it becomes apparent that his
music is not confined to one particular narrative level. The producers of Berman-
era Star Trek asked composers to write in a musical style that did not routinely
draw attention to itself, avoiding memorable themes or bombast and prioritizing a
blended texture with few solo instruments.40 This approach varied across the
series, and was most strictly enforced during the middle seasons of The Next
Generation. There are certainly exceptions to this stylistic model, yet composers
still tended to downplay blatant or superficial connections with the diegetic world
onscreen and instead prioritize an emotional undercurrent. Holodeck episodes
were commonly the occasions where these stylistic parameters could be most di-
rectly challenged, as was the case for especially emotive or romantic episodes, or
those that thematised music in some way.41 That recognized, Fontaine’s music
provides a way to transgress these limitations in a significant and extended way
rarely seen elsewhere in the Berman-produced series. As we would expect, the jazz
idiom is used in the underscore in scenes set in Vic’s program, hovering in a middle
ground between diegetic and non-diegetic music. But importantly, the jazz in-
strumentation and style starts to seep into the normally musically-unmarked style of
scenes outside the holosuite; the music obviously flouts the normal stylistic ap-
proach. Even in “His Way” (04:39) we start to hear the saxophone and piano
infiltrate the underscore style, and it occurs extensively in “Badda-Bing, Badda-
Bang,” most obviously in the scene’s big band variation of the DS9 theme that
accompanies the shot shown in Figure 9.1. This process reaches its conclusion,
however, in the final episode of DS9.
Seven years of DS9 finished with “What You Leave Behind.” The last time
that the cast is seen together is during a celebration at Vic’s, where he sings “The
Way You Look Tonight” to the assembled crew. This is an emotional perfor-
mance (performed “from the heart,” as Vic says), but the song is heard a second
time in the episode. After the main plot has concluded, and the crew of Deep
Space Nine start to go their separate ways, the viewer is treated to an extended
retrospective montage sequence that compiles touching character moments from
the preceding seasons. It is a celebration and a bittersweet tearjerker. The
backbone of the montage is provided by the music, an orchestral rendition of
“The Way You Look Tonight.”42
This is one of the emotional highlights of the series and represents a moment
in which Fontaine’s music transcends its connection with the holosuite Vegas and
becomes meaningful for the audience in a direct way. Viewers have long seen
Fontaine’s music serve as a way of dealing with complex emotions for the
characters; here it does the same for the audience. The number and montage are a
cathartic moment that deals with the intense experience of the end of the series,
especially the process of saying farewell to characters in which viewers have
invested so much time and feeling. It is a testament to the importance of the song
172 Tim Summers

that it should serve as the foundation of this sequence. Sinatra’s music is permitted
to enter the non-diegetic space, even though the producers normally ensure that
such music strictly conforms to an “unmarked” style.43 The sequence makes
obvious what has been implicit in previous episodes: the series teaches (and
enables) the audience to use the music of Sinatra-Fontaine, just as much as the
characters are shown doing the same.
Because the swing standards are pre-existing pieces, they are shared between
our reality, that of the crew, and Fontaine.44 As such, they sonically connect us
with the fictions. If Sinatra’s versions were not enough to link our reality with the
world of the series, James Darren released an album, This One’s from the Heart, in
the same year that DS9 finished. The album features new recordings of the songs
Fontaine sang on the show, along with other Sinatra classics.45 When the show
models the meanings and uses of the songs for its characters, it tells viewers how
to listen to, interpret, and use the swing standards for their own personal,
emotional ends. If, as Tia DeNora describes, music is a technological “device for
ordering the self,” then Star Trek presents us with new musical tools and even
demonstrates how we might utilize them for ourselves.46
Star Trek has traditionally promoted a distinctly rationalist perspective: “Gods”
are shown to be powerful alien creatures, mysteries are shown to have scientific
underpinnings, and even nightmares have explanations. Fontaine’s music is one
of the few phenomena that is not explicitly rationalized. We see his music able to
unlock feelings and emotional states, exert agency over the characters, and even
move to a different level of narratological reality. It remains mysterious and in-
effable. Part of this magic relies on the way that it mediates between our reality
and that of the characters: we share the act of listening with them, to songs that
exist in both our world and theirs.47
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a series that aimed to confront the challenges
represented by the utopian aspirations of the original series. It dealt with the
emotional hardships that arise when the promises of utopia fail: when love is not
easy, when war is traumatic, and when innocents die. Vic’s music is shown to be part
of how the characters cope in these situations. Furthermore, by using music that also
exists in our reality, it instructs us in how to meet similar kinds of difficulties in our
own lives. When a shapeshifter and a Bajoran achieve emotional honesty with “I’ve
Got You Under My Skin,” and a war-wounded Ferengi is soothed by “I’ll Be
Seeing You,” we are shown models of how we can use this music for ourselves,
even if we do not immediately identify with the time and place of Sinatra’s Vegas.
Though Star Trek is best known for its futuristic technologies, here we see the
series depicting a rather more accessible technology: music, specifically the Sinatra
repertoire. This “technology of self” is provided for the audience and its use is
demonstrated for the viewers. The series uses a postmodern attitude to argue for the
power of this music, despite the temporal dislocation, familiar repertoire, and
problematic politics and cultural specificity of the original context. Star Trek tells us
that we may warp to the final frontier, but we can still swing with Sinatra.
 Sinatra in Space 173

Notes
1 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, episode 23, “Sarek,” directed by Les Landau,
aired May 14, 1990, Paramount, 2002, DVD; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 6, episode 13,
“Virtuoso,” directed by Les Landau, aired January 26, 2000, Paramount, 2005, DVD.
Most discussion of Star Trek’s explicit representation and presentation of music has
either focused on the classical art music in Star Trek, or the alterity of music made by
aliens. For further discussion of Mahler and Verdi in Voyager, see Jeremy Barham,
“Scoring Incredible Futures: Science-Fiction Screen Music, and ‘Postmodernism’ as
Romantic Epiphany,” The Musical Quarterly 91, nos. 3–4 (2008): 240–274. For more
on Klingon music see my “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,”
Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 7, no. 1 (2013), 19–52.
2 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6, episode 20, “His Way,” directed by Allan
Kroeker, aired April 22, 1998, Paramount, 2003, DVD.
3 The seven episodes featuring Fontaine are “His Way”; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
Season 6, episode 26, “Tears of the Prophets,” directed by Allan Kroeker, aired June
17, 1998, Paramount, 2003, DVD; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episode 1,
“Image in the Sand,” directed by Allan Kroeker, aired September 30, 1998,
Paramount, 2003, DVD; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episode 8, “The Siege
of AR-558,” directed by Winrich Kolbe, aired November 18, 1998, Paramount,
2003, DVD; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episode 10, “It’s Only a Paper
Moon,” directed by Anson Williams, aired December 30, 1998, Paramount, 2003,
DVD; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episode 15, “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang,”
directed by Mike Vejar, aired February 24, 1999, Paramount, 2003, DVD; Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episode 25/26, “What You Leave Behind,” directed by
Allan Kroeker, aired June 2, 1999, Paramount, 2003, DVD. Beyond the seven epi-
sodes featuring Fontaine, James Darren also features very briefly in the episode “The
Emperor’s New Cloak” as a character in the mirror universe, an alternate reality
version of the world of Star Trek. Darren’s character appears to be a twenty-fourth-
century human rather than a hologram, and thus distinctly different from the fictional
singer with whom he shares his appearance. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7,
episode 12, “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” directed by LeVar Burton, aired February
3, 1999, Paramount, 2003, DVD.
4 Ira Steven Behr, quoted in Terry J. Erdmann with Paula M. Block, Star Trek Deep
Space Nine Companion (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), 562.
5 Darren, quoted in Erdmann and Block, Deep Space Nine Companion, 563.
6 Michael Nelson, “Ol’ Red, White, and Blue Eyes: Frank Sinatra and the American
Presidency,” Popular Music & Society 24, no. 4 (2000), 82.
7 Ocean’s 11, directed by Lewis Milestone (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1960),
DVD; Robin and the 7 Hoods, directed by Gordon Douglas (Burbank, CA: Warner
Bros. Pictures, 1964), DVD.
8 This table does not include songs played as background music without vocals.
9 America witnessed a resurgence of interest in swing music, especially during the late
1980s and early 1990s. It is evident in the soundtracks to When Harry Met Sally (1989),
Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Swing Kids (1993), The Mask (1994), Swingers (1996), and so
on. Kenrda Unrah (among others) describes a Gap khakis commercial as a crystalizing
moment of the swing revival: it was both the product of, and catalyst for, renewed
interest in swing and music of the 1950s and 1960s. The commercial aired in the same
year as Fontaine’s debut. Unrah also identifies the specific interest in the Rat Pack and
Sinatra as part of this same cultural movement. Unrah writes that “[T]he swing revival
satiated a craving amongst young people for a return to more traditional ideas about
gender and social interactions. I argue that this desire to return to traditional gender
roles arose as part of the 1990’s ‘crisis of masculinity,’ in which White men saw
174 Tim Summers

themselves as victims of the feminist movement and sought to reestablish ‘family

values’ and pre-1960s masculine roles.” Kendra R. Unrah, “‘Jubilant Spirits of
Freedom’: Representations of the Lindy Hop in Literature and Film from the Swing
Era to the Swing Revival,” (Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 2012), 157.
10 Jeff Smith, “Popular Songs and Comic Allusion in Contemporary Cinema,” in
Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music, ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik
and Arthur Knights (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 407–430.
11 Of course, the use of songs as a medium for expressing romantic feelings has been
well-observed, since at least 1957. Donald Horton, “The Dialogue of Courtship in
Popular Songs,” American Journal of Sociology 62, no. 6 (1957), 569–578.
12 Ira Wells, “Swinging Modernism: Porter and Sinatra beneath the Skin,” University of
Toronto Quarterly 79, no. 3 (2010), 976.
13 Wells, “Swinging Modernism,” 977.
14 Karen McNally, When Frankie Went to Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and American Male
Identity (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 169.
15 Wells, “Swinging Modernism,” 983.
16 Here and elsewhere, script excerpts are taken from Kimberly A. Kindya and Elizabeth
Braswell (producers), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion: A Series Guide and Script
Library (New York: Simon and Schuster Interactive, 1999), and edited to match the
filmed episode.
17 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1, episode 23, “Skin of Evil,” directed by Joseph
L. Scanlan, aired April 25, 1988, Paramount, 2002, DVD.
18 Hell Is for Heroes, directed by Don Siegel (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1962),
accessed January 23, 2021, https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/
prog/004C8548?bcast=131354973
19 An isomorphic cover is one “whose interpretations tend toward homology with the base
song. Since isomorphic covers are cases where imitation is to some extent more important
than interpretation, tactics on the part of the performers are prone to be less marked than
they would be in a metamorphic example. … On the one hand, the cover performer’s
reception of the original leads us toward understanding their musical decisions, and on the
other, the cover performance contains traces that lead back to the performer’s reception—
and reaction to—the original.” Evan Ware, “Their Ways: Theorizing Reinterpretation in
Popular Music,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2015), 105–106.
20 See, for example, Zulu, directed by Cy Endfield (Hollywood, CA: Paramount
Pictures, 1964), accessed January 23 2021, https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/
index.php/prog/00015470?bcast=98345640; Assault on Precinct 13, directed by John
Carpenter (n.p.: CKK, 1976), accessed January 23 2021, https://learningonscreen.ac.
uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00C4705A?bcast=126030237; and Saving Private
Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1998),
DVD, among many others.
21 Behr, quoted in Erdmann and Block, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, 630.
22 Sinatra’s versions of “I’ll Be Seeing You” include a recording with Tommy Dorsey
(Victor, 20-1574, 1940, shellac), as well as later performances on Point of No Return
(Capitol, W1676, 1962, vinyl, arr. Axel Stordahl) and I Remember Tommy (Reprise,
FS1003, 1961, vinyl, arr. Sy Oliver).
23 McNally, When Frankie Went to Hollywood, 95.
24 McNally, When Frankie Went to Hollywood, 84.
25 Philip Furia, “Sinatra on Broadway,” in Frank Sinatra and Popular Culture, ed. Leonard
Mustazza (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 163–173.
26 McNally, When Frankie Went to Hollywood, 92, 132.
27 The House I Live In, directed by Mervyn LeRoy (Hollywood, CA: RKO Radio
Pictures, 1945), Library of Congress, accessed January 23, 2021, https://www.loc.
gov/item/mbrs00009167/
 Sinatra in Space 175

28 Dave Calvert, “Similar Hats on Similar Heads: Uniformity and Alienation at the Rat
Pack’s Summit Conference of Cool,” Popular Music 34, no. 1 (2015), 12–13. The
quotation is from J. Randy Taraborrelli, Sinatra: The Man Behind the Myth (Edinburgh:
Mainstream, 1999), 285.
29 Edmund Santurri, “Prophet, Padrone, Postmodern Prometheus: Moral Images of
Sinatra in Contemporary Culture,” in Frank Sinatra: History, Identity and American
Culture, ed. Stanislao Pugliese (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 206.
30 Ocean’s 11; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang.”
31 De Witt Douglas Kilgore, “‘The Best is Yet to Come’; Or, Saving the Future: Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine as Reform Afrofuturism,” in Black and Brown Planets: The Politics
of Race in Science Fiction, ed. Isiah Lavender III (Jackson, MS: University Press of
Mississippi, 2014), 39. Lisa Doris Alexander also discusses this exchange and suggests
that “It is only when the accurate version of history is acknowledged that Sisko can
negotiate his place in the past and fully participate in the present.” See also Lisa Doris
Alexander, “Far Beyond the Stars: The Framing of Blackness in Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 44, no. 3 (2015), 156.
32 Kilgore, “‘Best is Yet to Come’,” 40.
33 Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose, trans. William Weaver (San Diego:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 67.
34 Kenneth Gloag, Postmodernism in Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012), 159.
35 Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 47.
36 DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 47.
37 DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 74.
38 Questions of essentialist and anti-essentialist perspectives on identity are recurrent themes
in scholarship that deals with critical issues of identity. See, for just one discussion
amongst many, Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
(London: Verso, 1993), 80, 90–102.
39 David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. (London:
Routledge, 2016), 204.
40 Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle, 1999), 177.
It was tension stemming from these requirements that famously led to composer Ron
Jones exiting the series.
41 For holodeck episodes see, for example, Dennis McCarthy’s music for “Elementary,
Dear Data,” or Jay Chattaway’s scores for “A Fistful of Datas” and “Our Man Bashir.”
Other examples of more musically distinct underscore can be heard accompanying the
melancholy mood of “The Inner Light,” the cliffhanger drama of “The Best of Both
Worlds” and the romance of “Meridian.” Such examples remain, however, exceptions
to the overriding musical style of the Berman-era series. Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Season 2, episode 3, “Elementary, Dear Data,” directed by Rob Bowman, aired
December 5, 1988, Paramount, 2002, DVD; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6,
episode 8, “A Fistful of Datas,” directed by Patrick Stewart, aired November 7, 1992,
Paramount, 2002, DVD; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4 episode 10, “Our Man
Bashir,” directed by Winrich Kolbe, aired November 27, 1995, Paramount, 2003,
DVD; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5 episode 25, “The Inner Light,” di-
rected by Peter Lauritson, aired June 1, 1992, Paramount, 2002, DVD; Star Trek: The
Next Generation, Season 3, episode 26, “The Best of Both Worlds,” directed by
Cliff Bole, aired June 18, 1990, Paramount, 2002, DVD; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
Season 3, episode 8, “Meridian,” directed by Jonathan Frakes, aired November 14,
1994, Paramount, 2003, DVD. Music from “Elementary, Dear Data” is presented on
the CD album Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection, Volume One, La-La Land
Records, LLLCD1176, 2011, including the track described as “Denouement/The
Challenge.” Music from “A Fistful of Datas” is presented as a suite on the CD album
176 Tim Summers

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Volume IV, GNP Crescendo, GNPD 8057, 1998.
Music from “Our Man Bashir” is presented on the CD album Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine Collection, La-La Land Records, LLLCD1239, 2013, including the track described
as “Smashing (Bashir Back in Action)/Holosuite Buddies”. Music from “The Inner
Light” is presented on the CD album Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection, Volume
One, La-La Land Records, LLLCD1176, 2011, including the track described as
“Lullaby #1.” Music from “The Best of Both Worlds” is presented on the CD album
Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Best of Both Worlds Parts I and II (Original Television
Soundtrack—Expanded Collector’s Edition), GNP Crescendo, GNPD 8083, 2013, in-
cluding the track described as “Captain Borg.”
42 The cue, written by Dennis McCarthy, also contains brief interpolations of the Deep Space
Nine theme and a short fragment of “The Minstrel Boy” (a favorite song of the character
Miles O’Brien). On the CD album Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Collection, La-La Land
Records, LLLCD1239, 2013, this cue is presented as “Finality/The Way You Look
Tonight,” though mixed considerably differently to the version heard in the episode.
43 Frequently, Vic’s songs seem to achieve the level of meta-commentary: Behr notes
“The Best is Yet to Come” is partly addressing the viewers, a promise for the final
series of episodes of the season, while Vic’s performance of “The Way You Look
Tonight” is the last moment we see the entire cast together. In the same way, “Here’s
to the Losers” sounds immediately after the discussion of a dangerous mission that will
have tragic consequences, and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is heard when the issues of
the fictionality of Fontaine’s world becomes an issue for Nog. Behr, quoted in
Erdmann and Block, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, 666.
44 The sole exception is the “Alamo” song written by Jay Chattaway. This number is
quickly interrupted by the mob takeover in “Badda-bing, Badda-bang.” It remains the
outlier in Vic’s repertoire, both in presentation and extra-fictional life.
45 The album’s title is a reference to his introduction to “The Way You Look Tonight”
in the final episode of DS9. The album cover shows Darren dressed in Fontaine style,
and his commentary in the liner notes further accentuates the intersection between his
own biography and that of Fontaine. An interior picture of Darren during a recording
session, bowtie undone, singing at a hanging microphone, clearly emulates similar
pictures of Sinatra. James Darren, This One’s from the Heart, Concord Jazz, CCD-4868-
2, 1999, compact disc.
46 DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 73.
47 For more on sharing listening with characters on screen, see Ben Winters, Music,
Performance, and the Realities of Film (New York: Routledge, 2014), 66, 186, 188.
10
MARKERS OF UTOPIAN DIFFERENCE
Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and
Voyager (1995–2001)

Paul Sommerfeld

In 1991, Gene Roddenberry’s death presaged a new chapter for Star Trek. The Trek
of the 1990s, defined by the television series Deep Space Nine (1993–99; DS9) and
Voyager (1995–2001; VOY), offered narratives different from their predecessors,
Star Trek (1966–69; TOS) and The Next Generation (1987-94; TNG). As characters
in both series grapple with religious conflict, ethical dilemmas, and ongoing
warfare, Deep Space Nine and Voyager shift away from the familiar, relatively un-
complicated utopia presented in TOS and TNG. Rather than a vision centered on
white male leadership, in which conflict typically resolves by the episode’s close,
the lead characters of DS9 and VOY regularly face morally ambiguous situations
that force them to tackle unanswerable questions. This is not to suggest that TNG
and TOS never present their characters with more unsettling situations; it is a
question of degree. Outlier episodes appear (such as when, in TNG, Captain Picard
is kidnapped and made to join a collective hive mind), but they remain exceptions
to an established norm.1
Despite this pivot toward a more dystopian framework, TOS’s fanfare remains
present in both the DS9 and VOY title themes and underscores—but in frag-
mentary form. Indeed, through his use of the original fanfare’s characteristics,
composer Jay Chattaway’s musical sketches suggest a recognition of the fanfare’s
ability to navigate the ideological tensions and ethical quandaries within both
DS9 and VOY.2 Musical traces, deformations, and distortions of the fanfare color
and inform scoring practices in both series. Analysis of both Chattaway’s un-
studied manuscript sketches and their realizations in key episodes comprises the
basis for this chapter. Unpacking this compositional process shows the fanfare’s
indispensable role in articulating DS9 and VOY’s more dystopic orientations.
Chattaway began writing for Trek with The Next Generation. His output is
rivaled only by fellow composer Dennis McCarthy (see Table 10.1). Chattaway’s
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-10
178 Paul Sommerfeld

scoring shows a consistency of style that, with McCarthy’s contributions, came to

define the franchise’s televised sound. Yet Chattaway’s sketches also offer musical
continuity from TNG, a necessary concern in maintaining brand identity. Even
as DS9 and VOY present grittier versions of Star Trek’s utopian future, the
fanfare’s musical foundation simultaneously regenerates TOS’s more optimistic
liberal humanism. When consumed alongside knowledge of Trek’s past, both
series not only provide glimpses of Trek’s potential to offer new alternatives but
also reveal what has made past entries so memorable. In accomplishing this
through music, Chattaway works within an established mold without producing
a carbon copy of the past, fashioning a model for franchised television scoring.

TABLE 10.1 Comparison of episodes scored by Chattaway and

McCarthy to total number aired

Jay Chattaway Dennis McCarthy

TNG 42/176 88/176

DS9 59/173 77/173
VOY 54/170 65/170
ENT 28/98 30/98

Total 183/617 260/617

A brief discussion of each series’ origins and narrative developments contextualizes

the ostensible paradox. In 1992, Rick Berman and Michael Piller, the creative force
behind TNG, were tasked with developing a new Trek series.3 The result, DS9, was
the first Trek without any input from Roddenberry. In contrast to the transitory
spaceship in TOS and TNG, DS9 centers its action on a station led by a Black man,
Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), at the Federation’s border. The
backwater post develops into a bustling center of interstellar commerce with the
discovery of a stable wormhole that allows quick travel to a distant area called
the Gamma Quadrant. DS9’s fixed setting is but the first of many differences from
the Trek that precedes it. The crew that run the station, a mixture of officers
from the Federation and citizens from the nearby planet Bajor, clash over differing
values and religious beliefs. From Season 4 onward, a serialized storyline follows the
Federation’s ongoing war with a hostile species from the Gamma Quadrant. The
station operates as the locus of battle, and the crew cope with an attempted military
coup, betrayals from within their own government, death, loss, and the unforgiving
consequences of warfare. In so doing, DS9 ventures beyond Trek’s known fra-
mework; its characters are not guaranteed success.
Both TNG and DS9 aired as first-run syndicated series; dates and times varied
between individual television stations. As TNG ended in 1994, Paramount ex-
ecutives desired a series to anchor a new television station: the United Para-
mount Network (UPN).4 This led to Star Trek: Voyager. VOY presents a twist to
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 179

TOS’s familiar premise. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), captain of the
starship Voyager, is tasked with retrieving a Maquis ship that disappeared with a
Federation spy onboard.5 The Maquis are a faction of Federation citizens who
refuse to leave colonies ceded to the Cardassian Union, a militaristic species not
part of the Federation. Both the Maquis vessel and Voyager are snatched by a
powerful alien and taken to the Delta Quadrant, an area of uncharted space over
70,000 light years away from Earth. Forced to merge into one crew, Federation
officers and Maquis separatists must work together to complete an anticipated
seventy-five-year journey home. At face value, the premise mirrors Captain
James T. Kirk’s (William Shatner) ongoing missions aboard the Enterprise. But
like DS9, VOY privileges the crew’s internal frictions. Flung far outside the
Federation’s utopian stability, they wrestle with morally gray circumstances that
challenge their own value systems.
Both Commander Sisko and Captain Janeway engender their leadership roles
by treating the differences they encounter and the harsh conditions they face as
sources of strength that work toward achieving the Federation’s familiar utopian
aims. As a center of commerce and governance, the station in DS9 functions as an
area of exchange, whose cultural riches can be used to better the Federation and
its current and potential citizens. As a transitory ship, Voyager encounters new
worlds and ideas but eventually returns to its home, the Alpha Quadrant, with a
wealth of knowledge. These narratives resonate with Ernst Bloch’s depiction of
utopia as glimpsed in fleeting traces.6 Per Bloch, utopia is broached by way of
negotiation of the texts that surround the culture in which it exists.7 In DS9 and
VOY, the main characters more frequently acknowledge profound differences as
something of value and do not shy from unanswerable questions in striving to
uphold the Federation’s utopian governance. Bloch’s utopian frame remains
intact, but it is broached through altered means, almost as if by mirror image of
TOS’s less demanding embodiment.
The TOS fanfare’s critical function in solidifying Trek’s utopian future in its
earlier installments cannot be overstated. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s,
much of Star Trek’s film scoring, as well as scores for the televised TNG episodes,
privileges either the fanfare’s unambiguous presentation or themes noticeably de-
rivative of its characteristics.8 The fanfare rarely, if ever, provokes viewers with
discomforting scenarios that lack clean resolution. Through its presence, it reassures
them that “technology will solve their problems, virtually without human inter-
vention.”9 Through its prolonged use, then, the fanfare operates as a sonic icon, a
signifier expanded beyond its originating context.10 Caryl Flinn’s positioning of
film music within a sense of historical timelessness offers an explanation for the
construction of a “no-place” utopia from which Trek’s fanfare emerges. In so
doing, the fanfare surfaces from within a “historical and ideological base that, in
exceeding that base, broaches the utopian.”11 Because the fanfare—no matter how
blurred—forms the foundation of scoring practices in DS9 and VOY, both series
simultaneously regenerate the Trek proliferated by their antecedents.
180 Paul Sommerfeld

To that end, musical fragmentation saturates the scores of DS9 and VOY. The
fanfare itself rarely appears in unadulterated form, a metaphor for their interactions
with ambiguity as a means to broach a utopian existence. For example, a harmonic
version of the fanfare’s successive perfect fourths proliferates throughout TNG as
a means of scene transition, especially as a cadential arrival that frames the cut to
commercial. Rarely is it the first sound heard upon return to the episode’s diegesis.
Most often occurring in second inversion, the chord becomes part of Star Trek’s
sound world. In both DS9 and VOY, however, Chattaway often incorporates
a half-step chordal shift. The resulting minor second and augmented fifth register as
unsettling, with uncertain direction. The cue that follows the opening scene of the
DS9 Season 2 episode “The Collaborator” provides a clear illustration of its use.12
Inverted perfect fourth chords gradually morph into chromatic distortion in brass-
dominated instrumentation of cacophony (Example 10.1). The episode follows
Bajor’s election of a new spiritual leader, during which political subterfuge dom-
inates the proceedings.

EXAMPLE 10.1 Jay Chattaway, cue M11, mm. 34–37. From the DS9 episode “The
Collaborator” (1:35). Transcribed by author 13

This cue, the episode’s first, intimates the conflicting motivations ahead that
guide Major Kira Nerys’s (Nana Visitor) actions, as well as her fellow Bajorans’
moral lapses in sanctioning acts of violence and terrorism. Even as the episode
ends with a fragment of the DS9 title theme offering some resolution, the closure
remains open-ended; Kira dwells on the future implications for both her species
and the Federation. Moreover, by drawing on a fundamental element of TNG’s
musical legacy—itself derived from TOS—the scoring in DS9 expands the fan-
fare’s potential use and flexible invocation. The chromaticized fanfare chord does
occasionally appear in TNG, but its increased appearance in Chattaway’s episodes
for DS9 (and VOY) illustrates one brief example of how modification to the
fanfare’s musical characteristics can musically foreground both series’ narrative
differences.14 Yet Chattaway’s initial version of the chordal fanfare still appears in
both DS9 and VOY with some regularity. These distortions suggest a musical
analogue for both series’ broaching of the franchise’s utopia, where fleeting
glimpses abound.
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 181

Ties to the fanfare through both series’ title themes establish the tenor of Trek’s
learned and recognizable musical past. Neil Lerner has demonstrated the con-
nections at length but contextualizing the nuances of how both themes bridge the
franchise’s musical past necessitates further explanation. McCarthy’s theme for
DS9 emphasizes perfect fourths, fifths, and octaves, reiterating the pastoral side
of the original fanfare’s pedal points and wide-open musical spacing via a solo
trumpet over a sparse texture—a metaphor for the station’s lonely outpost on the
Federation’s frontier.15 Yet the theme’s melodic kernel includes the same intervallic
content from the opening of TNG (m. 1, Example 10.2). McCarthy places his
theme in a different rhythmic profile of straight sixteenths (Example 10.3). His
theme also sounds over a pedaled C; the empty texture becomes a metaphor for the
station’s isolation.

EXAMPLE 10.2 Jerry Goldsmith, opening of the TNG title theme. Transcribed by
author 16

EXAMPLE 10.3 Dennis McCarthy, DS9 title theme. Transcribed by author 17

Jerry Goldsmith’s title theme for VOY, however, contains a dearth of tangible
links to the original fanfare. Lerner provides a similar assessment, stating “it’s
difficult to imagine either TOS theme or TNG theme as fitting with the serene
images of the ship gracefully floating through space that open Voyager.”18 The
steady tempo, greater reliance on straight quarter and half notes, continued use of
perfect fifth leaps, and use of strings rather than horn distance Goldsmith’s theme
from the TOS fanfare. Concealed motivic links to the fanfare, however, can still
be found within Goldsmith’s theme. The final gesture of the second statement,
reiterated an octave higher for the VOY theme’s final phrase, provides the clue.
In each statement, the theme leaps from C# to G# before arriving at F#.
Together, the three pitches form a first inversion of the fanfare’s successive
perfect fourths. The pitches are not in the correct order, nor do they follow a
consistent ascending or descending direction, but the theme’s preceding measure
relies only on C# and F# before arriving at G# on the following downbeat.
Because of the entrenched musical-ideological baggage in Trek, first enacted
by TOS, the enriching effects that DS9 and VOY offer become somewhat
subdued.19 In microcosm, VOY’s focus on reaching Earth as a catch-all for
home mirrors Star Trek’s problematic politics of white male centrality. But a base
moored in the recognizable (and a literally moored space station in DS9) is
182 Paul Sommerfeld

arguably necessary to explore new variations within an established franchise.20

Voyager’s predicament provides a helpful metaphor. The ship has drifted into
uncharted space—narratively, musically, and ideologically—but the tenuous links
between its own title theme and the fanfare nevertheless suggest dogged con-
fidence, as if intimating the reassuring utopia that lies at journey’s end. The
framework of Trek’s past is what allows both DS9 and VOY to offer something
different. The reveille, preparatory, and mnemonic identification of the TOS
fanfare’s characteristics mitigates potential skepticism of two series that otherwise
differ markedly from TOS and TNG.21 This familiar framework of linkage—
admittedly not a concept invented by Star Trek’s creators—emboldens DS9 and
VOY to explore more nuanced issues whose questioning cannot always be
glossed over or brushed aside. Both Sisko and Janeway challenge TOS’s tradi-
tional white male centrality—Sisko as Black, and Janeway as a woman. In tying
the TOS fanfare to their leadership, the fanfare begins to expand beyond the
ideological tensions of its past—or at least attempts to. With their experiences as
markers of difference, Sisko and Janeway set their respective series as simulta-
neously apart from and enmeshed within Trek’s musical-ideological past.

The Fanfare and Religious Belief in Deep Space Nine

DS9’s preoccupation with religiosity complicates its depiction of Star Trek’s
utopia. More than any other character in DS9, Commander Sisko’s seven-season
journey encapsulates a head-on confrontation with the unknown. Sisko’s re-
lationship with the series’ religious undertones demonstrates how the TOS
fanfare is used to negotiate Star Trek’s expanded frame. Darko Suvin provides
some helpful background. He defines science fiction as largely non-religious.
Because utopian societies are established through humanity’s own efforts, they
cannot include religion. Suvin argues, “utopia is Other World immanent to the
world of human or least psychozoic endeavor, dominion and hypothetic
possibility—and not transcendental in a religious sense.”22 Steeped in a liberal
humanist ideology, in which technology has solved humanity’s problems, Star
Trek (at least in this respect) follows the model Suvin presents. In the Star Trek
that precedes DS9, religion plays a minor role. Vulcans admittedly retain their
mystical beliefs, and their rituals reunite Spock (Leonard Nimoy) with his katra
(soul) in the 1984 film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.23 But religion persists at
a localized plane of the cultural or individual. Humanity, the stand-in for utopian
perfection, engages in few displays of spiritual devotion. Deep Space Nine’s pri-
mary character, Sisko, nevertheless grapples with religious belief throughout the
entire series, which often places him at odds with the Federation’s principles.
Deep Space Nine’s pilot episode, “Emissary,” establishes the framework for
Sisko’s religious journey.24 An opening scrawl of text provides necessary context:
a Federation spaceship is in the midst of a losing battle with the Borg. The Borg, a
hive-mind, cyborg species that assimilates others into a unified collective, destroys
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 183

the ship. Sisko’s wife dies during the encounter. Low brass in ascending chro-
matic gestures accompany the opening scene; the lack of fanfare-related material
foreshadows the series’ more complicated perspective. Uncertainty rises to the
forefront as the Federation is on the defensive. Heralded by almost all Star Trek
opening sequences, the fanfare’s absence is noteworthy. In addition to the TOS
and TNG television series, the fanfare opens nearly every film in the Star Trek
franchise.
Only upon the introduction of Sisko’s relationship with his son Jake does
the fanfare enter, a move which centers the fanfare within DS9’s interpersonal
relationships. Previous Trek installments follow a similar course—for example, the
fanfare operates as a stand-in for TOS’s camaraderie—but the diverse characters
that make up DS9 offer increased expansion. After Sisko convinces Jake that com-
manding Deep Space Nine will be an adventure, a solo flute enters (Example 10.4).
The ascending arpeggios mimic the opening gesture of the title theme—and by
extension, TNG—but in a more lyrical tempo, with legato articulation echoed by
the horn and trumpet. The arpeggio may not be two successive perfect fourths, but
the contour, instrumentation, and narrative connections forge an unmistakable link.

EXAMPLE 10.4 Dennis McCarthy, from the DS9 episode “Emissary” (5:37). Transcribed
by author

In contrast to the musical content that precedes it in the episode, this opening cue
provides implicit assurance that this Star Trek is not a complete departure from the
franchise’s established paradigm. To wit, the cue segues into the first appearance
of DS9’s title sequence.
DS9 nevertheless limits this utopian relief to instead highlight Sisko’s anger.
Three years after the loss of his wife, Sisko continues to grieve. He blames Captain
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), who controlled the Borg vessel that caused
Sisko’s loss (Picard had been captured by the Borg at the time).25 Upon meeting
184 Paul Sommerfeld

with Picard, a visceral reminder of his loss, Sisko becomes visibly hostile. In contrast
to the stoic resolve displayed by both Captains Picard and Kirk, the viewer is
presented with a leader wrestling with emotional turmoil. Sisko contemplates
leaving his post altogether. Past Trek entries address personal loss—Spock’s death in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan being the most prominent example—but Kirk, in
that position, does not think of leaving Starfleet.26 The scoring at the close of Sisko
and Picard’s conversation speaks to this shift in orientation. An inversion of suc-
cessive fourths enters as Sisko angrily spits out, “In the meantime, I will do the job I
have been ordered to do to the best of my ability, sir” (m. 2, Figure 5, at timecode
18:30 in the episode). The melody continues an ascent of G-C-D-F, which briefly
suggests the fanfare’s opening gesture in root position through its span (a minor
seventh) and its duration (a half note). The chromatic, descending bass line adds a
touch of melancholy, while the melody’s arrival on E suggests fulfillment of the
arpeggiated second-inversion triad that not only opens this statement but also be-
gins the TNG and DS9 main themes. Strings replace brass instrumentation. Here,
Sisko pledges to fulfill his duties, but does so grudgingly—a leader committed to his
duty but vulnerable to his emotions. The musical clouding stands as a mark of
difference. Sisko’s borderline contempt toward Picard, one of Star Trek’s most
beloved icons, flies in the face of convention.27 In contrast, Picard shares a warm,
reverent relationship with his predecessor, Kirk, in the 1994 film Star Trek
Generations.28
Both TNG and TOS do explore loss and grief—as TNG does with Picard’s
aforementioned capture by the Borg—but neither do so in their first episodes, and
never to such a pronounced degree.29 Sisko’s contemplation of leaving Starfleet
is instead the impetus for his religious journey. Yet the pilot episode’s final act, in
which Sisko embraces command of the station, points to DS9’s sustained, if ten-
uous, allegiance to Star Trek’s utopian promise. Sisko informs Picard that he has
changed his mind and wishes to remain. Sisko’s interaction with an alien species
in a nearby wormhole has renewed his desire for (intellectual) exploration.
Through questioning, he has found certainty anew. The fanfare’s implied presence
directs this inclusivity toward the Federation’s soothing utopian outlook. Sisko tells
Picard, “I’m certain sir” (1:28:10). A slower, stately version of ascending perfect
intervals enters, with multiple inversions of the TOS fanfare’s successive perfect
fourths in unison horn as Picard extends his hand (Example 10.5). It is as if
Picard were passing the baton to Sisko (even as TNG continued to air for two
more seasons).

EXAMPLE 10.5 Dennis McCarthy, from the DS9 episode “Emissary” (1:28:10).
Transcribed by author
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 185

In recalling the TOS fanfare, the score grounds DS9’s uncertainty within a larger
framework of Trek’s established, known future. The fanfare’s musical traces forge
the link. Sisko now readily accepts his continued membership in Starfleet. He has
seen new, unfathomable alternatives in the wormhole aliens, but remains com-
mitted to the Federation. His decision, accompanied by the fanfare’s components,
implicitly ties the series to Trek’s past iterations while also presenting a more
inclusive, complex vision.
As Sisko wrestles with the religious connotations of his experiences in the
wormhole that entice him to stay in command, his choices illustrate DS9’s
proclivity to juxtapose doubt with certainty. The Bajorans regard the wormhole
aliens as gods and view Sisko as a prophet whom they call the Emissary. The TOS
fanfare’s musical ties to Sisko’s negotiation of these beliefs performs three func-
tions. First, glimpses of the fanfare depict Sisko’s own questioning of religion and
his role within it. Second, they provide an aural metaphor for DS9’s focus on the
unknown. Third, they expand the possibilities of meaning associated with the
fanfare itself. Because of its past use and ideological baggage, the original fanfare’s
musical ties help encode the ideological exploration within Trek’s larger frame-
work. Throughout all seven seasons, Sisko maintains deep respect for the Bajoran
religion. He does not regard their beliefs as less evolved than his own, as char-
acters in both TOS and TNG frequently do with other religions.30 Sisko presents
a marked contrast with Kirk in “The Paradise Syndrome,” who romanticizes the
Native American tribe he discovers as embodiments of the noble savage.31 In
contrast, Sisko not only supports the continuation of Bajor’s religious traditions,
but eventually joins their gods—the wormhole aliens—in their alternate per-
ception of reality where time has no meaning.32
Sisko’s acceptance of his religious role develops gradually. In the Season 3 finale,
“The Adversary,” the fanfare’s opening gesture accompanies his promotion from
Commander to Captain (Example 10.6).33 Unison horns enter as his son pins the
new pip on Sisko’s chest.

EXAMPLE 10.6 Jay Chattaway, cue M11, mm. 1–2. From the DS9 episode “The
Adversary” (0:40). Transcribed by author 34

Sisko now appears committed to the Federation and its utopian promise. At this
point, he continues to respectfully dismiss the Bajorans’ belief that he is the chosen
Emissary from their gods. He continues to reject his role as Emissary until the
Season 4 episode “Accession.”35 A rival Emissary emerges from the wormhole, and
Sisko breathes a sigh of relief. He becomes troubled, however, by the new
Emissary’s desire to reinstate the Bajoran caste system. Sisko and the rival re-enter
the wormhole to discover who the true Emissary is. Upon the aliens’ admission that
186 Paul Sommerfeld

Sisko is in fact the Emissary (“You are of Bajor”), a solo horn enters in a musical
foreground filled with woodwinds and synthesizer. The ascending gesture mi-
mics the TOS fanfare: D# slides into an E such that the melody emphasizes two
perfect fourths, with the second receiving a quasi-leading tone. The subsequent
G is part of a transition to new material, but the descending perfect fourth that
follows suggests, through its changed pitch content, a metaphor for Sisko’s
spiritual realization. Multiple sets of successive fourths, separated by a half step,
reflect his need to bridge the divide between his Federation heritage and Bajoran
religiosity. The horn’s pairing with this realization makes the link with the
fanfare all the clearer. Sisko is the true Emissary for the Bajoran people, while
also a Federation captain. When forced to admit his duality, the fanfare’s rem-
nants remain, but are masked as a musical deformation that mirrors Sisko’s own
internal conflict and reassessment.
Material related to the original fanfare appears with less frequency as Sisko
embraces his role as Bajoran Emissary. The scoring implies that as he embraces
his new role, he drifts outside the Federation’s more straightforward utopian
society, which focuses on known, even scientific, answers. The Season 5
episode “Rapture” provides clarification.36 Sisko begins receiving visions that
help him locate an ancient Bajoran city. The station’s doctor, Julian Bashir
(Alexander Siddig) does not attempt to explain Sisko’s experiences using sci-
entific methods. His perspective illustrates DS9’s willingness to contextualize
Sisko’s religious experiences within both secular and religious terms. When the
visions begin to threaten Sisko’s life, Dr. Bashir focuses on what he can medically
accomplish to stop them rather than explore their cause. In so doing, the episode
illustrates a sensibility in which commonly conflicting perspectives—science and
religion—are to some extent embraced equally. The episode reveals DS9’s “will-
ingness to allow either the secular or religious context to be legitimized.”37
And yet, ties to the TOS fanfare in the episode’s scoring suggest that Star
Trek’s more straightforward perspective remains intact. First, when Sisko
awakens from surgery to discover that his ability to have visions has been re-
moved, a solo flute enters in wide leaps followed by a tritone and whole tone
scale subset. Such moments of success nearly always receive horn and any
content related to the fanfare. For example, in the pilot episode, when Sisko
escapes near death and successfully exits the wormhole, truncated statements of
the DS9 title theme appear. Their lack here indicates Sisko’s infidelity to the
Federation by relying on his spiritual experiences. It also indicates that Sisko
himself does not regard the surgery as a success; it has robbed him of his visions.
In the scene that follows, a uniformed Sisko informs his superior that it was in
his capacity as both Emissary and Federation representative that he re-
commended that Bajor defer membership in the government until a later date.
The admiral upbraids Sisko for his disloyalty to the Federation but recognizes
that the Federation needs Sisko for Bajor to eventually join. As if to confirm
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 187

this friction between opposing views as a strength, a solo horn enters in an

inverted arpeggio of successive fourths. Although saddened by the loss of his
visions, Sisko cannot reject his Federation heritage outright. It remains a
possible, rather than sole, guiding force.
Because so little of the original fanfare’s musical residue appears in the DS9
finale “What You Leave Behind,” even as it seemingly returns to TOS’s fra-
mework, the series ends in a cloud of ambiguity.38 A slow, solo rendition of
the DS9 title theme does trail the final line of dialogue, in which Quark states,
“The more things change, the more they stay the same” (1:29:30). The title
theme’s brass instrumentation and intervallic patterns are the only traces of the
TOS fanfare. Peter Linford’s analysis of the show’s relationship with religion
provides a helpful intersection: “the position DS9 finally holds is that where
religion exists, then so be it. Where it is absent, so much the better.”39 In other
words, even as DS9 allows greater diversity within characters like Sisko, it returns
to Trek’s originating model for Trek at large. The presence of the DS9 title theme at
the series’ close, rather than the original fanfare itself, sonically legitimizes DS9’s
plurality. But the title theme’s ties to the fanfare also indicate a hierarchical approach
in which the Federation’s unquestioning utopia serves as the goal: “The more
things change, the more they stay the same.” Bajor is poised to join the Federation.
Prolonged war with the Dominion has ended at great cost, but has achieved un-
precedented peace between the Dominion, Federation, Klingons, and Cardassians.
Musical traces and distortions of the fanfare allow glimpses of Star Trek’s utopia to
come into existence, but in so doing, they privilege the inevitability of TOS’s
orientation, in which too much questioning and uncertainty are deemed largely
unnecessary.
Yet Sisko’s final actions, in which he leaves the Federation and joins the
wormhole aliens, allows a thread of the series’ uncertainty to continue. Sisko’s
action contains the Bajoran faith within itself, rather than becoming of universal
significance. To that end, the music that underscores his joining with the
wormhole aliens contains few, if any, ties to the fanfare. An ascending solo horn
suggests one connection (Example 10.7). Its initial leap is a major sixth, but the
gesture’s final pitch frames a minor seventh, key to the fanfare’s intervallic
structure. Moreover, ending with this gesture continues a degree of uncertainty
in Sisko’s future.

EXAMPLE 10.7 Dennis McCarthy, from the DS9 episode “What You Leave Behind”
(1:14:52). Transcribed by author
188 Paul Sommerfeld

As he informs his new wife, Captain Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson), he could rejoin
her “Maybe [in] a year, maybe yesterday” (1:17:55); he continues to broach his
own utopian existence, as the traces of the TOS fanfare illustrate. The cue likewise
does not extend Sisko’s role in the Bajoran faith into a one of leadership in the
Federation’s own system. Sisko’s focus remains on his personal experiences.
Similarly, the DS9 title theme remains tethered to the series; it does not appear in
other Trek installments with the ubiquity that the TOS fanfare enjoys. Unlike
the fanfare or the TNG theme, it is limited to DS9’s more specific focus; it, like the
Bajoran religion, is tied to the local rather than the Federation’s—and TOS’s—
implicit universal.

Ethical Dilemmas in Voyager

Throughout its seven-year run, Star Trek: Voyager continued the trajectory es-
tablished by DS9 by crafting narratives with morally gray areas.40 Flung 70,000
light years from Earth, the crew begin their journey homeward under the lea-
dership of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). On the surface, their
peripatetic travel seems more akin to the TNG model. Nevertheless, Janeway,
a pragmatic scientist by training, is forced to “address every value of the
Federation … in a universe in which those values may no longer apply.”41 With
Star Trek’s utopia challenged from within, ideological tensions surface. Voyager
wrestles with countless hostile species and the frequent loss of crewmembers.
Among her many decisions, Janeway executes a temporary member of the crew
(“Tuvix”); makes alliances with the Borg, the Federation’s mortal enemy
(“Scorpion, Parts I & II”); and sacrifices herself to negate a timeline filled with
loss and death (“Year of Hell, Parts I & II”).42 On several occasions, her desire for
personal vengeance clouds her judgement, as in “Equinox, Parts I & II.”43 Yet,
because of Voyager’s largely human cast of characters and their focus on reaching
Earth as they discover new worlds and species, the series flirts with a TOS-style
construction.
The scoring of Janeway throughout the series reflects the ethical quandaries in
which she finds herself while guiding her crew home. The fanfare itself rarely
appears, but VOY’s title theme fulfills a role similar to its thematic predecessor in
TOS. The moments in which the TOS fanfare enters mark Janeway’s attempts as
successful, while also drawing on Star Trek’s established ideological hierarchy. In
so doing, VOY remains tied to TOS’s framework, but its musical components
expand the fanfare’s potential meanings through glimpses charged with possibility
rather than finality. Fanfare appearances in VOY’s pilot episode, “Caretaker,”
advance this perspective from the outset.44 “Caretaker” begins almost exactly like
DS9, with a scrawl of text and ascending low brass. The Maquis are in rebellion
against the Federation, and Voyager is tasked with finding a missing enemy vessel
on which the Federation had placed a valuable spy. The premise alone illustrates
a Trek quite different from its past; the Federation is engaged in civil war.
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 189

Throughout all but the final two minutes of the ninety-minute episode, the TOS
fanfare never appears. A shortened version of the series’ title theme, however,
fleetingly fulfills a leitmotif function like the fanfare in TOS. For example, when
Janeway promises to bring the Federation’s spy home, the title theme’s opening
gesture sounds in solo horn (Example 10.8). It then reappears toward the epi-
sode’s end when Lieutenant Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) risks his life to
save Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang).

EXAMPLE 10.8 Jay Chattaway, from the VOY episode “Caretaker” (15:30; 1:10:25).
Transcribed by author

In both instances, the title theme, like the TOS fanfare, represents truth and
honor. A perfect fourth increases to a fifth, and the minor seventh widens to an
octave. Perhaps the expansion is a literal example of the wider, unknown space in
which the crew find themselves. Nevertheless, the motive is a more distant re-
lation to the fanfare.
The original fanfare’s role in VOY as articulator of utopian existence through
attempted coexistence finds its strongest support in the pilot’s final scene.
The fanfare makes a pronounced, if fleeting, appearance, as if confirming the
characters’ inevitable return to the Alpha Quadrant with their integrity intact.
Janeway makes a stirring speech to motivate her newly-blended crew:

As the only Starfleet vessel assigned to the Delta Quadrant, we’ll continue to
follow our directive, to seek new worlds and explore space. But our primary
goal is clear. … Somewhere, along this journey, we’ll find a way back.45

Members of the Maquis and Starfleet must work together. When Janeway asserts that
they will continue to explore space, the fanfare enters in solo horn (Example 10.9).
Although after the half-step descent that follows the successive fourths, the horn
deviates from the TOS fanfare’s outline, its entrance posits that even as Janeway finds
a way home, her crew will continue to adhere to Federation principles—that is,
uphold Star Trek’s utopian promise.

EXAMPLE 10.9 Jay Chattaway, cue M84Rev2, mm. 46–49. From the VOY episode
“Caretaker” (1:29:20). Transcribed by author 46
190 Paul Sommerfeld

In this revised version of the cue shown in the example, Chattaway aligns the
original fanfare’s entrance with the phrase “explore space.” Television scoring is a
collaborative art, but the change here demonstrates the fanfare’s powerful role in
articulating VOY’s ideological ties to its predecessors. Chattaway thereafter links
the fanfare’s appearance with reiterations of Goldsmith’s title theme for VOY,
forging a musical and ideological bond. Their linkage with a crew populated by
opposing factions in a foreign situation highlights the series’ differences from its
Trek predecessors. The crew must find a way to work together to survive, and
the fanfare’s presence provides the strength to do so. Yet the fanfare’s blatant
placement in the scene makes the crew’s forthcoming struggles a foregone
success. The moment almost rings hollow and unearned—a seemingly back-
wards turn to the uncomplicated presentations of the fanfare in TOS.47 The
key lies in the VOY title theme fragments that follow. This subtle but im-
portant shift expands the fanfare’s potential meaning. While asserting their
success as inevitable—a reliance on TOS’s known framework—it simulta-
neously provides a window into VOY’s subsequent exploration of how the
Federation’s value systems weather the Delta Quadrant. The link between
the fanfare and the VOY title theme, in this moment, gives VOY the ne-
cessary room to wrestle with the moral and ethical dilemmas its crew will
encounter in unknown space.
One pivotal episode illustrates the fanfare’s contribution in unpacking the
ethical dilemmas Janeway must confront as she and her crew attempt to enact Star
Trek’s well-known utopia from afar. The Season 2 episode “Tuvix” provides a
direct contrast to TOS’s “The Enemy Within” by unpacking its straightforward
morality.48 In “The Enemy Within,” Captain Kirk is accidently split into rival
personalities—one benevolent, one aggressive—after a transporter malfunction.
The two halves remain at odds with one another throughout the episode.
“Tuvix” inverts this error. Returning from an away mission, Tuvok and Neelix
are accidentally merged into one being during a transporter malfunction. Because
the crew are unable to reverse the process, this new being, an amalgamation of
both Tuvok’s and Neelix’s personalities and memories, takes the name Tuvix.
Over several weeks he integrates into the ship’s culture. The narrative differ-
ences between the episodes lie in their endings. Prior to their reunion in “The
Enemy Within,” the good Kirk assures his weeping alter ego that they both
will live on as parts of each other (45:30). All returns to normal as the Enterprise
crew reunite Kirk’s two halves. In “Tuvix,” however, the eponymous char-
acter has no opportunity to continue living. The Doctor (Robert Picardo)
discovers a procedure that will separate Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix
while killing Tuvix. Janeway ultimately chooses to execute Tuvix, a rare
course of action in Star Trek’s utopian society.49 Her morally ambiguous de-
cision provides little closure. Indeed, “Tuvix” remains one of VOY’s most
complex and contested episodes.
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 191

Musical traces of the TOS fanfare frame Janeway’s decision. The fanfare itself
fulfills a similar purpose in “The Enemy Within”—Jessica Getman has docu-
mented its manipulation to depict both the good and evil Kirks throughout the
episode—but “Tuvix” reorients its components to encode the episode’s moral
ambiguity.50 Chattaway’s scoring begins the process with the camera’s close-up
reveal of Tuvix. Flute and strings enter in a whole tone subset that outlines a
tritone. The motive constitutes a distortion of the fanfare’s smallest kernel, a
single perfect fourth. Moreover, it is as if the intervallic shift, spurred by Tuvix’s
reveal, cannot continue. Stripped of its melody and instrumentation, the fanfare,
as a stand-in for the Federation’s order and normalcy, has no place for Tuvix.
As the crew begin to accept Tuvix, fragments of VOY’s title theme re-enter
the texture, a practice analogous to the TOS fanfare’s function in earlier Trek. For
example, a montage of his settling into life on Voyager, narrated by Janeway’s log,
features the return of perfect fifths and fourths in sequence (Example 10.10).
Despite the unorthodoxy of his birth, Tuvix finds acceptance within the Voyager
family, as the horn’s presence seems to confirm.

EXAMPLE 10.10 Jay Chattaway, cue M42, mm. 5–8. From the VOY episode
“Tuvix” (28:30). Transcribed by author 51

After the initial descending leap, the melody’s frame forms an inversion of two
successive fourths. The TOS fanfare may not appear, but its glimpses structure
the cue. Prior to the montage, the horn has not appeared in the episode since
the opening cue. The fanfare’s lack itself suggests the crews’ hesitation. Tuvix
remains an anomaly. Yet Chattaway’s score reverts to increased ambiguity with
the revelation that the transporter malfunction can be undone. Tuvix’s ex-
clamation that he has the right to live lacks accompaniment of the fanfare’s
characteristics. Instead, the cue is filled with more chromatic melodic move-
ment, a distortion with the implicit suggestion of not only Janeway’s forth-
coming decision but also Tuvix’s lack of, for want of a better word, agency.
Prior to his execution, as Tuvix forgives Janeway for her decision, a solo horn
finally re-enters the texture. The fanfare’s successive fourths remain within
the gesture, A-D-G and E-A-D, but are masked by descending inversion, as if
acknowledging the unenviable decision regarding Tuvix’s fate. No clear-cut
solution exists.
The melody that enters with Tuvok and Neelix’s return suggests a semblance
of the moral certainty that TOS exhibits in “The Enemy Within.” The motive
192 Paul Sommerfeld

is the same from Tuvix’s montage, but in lush orchestration and a decidedly pan-
tonal context of chordal successive fourths (Example 10.11). The lack of brass
subtly hints at the moral ramifications of Janeway’s decision by preventing no-
tions of complete certainty.

EXAMPLE 10.11 Jay Chattaway, cue 54, mm. 34–35. From the VOY episode
“Tuvix” (44:45). Transcribed by author 52

Repetition of the Tuvix motive thereafter shifts to a viola and horn combination,
as Janeway begins to accept her decision. The first three pitches of the VOY title
theme in violin, the episode’s final musical gesture, receives open fifth accom-
paniment. Its presence suggests a hollow moral victory in Tuvok and Neelix’s
return. Because the fanfare itself does not appear, the moment allows its
traces—the opening phrase of VOY’s theme as well as the successive fourths of
the TOS fanfare, inverted—to reflect the episode’s conflicted morality. Issues
of right and wrong are not the primary focus. Rather, “Tuvix” weighs the cost of
finding answers in impossible situations, of what is both lost and gained. The
fanfare’s absence reveals just as much as its presence. Here, its glimpses intimate
the strength Janeway must find to soldier onward despite uncertainty in her own
morality. The fanfare’s traces allow room for that doubt without condemning her
own questioning outright.
Voyager’s series finale, “Endgame,” bookends the series’ use of its title theme
and the TOS fanfare to articulate moral dilemmas.53 At the episode’s opening, an
aged Admiral Janeway, having brought Voyager back to Earth after a twenty-year
journey, time travels to a Voyager still in the Delta Quadrant. She wants to bring
the crew home earlier to avoid the deaths of several beloved crewmembers. In
the present, Captain Janeway has just discovered a Borg transwarp hub that could
bring Voyager home in minutes. Upon Admiral Janeway’s arrival, she and Captain
Janeway argue over the ethics of destroying the hub to impede the Borg instead
of using it to return Voyager home. The two women eventually compromise on a
plan that achieves both objectives.
Before reaching that compromise, Ensign Kim speaks in favor of the Captain’s
plan to destroy the Borg hub for the greater good. During his monologue, a
rhythmically augmented version of the series title theme sounds in solo horn
(Example 10.12). Its presence, looped with a prominent statement of the original
fanfare, reiterates the crew’s collective loyalty and trust.
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 193

EXAMPLE 10.12 Jay Chattaway, cue M65, mm. 1–11. From the VOY episode
“Endgame” (1:06:40). Transcribed by author 54

Indeed, reunited with her familial network on Voyager, the Admiral remembers
“how much they loved being together” (1:07:41). Transitional material marked
by descending stepwise motion links the VOY title theme to the TOS fanfare, an
action that mirrors the pilot episode in reverse order. Harry offers a toast, “to the
journey,” and the TOS fanfare enters in solo horn (mm. 10–11). The rhythmic
augmentation makes the statement more emphatic. Here, the series’ ties to Star
Trek’s past become clear. In appearing with the words “to the journey,” the
fanfare suggests that the journey ends within the warm embrace of TOS’s utopia
to which the fanfare still retains links. That journey remains centered in the
relationships between the crew, just as in TOS, but VOY’s heightened focus
on moral quandaries, as seen in Janeway’s leadership, has expanded the realm of
possibility. Voyager may have expanded Star Trek’s outlook, but the franchise’s
larger framework remains.
To that end, the TOS fanfare itself appears once more as the two Janeways
reach their compromise. The Captain offers the Admiral good luck, and the
fanfare sounds in violin in straight rhythm (Example 10.13).

EXAMPLE 10.13 Jay Chattaway, cue M66Rev, mm. 17–20. From the VOY episode
“Endgame” (1:09:00). Transcribed by author 55

The clarinet and viola echo an inversion of interlocking perfect fourth sequences—
a nod to the element of uncertainty that tinges their mutual decision—but the TOS
fanfare’s initial presence is noticeable. The two women have agreed to a course of
action that they are hopeful will bring Voyager and her crew home. In using the
fanfare rather than the VOY title theme, the moment foreshadows success. And
194 Paul Sommerfeld

because the fanfare appears twice in such close succession, its significance increases.
With such rare appearances throughout the entire series, the TOS fanfare’s oc-
currence here intimates that Voyager is coming to an end. Janeway’s final line, “Set a
course for home,” spurs a variation of the VOY title theme in resounding horn
choir. Tellingly, the final gesture is a second inversion arpeggio of successive fourths
and not the fanfare. Rather than the relatively uncomplicated fanfare, viewers are
presented with VOY’s nuanced, if inconsistent, approach.

Conclusion: Same Means, Different Ends

Even as DS9 and VOY offer nuanced explorations of Star Trek’s utopia, their
musical content, in relying on the original fanfare’s musical web, directs their
orientation toward TOS’s established and relatively straightforward paradigm.
Both series gravitate toward the unknown—DS9 in its religiosity, VOY through
its moral ambiguity. Their questioning, however, exists as part of a journey to-
ward the enactment of TOS. Deep Space Nine ends with achieving newfound
peace between the Federation, Dominion, Klingons, and Cardassians. Voyager
finally reaches Earth. Garak (Andrew Robinson), the Cardassian tailor from DS9,
provides an apt metaphor when discussing root beer: “It’s so bubbly and cloying
and happy. Just like the Federation. If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.
It’s insidious.”56 The fanfare, tied to TOS, perhaps becomes like Garak’s root
beer; the motif becomes an insidious symbol through the volume of sheer re-
petition in Trek’s previous installments.
Yet it is only because Star Trek had already accrued this cultural capital—its
association with an attained utopian future—that the alternative explorations
using similar elements could develop. As Chattaway’s sketches demonstrate, both
his and McCarthy’s use of the TOS fanfare maintain the brand of Star Trek’s
sound world. Traces, fragments, and distortions of the fanfare’s musical char-
acteristics raise the dual specter of ambiguity and uncertainty, but their presence
articulates DS9 and VOY as within the Trek world. In their fleeting glimpses of
alternatives, the fanfare’s Blochian traces broadcast how TOS’s utopia might
come to exist. Both series experience the juxtaposition of incompatible beings
and situations on a weekly basis, all for (potential) betterment. Their concentrated
focus can remain contained within Star Trek’s broader paradigm, while also sti-
mulating reflection from within—a model for franchised television scoring. Sisko
asserts to the mischievous alien Q (John de Lancie), “I’m not Picard,” but viewed
through the lens of shared characteristics, neither he—nor Janeway—are anti-
thetical to the famed captain.57
As part of the TOS fanfare’s defined construct, the musical traces within both
series’ scoring can be noticed precisely because those characteristics are already
recognizable and rapidly understood. Constructed and repeated over time, both
the fanfare’s lack of presence and repurposed components can and are used to-
ward altered ends. Intertextual references to Star Trek’s past provide grounding
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 195

and allow both series to more easily raise the unsettling situations they address.
Yet in so doing, the process circles back onto the original fanfare and the more
comfortable known linked with it. Together, these pieces of a perceived whole
offer an aggregate of meanings whose fleeting glimpses present the potential for
new associative meanings to surface. The glimpses of possibility these series
offer—centered in musical ties to the original Star Trek fanfare—chip away at
the established construct’s perceived inevitability, and by proxy, the fanfare’s
potential for continued expansion as an articulator of the Star Trek universe.

Notes
1 Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 105–36.
2 A&M 3895, Jay Chattaway Papers, 1990–2005, West Virginia and Regional History
Center, University of West Virginia, Morgantown, WV.
3 Terry J. Erdmann and Paul M. Block, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (New
York: Pocket Books, 2000), 12.
4 The series was also the first Trek installment to premiere after Paramount’s sale to
Viacom, and the corporation was eager to create new revenue from the franchise. Paul
Ruditis, Star Trek: Voyager Companion (New York: Pocket Books, 2003), 6–8.
5 Work began on Voyager in 1993 during production of the final season of TNG and
Season 2 of DS9. The Maquis narrative is woven into both, creating continuity be-
tween all three series. Ruditis, Voyager Companion, 7.
6 Caryl Flinn, Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostalgia, and Hollywood Film Music (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 92.
7 Flinn, Strains of Utopia, 93.
8 Neil Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings: The Title Themes of the Star Trek
Television Franchise, 1966–2005,” in Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the
Future, ed. K.J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward (New York: Routledge, 2013), 52–71.
9 Keith Booker, “Star Trek and the Birth of a Film Franchise,” in Science Fiction Film,
Television, and Adaptation: Across the Screens, ed. J. P. Telotte and Gerald Duchovnay
(New York: Routledge, 2012), 102; Jeff Bond, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style
(Los Angeles: Lone Eagle, 1999), 107.
10 Flinn, Strains of Utopia, 91–97.
11 Flinn, Strains of Utopia, 97.
12 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 2, episode 24, “The Collaborator,” directed by Cliff
Bole, aired May 22, 1994, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00C16WH
RU/ref=atv_dp_b00_det_c_UTPsmN_1_1
13 All transcriptions are my own, taken from the screened episode with further clar-
ification provided by archival sketches as noted. Timecodes are from the episode. Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine, “The Collaborator”; Jay Chattaway, “Cue M11,” mm. 34–37,
Box 21, Folder 5, “The Collaborator,” Chattaway Papers.
14 Examples include: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6, episode 26, “Descent Part I,”
directed by Alexander Singer, aired June 21, 1993, https://www.amazon.com/gp/
video/detail/B005HEQ4XQ/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s6; Jay Chattaway, “Cue
M44,” Box 12, Folder 2, Chattaway Papers; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 7,
episode 1, “Descent Part II,” directed by Alexander Singer, aired September 20, 1993,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/de tail/B005HEQ4XQ/ref=atv_dp_season_
select_s7; Jay Chattaway, “Cue M13,” Box 12, Folder 3, Chattaway Papers; Star Trek: The
Next Generation, Season 7, episode 23, “Emergence,” directed by Cliff Bole, aired May 9,
196 Paul Sommerfeld

1994, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEQ4XQ/ref=atv_dp_
season_select_s7; Jay Chattaway, “Cue M11,” Box 16, Folder 5, Chattaway Papers.
15 After the station grows into a busy hub, however, the theme receives a percussive
accompaniment and enlivened tempo, all reflective of its changed status. Lerner,
“Hearing the Boldly Goings,” 64–65.
16 Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Best of Both Worlds Part I.”
17 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “Emissary.”
18 Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings,” 66.
19 Michael Pounds, Race in Space: The Representation of Ethnicity in Star Trek and Star
Trek: TNG (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999); Jessica Getman, “A Series on the
Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue,” Journal of the Society for American Music
9, no. 3 (August 2015): 293–320.
20 Paul Grainge discusses “raiding of the archive” in Brand Hollywood: Selling
Entertainment in a Global Media Age (New York: Routledge, 2008), 109–29.
21 Philip Tagg and Robert Clarida, Ten Little Title Tunes: Towards a Musicology of the Mass
Media (New York: Mass Media Music Scholars’ Press, 2003), 110.
22 Darko Suvin, Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (Kent, OH: Kent State
University Press, 1988), 34.
23 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, directed by Leonard Nimoy (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1984), DVD.
24 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 1, episodes 1 & 2, “Emissary,” directed by David Carson,
aired January 3, 1993, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00C16WHRU/
ref=atv_dp_b00_det_c_UTPsmN_1_1
25 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, episode 26, “The Best of Both Worlds Part
I,” directed by Cliff Bole, aired June 18, 1990, and Star Trek: The Next Generation,
season 4, episode 1, “The Best of Both Worlds Part II,” directed by Cliff Bole, aired
September 24, 1990, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEPJXW/
ref=atv_ dp_season_select_s3
26 Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1982), DVD.
27 One could also read the exchange as Sisko’s seething resentment of Picard’s white
privilege.
28 Star Trek Generations, directed by David Carson (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
1994), DVD.
29 Captain Picard’s grappling with his own grief over the loss of Data in Picard (2020)
reflects the franchise’s continued evolution, and suggests the influence DS9 (and
VOY) have had on those developments.
30 Star Trek, Season 2, episode 5, “The Apple,” directed by Joseph Pevney, aired October
13, 1967, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B000HKYNQ0/ref=atv_dp_
season_select_s2; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1, episode 8, “Justice,” di-
rected by James L. Conway, aired November 9, 1987, https://www.amazon.com/gp/
video/detail/B005HEPJXW/ref=atv_ dp_season_select_s1
31 Star Trek, Season 3, episode 3, “The Paradise Syndrome,” directed by Jud Taylor,
aired October 4, 1968, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B000HKYMC0/
ref=atv_dp_season_select_s3
32 Peter Linford, “Deeds of Power: Respect for Religion in Star Trek: DS9,” in Star Trek
and Sacred Ground: Exploration of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, ed. Jennifer
E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press), 99.
33 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 3, episode 26, “The Adversary,” directed by
Alexander Singer, aired June 19, 1995, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/
B005HEF838/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s3
 Music in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001) 197

34 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “The Adversary”; Jay Chattaway, “Cue M11,” mm. 1–2,
Box 25, Folder 3, “The Adversary,” Chattaway Papers.
35 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4, episode 17, “Accession,” directed by Les Landau,
aired February 26, 1996, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEF8H4/
ref=atv_dp_season_select_s4
36 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 5, episode 10, “Rapture,” directed by Jonathan
West, aired December 30, 1996, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/
B005HEFRE8/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s5
37 Linford, “Deeds of Power,” 96.
38 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 7, episodes 25 & 26, “Rapture,” directed by Allan
Kroeker, aired June 2, 1999, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/
B005HEFAUE/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s7
39 Linford, “Deeds of Power,” 99.
40 Elaine Graham, “Much Ado about Data,” in Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters,
Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press,
2002), 115.
41 Thomas Richards, “Afterward,” The Meaning of Star Trek: An Excursion into the Myth
and Marvel of the Star Trek Universe (New York: Main Street Books, 1997), 192–93.
42 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 2, episode 24, “Tuvix,” directed by Cliff Bole, aired May 6,
1996, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEVDT6/ref=atv_dp_
season_select_s2; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3, episode 26, “Scorpion Part I,” di-
rected by David Livingston, aired May 21, 1997, https://www.amazon.com/gp/
video/detail/B00 5HEVCFG/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s3; Star Trek: Voyager, Season
4, episode 1, “Scorpion Part II,” directed by Winrich Kolbe, aired September 3, 1997,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEVBTI/ref=atv_dp_seaso n_se-
lect_s4; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, episode 8, “Year of Hell Part I,” directed by Allan
Kroeker, aired November 5, 1997, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/
B005HEVBTI/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s4; Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, episode 9,
“Year of Hell Part II,” directed by Mike Vejar, aired November 5, 1997, https://
www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEVBTI/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s4
43 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 5, episode 26, “Equinox Part I,” directed by David
Livingston, aired May 26, 1999, and Star Trek: Voyager, Season 6, episode 1, “Equinox
Part II,” directed by David Livingston, aired September 22, 1999, https://www.
amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEVBWA/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s5
44 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 1, episodes 1 & 2, “Caretaker,” directed by Winrich Kolbe,
aired January 16, 1995, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HESLUA/
ref=atv_dp_season_select_s1
45 Star Trek: Voyager, “Caretaker,” (1:29:00).
46 Star Trek: Voyager, “Caretaker”; Jay Chattaway, “Set Course for Home,” cue
M84Rev2, mm. 46–49, Box 31, Folder 6, “Caretaker,” Chattaway Papers.
47 Berman later admitted, “We wanted to get the Maquis into Starfleet uniforms, with a
captain who had to pull together diverse groups of people into a functioning, solid,
effective unit. It would get pretty irritating, and cumbersome, to have the Maquis tension
in every episode.” Brandon Nowalk, “Star Trek: Voyager Accidently Presided Over the
Franchise’s Decline,” A.V. Club, May 28, 2013, accessed December 4, 2016, http://
www.avclub.com/article/istar-trek-voyageri-accidentally-presided-over-the-98207
48 Star Trek, Season 1, episode 5, “The Enemy Within,” directed by Leo Penn, aired
October 6, 1966, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00C16VSAW/ref=
atv_hm_hom_1_c_iEgOEZ_5_2
49 No other captain has ordered the execution of a Starfleet crew member. Notably,
Commander Sisko refuses to execute Lieutenant Worf for profound insubordination
during the Dominion war in the Season 4 episode “To the Death” (May 13, 1996).
Coincidentally, the episode aired one week after “Tuvix.” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
198 Paul Sommerfeld

Season 4, episode 23, “To the Death,” directed by LeVar Burton, aired May 13, 1996,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEF8H4/ref=atv_dp_season_
select_s4
50 For analysis of “The Enemy Within,” see Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 307–316.
51 Star Trek: Voyager, “Tuvix”; Jay Chattaway, “Captain’s Log,” cue M42, mm. 5–8,
Box 38, Folder 2, “Tuvix,” Chattaway Papers.
52 Star Trek: Voyager, “Tuvix”; Jay Chattaway, “Exit Tuvix,” cue M54, mm. 34–35,
Box 38, Folder 2, “Tuvix,” Chattaway Papers.
53 Star Trek: Voyager, Season 7, episodes 25 & 26, “Endgame,” directed by Allan Kroeker,
aired May 23, 2001, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005HEPIDS/ref=
atv_dp_season_select_s7
54 Star Trek: Voyager, “Endgame”; Jay Chattaway, “Harry’s Big Speech,” cue M65, mm.
1–11, Box 44, Folder 1, “Endgame,” Chattaway Papers.
55 Star Trek: Voyager, “Endgame”; Jay Chattaway, Cue M66Rev, “Smell the Coffee,”
mm. 17–20, Box 44, Folder 2, “Endgame,” Chattaway Papers.
56 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 4, episodes 1 & 2, “The Way of the Warrior,”
directed by James L. Conway, aired October 2, 1995, https://www.amazon.com/gp/
video/detail/B005HEF8H4/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s4, (1:12:00).
57 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 1, episode 7, “Q-less,” directed by Paul Lynch,
aired February 6, 1993 (24:45).
11
NO, THEY’RE NOT GONNA
CHANGE MY MIND
Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue

Evan Ware

During Star Trek Voyager’s (VOY) penultimate season (1999–2000), Paramount

Studios asked long-time franchise executive producer Rick Berman to helm a
new series.1 Over his objections that Star Trek needed “a few years’ rest,” the
studio decided to push ahead with the project.2 Berman, along with veteran Trek
writer and producer Brannon Braga, were left to figure out what the new concept
should be. After three series over the previous fourteen years that had been set in
the twenty-fourth century, Berman and Braga settled on a key element of what
they wanted out of the new show: that it be different.3 The result was Enterprise
(ENT), a prequel set before the original series of Star Trek (TOS). By becoming
the first series in the franchise to forgo the words Star Trek in its title (its complete
title for Seasons 1 and 2 was simply Enterprise), the production team accurately
signaled something essential about this new show: that the trappings to which fans
had become accustomed—including such fixtures as shields, phasers, transporters,
and even The United Federation of Planets—would be absent. Costumes, sets,
and even fundamental assumptions about familiar alien races like the Vulcans
would also be changed, immersing the viewer in a world that was at once fa-
miliar, but which could still be rife with surprise and discovery. One of the most
controversial markers of these changes was the show’s title cue. Absent were the
fanfares and orchestral themes that heralded voyages to strange new worlds
throughout the shows of the 1990s. Instead, Enterprise began with a rock song.4
“Where My Heart Will Take Me,” written by Diane Warren and performed
by British tenor Russell Watson, was widely hated by fans. Contemporary news
articles appearing in SciFi Wire and EW.com both describe online petitions being
organized and garnering thousands of signatures; SciFi Wire even refers to fans
protesting the song outside Paramount Studios.5 In the years since its cancell-
ation, fan hatred of the song has continued unabated. This is evidenced in
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-11
200 Evan Ware

numerous articles (from subcultural websites to Newsweek), blog posts, vlog posts,
and chat threads that rank Star Trek title cues, and dependably place Enterprise’s
last.6 There have been at least two—certainly non-scientific—fan polls by
StarTrek.com conducted in 2013 and 2016, with over 25,000 and 5,000 partici-
pants respectively. Concerning the popularity of series title cues overall, both
found broad disagreement among fans, with no show capturing a majority of the
popular vote. The Next Generation (TNG) took first place with 30 percent and
33 percent, while ENT was second-last in 2013 with 15 percent (TOS was last),
and last in 2016 with just 12 percent.7 Even sites that do not rank “Where My
Heart Will Take Me” last nevertheless rank it near the bottom, and no poll ever
ranks the slightly retooled version of the song from Seasons 3 and 4 anything but
last. Of the vanishingly few who diverge from this profile, as Kayti Burt does in
her Den of Geek rankings, they include a warning that the opinion expressed is
controversial (she put ENT in second place).8
Authors, bloggers, vloggers, and posters in the sources cited above often describe
“Where My Heart Will Take Me” with words like “cheesy,” “sticky,” “insipid,”
and “dreadful.” Pejorative references to Rod Stewart are also common. He is either
mistakenly thought to be the singer of this version or known to be the performer of
the original version of the song from the film Patch Adams (1998).9 These char-
acterizations insinuate the bewilderment made plain in the title of an online forum
thread: “Why did they choose that theme song for [Star Trek: Enterprise]?”10 The
author of the original post concisely summarizes a lot of fan reactions when they
ask, “Why is the theme song completely different? It seems outside the original
spirit and scope of the [Star Trek] that Gene Roddenberry created.” Likewise,
Redditors such as u/admiralteee and u/otherguydidit observe that the use of lyrics
pulls them out of their engagement in the show. Reddit user otherguydidit
describes just wanting “to watch space scenery and revel in imagination,” and that
the lyrics “just ruin the illusion.” Similarly, u/admiraltee describes how it “pulls me
out of my immersion every time.”11
These fan responses point to the locus of sincere frustration with the song: its
inappropriateness to the franchise.12 The brief overview of fan opinion above is
the launching point for this chapter’s examination of the specific musical elements
of the ENT cue that elicit such consistent and negative reactions from people
otherwise receptive to Star Trek. As music theorist Yonatan Malin has reflected,
ethnographic and music-analytic information can relate only part of the musical
experience individually. Together, however, they bring about a fuller picture,
illuminating each other’s epistemological blind spots and even contradicting each
other in ways that lead to productive insights.13 In this case, the fans and critics
have pointed to a lack of suitability as the reason the song has remained so un-
popular, with subcategories including cheesiness, the dispelling of viewer im-
mersion, and market pandering. The musical analysis at the core of this chapter
explores the way the musical codes of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” violated
Star Trek ideology and gave rise to these social reactions.
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 201

Title Cues, Anti-Fans, and Questions of Genre

Analytic work on title cues is nothing new. Scholars of film and television music
have firmly established them as critical ideological indices for their fans. Philip Tagg
and Ron Rodman have described title cues as a kind of stage-setting or invitation,
whereby essential aspects of the emotional and conceptual scope of the show’s
universe are first conveyed.14 While Tagg offers a framework for understanding a
title cue’s function, Rodman goes further in discussing the cue’s scope, proposing
that it acts as a formal framing tool that signposts not just beginnings but endings, as
well as transitions to and from commercial breaks.15 In this sense, title cues can be
understood as what cultural theorist Gerard Genette has dubbed “paratexts.”
Although Genette originally meant the term to apply to the fragments that sur-
round and position a literary text (covers, prefaces, typefaces, and so on), cultural
theorist Jonathan Gray has pointed out that these paratextual objects exist in tel-
evision as introductory sequences, advertising, and more.16 According to Genette,
paratexts work as a kind of airlock that allows the reader to transition smoothly into
and out of the world of the text. Since they are largely unbound by narrative or
visual subordination—the second-to-second synchronization of music to moving
image that overrides all usual considerations of musical form—title cues are among
the most structurally autonomous musical events within television shows.17 Their
musical autonomy and their role as airlocks into their respective series make title
cues potent vehicles for a show’s musical expression of ideology, as well as loci of
great emotional attachment for fans.
Scholars examining the music of Star Trek have argued precisely these points.
In her article on the ideological implications of the TOS title cue, Jessica Getman
describes it as an essential index of the whole show, one that “memorably
communicate[s] and illuminate[s] social ideologies central to Star Trek’s mis-
sions.”18 Using semiotic analysis, she establishes that the TOS cue’s fanfare and
beguine combine with visuals to convey intrepid, irrepressible, and heroic
American exploration against a backdrop of mythic romance. She also argues that
in evoking heroic and mythic tropes associated historically and in context with a
white male hero, the show subverts its own intention of representing an egali-
tarian future.19 Thus, the showrunners’ aims and the actual result are sometimes
at odds with each other. Rather than viewing this as a weakness, Getman treats it
as a rich source of information about the show’s zeitgeist. Her work thus focuses
on big-picture sociological factors rather than individual fan reaction to those
ideological concepts and contradictions.
Neil Lerner is the only music scholar to have written specifically on the ENT
title cue while examining the various Star Trek series’ title cues and their level of
musical interconnection.20 Where ENT is concerned, Lerner argues that the
“adult contemporary sound” of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” forfeited the
initial fanfare trope and thus “may have worked against the strong mnemonic
functions of the earlier [Star Trek] title themes.”21 He further notes that popular
202 Evan Ware

music is rarely successful as title cues for science fiction series, concluding that
“the generic conventions strongly tilt toward a heroic instrumental theme, and
the example of Star Trek: Enterprise adds evidence to that argument.”22
Although contentions of a generic disconnect between the song and the series
are certainly germane, the situation is more complicated than Lerner’s argument
implies. For one thing, it is questionable whether “heroic instrumental themes”
are—or have ever been—the norm for science fiction television title cues. On the
contrary, there is a fairly robust history of instrumental title cues that draw on
their era’s popular music codes. After the famous initial fanfare, the title cue of
TOS becomes a beguine, complete with Caribbean-inspired percussion. Lost in
Space’s title cues (1965–67 and 1967–68) are both jazz-infused popular set pieces,
using typical verse–chorus forms with upbeat tempi. Likewise, the title cue for
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979–81) and both of the title cues for Space:
1999 (1975–76, and 1976–77), while they do use some heroic-sounding brass,
either compartmentalize this in a TOS-like beginning fanfare, or combine it into
the disco-derived textures, rhythms, and harmonic tropes of their main title
themes. It might be argued that the presence of a human voice singing actual
lyrics is the critical issue here—that it is popular song, not just popular music, that
is the transgressive element. This does not hold up, however, since there was a
shift toward vocal music in science fiction television at the time ENT premiered,
with Firefly (2002–2003) being a notable exemplar of this new wave.23 So, in an
important sense, ENT’s use of popular music is unremarkable when considered in
the constellation of science fiction television title cues from the late 1960s to the
early 2000s.
Even if the ENT title cue’s waywardness were considered only within the Star
Trek franchise, rather than science fiction television as a whole, a second problem
arises. Using Lerner’s shorthand “adult contemporary sound” to describe the cue
as a whole assumes that genre labels can make meaningful observations about a
song’s musical sounds, when in actuality, the very idea of genre in music is
contested territory. Simon Frith has observed that genres describe inherently
complex social categories whose members are adjudicated through ideological
discourses that are not necessarily related to their sound qualities.24 In fact, Frith
argues that genres are, among other things, a set of commercial labelling systems
that vary in different segments of the recording industry (album sales, radio,
government regulation, and so on), delimiters of fan identity, performer short-
hand, and frameworks for criticism. They are a messy coproduction by a wide
range of participants in musical, social, commercial, and ideological spheres.25
Thus, any claim about the inappropriateness of ENT’s title cue to the Star Trek
franchise by referencing its “adult contemporary sound” are necessarily ambig-
uous in the absence of further musical, social, or ideological contextualization.
It is clear, however, that aspects of the title cue violated fans’ understanding of
the franchise’s ideology and that it thus failed as an airlock for them to enter
ENT’s world. In this respect, it is important to remember that fans are not a stable
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 203

category of people. They are dynamic, evolving in response to changes in the

focus of their fandom. Gray argues that “anti-fannish moments” are of profound
interest since they reveal what has “gone wrong.”26 Behind the stated reasons for
fan hatred of the ENT title cue (the paratext, acting like a book cover) lurk
frustrated expectations, particularly given that those fans were predisposed to
being sympathetic to a new entry in the Star Trek franchise (ENT, the main text).
Thus, fans can become anti-fans if “part of a text [the cue] is perceived as harming
the text as a whole [ENT and even the entire Star Trek franchise].”27
Vivi Theodoropolou has followed up on Gray’s thought-provoking ob-
servations in her work on sports. Anti-fandom, she argues, is often predicated on
a pre-existing and antagonistic fandom. In order to be an anti-fan of one sports
team (say, The Ohio State University Buckeyes), one would first have to be a fan
of another (say, the University of Michigan Wolverines).28 Anti-fandom, in her
conception, is simply fandom directed at a threatening “Other.” Although there
is no direct equivalent to a sports rivalry in the case of the ENT title cue, Derek
Johnson’s work on “fan-tagonism” sheds light onto a possible analog. The term
describes the struggles for textual control among fan factions and, more im-
portantly for my purposes, with producers. Fans, he argues, will mobilize to
protect the continuity of a series while producers will attempt to discipline fans in
return.29 The result of this relationship could, when it is “fan-tagonistic,” give
rise to the kinds of anti-fandom seen in reaction to the ENT title cue. These
frameworks offer a means to bridge the layers of social, ideological, and com-
mercial discourses within my initial ethnographic sketch of ENT anti-fandom
with the analysis of music structures and meanings of the ENT title cue to follow.
My guiding contention in this analysis of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” is
that it transgressed many of the discourses that lay at the heart of the title cues
from the other 1990s Star Trek series, namely TNG (1987–1994), Deep Space Nine
(DS9, 1993–1999), and VOY (1995–2001). On the air, and later in syndication
for nearly a decade and a half by the time ENT premiered, these series unarguably
conditioned fan expectations, essentially creating a subgenre of “prototypical Star
Trek title cues.” I will therefore analyze the ENT title cue in the context of these
series (hereafter referred to as “the nineties series”) under the aegis of four ana-
lytical rubrics, each based on a line from Star Trek’s famous maxim (“Space, the
final frontier …”), the opening voiceover first heard in TOS but reintroduced in
TNG. As the epigraph of the whole franchise, the voiceover states the core
principles of the show and thus provides an excellent framework in which to
assess how musical aspects of the series’ title cues have social, ideological, and
commercial ramifications for Star Trek fans. In comparing “Where My Heart Will
Take Me” with the nineties series, I demonstrate that Berman’s new musical
direction broke with the Star Trek motto—and thus the franchise more
broadly—in almost every way possible. It transgressed the expectations and
ideology set out by the nineties title cues and ultimately offered fans a mal-
functioning airlock through which many had difficulty accessing the new show.
204 Evan Ware

Analysis

Space, the Final Frontier

More than even the classic fanfare, the most powerful association to the concept
of Star Trek in any title sequence of the franchise is the idea of outer space itself.
Not only is it the first word of Kirk’s (TOS) and Picard’s (TNG) famous voice-
overs (spoken by William Shatner and Patrick Stewart, respectively), it is almost
exclusively the first visual of any title sequence, be it television or film. TOS was
the progenitor, opening directly onto a starfield. The visual quickly became a
standard beginning—especially for the films, though it was used in The Animated
Series (TAS, 1973–74) as well. Of the three films that do not use a starfield, two
use a black backdrop that achieves an almost identical effect.30 While they did not
use simple starfields, each of the nineties series title sequences used them in
figure–ground relationships with space phenomena like nebulae (TNG), comets
(DS9), and solar flares (VOY). While these images do not trigger the immediate
recall of the other franchise entries (either TV series or movies), they evoke their
spirit enough to be legible as Star Trek to viewers while also maintaining their
own independence, a going concern for the showrunners.31
Outer space was scored as tonally ambiguous pitch collections with equally
ambiguous meters; the latter is discussed in greater detail further on in this
chapter. The pitch collections manifest as either empty octaves or pandiatonic
clusters. Octaves are by far the dominant approach, though there are some dis-
crepancies in their specific usage. Most frequently they are orchestrated as pedals
in high strings (ordinario or harmonics, real or MIDI).32 Much has been written by
Tagg, Lerner, and Getman, among others, on the coding of pedal harmonies as
musical icons for open spaces.33 At first, they were used to represent bucolic
settings in works like Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 in E-flat, Gustav
Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, and Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid, but they later came
to signal outer space, in part as a result of their use in the Star Trek franchise
itself.34 The other musical strategy is the use of non-triadic harmonic pedals in the
strings—fourths in the VOY cue and pandiatonic clusters in the 1994 film
Generations (ST:GEN). These reference a different lineage than the open octaves,
drawing more on the kinds of harmonic pedals found, for instance, in the first
movement of Rued Laangard’s Music of the Spheres (1914).35 Laangard’s move-
ment has an active, “buzzing” texture created by section-wide string tremolos
that results in a sound with strong similarities to VOY’s and ST:GEN’s title
music. Although they may have different origins than the open octaves, their
effect is similar in that they provide an unmoving and syntactically ambiguous
setting for the space visual, all contained within an overarching octave of musical
space. The suspension of rhythmic and harmonic motion created by the pedals is
reinforced by the use of stringed instruments that are capable of continuous sound
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 205

when played in a section. This conveys not only the physical vastness, but also the
timescale of the final frontier.
Enterprise’s opening is about as different as possible. Starting with a stable
shot of Earth, a male voice sings the words “It’s been a long road.” While it
is true that TNG’s original opening to Seasons 1 and 2 also started with a camera
shot of Earth, it quickly pulled away, out into the solar system, before veering
into deep space where the Enterprise is first seen; Earth is a point of departure.
ENT’s opening goes the other way. Rather than moving out into space, the
second shot focuses in on the planet, with subsequent shots taking us through
the atmosphere and over an ocean. What follows is a montage showing
humanity’s rise to the stars (including early seafaring, the first flight, the Apollo
program, and the first warp‐capable ship), ending with the titular starship jumping
to warp speed away from the planet. The point of view of the entire montage is
rooted in Earth’s perspective.
Likewise, gone are the musical evocations of space. Instead of orchestral oc-
taves or diatonic tone-cluster pedals, the music consists of triadic tonality ren-
dered by a straining male vocal, acoustic guitar, solo cello, and electric bass.
Moreover, the ametric presentation of space throughout the nineties series is also
absent. Although “Where My Heart Will Take Me” doesn’t introduce any kind
of rhythmic ostinato until the pre-chorus, it nevertheless gives clear markers of its
metric framework (see Example 11.1).

EXAMPLE 11.1 “Faith of the Heart” (ENT) beginning of the first verse (time code
0:00:00–0:00:07). Transcribed by author 36

Two anacruses usher in two downbeats articulated both by multiple onsets in the
ensemble and the highest pitches of each vocal line. The harmony follows suit,
sitting on a two-measure tonic chord introduced in the first downbeat and an
unfolded IV chord in measures 3–4.37 These are at the forefront of the mix as the
bass is the only track whose volume matches the vocal. Even in the absence of an
audible pulse, the resulting two-measure hypermeter is evident and easily permits
206 Evan Ware

viewers to infer the meter and its constituent beats. The song’s musical devel-
opment from verse to pre-chorus (“I will see my dream come alive at last …”) to
chorus (“I’ve got faith of the heart …”) largely involves a filling in of this open
metric structure with more surface-level pulses, first in the rhythm guitar and
then in the drum kit. While there is a certain rhythmic looseness to the verse,
there is never any question as to the location of the beat.
In contrast, metric ambiguities are central to the evocation of the opening
space scenes in the nineties series. The cues for TNG and DS9 both have par-
ticularly loose-metered introductions. Long and unchanging pedal pitches in
the strings and synthesizer are set against melodic activity that, in the absence of
any other onsets in the sound field, resist regular metric interpretation. It might
be tempting to think that the descending synthesizer intervals opening the TNG
cue mark some kind of regular meter, but a closer examination of their timings
reveal inconsistencies (see Example 11.2).

EXAMPLE 11.2 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) introduction, prior to main
title theme (time code 0:00:00–0:00:47). Transcribed by author 38

The time lag between synthesizer onsets is somewhere between two and three
seconds, with no value predominating. Therefore, attempting to “count in” the first
brass entries based on these onsets is a hopeless task. It is better, in my estimation,
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 207

to consider these as a separate section, an unmetered framing device followed by a

metered introduction. This tracks with the visuals. Images of space receive the loose
metric treatment, while the change to clear meter happens simultaneously with
images of the Enterprise (representing humans being an organizing force in nature).
Meter in the opening of the DS9 cue is even more difficult to unpack (see
Example 11.3). With rubato horn passages, string articulations that seem often out
of step with the horn solo, and possibly-conducted pauses, the sense of a regular
pulse or meter is febrile at best. By illustrating when onsets occur without re-
ference to note values, the transcription below is meant to capture the ambiguity
created by this metrically fluid opening.

EXAMPLE 11.3 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) introduction, prior to main title
theme (time code 0:00:00–0:00:36). Transcribed by author 39

Just as with the TNG cue, there are inconsistencies in the pauses where the string
and synthesizer chords enter. The first is three seconds, the second five, the third
four, and the last is three. Once the main trumpet melody begins, it is not easily
made clear what the meter is, given that there is only one instrument of reference;
all others playing are simply holding pitches. The only onsets we get are on the
trumpet’s sixteenth-note ascents at the beginning of each of its lines.
Star Trek: Voyager’s introduction is the most metrically straightforward of the
nineties series (see Example 11.4). In this case, the muted trumpets and timpani
call and respond to each other with motives that are inscribed clearly within a
shared pulse structure.
208 Evan Ware

EXAMPLE 11.4 Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) introduction, prior to main title theme
(time code 0:00:00–0:00:16). Transcribed by author 40

The clear implication of 4/4 meter in the trumpet is immediately cast into doubt,
however, by the 5/4 response of the timpani. With the trumpet’s expanded re-
statement comes the expectation of a second 5/4 measure that never arrives.
Instead, the timpani repeats its triplet motive two downbeats in a row, compressing
it into a lead-in to the main title theme. Though far subtler than the previous two
examples, the introduction in VOY’s title cue nevertheless creates a certain amount
of tension as to when the arrival at the main title theme will happen. The metric
dissonance, therefore, adds enough uncertainty that, when taken with the non-
triadic string pedal above, is legible in the context of Star Trek openings as part of
the infinity and timelessness of the final frontier that the ENT title cue, with its clear
metric regularity and straight-ahead harmonic tonality, lacks.

These Are the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise

The tonally and metrically ambiguous openings of the nineties Star Trek title cues
act as the musical evocation of the setting (ground) against which action in Star
Trek happens—outer space. This creates an anticipation for both for the arrival of
the vessel—the figure against the ground, be it starship or space station—and the
tonal and metric clarity of the main title theme that accompanies its revelation.41
As fundamental elements for a functioning airlock into the series, each vessel and
main title theme merge into a conceptual whole that becomes a crucial site of fan
attachment. Thus, the moment just prior to their arrival is the point of highest
tension in most Star Trek title cues.
TNG’s long, opening pedal B♭ is initially accompanied by descending
interval pairs in the synthesizer—B♭-F, A♭-C (see Example 11.2 above)—before
the Star Trek fanfare (originally from TOS) adds F-B♭-E♭ (with a D embellishment)
and G-C-F quartal configurations. Together, these pitch classes form a
complete diatonic collection, though without any sense of tonal teleology.42
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 209

The moment the Enterprise engages its warp drive, however, the first triadic harmony
is sounded in the trumpets, a D♭ major chord, which acts as the syntactical dominant
(see Example 11.5).43 It holds for a second before cascading down in a rapid string
and harp arpeggio that leads into the main title theme and the key of B♭ mixolydian.

EXAMPLE 11.5 TNG transition to main title theme (time code 0:00:47–0:00:50).
Transcribed by author 44

Not only does this chord break the brass’s registral ceiling, but, given the fact that it
is mixed with the sound effect of the revving warp engine, it creates a particularly
bright, thrilling, and sudden sonic contrast that sends the ship, its crew, and the
viewers away on the show’s continuing mission of exploration. The chord also acts
as a transition in terms of the organization of the pitch class space. Although the
introduction and main title theme share precisely the same pitch classes, the tonally
amorphous quartal pandiatonicism of the opening is converted to triadic mix-
olydian teleology for the main title theme march. The formless setting (ground) of
space is organized by the heroic and intrepid human figures.
The cues for both DS9 and VOY have similar transitional moments that bring
introductory pandiatonic quartal tension to a climax before reorganizing into
more traditional diatonic teleologies. In Dennis McCarthy’s DS9 title cue, the
quartal harmonies emerge in sequence from the solo horn line, the horn duet,
and the string accompaniment to the duet (for the purposes of Example 11.6, I’ve
only notated pitch classes). It finishes on a pandiatonic sonority that is ambiguous
for its lack of modal (major, minor, dorian, etc.) character just as the titular space
station, Deep Space Nine, comes into middle-ground view.
210 Evan Ware

EXAMPLE 11.6 DS9 transition to main title theme (time code 0:00:34–0:00:36).
Transcribed by author 45

Heard as the end of the introduction, it is a tonally uncertain quartal pitch col-
lection, but heard as the beginning of the main title theme, it is a V7 chord whose
resolution to I is coordinated with of the first onset of the theme and a jump cut
to a close-up of the space station. Musical material is reorganized from nebulous
quartal pandiatonicism into explicit triadic tonality, remaining on a pedal I
through over half of the whole cue.
Jerry Goldsmith’s score for VOY works very similarly, though in a compressed
time scale. The seventeen-second introduction consists of a high quartal E-A-D
string pedal under which muted trumpets and timpani elaborate the D-A, with
the trumpet adding a brief C# in the second measure.

EXAMPLE 11.7 VOY transition to main title theme (time code 0:00:13–0:00:17).
Transcribed by author 46
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 211

In the absence of any further tonal information, the sonority in the opening of
VOY is best understood as that E-A-D quartal harmony with emphasis placed
on the A-D through doubling in the trumpets and timpani. Like DS9, it is only
after the arrival of the main title theme that the previous sonority is retro-
spectively understandable as Dominant function. Here, the timpani re-
emphasizes the ^5-^2 outline of G major’s V chord, transforming its initial
trochee through a metric acceleration that serves as a lead-in to the main title
theme. This short passage accelerates into the resolution of the dominant, the
arrival of the title card, and our first full view of the vessel in a majestic
camera pan.
The Star Trek: Enterprise title cue has one moment that serves as a kind of analog
to the transitions into the main title themes described for the nineties series (see
Example 11.8). At the end of the pre-chorus, a highly prolonged predominant
function (IV and II) finally veers toward a cadence.

EXAMPLE 11.8 ENT main title verse, pre-chorus, and chorus (time code 0:00:00–
0:01:06). Transcribed by author 47

The harmonic move supports the vocalist rising from the D they have pro-
longed since the beginning, to the F# that marks the start of the fundamental
line (in this case ^3-^2-^3). This effectively breaks the registral ceiling at the same
time that the drums and electric guitar join in, adding rhythmic and textural
intensity. Save for the lack of any musical coding of “outer space,” the music
behaves similarly to the previous examples in almost every way. The visual,
however, does not.
The precedent set by the previous series freights this moment with ex-
pectation for a visual revelation of the starship Enterprise, but instead,
the image presented to the viewer is of the Wright brothers’ first flight at
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This is a part of the history of human ex-
ploration montage that starts at the beginning of the pre-chorus and extends
212 Evan Ware

through to the coda. While this moment of sonic/visual association is perhaps

emotionally effective for North American audiences in a general sense, it is
not necessarily legible to fans as a Star Trek moment since the titular starship is
absent. To complicate matters, the Enterprise only appears much later, during
the coda of the song. Since, at this later juncture, the syntactic cadence on the
words “faith of the heart” has already dissipated the rhythmic and contra-
puntal tension of the chorus, the ship feels like an afterthought, not the
central character—the synecdoche for the cast and the spirit of the show that
other vessels represented in previous series. Just as the title sequence for ENT
is only tangentially about space, it is also only tangentially about the
Enterprise.

Its Continuing Mission: To Seek Out New Life, and

New Civilizations
The reveal of the heroic starship (or space station) is an early event in all the
nineties series’ title cues, usually around the twenty- to thirty-second mark.
There is still, on average, about another minute in which the title card and credits
roll, to the sounds of each show’s main title theme. In these sections, the role of
the music changes from one building anticipation of the primary musical-visual
climax (the reveal) to one building anticipation for specifically musical events (the
main title theme’s musical climax). This is one of the few, possibly only, times in
these series that musical, rather than filmic, logic determines the contents of a
cue. Thus, compositional concerns like key relationships, chord progressions,
melodic composing out, register choices, and timbral contrasts all come under the
governance of established musical forms rather than responding to on-screen
action.48 These forms construct for viewers a comforting overall framework that
promises that each episode of the series will begin in the known (the A section),
depart to explore the fantastical and fun (the B section), and ultimately return to
safety in the end (the A section).
As a result, title cues of the nineties series all feature forms with clear
sectional boundaries, usually alternating between tightly organized A sections
and more loosely organized B sections. Given their more stringent organiza-
tion, A sections have a tendency to fall into Mark Richards’ category of
“grammatical themes” in film music, or themes that have clear beginnings/
endings or call/response functions.49 Of the three nineties series themes,
VOY is the most archetypal, being in rounded binary form (A/BA’)
(see Example 11.9). The A section is a textbook example of period form. Save
for the one-measure phrase compression in the consequent, it has all of the
standard elements, including clear basic and contrasting ideas, unambiguous
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 213

EXAMPLE 11.9 VOY main title A section period form (time code 0:00:17–0:0:44).
Transcribed by author 50

half and authentic cadences, diatonic harmonies in standard tonal syntax, and
standard motivic repetitions.
The consequent phrase features a high horn B4, which takes the melody across
its registral ceiling of G4, both providing a local climax to the section and setting
up a more intense climax when this line is taken up the octave in the trumpet
during the A’ recapitulation. With its moderate tempo and relatively slow me-
lodic note values in the horns, the theme accesses that instrument’s long-standing
connotations of heroism.51
Star Trek: Voyager’s B and A’ sections follow the standard functions and
proportions of the second half of a rounded binary form (see Example 11.10).
The B section is typically loosely knit, featuring more motivic fragmentation and
chromatic relationships, while articulating fewer clear tonal functions.52
214 Evan Ware

EXAMPLE 11.10 VOY B and A’ sections (time code 0:00:54–0:01:27). Transcribed

by author 53

C major is made the center of activity through repetition and octave transposition.
Most of the section consists of a shuttle between C and A♭ chords, a relationship
Scott Brandon Murphy has catalogued as M8M in his inventory of tonal-triadic
progression classes (TTPCs) in film music.54 Deriving its name from the fact that
a major chord is transposed eight semitones to another major chord (thus, M8M),
Murphy notes that this particular progression class has semantic associations
to heroism and fun, blended with “ample reference to the fantastical.”55 The
progression and its connotations fit snugly with VOY’s brand: a heroic romp
through the cosmos by a ship trying to get home from the other side of the galaxy.
Framed between heroic A sections, the second of which has the dramatic musical
climax on a trumpet’s high B5, viewers are reassured that a precarious situation is, in
fact, a source of entertainment, not existential danger.
The A section of the AABA’ form in TNG’s title cue also conveys heroism and
is tight-knit (see Example 11.11). With the trumpets taking the melody, it is a
brightly orchestrated, energetic theme steeped in the march topic. It begins with a
single antecedent phrase in B♭ mixolydian. Though it is bisected by a mixolydian
minor dominant, it nevertheless concludes with a tonal major V chord.

EXAMPLE 11.11 TNG main title A section antecedent phrase (time code 0:00:50–
0:00:58). Transcribed by author 56
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 215

Like the VOY theme, this phrase checks all of the boxes when it comes to
antecedent constructions: basic and contrasting ideas supported by clear tonal
relationships (though admittedly mixolydian-inflected) that move from tonic
to dominant functions, and with a phrase-ending half-cadence. This ante-
cedent, however, lacks a consequent, at least initially. Instead, it is followed
by a shift to D major and a change of motivic content (though it remains
related to the A section), as well as a change in timbre from brass to strings
(see Example 11.12).

EXAMPLE 11.12 TNG A section departure phrase (time code 0:00:59–0:01:07).

Transcribed by author 57

These elements illustrate Richards’ departure phrase type, a response to an

antecedent that has a “substantial degree of difference from previous ideas.”58
Together, they constitute the A section of TNG’s title theme, and form what
Richards calls a composite theme (antecedent and departure) whose principal
function is to introduce strong contrasts. A more loosely knit section, TNG’s
departure appears as a continuation phrase, complete with fragmentation. In
TNG’s cue, the departure’s prolonged D major harmony becomes an applied
dominant whose cadence is essentially abandoned with the return to B♭ major for
the reprise of the A section.
While TNG’s main theme does not have the equivalent of a completely
contrasting middle in the manner of VOY’s (see Example 11.13), the departure
phrases enable it to build to a secondary climax through harmonic means. The
second A section’s departure phrase moves to B major instead of D, a classic
modulation up a half-step (a “pump-up” modulation, in Lehman’s terminology)
that intensifies the energy and excitement. 59 Not stopping there, however, the
music moves through a second pump-up modulation to the B section, where an
iteration of the departure phrase is used without antecedent. This happens over a
pedal C major with mixolydian inflections. This section ultimately comes to a
close on D major, with the strings reaching the highest registers of the piece so
far. It is only after this climax, as the A theme returns in G major, that the tonal
216 Evan Ware

EXAMPLE 11.13 TNG main title overall form. Transcribed by author 60

relationships of the sections become clear. The initial abandoned D11 from the
first A section is actually the dominant of the whole cue.
The harmony’s early foreshadowing of the dominant, wedged between A
sections, notably connects with connotations of the fun and fantastical through
the M4M/M8M tonal inverse pair that result from the changes from B♭ to D
and back.61 The two pump-up modulations raise the intensity of each section
change before the main title theme’s musical climax. Just as it did in VOY, the
musical climax frames the travels to strange new key areas within a familiar
tonal plan (see Example 11.14).

EXAMPLE 11.14 TNG B and A’ sections (time code 0:01:25–end). Transcribed by

author 62

With its setting on a space station, DS9 stands apart from TNG, VOY, and
ENT in using a fixed locale, and by extension, there being less emphasis on
exploration. It is no surprise that its main title theme reflects these realities
by eschewing any hint of the chromatic fantastical. Instead, the main
title theme is built on a C major pedal that breaks twice for cadential
progressions at the ends of the B and A’ sections of its ternary form
(see Example 11.15).
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 217

EXAMPLE 11.15 DS9 main title theme form (time code 0:00:36–end). Transcribed by
the author 63

Despite this major difference, the DS9 title theme still has much in common with
TNG’s and VOY’s. For one thing, it shares the clear tonal functions of the tight-
knit themes in the other nineties series. The bass moves very little, save for a move
to ^3 to support a I6 chord that sets up the theme’s two IV-V-I cadences. These
cadences also mark the same sectional changes as in the other two series—from B to
A’, and at the end of A’—making these the points of highest musical tension. This is
particularly true in the A’ section where the trumpet’s high C6 is sounded over the
I6 that initiates the cadence, a musical climax that frames the middle section just as
with the title cues of other two series. In DS9, the instability introduced in the B
section consists of horns playing B♭ chords over a C pedal. The allusion to mix-
olydian modal organization loosens the section from its moorings in C major and
provides a degree of contrast proportional to the rest of this very harmonically stable
cue.64 Whatever that instability, however, it is dispelled by the entire trumpet
section taking the main melody in A’, giving one of the most powerful and rousing
ends to any of the nineties title cues. Once again, the viewer is promised a sense of
return and safety.

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before

In the foregoing section I have shown that, despite local differences, the nineties
Star Trek franchise entries had a number of important commonalities in their
main themes. All of them had clear sectional organization consisting of tight-knit
outer sections (A and A’) and looser-knit contrasting middles (B); several drew on
mixolydian inflections or progressions; most accessed the fantastical through
M8M progression classes; and all of them featured a musical climax in the final A
section that conveyed a sense of closure, predictability, and safety. Whatever
strange new worlds audiences were headed for, it was certain they would be
coming back to the familiar.
None of this is true for ENT, a fact that is observable from that most
visceral aspect of musical style, instrumentation. In contrast to the nineties series’
orchestral cues, the voice, acoustic guitar, cello, and electric bass combination in the
218 Evan Ware

ENT cue’s verse is augmented in the pre-chorus with kick drum and rhythm
guitar. This is fully fleshed out in the chorus with the help of the whole drum kit,
electric rhythm guitar, and, at the chorus repetition, electric lead guitar. With
the exception of the cello, none of these instruments had ever been used in a
Star Trek title cue before. Instead of the anonymity of the orchestra, the instruments
in “Where My Heart Will Take Me” invoke physical embodiment. Frith argues
that “rock performers are expected to revel in their own physicality … to strain and
sweat and collapse with tiredness.”65 Regardless of whether the performers are
actually seen, rock performance has such strongly coded physicality that the per-
former’s bodily presence in the imagination is unavoidable. The strain and fry in
Russell Watson’s voice throughout the ENT cue, the effort heard in the high
bending pitches of the lead guitar in the chorus, the way the drummer leans into the
fill at the outset of the chorus, and the way the rhythm guitarist attacks their
strumming patterns in the pre-chorus all evoke a vastly different world from the
orchestral fare of ENT’s predecessors. Struggle, strain, effort, and most importantly,
the human body are central.
The notion of struggle also pervades the song’s structural elements. Whereas
the other three series have clearly demarcated musical sections featuring clear-cut
grammatical themes, “Where My Heart Will Take Me” is a single verse/pre-
chorus/chorus form, with each section adding further layers of musical activity,
suggesting a progress narrative. But while the sections are marked by changing
instrumentation, they are not particularly marked in terms of harmonic function.
In fact, as the verse and pre-chorus demonstrate, the voice leading shows a
marked emphasis on IV and II chords, both signaling predominant function, with
neither arriving at a moment of sectional change (see Example 11.16).

EXAMPLE 11.16 ENT main title verse, and pre-chorus (time code 0:00:00–0:31).
Transcribed by author 66

The III chord that starts the pre-chorus might be thought of as a tonic substitute,
but it does not have the sense of stasis that a I chord would convey in the same
position. With no change in register, III acts as a neighbor tone prolongation of the
predominant function that spans most of the verse and pre-chorus. These sections
thus remain stuck in a transition between tonic and dominant.
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 219

The true gravitational pull of the dominant is not felt until the II chord arrives
as a local pedal, under which musical activity intensifies into the chorus. From
here to the chorus’s lead-in, the voice illustrates Drew Nobile’s concept of
“melodic-harmonic divorce” as it remains stubbornly out of phase with the
prevailing E-minor harmony in the accompaniment by emphasizing pitch classes
D and A (see Example 11.17).67 This is an inversion of the common verse/pre-
chorus/chorus schema containing a loose-tight-loose relationship between melody
and harmony that Nobile identified in contemporary pop songs.68

EXAMPLE 11.17 ENT verse and pre-chorus, melodic-harmonic divorces marked

with boxes (time code 0:00:00–0:00:31). Transcribed by author 69

While the verse in “Where My Heart Will Take Me” has few melodic-harmonic
divorces, they increase in frequency during the first half of the pre-chorus, cul-
minating in a three-measure melodic-harmonic dissociation over the words, “and
they’re not gonna hold me down no more/no they’re not going to change my
mind.” This is similar to Nobile’s concept of a “hierarchy divorce,” in which the
sung melody exists at a deeper structural level than the harmony. Rather than the
divorce being the product of unchanging melodic fragments over changing or-
namental harmony, in this song the pre-chorus’s vocal part anticipates a harmony
that has not yet been heard.70 The vocal pitches D and A appear almost exclusively
over the long II (E-minor) pedal. Although it might be tempting to consider them
as a 7th and an 11th, no such chord extensions are found in the underlying in-
strumental parts. Instead, the melody’s D and A come into harmonic phase when
the ensemble shifts from II to the Vsus4 chord of the anacrustic cadence, ushering
in the chorus. Thus, the obstinacy and prescience of the melodic gesture connotes
stubbornness, waiting for the right time, or being ahead of one’s time and waiting
for others to catch up.71
When the chorus begins, the melody and harmony come into their tightest
alignment so far. With the lyrics turning to themes like, “I can do anything,” the
voice is in its top register, around F# and G, and nearly always in lock step with
the harmony (see Example 11.18).
220 Evan Ware

EXAMPLE 11.18 ENT chorus melody with melodic-harmonic divorce in box (time
code 0:00:31–0:00:45). Transcribed by author 72

Just like in the nineties series’ title cues, the breaking of the registral ceiling is
climactic. It begins with the D-E-F# anacrusis when the chorus begins and when it
is repeated eight measures later. These climaxes, coming as they do at the beginning
of the choruses, mark the phrases very differently from the ending cadence-focused
cues by Goldsmith and McCarthy. Whereas final cadences emphasize an ending
function, signaling return, cadences at the outset of phrases emphasize a beginning
function, and are thus propulsive and evocative of departure—an opening outward
rather than a return.
The ending function of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” happens some
time after these propulsive high points. In fact, the closing syntactical cadence
in “Where My Heart Will Take Me” is actually delayed by a phrase expansion
(see Example 11.19).

EXAMPLE 11.19 ENT choruses and coda (time code 0:00:31–end). Transcribed by
author 73

Using an E-major chord (at time code 0:00:55) where the phrase would normally
turn toward the dominant, the expectation is nullified and it instead acts as a
neighbor to IV. This has the effect of relaxing musical tension by dispelling the
expectation of V in the surprising harmonic move, and then supporting codetta-
like fragments that make the passage sound like a closing section. When the
dominant finally arrives, the intensity, register, and density of musical activity have
all been made more diffuse. In all the nineties series cues, this moment would
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 221

be where the big, climactic, final cadence landed. Instead, the ENT song strikes a
decidedly reflective note, with the semantic close of the coda’s cadence only a faint
presence in the strings, mixed behind the Enterprise’s mildly revving warp engine
as it heads out into the unknown. We, tethered to Earth, watch as it leaves. There is
no real return here. As a result, one of the central musical narratives around which
Star Trek main title themes in the nineties were scaffolded is cast aside.

Conclusion
Musically, ENT boldly went in a new direction, and was rewarded, as boldness
sometimes is, with deep unpopularity. The core of the issue, as I have illustrated,
lies in an ideological mismatch between the series creators’ need to do something
new and fans’ desire for continuity with previous series. By the time ENT aired, a
whole new generation of Star Trek fans had grown up with the nineties
series—rather than TOS—as their touchstones. These series’ title cues, while
differing in superficial respects, share a core ritual where the setting of space was
established, the vessel was dramatically introduced, and their heroic adventures
were framed by safe musical climaxes. The cues were buttressed by the musical
signifiers and processes summarized in Table 11.1, a summary that amounts to a
kind of family resemblance taxonomy for “appropriate Star Trek title cues.”74
It is clear from both the form and content of this summary that the ENT
title cue eschews nearly all of these elements (see Table 11.2). Instead, it uses
visual and musical events to evoke physicality, struggle, imperfection, and
triumph over adversity. Not only do these traits violate the franchise’s utopian
ideology of human perfection, but the visual and musical means by which
they are evoked form what is essentially an anti-prototypical Star Trek title
cue. Because there is little, if any, family resemblance between it and
the prototype, it comes across as the least Star Trek of the franchise title
cues.76 Indeed, in the brief survey of fan opinion at the outset of this chapter,
the most oft-reported fan reaction was a sense of removal from the text. The
reason for that removal is clear: because “Where My Heart Will Take Me”
was an anti-prototype, it failed as an airlock into the show. This is made more
acute by the fact that the song was never part of an overall musical design for
the series. Unlike the title cue for Firefly, the flavor of which was incorporated
into the show’s underscore, neither the whole nor any discernible aspect of
“Where My Heart Will Take Me” has a similar role in ENT. In fact, the series
underscore was written by franchise veterans like McCarthy, Jay Chattaway,
Paul Baillargeon, and David Bell, and thus the music for each episode of ENT
does not sound significantly out of step with anything that had been done in
the previous fifteen years. “Where My Heart Will Take Me” alone stood as
the one major musical change to the franchise formula.
Its status as an outlier, both within ENT itself as well as in the larger world of
nineties Trek, might well explain the cue’s enduring unpopularity: it was
 75
TABLE 11.1 Prototypical Star Trek title cue family resemblance taxonomy

General Form Visual Events Musical Events Sound Design Events Affect

• starfield • ambiguous meter • environmental sound • emptiness

• stellar phenomena • pedal octaves effects • eternity
222 Evan Ware

Ground • solar systems • pedal non-triadic pandiatonicism • infinity

• anticipation for
Introduction arrival of figure

• arrival of/pan to • section-ending syntactical • warp engine revving • point of highest

Figure vessel dominants • initial fly-by tension
• title card • cue’s strongest climax

• title card • tight-knit grammatical themes • fly-by sound effects • relaxation of

• credits • clear triadic tonality/mixolydian tension
• starship fly-bys progs. • heroism
Beginning • starship close-ups • brass melodies • home/safety
• local melodic/harmonic climax • stability
at end of section • intrepidness
• adventure

• credits • looser-knit sections • none • fun

• change in tonal organization • fantastical
(tethered chromaticism, • adventure
mixolydian inflection) • departure/less
Middle • M8M progression classes safe
• pump-up modulations
Main Title
• register changes
Theme
• timbre changes (usually to
strings)
 • credits • re-establishment of triadic • final rev to warp/ • return
• final fly-by and tonality fly-by • safety
warp away • re-establishment of tight-knit • predictability
grammatical themes • happy ending
• high brass melodies and register • order
End
• major musical climax (second
strongest climax of the cue) ends
section
• short coda confirms syntactical
cadence
Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue
223
TABLE 11.2 ENT title cue’s anti-prototypical taxonomy

General Form Visual Events Musical Events Sound Design Events Affect

• planet Earth • clear meter • none • introspective

224 Evan Ware

• title card • triadic tonality (emph PD) • quiet

Verse • enter atmosphere/ • human voice singing lyrics • sentimental
clouds • acoustic guitar, electric bass,
• ocean fly-over solo cello

• history of human • continued PD emphasis • none • stubborn

exploration montage • loosening melodic-harmonic • struggling
Pre-Chorus fusion • ahead of one’s
• 3 mm. divorce anticipates the time
chorus
Main Title • rhythm guitar added
Theme
• montage continues • climax initiates chorus and its • none • triumph
repeat • overcoming
• few melodic–harmonic • self-assurance
divorces • individualism
Chorus • electric guitar and drum kit
added
• phrase expansion diffuses
tension into ending cadence

• final fly-by and warp • strings repeat cadence more • Enterprise goes to • introspection
Coda
away softly warp (soft)
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 225

considered by fans and critics alike as having been parachuted in for commercial
purposes. As another major violation of Star Trek ideology—whose utopia has
famously evolved beyond such earthly needs—the perceived material purpose of
the cue served to undermine potential immersion in the show’s world. With no
working airlock into Star Trek’s utopic future, fans were expelled from paradise,
as it were. Worse, by aligning with the non-utopic trappings of the real world,
the showrunners provoked fans to rebel. “Where My Heart Will Take Me” was
seen as threatening the whole text of Star Trek, and many fans of the franchise
turned against what they loved, crossing over to become anti-fans of ENT. They
directed their fan-tagonism at the production team, protested, signed petitions or
wished they still could some two decades later.
To be certain, a show never fails just because of its title cue. There are a whole
host of material, textual, and contextual considerations that come to bear on such
a complex question. A show’s title cue does, however, play a vital role in sig-
naling its core ideological values, what kind of experience it is affording viewers,
and how it fits into, expands, changes, or resists its own lineage. In the twenty
years since its premiere, the ENT title cue is still as unpopular as ever, which is an
indication of the degree of importance title cues hold for Star Trek fans. How title
cues bring us into the utopian world of Star Trek remains a question of great
complexity, but also one of great importance. The continuing and profound
societal changes in early twenty-first century North America are finding their
expression through the not-quite-so-utopian settings of Star Trek: Discovery
(2017–), Star Trek: Picard (2020–), and Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020–). Finely
attuned to Western culture’s fears and aspirations, as always, the Star Trek fran-
chise and its music have thus set out to the next frontier in the continuing
voyages of our self-understanding. May we boldly explore these strange new
worlds and seek to better comprehend our evolving civilization.

Notes
1 Over the course of this chapter, all Star Trek television series to date will be referenced,
as well as all of the films released prior to Enterprise. To streamline referencing, they are
all listed below:
1) TELEVISION SERIES—Star Trek, title music by Alexander Courage, created by
Gene Roddenberry (1966–1969; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek/); Star Trek:
The Animated Series, title music by Ray Ellis, created by Gene Roddenberry
(1973–1974; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_animated/); Star Trek: The Next
Generation, title music by Jerry Goldsmith, created by Gene Roddenberry (1987–1994;
https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/); Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine, title music by Dennis McCarthy, created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller
(1993–1999; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_deep_space_nine/); Star Trek:
Voyager, title music by Jerry Goldsmith, created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and
Jeri Taylor (1995–2001; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek_voyager/); Enterprise,
title music by Diane Warren, performed by Russell Watson, created by Rick Berman
and Brannon Braga (2001–2005; https://www.cbs.com/shows/enterprise/); Star Trek:
226 Evan Ware

Discovery, title music by Jeff Russo, created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman
(2017–; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/), Star Trek: Picard, title
music by Jeff Russo, created by Kristen Beyer, Michael Chabon, Akiva Goldsman, and
Alex Kurtzman (2020–; https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-picard/); Star Trek:
Lower Decks, title music by Chris Westlake, created by Mike McMahan (2020–;
https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-lower-decks/).
2) FILMS—Star Trek: The Motion Picture, music by Jerry Goldsmith, directed by
Robert Wise (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1979), DVD; Star Trek II: The
Wrath of Khan, music by James Horner, directed by Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1982), DVD; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, music by James
Horner, directed by Leonard Nimoy (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1984),
DVD; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, music by Leonard Rosenman, directed by
Leonard Nimoy (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1986), DVD; Star Trek V: The
Final Frontier, music by Jerry Goldsmith, directed by William Shatner (Hollywood,
CA: Paramount Pictures, 1989), DVD; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, music
by Cliff Eidelman, directed by Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
1991), DVD; Star Trek Generations, music by Dennis McCarthy, directed by David
Carson (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1994), DVD; Star Trek: First Contact,
music by Jerry and Joel Goldsmith, directed by Jonathan Frakes (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1996), DVD; Star Trek: Insurrection, music by Jerry Goldsmith, di-
rected by Jonathan Frakes (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1998), DVD; Star Trek
Nemesis, music by Jerry Goldsmith, directed by Stuart Baird (Hollywood, CA: Paramount
Pictures, 2002), DVD.
2 Mark Altman and Edward Gross, The Fifty-Year Mission, The Next 25 Years: The
Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2016), 644.
3 Braga has said that he “really had just about had it with the 24th century” after his
work on VOY. Altman and Gross, The Next 25 years, 644–45.
4 Interestingly, “Where My Heart Will Take Me” was not the initial choice Braga and
Berman made. They had initially cut the title cue to U2’s “It’s A Beautiful Day” but
quickly realized that they would not have the budget to license the song. “Creating
Enterprise” featurette on Star Trek: Enterprise The Complete First Season, created by
Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (Hollywood, CA, 2001), DVD.
5 “Berman Defends ‘Faith,’” SciFi Wire, December 12, 2001, accessed July 29, 2020,
https://web.archive.org/web/20030220144135/http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-
main.html?2001-12%2F12%2F11.00.tv; Brian Hiatt, “Why Trekkies hate ‘Enterprise’‘s
theme song [sic],” EW.com, October 18, 2001, accessed July 29, 2020, https://ew.com/
article/2001/10/18/why-trekkies-hate-enterprises-theme-song/
6 Andrew Whalen, “Every ‘Star Trek’ Theme Song Ranked,” Newsweek, May 26, 2020,
accessed November 29, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/star-trek-theme-songs-
ranked-next-generation-voyager-main-title-alexander-courage-movie-soundtrack-
1506088; Charlie Brigden, “Ranking The ‘Star Trek’ Themes,” Film School Rejects,
January 21, 2019, accessed November 29, 2020, https://filmschoolrejects.com/ranking-
the-star-trek-themes/; “All 8 Trek Opening Themes Ranked (Redux),” Redmangore-
reveiws, July 4, 2018, accessed November 29, 2020, https://redmangoreviews.com/2018/
07/04/all-6-trek-opening-themes-ranked/; Maurice Mitchell, “Every Star Trek
Opening Theme Song Ranked from Worst to Best,” The Geek Twins, October 3, 2019,
accessed November 29, 2020, http://www.thegeektwins.com/2019/10/every-star-trek-
opening-theme-song.html. In “Ranking Star Trek Theme Songs” (reddit.com) nearly
every participant in the subreddit lists the ENT theme song last; “Ranking Star Trek
Theme Songs,” Reddit.com, February 12, 2011, accessed November 29, 2020, https://
www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/fkf36/ranking_the_star_trek_theme_songs/.
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 227

Likewise in the “Rank your Star Trek theme songs” subreddit, no one lists the ENT
theme song on their list of favorites; “Rank your Star Trek theme songs,” Reddit.com,
September 12, 2017, accessed November 29, 2020, https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/
comments/6zshpi/rank_your_star_trek_theme_songs/
7 “The Trek Series with the Best Theme Music Is …,” Startrek.com, September 15,
2013, accessed November 29, 2020, https://www.startrek.com/article/the-trek-
series-with-the-best-theme-music-is; “Fans Say Trek Show with the Best Musical
Theme Was …,” Startrek.com, August 14, 2016, accessed November 29, 2020, https://
www.startrek.com/article/fans-say-trek-show-with-the-best-musical-theme-was
8 Kayti Burt, “Which Star Trek Opening Sequence Is The Best?,” Denofgeek.com,
September 5, 2017, accessed November 29, 2020, https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/
which-star-trek-opening-sequence-is-the-best/; Kevin Wong, “Let’s Rank The Star
Trek TV Openings, Worst To Best,” Kotaku.com, August 15, 2015, accessed
November 29, 2020, https://kotaku.com/let-s-rank-the-star-trek-tv-openings-worst-
to-best-1723292094; Jessie Gender, “Every Star Trek Theme Song RANKED (Even
Star Trek Picard),” YouTube.com, January 31, 2020, accessed July 29, 2020, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXq8EZEBt0s
9 See, for instance, the misattribution on “Rod Stewart—Enterprise Theme (Faith Of
The Heart) Lyrics,” SongLyrics, accessed January 04, 2021, http://www.songlyrics.
com/rod-stewart/enterprise-theme-faith-of-the-heart-lyrics/
10 “Why did they choose that theme song for Star Trek Enterprise?,” Science Fiction and
Fantasy Stack Exchange, July 5, 2013, accessed July 29, 2020, https://scifi.
stackexchange.com/questions/37804/why-did-they-choose-that-theme-song-for-
star-trek-enterprise
11 u/therguydidit and u/admiralteee, “just discovered the theme song. Can i still sign the
petition protesting it?,” Reddit.com, August 7, 2019, accessed July 29, 2020, https://
www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/cn85wr/just_discovered_the_star_trek_
enterprise_theme/
12 This is a form of “social marking” that ethnomusicologist Steven Feld would argue is
undoubtedly the result of salient musical marking—the musical and the social being
co-productive; see Steven Feld, “Sound Structure as Social Structure,” Ethnomusicology
28, no. 3 (1984): 406.
13 Yonatan Malin, “Analytical Stories, Ethnography, and Cultural Values,” paper de-
livered at the CU Boulder Colloquium (February 1, 2016): 18–19. My thanks to
Yonatan for sharing a copy of his paper with me.
14 Tagg’s three concepts to describe a title cue’s functions are the “reveille” that signals
that something new is beginning, the “preparation” that conveys the general mood of
the show, and the “signature” that is the show’s recognizable thematic material; see
Philip Tagg, Kojak—50 Seconds of Television Music: Toward the Analysis of Affect in
Popular Music (Göteborg: Musikvetenskapliga Institute, Götebord University, 1979).
15 Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 50–55.
16 Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), cited in Jonathan Gray, “New Audiences, New Textualities: Fans, Anti-
fans, and Non-fans,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2003): 72.
17 Frank Lehman, Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018), 26–31.
18 Jessica Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue,”
Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (2015): 295.
19 Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 316–17.
20 Paul Sommerfeld’s chapter “Markers of Utopian Difference: Music in Deep Space Nine
(1993–1999) and Voyager (1995–2001),” included in the present volume, deals with
the use of VOY theme fragments in the show’s underscore as an intratextual device.
228 Evan Ware

21 Neil Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings: Tracking the Title Themes of the Star Trek
Franchise, 1966–2005,” in Tuned to the Future, ed. K. J. Donnelley and Philip Hayward
(New York: Routledge, 2012), 68.
22 Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings,” 68.
23 Given the negative fan raction to the ENT title cue, it is unlikely to have been the
catalyst behind the choice of a popular song cue in Firefly. Other science fiction series
were using vocal music at the time, giving more weight to the notion of a popular
song title cue zeitgeist. While the title cues for Battlestar Galactica and Farscape are not a
songs per se, both use the human voice as a central element in their decidedly exoticized
and tense music. Battlestar Galactica, music by Bear McCreary, created by Glen A. Larson,
developed by Ronald D. Moore (2004–2009; Universal City, CA: Universal Pictures
Home Entertainment, 2010), Blu-ray; Farscape, music by SubVision, created by Rockne
S. O’Bannon, (1999-2003; New York, NY: A&E Home Video, 2011), Blu-ray; Firefly,
music by Greg Edmonson, created by Joss Whedon (2002–2003; Los Angeles, CA: Fox
Home Entertainment, 2014), DVD.
24 “… although we are ostensibly dealing with sound qualities, it may be difficult to say
what different acts or records in a genre have in common musically” (emphasis ori-
ginal). Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996), 86, 95. Frith highlights “indie” music as a case in
point: it is a genre named for a means of production and an attitude with respect to the
larger recording industry. Indeed, a glance at the number one songs on Billboard’s
Adult Contemporary chart for the year 2000 (when ENT premiered) reveals a col-
lection of songs by Savage Garden, Faith Hill, Marc Anthony, Don Henley, BBMak,
Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow, and *NSYNC that, predictably, share some
musical traits but not others, and with not even one trait shared by all. “Billboard:
Adult Contemporary,” Billboard.com, accessed November 29, 2020, https://www.
billboard.com/charts/adult-contemporary/2000-01-01
25 Frith, Performing Rites, 75–89, 95. Franco Fabbri’s genre rules make a similar point: only
technical and semiotic rules have anything to do with “the music itself,” while behavioral,
commercial, juridical, social, and ideological rules govern a host of other considerations;
see Franco Fabbri, “A Theory of Musical Genres: Two Applications,” in Popular Music
Perspectives, ed. David Horn and Philip Tagg (Exeter, UK: IASPM, 1981), 52–81.
26 Jonathan Gray, “How Do I Dislike Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” in Anti-Fandom:
Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 31.
27 Gray, “New Audiences, New Textualities,” 73.
28 Vivi Theodoropoulou, “The Anti-Fan within the Fan: Awe and Envy in Sports Fandom,”
in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornell
Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 316.
29 Derek Johnson, “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies
of Fandom,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, ed. Jonathan
Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University
Press, 2007), 287, 295.
30 In addition to TOS and TAS, the films The Motion Picture (ST:TMP), The Wrath of Khan
(ST:WOK), The Voyage Home (ST:VH), The Final Frontier (ST:FF), The Undiscovered
Country (ST:UC), Generations (ST:GEN), and Nemesis (ST:NEM) all use an opening star
field while First Contact (ST:FC) and Insurrection (ST:INS) use an initial black screen. The
only film that parts ways with this practice is The Search for Spock (ST:SFS), which opens
with a recap of the end of ST:WOK, introducing the classic music over a shot of planet
Genesis seen from the Enterprise. The change makes sense when considered in context:
ST:SFS was a direct sequel to ST:WOK and thus the audience could have been presumed
to be familiar within the ongoing story arc. The framing function of the visual, the airlock
into the text, was more importantly focused on the specific location where the story had
left off.
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 229

31 Berman speaks of getting “the essence of Star Trek, as opposed to the specifics … .”
Altman and Gross, The Next 25 Years, 28.
32 This is the case for TOS, TAS, TNG, and DS9 among shows, and ST:WOK, ST:SFS,
ST:VH, ST:FF, ST:FC, ST:INS, and ST:NEM among films.
33 Philipp Tagg, Fernando the Flute (IV: 4th Edition) (New York: Mass Media Music
Scholars’ Press, 2018), 78-85; Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 301-302; Lerner,
“Hearing the Boldly Goings,” 56.
34 Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major (New York: Dover Publications,
1990 [1874]); Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan” (New York: Dover
Publications, 1987 [1888]); Aaron Copland, Billy the Kid (New York: Boosey &
Hawkes, 1999 [1938]).
35 Rued Laangard, Music of the Spheres (IMSLP, [1918]), accessed August 4, 2021, https://
imslp.org/wiki/Sfærernes_musik,_BVN_128_(Langgaard,_Rued).
36 Star Trek: Enterprise title cue, words and music by Diane Warren.
37 Since the VI-V motion is clearly non-functional, I am considering these to be passing
chords that embellish and compose out the IV.
38 Star Trek: The Next Generation, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
39 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, title cue by Dennis McCarthy.
40 Star Trek: Voyager, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
41 In this respect, these openings have much in common with the “slow introduction” to
a classical sonata form in which “fanfare motives are typically encountered, yet … are
often tempered by a general sense of hesitancy and uncertainty, so as not to give the
impression that the movement has truly begun.” See William Caplin, Analyzing
Classical Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 552.
42 Frank Lehman describes something quite similar, but which applies to triadic tonal space
(see Lehman, Hollywood Harmony, 203–207). While he notes that triadic pandiatonicism
is comparatively rare, the examples from TNG (and further on from DS9 and VOY)
indicate that quartal pandiatonicism might be fairly common, at least in nineties Star Trek
soundtracks. Both Getman and Lerner refer to this in their work, though not with the
same terminology. See Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 301–302; Lerner, “Hearing the
Boldly Goings,” 55–57.
43 These are chords that function as dominants regardless of whether or not they are
actually V. See Drew Nobile, “Form and Voice Leading in Early Beatles Songs,” Music
Theory Online 16, no. 1 (2011): 4.
44 Star Trek: The Next Generation, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
45 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, title cue by Dennis McCarthy.
46 Star Trek: Voyager, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
47 Star Trek: Enterprise title cue, words and music by Diane Warren.
48 The term “composing out” comes from linear analysis and refers to the process of
prolonging harmonies through contrapuntal means (either through surface figuration
or subordinate harmonies). In this case, melodic composing out means that harmonies
in the middle-ground or background of the music are brought to life through large
scale melodic motions spun out in the foreground over time, rather than discrete
harmonies played one after another directly.
49 See Mark Richards, “Film Music Themes: Analysis and Corpus Study,” Music Theory
Online 22, no. 1 (2016): 3–4. He is drawing on Caplin, who describes such themes in the
context of tight-knit organizations that “promote structural stability,” and loose-knit
organizations that “promote structural instability.” Tight-knittedness is evaluated based a
number of factors including lack of modulation, clear PACs (perfect authentic cadences),
mainly diatonic harmony, symmetrical grouping structures, motivic uniformity, and
conventionality of theme types. See Caplin Analyzing Classical Form, 203–205.
50 Star Trek: Voyager, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
230 Evan Ware

51 For an extensive discussion see Raymond Monelle, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military,
and Pastoral (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 35–112.
52 Surrounded by chromatic chords outside of functional tonal syntax, the section ex-
hibits the hallmarks of Frank Lehman’s concept of “tethered chromaticism.” He de-
scribes this as “a strong sense of tonicity without the predictable routines of functional
tonal syntax.” See Lehman, Hollywood Harmony, 207.
53 Star Trek: Voyager, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
54 Scott Brandon Murphy, “Transformational Theory and the Analysis of Film Music,”
in The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, ed. David Neumeyer (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 485.
55 Murphy, “Transformational Theory,” 488. Murphy’s conclusions about the semantic
associations of TTPCs are based on a corpus of three hundred films as well as on broad
personal experience. The following M9Ms—third descents from Ab to F, and F to
D—do not figure in his conclusions. They do, to my ear at least, bear a family resem-
blance to M8Ms in terms of the fantastical, though here they add a kind of brightness or
shimmer not shared by M8Ms. Further discussion is beyond the scope of the present
project, though it is an intriguing avenue for future enquiry. Of further note, the pro-
gression has a long history in the Star Trek franchise, as it is the memorable opening
chords of the title theme overture to ST:TMP, also composed by Goldsmith.
56 Star Trek: The Next Generation, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
57 Star Trek: The Next Generation, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
58 Richards, “Film Music Themes,” 35.
59 Lehman, Hollywood Harmony, 54–58.
60 Star Trek: The Next Generation, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
61 For more on tonal inverses see Murphy, “Transformational Theory,” 484–86.
62 Star Trek: The Next Generation, title cue by Jerry Goldsmith.
63 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, title cue by Dennis McCarthy.
64 In truth, introducing an M8M progression class would likely be such a strong contrast
from the rest of the music as to be out of place and distracting.
65 Frith cites the orchestra’s incorporeality, it’s veneration of stillness for both performer
and audience, and thus its tendency to conceal effort. Frith, Performing Rites, 124.
66 Star Trek: Enterprise title cue, words and music by Diane Warren.
67 Drew Nobile, “Counterpoint in Rock Music: Unpacking the “Melodic-Harmonic
Divorce,” Music Theory Spectrum 37, no. 2 (2015): 189–203.
68 Nobile, “Counterpoint in Rock Music,” 200–201.
69 Star Trek: Enterprise title cue, words and music by Diane Warren.
70 For more on hierarchy divorces and for Nobile’s examples of melodies maintained
over changing harmonies, see Nobile, “Counterpoint in Rock Music,” 190–93.
71 Nobile’s concerns are mostly centered on the structural conditions in which melodic-
harmonic divorces exist. Here, I am expanding on his theory to describe expressive
processes in the music. It is beyond the scope of the present work to speculate on
whether the form of melodic-harmonic divorce illustrated here is a trope in popular
music. It is, however, a tempting subject of further study. If it were common enough to
warrant it, perhaps we could eventually consider the category of “anticipation divorce.”
72 Star Trek: Enterprise title cue, words and music by Diane Warren.
73 Star Trek: Enterprise title cue, words and music by Diane Warren.
74 Here, I am referring to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance,” where
members of a “family,” or category, may share traits without any one trait or collection of
traits defining the category for all members; see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations (New York: MacMillan, 1953): 66–71; and an excellent summary in
George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987), 16.
 Anti-Fandom and the Enterprise Title Cue 231

75 Section-ending syntactical dominants are chords that function as dominants regardless

of whether or not they are actually V. See Nobile, “Form and Voice Leading in Early
Beatles Songs,” 4.
76 I am drawing on Eleanor Rosch’s concept of the “prototype effect,” which explains
that category members will display varying degrees of fitness so that some members
can be deemed better examples of a category than others. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and
Dangerous Things, 40–41.
12
NAVIGATING CONTRASTING STYLES
IN THE FIRST THREE STAR TREK
FILM SCORES
Louis Niebur

Throughout much of the twentieth century, film and television composers drew
upon the language of neoromantic orchestral music to represent utopias. The
original series of Star Trek was frequently guilty of this.1 But by the late 1970s,
science fiction media, generally among the more musically progressive of genres,
challenged listeners by expanding its stylistic options to include a wider and more
nuanced variety of styles as it musically depicted these imagined futures. At
the heart of this nexus sat the Star Trek film franchise. Both Jerry Goldsmith’s and
James Horner’s scores for the first three Star Trek films demonstrate the multi-
plicity of styles available for science fiction films. Beginning with the long-in-
development Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979; ST:TMP), the score by the
prolific and pioneering Goldsmith largely abandoned his modernist tendencies in
lieu of a John Williams-inspired tonal sound, complete with orchestral fanfares,
leitmotivic themes, and sweeping string melodies.2 But the question of the re-
presentation of technology sits uncomfortably alongside this nostalgic method,
and a complex set of approaches results. In much the same way as in the original
series, Goldsmith used a combination of standard orchestra, synthesizers, and
unusual instruments in an elaborate web of signification, predictably deploying
electronic sound for the most unknowable, malevolent aspects of the science
fiction universe. Dissonant electronic sounds were reserved for moments de-
picting threats, particularly that of the mechanical antagonist, V’ger. However, at
key moments Goldsmith also participated in the fashion for depicting a utopic
future with electronic sounds, usually by doubling the traditional orchestral
melodies with synthesizers, but also in more overt and beautiful ways.
A similar approach was taken for the next two Star Trek films. James Horner’s
swashbuckling scores for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek III:
The Search for Spock (1984) evoked Korngold’s famous Seahawk score of 1940,
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-12
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 233

while incorporating electronic sounds at carefully chosen moments.3 This chapter

explores how Star Trek’s first film composers reconciled several philosophically
opposed but interrelated methods for scoring science fiction films. Goldsmith and
Horner adopted contemporary signifiers of futuristic technology and alien cul-
tures while at the same time incorporating modern and postmodern orchestral
idioms. By acknowledging the debts owed to earlier films’ soundtracks by these
composers, I suggest that the first three Star Trek films established a reliable
template for scoring the franchise and its vision of the future.

Scoring Science Fiction

In the years leading up to ST:TMP and its sequels, a few techniques for scoring
science fiction films emerged. Beginning with soundtracks like Bernard
Herrmann’s for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Louis and Bebe Barron’s
pioneering score for Forbidden Planet (1956), science fiction films tended to feature
dissonant, atonal electronic music to represent the alien, futuristic, or unfamiliar.4
The technology behind early electronic music encouraged an abstract, formless
structure, and even as the equipment evolved to become more user-friendly and
less associated purely with academic electronic music studios, this “ugly”5 sound
remained an option for composers desiring a way to depict the truly mysterious
and threatening aspects of science fiction. However, science fiction film composers
inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968) could also
draw from the musical language of high modernists.6 In 2001, Stanley Kubrick’s
alignment of alien contact and post-war contemporary classical music, specifically
that of the atonal orchestral and choral works of Gyorgy Ligeti, contrasted against
his use of popular, diatonic, light classical hits to represent the effortless in-
corporation of technology into humanity’s future.
In the wake of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), the late 1970s saw a proliferation
of big-budget science fiction films, with studios capitalizing on the revitalization
of the once moribund genre.7 One of the many elements imitated in the wave of
post-Star Wars films was John Williams’s postmodern neoromantic score, which
resurrected huge orchestras and leitmotivic techniques, although with a tonal
language derived from early twentieth-century British and Russian concert music
rather than a more Germanic tradition. Finally, as electronic scores reached a new
height of popularity in the late 1970s, some composers, such as Vangelis in his score
for Blade Runner (1982), abandoned the dissonant and abrasive style of earlier
electronic scores and embraced a hyper-tonal and lyrical, yet still synthetic, sound,
which was very different from the neoromantic orchestral language of Williams.8
By the end of the 1970s, it was possible to represent technology, alien cultures
and worlds, as well as utopian and dystopian futures by the novel sound of delib-
erately consonant electronic music. Factors involved in the rise of this last style
of scoring science fiction included the greater affordability of once prohibitively
expensive instruments, the ability for composers unfamiliar with or uninterested in
234 Louis Niebur

the language of academic electronic music to write in this style, and the sub-
sequent incorporation of pop idioms into film scoring, which throughout
the 1970s had become more amenable to electronically generated sounds. So, to
summarize, by the end of the 1970s, four styles of scoring practices for science
fiction films predominated: electronic atonal, modernist orchestral, neoromantic
orchestral, and electronic tonal.9 Each of these approaches would influence the
first three Star Trek films.

Electronic Tonal Elements

Although Jerry Goldsmith was the first composer to reckon with the multitude of
scoring choices in a Star Trek feature film, he was by no means the first to confront
these potentially contradictory options. In 1971, Wendy Carlos capitalized on the
success she had had with her genre-breaking album Switched-On Bach (1968) by
realizing familiar, tonal, and classical works on the Moog synthesizer for Kubrick’s
A Clockwork Orange.10 What are we to make of this choice? The film does not
depict a utopia full of technological wonder, but rather one in which rundown
urban centers metaphorically represent the larger ethical breakdown of society. A
musical language associated with beauty ironically represents this dystopia, de-
monstrating what Barham called “an integrated aesthetics of identity between
dystopian agony and utopian ecstasy.”11 The electronics impose a kind of ration-
ality that, rather than removing the humanity from the equation—as Summers
suggests in the context of the original Star Trek series—in the context of a dystopia
strengthens the very human Neo-Hegelian aspects of a struggling culture.12
James Horner incorporated this kind of electronic music into the diegetic sound
world of his first science fiction film, Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).13 In one of the
film’s most unusual moments, a human scientist is shown inserting a transparent
“cassette”14 into an android, who begins singing all four parts of a renaissance
madrigal filtered through a Vocoder. This is a clear reference to the Vocoded
treatment of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Carlos’s score for Clockwork Orange.
Rather than being backward-looking nostalgia, cues like these seem to be telling us
that in the future, tonality will be even more beautiful than it is now—the music
implies that technology has the ability to make art better.
Similarly, in Goldsmith’s score for ST:TMP, music associated with
Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Vulcan culture in general tends toward
the timbrally electronic. One of the few times a purely electronic sound is evoked
not for fear or suspense occurs on Spock’s first appearance in the film, when a
synthesizer doubles the Orientalist (but still tonally coherent) Vulcan music.
Later, as Spock arrives alone on the Enterprise, Goldsmith gives him the film’s
only purely electronic cue: a simple tune, both beautiful and rational, techno-
logical and historical, artificial and evocative of humanity. This dichotomy, using
exceedingly tonal and semiotically “beautiful” electronic music to represent a
futuristic dystopia or potentially alienating foreignness (of which Spock is an
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 235

exemplar), reemerged at the end of the seventies and into the early eighties, as
electronic scores became easier to realize, most famously in Vangelis’ Blade
Runner (1981) and John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981).15
Barham persuasively suggests that Vangelis’ and others’ use of electronic
tonality “marked a regressive stylistic step in scoring practice.”16 He offers that,
“As with the neo-Golden-Age orchestral scores of John Williams, here advances
in sound technology are coupled with a stylistic nostalgia that may turn out to be
a central topic of the kind of postmodernity with which Blade Runner has been
attributed as multigeneric screen text.”17 But I contend that a slightly modified
reading gets closer to the appeal of this hyper-tonal music. While it is true that
Vangelis draws upon a stereotypical film noir jazz trope for some of the more
overtly referential moments in the film, much of his score bears no resemblance at
all to earlier film scoring techniques. Instead, Vangelis’s score relies on the novel,
warm, and rich sound of the synthesizer to generate an aural texture analogous to
director Ridley Scott’s visual sensory excess. The music’s overwhelming thick-
ness captures the complexity of Scott’s vision of the future—both beautiful and
terrifying, a nonstop sensory feast—in a way that no orchestra could. The same is
true of Carpenter’s score for Escape from New York; while indebted to an estab-
lished, tonal musical language, the timbres and periodic structures reference a
totally modern popular music aesthetic.
Jessica Getman enumerates the three different ways Star Trek depicted (and
scored) alien races in the original series: the “non-white human, the humanoid
alien, and the non-humanoid alien.” As she explains, “These [humanoid alien]
groups are imagined musically through highly Orientalist practices, in ways that
allow them to comment upon and act as metaphors for real-world societies or
social dangers.”18 These methods apply to the scoring of the films as well. In Star
Trek: The Wrath of Khan, James Horner depicts Spock in ways typical of the
“humanoid alien,” for example by using pleasing but instrumentally ambiguous
textures to emphasize that, despite the oddness of the instrumentation, the
Vulcans are ultimately trustworthy. Horner’s relatively apathetic attitude towards
blissful electronic sounds means that such a use of electronic music is rare in his
scores. His motive for Spock in both Star Trek II and III replaces the synthesizer
with the semiotically mysterious, shimmering glass harmonica and inflects the
tune with a greater degree of chromaticism. Goldsmith’s electronic music for
Spock in the first film retains a suitably Orientalist feel with its use of unusual
scales, without sacrificing the clear reference to technological and logical wonder
evoked by the synthetic sounds.

Modernist Orchestral Elements

In 1968, while Kubrick was committing himself (and a worried MGM) to his
choice of orchestral standards for 2001, Jerry Goldsmith embarked on a very
different avant-garde approach to science fiction. His score for Planet of the Apes
236 Louis Niebur

(1968) drew upon the modernist language of Igor Stravinsky, Ligeti, and Iannis
Xenakis and expanded the traditional film orchestra with a unique collection of
unusual instruments (most famously pots and pans, and—emulating the noises of
the apes themselves—the Brazilian cuica). Bernard Herrmann’s eccentric or-
chestration for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), which involved top- and
bottom-heavy registers (courtesy of Hammond organs, vibraphones, glock-
enspiels, harps, and low brass, among other unusual percussion instruments)
performing chromatic, anti-teleological tone clusters and patterns, provided a
precedent for Goldsmith.19 Like Getman, Tim Summers shows in his work on
the depiction of alien cultures in the original Star Trek series how the alterity of
science fiction characters and situations has generally been musically depicted on a
spectrum from “not alien” to “most alien,” following predictable patterns. As the
visuals move towards the “most alien” end of the spectrum, Star Trek scores trend
towards metallic timbres and electronic instruments, with a removal of expressivity
and rubato.20 Melodic structure and periodicity become less pronounced, and tonal
centers become less stable. Ergo, in science fiction, one tradition sees a move
towards avant-garde sounds as parallel to increasingly bizarre (and potentially
threatening) alien presences. In Goldsmith’s score for ST:TMP, the Klingons are
represented by—in addition to a militaristic, strident brass melody—the inclusion
of the Indonesian angklung and various unconventional percussion instruments.
While he mostly reserves electronic instruments such as the Blaster Beam to ac-
company futuristic technology, Goldsmith adheres closely to Summers’ connection
between the Klingon’s alien threat and the use of unfamiliar instruments and
metallic timbres in the original series. The atonal texture of the percussion in-
struments in ST:TMP indicates the alien threat of the Klingons by, as Lehman
suggests, “strategically lifting or dissolving the tonal frameworks [Goldsmith]
sets up.”21 The composer is then able to “effectively hint at much larger ‘infinite’
harmonic realms beyond what is representable in a brief and dramatically-
constrained cue.”22 These infinite harmonic realms, drawing upon traditional
xenophobic, Orientalist tropes, translate as a potentially infinite threat. Goldsmith’s
scoring of the Klingons contrasts with his depiction of Spock’s alienness as
“technological” and “not human” (through the use of the synthesizer), but still
comprehendible (through harmonic and melodic tonality) and approachable
(through warm, soothing timbres).
James Horner, unlike Goldsmith, was a relative newcomer to film scoring when
he landed the Star Trek II job. While finishing a composition doctoral degree at the
University of California, Los Angeles he cut his teeth at Roger Corman’s New
World Pictures, scoring three films in rapid succession. Composers contemporary
to Horner, like Howard Shore, John Carpenter, and Danny Elfman, used syn-
thesizers and electronic sounds for their first film scores, partially out of budgetary
necessity—replacing a standard, expensive orchestra—and partially from an affinity
for the pop sound of the instruments. James Horner, however, began his career
using traditional, acoustic orchestral instruments from the outset. Although he only
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 237

contributed a single extended cue to Charles B. Griffith’s Jaws-inspired Up from the

Depths (1979), his signature style is already apparent in this cue’s brass fanfare,
orchestrated for a chamber ensemble of trumpet, bass, harp, and percussion.23 His
more substantial score for Humanoids from the Deep (1980) occasionally deploys
shimmering wine glasses to represent the mystery of the ocean, as well as Craig
Huxley’s Blaster Beam to reinforce bass harmonies.24 But overall, Humanoids was
written for a traditional orchestra playing in a dissonant modernist style. Horner’s
wife recalled how he attempted to overcome the budgetary problems of using
actual players in his early scores: “He took all of the money he made on Humanoids
from the Deep, and then dumped it into the next score —he didn’t take any money
out,” she says. “He used it to make the music as good as he could and lived off the
money he made as a teaching assistant at UCLA.”25
For Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, despite its largely heroic, diatonic sound
world, Horner follows TOS’s schematic in representing the alterity of alien life by
utilizing more modernistic techniques. In cues such as “Khan’s Pets” and “The
Eels of Ceti Alpha V,” Horner incorporates the dissonant brass and sliding strings
present in his Humanoids score, adding a maddening bass ostinato to build a sense
of tension that highlights the horrifying menace brought about by Khan Noonien
Singh’s (Ricardo Montalbán) alien imprisonment.26 As the tension gives way to
the certainty of Khan’s malevolence, anvil crashes punctuate the reveal of his
“pets” (Ceti eels). Additional percussion instruments enhance the anvils, slowly
building in intensity until they too pound out an ostinato with a brutality re-
miniscent of Stravinsky’s “Dance of the Adolescents.”
By contrast, Horner doubles down on the “peaceful alienness” of the Vulcans
in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, representing them by gentle chromaticism on
strings, harp, and ethereal glass harmonica, set against the Klingons’ Orientalized
diminished-fifth theme on the shofar. Aaron Fruchtman skillfully analyzed the
role of the shofar in Goldsmith’s score for Planet of the Apes as evoking both the
“primal” and “archaic,” observing how the composer’s theme for the Klingons in
ST:TMP, despite being realized on oboe, likewise drew upon the traditional
shevarim shofar call for similar effect.27 This “primal” and “archaic” description
works equally well for Horner’s depiction of the Klingons through that ancient
instrument, although his theme is written in a more dissonant style.

Dissonant Electronic Elements

In the year after Planet of the Apes, Goldsmith doubled down on modernism for
The Illustrated Man (1969), where he moved beyond the expanded orchestra into
avant-garde electronic music, at least for those segments that clearly took place
in the far future.28 The film’s main theme, however, foreshadowed the lyric
romanticism he would deploy in his first Star Trek score. As in his Logan’s Run
score from 1975, the electronic music in The Illustrated Man is incorporated quasi-
diegetically as a representation of the kinds of music to which the futuristic
238 Louis Niebur

characters might actually listen.29 Unlike Wendy Carlos, however, Goldsmith

imagines this music of the future as inherently dissonant and alienating. Perhaps
he heard it as an extension of contemporary classical electronic music’s harmonic
language and a product of the modular synths that helped realize the score.
In several other films of the period, abstract electronic sounds are used non-
diegetically, as a representation of the kinds of sounds advanced technology made
(or would make, if fictional) in the diegetic realm. Examples of this include the
technological bleeping and mechanical typing sounds employed in Gil Mellé’s
The Andromeda Strain (1971) and in Desmond Briscoe’s score for the BBC TV
production of The Stone Tape (1972).30 Of course, the Barrons’ Forbidden Planet
score, where the non-diegetic “electronic tonalities” overlap ambiguously with
the diegetic soundscapes of the film’s various locations, provided the foundational
material and techniques for many of these later examples. The original Star Trek
series continued this approach to using abstract electronic sounds. Summers
notes, “Using musical instruments/musical sounds for diegetic sound effects …
creates a shared, instrumented musical middle ground between score and sound
effect, which ties the score’s descriptive power closer to the visual text. Musical
elements are tightly integrated into the depiction of environment.”31
In both Goldsmith’s and Horner’s Star Trek scores, the inclusion of electronics
into a traditional score was also pragmatic. Goldsmith recalled director Robert Wise
“telling me that music was going to have to carry certain scenes, that the music was
going to have to take the place of sound effects because there was no time to get
them in.”32 He specifically remembered the contributions of synthesizer player
Craig Huxley as a gradual process that evolved over the course of scoring.
Goldsmith originally envisioned ST:TMP as an acoustic score, but then learned that
Huxley,

had another synthesizer with him at the sessions and something came up
and Bob [Wise] said “let’s try this electronically,” so gradually more and
more electronics started creeping into the score. Bob liked it, and I think
that’s what he was looking for—he wanted something strange sounding, a
lot stranger than I was making it.33

In particular, the initial scenes on Vulcan have the synthesizer doubling the avant-
garde orchestral music, heightening the “strangeness” of the Kolinahr ritual. The
same is true of the diegetic sound effects for V’ger’s assault on the space station,
where random atonal electronic pitches accompany the mysterious but en-
igmatically technological attack.
Both Goldsmith and Horner were following the current vogue for such effects.
Other contemporary examples include John Barry’s score for The Black Hole, also
from 1979, in which the composer similarly combines a romantic orchestral sound
with dissonant electronic effects and consonant, melodic synthesizer parts.34 Like
Goldsmith and Horner, Barry uses the Blaster Beam for threatening moments, as
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 239

well as abstract synthesizer whooshes as a diegetic sound effect to represent the hole
itself. But at the same time, Barry’s synthesizer part doubles the primary, consonant
waltz of the Black Hole theme, almost as an afterthought or a ghostlike echo. As
Donnelly notes about John Carpenter’s score for The Fog—and which is equally
applicable to The Black Hole and all three Star Trek scores under discussion—“The
mix of timbres has the ethereal synthesizer representing the unknown counterposed
with the organic sound of the piano that marks the familiar. These coordinate
points place us into an ‘in between’ state, emphasizing the spooky music as the sonic
equivalent of a ghost story.”35 Goldsmith emulates this effect in both The Swarm
(1978) and ST:TMP, with the synthesizer subtly doubling orchestral melodies.36
For Horner’s two Star Trek scores, the composer’s lack of familiarity with
electronic music, combined with Paramount’s enthusiasm for Craig Huxley’s
work with the synthesizer and the Blaster Beam in the first film, led them to
commission a fully electronic cue for the Genesis Project from Huxley rather
than Horner. Huxley composed the cue at his home studio and the resulting
music is unlike anything in the rest of the film, with abstract, swirling tones “to
symbolize this hyper-growth of a certain kind of genetic acceleration.”37 As the
visuals depict a dead planet being biotechnologically transformed, the music moves
from near stillness to chaotic, electronic fecundity, blurring the distinction between
the plant life evoked and the abstract, unknowable power of the technology
itself. The dissonant anarchy of the music makes the audience question the wisdom
of the process, while at the same time marveling at the wonder of it. The reuse of
Huxley’s score in the next two films as the Genesis footage is shown begs the
question whether his music actually diegetically accompanies what is essentially an
in-world marketing video for the process. If so, the music additionally functions
diegetically in much the same way as the dissonant electronic music of earlier films
like The Illustrated Man, The Andromeda Strain, and Logan’s Run. Paramount’s
insistence on an electronic cue for this moment demonstrates their familiarity
with the trope of harsh, diegetic electronic music as one aspect of the sound world
of the future.

Neo-romantic Orchestral Elements

The influence of John Williams’s score for Star Wars (1977) often overshadows his
work that same year on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.38 The latter film begins
with a modernist musical representation of alien life more typical of earlier science
fiction films, with a clear connection between the alien influence and dissonant
music performed by an extended orchestra, à la Planet of the Apes. Here, even
Williams’ attempt at a love theme is a Xenakis-like tone cluster, albeit one realized
using diatonic pitches rather than chromatic ones. As Close Encounters becomes
more optimistic about the influence of the alien presence, however, Williams’s
language begins to shift, cued by the diegetic, consonant communication signal
offered by the aliens themselves. By the end of the film, Williams’s music has made
240 Louis Niebur

a complete transformation from modernist dissonance to the neoromantic language

he would adopt for the next two decades. This duality is reflected in the harmonic
design of the score, which establishes a polarity between cluster-based atonality
in the mold of Xenakis and Ligeti on the one hand and tonality on the other.
Schneller comments: “Atonality is associated with the mysterious and initially
threatening presence of the aliens, but ultimately gives way to a celebratory flourish
of [orchestral] tonality once the visitors are revealed as benign.”39 Neil Lerner has
taken this observation one step further by cynically (but convincingly) comparing
“the extent to which [director] Spielberg infantilizes both the diegetic and the non-
diegetic viewer” and Williams’s score, which “sets up the more experimental
musical style as strange by associating it with the aliens, and ultimately it rejects this
modernist musical language, substituting tonality for atonality just as it substitutes a
nondescript heavenly existence for middle-American materialist banality.”40
The primary models for Lucas’s Star Wars, and therefore Williams’s new sound
world, were swashbuckling adventure films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1936),
King Solomon’s Mines (1937), and The Three Musketeers (1935).41 A strong nostalgic
urge had similarly inspired the music for the original Star Trek series of the 1960s as
well as Williams’ own work on Lost in Space (1965–68).42 Thus, Williams drew
inspiration from the likes of Erich Korngold, Mischa Spoliansky, and Max Steiner,
respectively. These three composers, and many others working in the 1930s, op-
erated according to what Jeff Smith calls “a paradigmatic range of classical norms.”43
These norms, “yielded a remarkably uniform group style among Hollywood
composers that emphasized leitmotifs, theme writing and symphonic orchestra-
tions.”44 Donnelly suggests that Williams adopted this musical style nearly wholesale
in the late-1970s.45 This makes sense for a postmodern film like Star Wars, which
deliberately references both the adventure films of the 1930s and television science
fiction of the 1960s. It may seem improbable that a neoclassical musical language
would become the default style for most science fiction films afterward, even those
for whom the connection to the more adult-themed, concept-driven notion of the
genre remained. But in fact, this is what happened. In the public imagination,
Williams’ broad, accessible musical palette, complete with leitmotifs, stings, and
mickey-mousing, replaced the modernist language of earlier science fiction films.
Goldsmith himself was clearly thinking along these lines as well. His original
opening theme for Alien (1979) was more lyrical and traditional than his usual
avant-garde style (a technique Goldsmith hoped would fool people into a false
sense of security), but director Ridley Scott rejected it in favor of a more tra-
ditionally “horrific” dissonant sound from the beginning.46 In the context of his
ST:TMP score, this tonal turn shouldn’t be entirely surprising either, especially
considering the generic tightrope the television program had always walked
between traditional adventure show and conceptual science fiction. Was, then,
his reduced use of avant-garde techniques, and his subsequent return to tonality
in the late-1970s in science fiction (a process mirrored by James Horner’s scores
for Star Trek II and III), simply a tribute to the neoromantic musical style of the
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 241

original series? Or was it a move back to the sound of the 1930s in a postmodern
nod to those films of the past? Certainly, some critics have heard it as the former.
Vivian Sobchack described the mythos surrounding Star Trek’s theatrical films as
inherently nostalgic, noting that the first three films,

Constitute a particularly poignant and intertextually grounded pseudo-

history of their own. … The “futurism” of the Star Trek films is nostalgically
backward-looking to earlier visions of the future—perhaps best dramatized in
Star Trek: The Motion Picture when Kirk (and the film) nostalgically gazes at
the refitted but still familiar (and now technologically old-fashioned) starship
Enterprise for what seemed to some less nostalgic spectators an interminable
length of overreverent screen time. … The three films together narratively
reenact the nostalgic drama of the television series’ own death and
resurrection. … Despite all their “futurist” gadgetry and special effects,
then, the Star Trek films are conservative and nostalgic, imaging the future by
looking backward to the imagination of a textual past.47

Jeremy Barham points out that in Star Trek, “subsequent feature films and spin-off
series generally embraced the sweeping orchestral language of the new musical
romanticism wholeheartedly.”48 Goldsmith remembers his initial meetings with
Star Trek director Robert Wise:

He didn’t say, “I want something like Star Wars” or something in that idiom,
but it was more or less that that was what was out there and that was very
successful … it made sense. Subsequently, I’ve treated all the Star Trek movies
I’ve done in a more musically romantic way rather than being very avant-
garde—it’s totally the opposite [of the] approach I took on Planet of the Apes.49

As mentioned earlier, using a romantic tonal language in science fiction wasn’t

entirely foreign to Goldsmith; in addition to his pastoral orchestral style for The
Illustrated Man’s segments set in the 1930s, his 1977 score for Capricorn One
combined his love of Stravinsky-esque rhythms with old-fashioned string and
piano love themes.50 Even in a horror film like The Swarm (1978), Goldsmith
found space for gentle melodic tunes, like a lovely theme for flute, clarinet, and
strings associated with the character Maureen. He was so wrapped up in his new
romantic language by the time he came to score Star Trek, in fact, that the di-
rector dismissed his first attempt at a main theme as more appropriate for a sailing
adventure film. The theme ultimately written for the film still owed a great deal
to Williams’ Star Wars main theme, and consequently, all the classic main themes
of the past that Williams was drawing upon. In particular, Goldsmith borrowed
the traditional ABA overture structure, featuring an initial brass fanfare, followed
by a gentler string B section, before concluding with a rousing recap of the
march-like A theme. At the same time though, the upward-leaping brass melody
242 Louis Niebur

of the A section is reminiscent of the questing, adventurous space theme of the

original series’ titles.
Even his relatively modernist Klingon theme is a direct quote from Ralph
Vaughan Williams’s third, “Scherzo” movement of his Symphony No. 4 from
1935.51 This musical language, part of the “English Musical Renaissance” of the
first half of the twentieth century that also included the composers Gustav Holst,
Arnold Bax, and William Walton, served as the primary harmonic and timbral
influence on John Williams’ own musical renaissance in the late 1970s. Having
been recently discovered by film composers, Goldsmith clearly heard the po-
tential in Vaughan Williams’ music for his own neoromantic style.
Ironically, a sea-faring adventure theme was exactly what director Nicholas
Meyer wanted from James Horner for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Abandoning
much of the philosophical approach that had informed the first Star Trek film, this
sequel would be an adventure movie. That hardly affected the sound of the score,
however; science fiction as a trope superseded any other trope, and by the early
1980s, the commercial sound of a Williams score was what sold. After 1977, the
success of Star Wars meant that science fiction was taken seriously as a profitable
genre that could produce blockbusters, and as Hayward observed, “extremely ra-
dical departures in musical style risk[ed] alienating audiences.”52
Horner had already tried out this sound in his final New Line Cinema film and
first science fiction score, Battle Beyond the Stars. Abandoning the chamber sound
of his earlier films, Horner worked hard to emulate Williams’ adventure aesthetic
with a sixty-piece orchestra, his largest to date. As in Star Wars, and like Goldsmith’s
Star Trek score, Horner opens Battle Beyond the Stars with a fanfare (elements of
which he would incorporate into his first Star Trek score), and, like Williams, he
offers a wistful heroic horn theme throughout the film. His score also contains
direct references to some of the other influences on this sound, in particular Sergei
Prokofiev’s low brass rumbling from Alexander Nevsky’s “The Battle on Ice.”53 The
Blaster Beam, prominent in all three Star Trek scores, appears throughout Battle as
well. For Star Trek II and III, Horner would limit some of these more overt re-
ferences in lieu of the sound that would become his trademark: soaring brass themes
imbued with unexpected modulations and chromatic leaps, string filigrees and
woodwind textures that buzz with optimism, and ominous, rumbling low bass in
the strings, brass, and percussion.

Future Utopias
While, on the surface, the scores for the first three Star Trek films seem un-
ambiguously neoromantic, a closer look reveals that they are fully invested in the
complicated musical history of science fiction cinema since the mid-twentieth
century. The eclectic compositional strategies employed by both Goldsmith
and Horner would lay the groundwork for future Star Trek composers, with
Leonard Rosenman introducing popular music styles to a greater extent in
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 243

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), and Cliff Eidelman taking a much darker,
introspective approach for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).54
Perhaps this mélange of musical styles can be partly attributed to the various ways
in which each approach navigates the boundaries of utopia. By carefully marking
actions as malevolent and benevolent through the contrast between modernist and
romantic musical language, the Star Trek universe can clearly delineate between
moral and immoral characters and actions, while at the same time providing, as
in the original series, “a utopian sense by adding grandeur and humanity.”55 By
imbuing seemingly inhuman technology with the beauty and familiarity of simple
tonal harmonies, even electronic music can be made to embody the utopia of a
potentially scary technological future. The singular place held by Star Trek in
popular culture, and the odd, distinctly unique configuration of cultural elements at
play in the late 1970s and early 1980s, allowed Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner to
draw liberally from the varied traditions of science fiction scoring in a way few
other composers had been able to. Their scores for the first three Star Trek films are
aural time capsules of a moment in science fiction when the sonic representation of
the future was fluid and in flux.

Notes
1 Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry (1966-69; Hollywood, CA: Paramount,
2015), DVD.
2 Star Trek: The Motion Picture, directed by Robert Wise (Hollywood, CA: Paramount
Pictures, 1979), DVD.
3 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1982), DVD; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, directed by
Leonard Nimoy (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1984), DVD.
4 Forbidden Planet, directed by Fred McLeod Wilcox (Burbank, CA: Walt Disney
Productions, 1956), DVD; The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise
(Hollywood, CA: Twentieth Century Fox, 1951), DVD.
5 “Ugly” here, because ugly is a subjective term; many people are fond of purely
electronic sound, no matter the timbre, and wouldn’t consider it necessarily ugly in a
conventional sense. While dissonance often finds the word ugly attached to it, dis-
sonance has a certain pleasant quality to many. The point at which it becomes “ugly”
is, again, highly subjective. But I would argue that the intention is to imply a kind of
ugliness often when used in film scores.
6 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick (Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968), DVD;Planet of the Apes, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
(Hollywood, CA: Twentieth Century Fox, 1968), DVD.
7 Star Wars, directed by George Lucas (Hollywood, CA: Twentieth Century Fox,
1977), DVD.
8 Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott (Hollywood, CA: Warner Brothers, 1982), DVD.
9 For more information on this topic, see Jeremy Barham, “Scoring Incredible Futures:
Science-Fiction Screen Music, and ‘Postmodernism’ as Romantic Epiphany,” The
Musical Quarterly, 91, nos. 3–4 (Fall–Winter, 2008), 240–74; Philip Hayward, ed., Off the
Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 2004); Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film, 2nd ed.
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 276–77.
244 Louis Niebur

10 Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Bach, Columbia Masterworks Records, MS 7194, 1968; A

Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick (Hollywood, CA: Warner Brothers,
1971), DVD.
11 Jeremy Barham, “Scoring Incredible Futures,” 240–74; 250.
12 Tim Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” Music,
Sound, and the Moving Image, 7, no. 1 (2013), 44–45.
13 Battle Beyond the Stars, directed by Jimmy T. Murakami (Atlanta, GA: New World
Pictures, 1980), DVD.
14 While clearly not a cassette (there is no internal tape, no moving parts), it functions as a
cassette in the way a contemporary audience would have recognized—in size, shape,
etc., as the newest kind of commercial audio technology to have become popular,
either the 8-track or the compact cassette, by 1980.
15 Escape from New York, directed by John Carpenter (Los Angeles, AVCO Embassy
Pictures, 1981), DVD.
16 Barham, “Scoring Incredible Futures,” 255.
17 Barham, “Scoring Incredible Futures,” 255.
18 Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender in the Original Series of Star Trek (1966-
1969)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2015), 21.
19 The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise (Hollywood, CA: Twentieth
Century Fox, 1951), DVD.
20 Summers, “Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 25.
21 Frank Lehman, “Reading Tonality Through Film: Transformational Hermeneutics
and the Music of Hollywood” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2012), 276.
22 Lehman, “Reading Tonality,” 277.
23 Up from the Depths, directed by Charles B. Griffith (Atlanta, GA: New World Pictures,
1979), DVD.
24 The Blaster Beam is an instrument comprised of a long metal rod strung with wires,
under which electric guitar pickups amplify and distort the bass tones generated by
their plucking. Huxley adapted his version in the late 1970s from an earlier instrument
designed by John Lazelle a decade earlier. Kirk D. Keyes, “The Blaster Beam—a
Unique Musical Instrument,” accessed January 8, 2021, www.balsterbeam.com/it/;
Humanoids from the Deep, directed by Barbara Peeters (Atlanta, GA: New World
Pictures, 1980), DVD.
25 Tim Greiving, “James Horner’s Posthumous Works Tell a Story of His Life,” NPR, All
Things Considered, September 22, 2016, accessed January 7, 2021, https://www.npr.org/
sections/deceptivecadence/2016/09/22/494922417/james-horners-posthumous-
works-tell-a-story-of-his-life
26 James Horner, “Khan’s Pets,” track 3, “The Eels of Ceti Alpha V,” track 4, Star Trek
II: The Wrath of Khan, Retrograde Records, FSM-80128-2, 2009, compact disc.
27 Aaron Fruchtman, “Sounding the Shofar in Hollywood Film Scores,” in Qol Tamid:
The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture, eds. Jonathan L Friedman and Joel Gereboff
(Claremont, CA: Claremont Press, 2017), 247–65.
28 The Illustrated Man, directed by Jack Smight (Hollywood, CA: Warner Brothers,
1969), DVD.
29 Logan’s Run, directed by Michael Anderson (Hollywood, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, 1976), DVD.
30 The Andromeda Strain, directed by Robert Wise (Burbank, CA: Universal Pictures, 1971),
DVD. The Stone Tape, directed by Peter Sasdy (London: BBC Television, 1972), DVD.
31 Summers, “Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 23. Although it is also true, as Getman
notes, electronic music of any kind was never a constant presence in the original series’
scores, instead drawing upon “the examples of composers like Erich Korngold, extracting
the show from the pulp-y science fiction tradition and entering it into the sphere of epic
drama—a heroic adventure in outer space.” Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender,” 18.
 Navigating Contrasting Styles in the First Three Star Trek Film Scores 245

32 Jeff Bond and Mike Matessino, “The Musical Voyage of Star Trek: The Motion Picture,”
liner notes for Music from the Original Soundtrack: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, La-La
Land Records, LLLCD 1207, 2012, compact disc, 12.
33 Bond and Matessino, “Musical Voyage,” 12.
34 The Black Hole, directed by Gary Nelson (Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Productions,
1979), DVD.
35 K. J. Donnelly, “Hearing Deep Seated Fears: John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980),” in
Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear, ed. Neil Lerner (New York: Routledge Press,
2010), 156; The Fog, directed by John Carpenter (Hollywood, CA: AVCO Embassy
Pictures, 1980), DVD.
36 The Swarm, directed by Irwin Allen (Hollywood, CA: Warner Brothers, 1978), DVD.
37 Jeff Bond, Lukas Kendall, and Alexander Kaplan, liner notes for Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Retrograde Records, FSM 80128-2, 2009,
compact disc, 17–18.
38 Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg (Hollywood, CA:
Columbia Pictures, 1977), DVD.
39 Tom Schneller, “Sweet Fulfillment: Allusion and Teleological Genesis in John
Williams’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Musical Quarterly, 97, no. 1 (2014):
98–131, 103–104.
40 Neil Lerner, “Nostalgia, Masculinist Discourse and Authoritarianism in John Williams’
Scores for Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Off the Planet: Music, Sound
and Science Fiction, Philip Hayward, ed., Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction
Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 102-103.
41 The Adventures of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley
(Hollywood, CA: Warner Brothers, 1936), DVD; King Solomon’s Mines, directed by
Robert Stevenson and Geoffrey Barkas (London: Gaumont British Picture Corporation,
1937), DVD; The Three Musketeers, directed by Rowland V. Lee (Hollywood, CA: RKO
Radio Pictures, 1935), DVD.
42 Lost in Space, created by Irwin Allen (1965–68; Los Angeles, CA: Twentieth Century
Fox, 2019), DVD.
43 Jeff Smith, The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998), 6; quoted in Donnelly, “Hearing Deep Seated
Fears,” 154.
44 Donnelly, “Hearing Deep Seated Fears,” 154.
45 Donnelly, “Hearing Deep Seated Fears,” 154.
46 Alien, directed by Ridley Scott (Hollywood, CA: Twentieth Century Fox,
1979), DVD.
47 Sobchack, Screening Space, 276–77.
48 Barham, “Scoring Incredible Futures,” 256.
49 Bond and Matessino, “The Musical Voyage of Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” 6–7.
50 Capricorn One, directed by Peter Hyams (London: ITC Films, 1977), DVD.
51 Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 4 in F minor (London: Oxford University
Press, 1935).
52 Philip Hayward, “Sci-Fidelity: Music, Sound, and Genre History,” in Hayward, Off
the Planet, 25; quoted in Barham “Scoring Incredible Futures,” 251.
53 Alexander Nevsky, directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dmitriy Vasilev (Moscow,
Russia: Mosfilm, 1938), DVD.
54 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1986), DVD; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, directed by
Nicholas Meyer (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1991), DVD.
55 Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender,” 20.
13
SONGS OF THE FINAL FRONTIER
Listening to Whales in Star Trek IV:
The Voyage Home

Sarah Rebecca Kessler

“Space: the final frontier.” Uttered by William Shatner in the title sequence of
the original, mid-1960s Star Trek television series, this now recognizable catch-
phrase draws a parallel between the Western United States and the extraterrestrial.
But while the settlement of the former is complete, the mantra suggests, the
latter is the only remaining wilderness untamed by human domination. To
breach outer space is to make human footprints in alien realms, “to boldly go
where no man has gone before.”1
In its early years, the Star Trek franchise persistently invoked the Space Race
that characterized the Cold War context of its making, yet terrestrial frontiers and
the strange beings that populated them continued to preoccupy the cultural
imagination. Beginning also in the mid-1960s, the vastest such frontier, the
ocean, and the most massive of its otherworldly creatures, the whale, were newly
penetrated by human technologies in the name of an environmentalism poised to
save the earth from the havoc wreaked by colonialism and other all-too-human
atrocities. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), the fourth feature film based on
the original 1960s TV series, registers this irony.2 In The Voyage Home, an alien
probe in the twenty-third century emits a signal eerily reminiscent of the song of
a long extinct animal: the humpback whale. The probe’s signal ecologically
threatens the now entirely anthropocentric Earth. To rescue the planet from this
non-human menace, James Kirk and crew must time-travel back to the hilar-
iously archaic San Francisco Bay of the 1980s to find living whales capable of
translating the probe’s message. Already endangered in the postcolonial West of
the past, the whales’ ethereal voices alone carry the necessary reply. Kirk and
crew therefore must extract the singing cetaceans from the dystopian ’80s Bay
Area, plagued by ongoing environmental destruction, to save the utopian future
Bay Area from extraterrestrial interference.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-13
 Songs of the Final Frontier 247

Representing whale song as both the harbinger of, and antidote to, en-
vironmental crises past, present, and future, The Voyage Home displays an am-
bivalent approach to whale vocalization and thus to interspecies communication.
Within the film, whales’ voices seem to announce their singers’ extinction at
human hands, even as their songs echo into the “final frontier,” presaging their
acoustic endurance beyond the era of human supremacy. While Admiral Kirk, in
the imperialist tradition that undergirds Star Trek’s liberal humanism, hears the
whales’ indecipherable song as a means to the anthropocentric end of saving
the Earth’s climate-distressed humans, the Vulcan Spock resists imbuing their
vocalizations with self-serving meaning.3 In this way, the film posits an ethics of
listening to whales—one that is ultimately compromised by the crew’s decision to
utilize the cetaceans without their consent. In the process, The Voyage Home
demonstrates how sound technologies like the hydrophone play a central role in
environmentalist framings of the whale as an intelligent, even superior, life form,
whose esoteric vocalizations at once anthropomorphize it and suggest its ad-
vancement beyond the human.
After briefly examining whale song’s pivotal importance to the U.S. environ-
mental movement following its human discovery in the 1950s (Section I), this
chapter explores The Voyage Home’s contradictory framing of cetacean vocalization
as the sound that will ironically save humanity—even as it remains unintelligible
to humans (Section II). The film’s rendering of whale song as meaningful vocali-
zation impervious to human linguistic translation, I argue, suggests an ethical lis-
tening practice that The Voyage Home cannot itself realize due to the film’s
fundamentally violent spatiotemporal displacement of the sound’s very makers: the
whales. However as I discuss in the chapter’s third section, scientists, artists, and
scholars such as Katy Payne, Daniela Gesundheit, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, take
differently speculative approaches to whale song that practice listening to cetaceans
without demanding their sound’s intelligibility—its accessibility to dominant
regimes of comprehension that, Gumbs asserts, include not merely a kind of race-
blind anthropocentrism, but white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy.4 In the
spirit of these brilliant projects, the chapter concludes by advocating for a turn from
modeling environmental activism as “stewardship” to shaping and practicing such
action as “apprenticeship” (in both Gesundheit’s and Gumbs’s phrasing).5 As this
essay makes clear, I understand environmental apprenticeship as a decolonial
practice rooted in listening.

Section I: Singing Whales “Save the Whales”

In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. environmental movement took root and the
languages of “saving” and “conservation” became prevalent. Industrialized
whaling had taken place since the seventeenth century, and, especially with the
introduction of factory ships on which full whales could be processed (like the
Pequod in Melville’s Moby-Dick), whaling rapidly decimated whale populations.
248 Sarah Rebecca Kessler

From the 1960s onward, however, U.S. culture began to rethink the whale.
Films and TV shows such as Flipper (the popular 1963 kids’ movie that subse-
quently spun off into three seasons and 88 episodes of television) and The Day of
the Dolphin (the 1973 science fiction film adapted from Robert Merle’s 1967
novel, Un animal doué de raison, or “A Sentient Animal”) began depicting ceta-
ceans as highly intelligent beings.6 The “Save the Whales” movement (along with
the bumper stickers of so many 1980s childhoods) was born. And as Margaret
Grebowicz and others have observed, whale song was central to the whale’s
transformation from prey to a being and species worthy of preservation.7 In large
part due to the “discovery” of whale song, the whale became, in Ursula Heise’s
words, “what conservationists themselves often call, half humorously and half
disdainfully, ‘charismatic megafauna’ or, more neutrally, ‘flagship species,’ animal
types whose appeal to the broad public makes them good tools in campaigns to
raise public awareness and funds for conservation issues.”8 Of course, Inuit and
other indigenous whalers had already understood the whale as vital to their
ecosystems since time immemorial, but that wasn’t part of the emergent cetacean
grand narrative.9
Whale song was officially detected by accident in the 1950s by Frank
Watlington, a naval engineer in Bermuda who was listening to the sea for Soviet
submarines, recording dynamite explosions underwater. Watlington’s recordings
were made with the help of hydrophones: underwater microphones initially
conceived during World War One to match the acoustic impedance of water.
Noises began to interfere. These alien sounds were, it turned out, the vocaliza-
tions of humpback whales. Watlington gave the compellingly uncanny recordings
to the bio-acoustician Roger Payne and his colleague Scott McVay, who were, at
the time, in Bermuda studying humpbacks on the animals’ annual winter mi-
gration to warmer waters to breed and birth. Writes Grebowicz, underlining the
masculinist imperialism at the heart of whale song’s particular origin story, “It was
[Payne and McVay] who ‘discovered’ the humpbacks in the way one discovers
a new vocal sensation, by means of something like a demo.”10 But it was the
musically-trained bio-acoustician Katharine “Katy” Payne, then married to
Roger, who would devote decades of her still-ongoing career to analyzing the
whales’ songs, prolifically writing about them, and visualizing them in complex
and colorful spectrograms that captured their melodies and rhythms, repetitions
and improvisations.11
Under Payne and Payne’s supervision, then, Watlington’s recordings became
the best-selling LP Songs of the Humpback Whale, which was released in 1970.12 In a
typically patriarchal turn of events, the record’s liner notes barely mention Katy
Payne, crediting her husband with the insights she brought to the recordings’
source material. The female Dr. Payne is described as “his wife” or an indistinct
member of “the Paynes,” while the male Dr. Payne is labeled a “brilliant” scientist
whose dissemination of whale song “through art forms and through television,
radio, newspapers, magazines, lectures, and meetings of all kinds [has convinced
 Songs of the Final Frontier 249

people that] … the magnificent whale, now in peril of virtual extinction, must be
saved.”13 Indeed, two years after Songs of the Humpback Whale was released, the
U.N. voted to advance a proposal for a ten-year moratorium on commercial
whaling.14 Whale vocalization, and specifically whale song, produced and packaged
in easily consumable record album form, moved influential people in a way that
the silent fact of animal death did not. “Perhaps no other sound,” speculates
Grebowicz, “has a comparably powerful effect on the contemporary environmental
imagination.”15 Certainly, it seems that in the allegedly “post-civil rights era” U.S.
of the mid-1960s and early 1970s, powerful humans were very eager to listen to
cetaceans’ enigmatic rhythms and melodies—perhaps because these same human
demographics were all too eager to evade the struggle of listening to human voices
whose demands to be treated humanely they’d never wanted to meet.
Indeed, the politics of voice within the Civil Rights struggle and within the
emerging environmental movement were deeply entwined. It was easier for
the white bourgeois mainstream to approach animal vocalization with empathy
than to attend to the often painfully intelligible voices of minoritized human
beings. While the “Save the Whales” movement’s professed aim was laudable (if
problematically articulated), its unique telos cannot be disentangled from the
movement’s foundational privileging of whale vocalization over that of the Black
American subjects then (as now) actively demanding the ears of the U.S. public.
The structurally anti-Black—and patently anti-indigenous—racism of “Save the
Whales” was not ameliorated by the campaign’s literal focus on (white) saviorism,
which at once fetishized and patronized the cetaceans toward whom it was di-
rected. Rescuing whales from extinction was also a masculine activity, at least
according to Songs of the Humpback Whale’s liner notes. Even chief whale song
expert Katy Payne’s authorial voice was ignored in pursuit of the white male
scientists’ lofty goal.
Listening to Songs of the Humpback Whale becomes an infinitely more layered
experience in light of this crucial background. The album was not the first text
to frame humpback vocalization as “song”; as Stefan Helmreich has observed,
“musical metaphors” were used to describe the whales’ vocal stylings well before
Songs’s pressing.16 Prior, even, to these early metaphorizations of whale vocali-
zation, military technologies like Watlington’s aforementioned hydrophone
worked to “abstract [sound] from the water medium to reveal and produce
resources imagined as musical.”17 Beginning with this process of abstraction,
Helmreich describes humpback whale sound’s path from underwater vibration to
voice to “song”:

It was through such field listening—filtering “noise” from sound, tuning it

to the human auditory range—that whale “songs” were discovered. …
Once whale sounds had been separated, they were aestheticized as lonely,
majestic, ecologically tuned-in arias to the wounded sea.18
250 Sarah Rebecca Kessler

In a wartime context inextricable from the ongoing project of U.S. imperialism,

underwater vibrations are recorded, filtered, and tuned to the aboveground
human ear; thus mediated, these sounds are made legible as music, and that music
is proclaimed to signify an operatic forlornness, magnificence, and superhuman
environmental awareness. In short, Western Man had to create whale song—to
mediate it into existence and imbue its existence with meaning—to be able
to save it.
Katy Payne registered this irony in 1985, wryly commenting that, among
Americans and Europeans, “[w]hales have become fashionable. We who have
shed so much blood now endorse a cease-fire.”19 That Payne attributed the
Western public’s nascent desire to protect cetaceans to vogue rather than care
reflects the scientist’s broader approach to animal (including human) vocalization.
Primarily concerned with form, with the “patterns that whales select for their
ever-changing phrases,” Payne refrained from making grandiose and self-
aggrandizing claims about the plaintiveness of whale song.20 She observed that
whale songs, which are structurally repetitive, change progressively over time,
and that, “[t]he process resembles what in humans we call fashion, or vogue,
or style.”21 Payne also compared whale song’s temporal shifts to linguistic drift, or
durational change in human language, which, she maintained, “has nothing to
do with the meaning of the words, phrases, or sentences being uttered.”22 If
whales’ newfound stylishness among American and European humans was not an
empathetic response to the cetaceans’ “lonely” vocalizations, but the outcome
of Western imperial penetrations into the deep, vibrational extractions, and the
subsequent fabrication of whale song as such, we must listen differently to Songs of
the Humpback Whale.
We cannot, for instance, approach the album’s first track, “Solo Whale,” as a
series of “cries,” as the liner notes for Songs suggest we do.23 For while “cries” can
refer to “characteristic sound[s] or call[s],” the English word cannot shake its other
dominant meaning, that of “inarticulate utterance[s] of distress, rage, or pain.”24
Aided by the categorization of the recorded whale as “solo,” as both singular and
alone in the act of singing, the description of the whale’s inescapably mediated
sounds as “cries” positions them as inchoate vocalizations—the wordless screams
of an animal forever locked in the sea’s padded cell. Maybe the song’s repetitive,
high-pitched utterances, emitted with increasing frequency until they’re slowed
down and spaced out once again, conjure a kind of feminine helplessness in the ears
of those accustomed to Western norms of vocal gendering. Perhaps, as a colleague
once suggested, it’s the knowledge that a massive, male-gendered body made such
feminized sounds that evokes such pathos.25 Yet hearing whale song in such a
highly gendered way entails ignoring its heterogeneity, its many textures, and its
incomparable pitch range. In between the ear-splitting highs of “Solo Whale”
unfold deep lows, vocalizations that resemble, say, a motorcycle backfiring in a
particularly resonant, bodily way. Who’s to say that the latter sounds aren’t “cries,”
and that the former aren’t articulate linguistic emanations? Why assume the
 Songs of the Final Frontier 251

loneliness of the solo whale, whose voice, swiftly carried by water, could reach
listeners thousands of miles away?
One of the sounds in “Solo Whale” is readily intelligible to the untrained
human ear. It’s a man-made sound that occurs twice during the song’s first half.
This sound is not visually represented in Katy Payne’s spectrogram of the track,
but where it occurs there’s a simple note: “Explosion.” Here is a nonlinguistic
vibration whose meaning is all too clear. As an indirect result, every explosion
justifies the solo whale’s cries, in an interpretation that shores up imperialism even
as it purports to rescue its alleged victims. To listen to whale song differently,
we’ll have to listen like Spock.

Section II: Singing Whales “Save the Humans”

Conceived and directed by Spock himself—the legendary Leonard Nimoy—Star
Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released in 1986, the same year that the International
Whaling Commission’s highly anticipated commercial whaling ban finally took
effect. The Pacific Basin—for which Kirk and crew set coordinates as soon as they
realize that the only way to “Save the Humans” from the havoc-wreaking alien
probe is to “Save the Whales”—had long been a focal region for U.S. anti-whaling
activists, whose ire was often, and unsurprisingly given the period’s political cli-
mate, directed at Russian and Japanese whalers. During this same period, many
Pacific Rim U.S. cities—including, of course, San Francisco—became hotbeds of
pro-cetacean activism. This holds true in the “primitive and paranoid” ’80s Bay
Area of The Voyage Home,26 where the kooky, shag-haired Dr. Gillian Taylor of
the Sausalito-based Cetacean Institute (modeled on and filmed at the Monterey Bay
Aquarium) links up the ragtag Starfleet team with the humpback whales they
desperately seek. Coincidentally, on the twenty-third-century Earth from which
Kirk and company have slingshotted around the sun to retrieve the humpbacks of
the 1980s, Starfleet itself is headquartered in the Bay Area, under the shadow of the
Golden Gate Bridge in Fort Baker, adjacent to Sausalito, with a stunning view of
the SF skyline just across the water. It is this twenty-third-century Bay to which the
late-twentieth-century whales will be returned at the film’s close, to sing the song
of their perseverance beyond their historical extinction. The irony of using the
dystopian past’s dwindling animal species to rescue the utopian future from human
extinction is not lost on The Voyage Home, which presents its fantasy time-loop with
tongue securely in cheek.
At the beginning of The Voyage Home, when the viewer first encounters the
alien probe that provokes the cetaceans’ non-consensual space- and time-travel, it
appears as an interstellar whale suspended in the oceanic void of space, emitting a
high-pitched, intermittent signal that could accompany a stabbing scene in a
horror film. Detected by the nearby U.S.S. Saratoga, the probe does not respond
to communication attempts in any known languages. As its massive body slowly
approaches Earth, we glimpse the probe’s mottled underbelly and learn from one
252 Sarah Rebecca Kessler

of the soon-to-be-neutralized starship’s officers that its sounds are being borne
on an “amplification wave” of tremendous strength, such that it drains the power
from every source in its path. Having thus disabled the planet’s infrastructure, the
probe commences vaporizing Earth’s oceans and the viewer witnesses what can
only be described as an accelerated climate change event. Clouds mass over the
planet’s surface as a geostorm develops. On the ground, the Federation President
laments to Spock’s father, Ambassador Sarek, Starfleet’s inability to respond to the
message sent by the agent of the imminent global catastrophe. “It is difficult to
answer when one does not understand the question,” replies the senior Vulcan,
implying that the problem is not the probe’s sound, but rather humans’ poor
listening skills.
Upon their receipt of various distress signals engendered by the probe’s in-
terference, Kirk and crew leap into action, solving the riddle of the probe’s call
in a matter of seconds via the starship’s advanced audio-analysis technologies. But
even before the ship’s mysterious systems impose sonic legibility onto the alien
transmission, Spock perceives no ill will in the probe’s unmodified vibrations.
After quietly listening to the intermittent noises, the Vulcan concurs that their
maker is “an unknown form of energy of great power and intelligence.” The
cynical old human Dr. “Bones” McCoy harrumphs at Spock’s assessment, as-
suming the worst. But only “human arrogance”—in a word, anthropocentrism—
would cause one to reflexively interpret alien sound as somehow meant for one’s
own ears. Modified by Uhura to echo what it would sound like underwater, the
probe’s noise reveals itself as distorted whale song—from the original recordings
of Frank Watlington, no less. And like Watlington, whose military hydrophones
captured whale song as an obstacle to hearing before he interpreted it as another
kind of signal, the crew discovers what they need to listen for. But sonic legibility
(by which I mean legibility as sound rather than as mere noise) is not intellig-
ibility, and though they now know that the probe is singing in whale, the team
still can’t decode its message. Arrogantly, Kirk asks Spock if “the humpbacks’
answer to this call [can] be simulated,” to which the latter counters, “The sounds,
but not the language. We would be responding in gibberish.” Mimicry, suggests
Spock, is a non-solution to the problem of incomprehension. Confronted by this
inconvenience, Kirk, in classically American fashion, concludes that the only op-
tion is to blow up the alien probe. It is up to the resident Vulcan to suggest an
alternative that doesn’t involve vaporizing the known universe. Later, as the time-
traveling H.M.S. Bounty (a Klingon ship commandeered by the Enterprise crew)
approaches the 1980s Pacific Basin in search of cetaceans, Uhura memorably quips,
“Admiral, I am receiving whale song. It’s coming from San Francisco.”
The San Franciscan whales in question are two humpbacks, George and
Gracie, who ostensibly wandered into the Bay—and into the loving stewardship
of Dr. Taylor and the Cetacean Institute, which possesses “the largest … tank in
the world.” Upon landing the ship in Golden Gate Park, Kirk and Spock head for
the Institute, where the clash between their listening practices comes to a head,
 Songs of the Final Frontier 253

yet is also quickly defused. In search of George and Gracie, human and Vulcan
improbably join a tour group guided by Dr. Taylor, who repeats nearly word for
word a central assertion of Katy Payne’s research: that humans (still) do not know
why whales sing.27 As Kirk and the rest of the group gaze at the captive
humpbacks, slowly swimming in their giant murky tank, Spock appears under-
water, approaching the massive cetaceans in a gentle attempt to mind-meld with
them. Both Dr. Taylor and Kirk are incensed: the scientist because the Vulcan has
trespassed, and the captain because he has the hots for the scientist—and because his
plan was to simply take the whales, as if kidnapping giant mammals is akin to mere
shoplifting. Spock must explain to the two humans that, as in the case of the probe,
without mutual communication with the whales no one can ethically presume their
position, much less their consent. “If we were to assume that these whales were
ours to do with as we please, we would be as guilty as those who caused their
extinction,” he insists. Spock later relates to Kirk what he learned during the mind
meld, that the whales resent their treatment at human hands. Kirk’s utmost con-
cern, however, is, “Are they gonna help us?” Spock answers that he “believes” he
“successfully communicat[ed]” the crew’s “intentions”—without providing the
whales’ response.
Spock’s ambivalent claim that George and Gracie have understood and con-
sented to the crew’s plan to displace and instrumentalize them in order to save
the Earth (and presumably their species) from extinction reflects the limitations of
reading The Voyage Home as a guide for ethical listening. The film’s liberal humanist
framing ultimately cannot accommodate a narrative that resists the anthropocentric,
imperial assumption that whales, like good liberal human subjects, want what’s best
for all (read: humans), and that they’ll act, or sing, to that end. Spock’s ambiguity as
to the whales’ response to the mind meld—a crucially tactile, nonlinguistic mode of
communication—leaves open the possibility that the cetaceans may indeed think
otherwise. But the space of the Vulcan’s vagueness is ordered by human projection,
and the plan proceeds on the supposition that the whales have more or less said
“yes” to the task at hand.
In the end, however, it doesn’t matter what the whales did or didn’t say during
the mind meld. The Cetacean Institute releases them into the wild before the crew
can spirit them away, since Gracie, the female, is pregnant and must give birth
outside of captivity. As soon as the whales are freed, they become prey for Russian
whalers. This grave threat provides an excuse to beam them up without their
consent. As Kirk and Dr. Taylor observe the whales aboard the starship, remarkably
calm in their minuscule space-tank, Kirk muses, “You know it’s ironic. When man
was killing these creatures, he was destroying his own future.” Because that’s what
Star Trek’s utopian vision is really all about: “man.” At least according to a man.
In The Voyage Home, man’s plan works, with the invaluable aid of the Vulcan
Spock. The crew returns to the twenty-third century, the H.M.S. Bounty con-
veniently crash lands alongside the Golden Gate Bridge, and the unrestricted whales
frolic in the Bay’s vaporizing waters. George breaks into song. The probe begins its
254 Sarah Rebecca Kessler

slow retreat, and the planet is rescued from certain environmental collapse. This
climactic scene is rendered as an untranslatable sonic and auditory exchange
between two non-human entities, with Kirk and the gang looking on—and
listening—in wonder. To invoke Natalia Cecire, who has written beautifully
about The Voyage Home in the unlikely context of twentieth-century American
writing and poetics, the sequence is nothing short of experimental.28 For more
than two minutes, the film’s sound and image tracks cut from undersea to outer
space, from the lumbering whales with their high-pitched vocalizations to
the hulking probe with its squeaky, horror movie expulsions, which cease as
it recedes.
The Voyage Home’s depiction of this wordless dialogue appears to illustrate the
whales’ salvation of Earth for humanity’s benefit (with the potential for re-
population as a kind of compensation), but the film’s production history com-
plicates the narrative. Though the studio demanded subtitles for the apparent
conversation between George and the alien probe, Nimoy fought tooth and nail
to protect their cosmic chat from inaccurate translation.

I felt extremely, extremely strongly about that issue. … They [the aliens
behind the probe] are communicating with the whales, it’s not necessarily
for us to understand what they’re saying to each other—it’s not important.
The magic is that they are communicating with each other and we must
understand that not all things are given to us to understand—nor is it
necessary.29

Nimoy’s refusal to subtitle the film’s whale (and probe) vocalizations gestures
toward a mode of listening that acknowledges that not all sounds, signals, and
songs are destined for human intelligibility—nor is it necessary for us to make all
sounds, signals, and songs intelligible to ourselves. Spock and his human portrayer
share the conviction that it is possible to listen ethically in the absence of a shared
language. Put otherwise, they both believe that linguistic meaning needn’t be
extracted from vocalization for its sound to suggest that the party producing it is
worth listening to. Unfortunately, within The Voyage Home, Spock’s refusal to
specify exactly what the whales said during the mind meld—perhaps because
mind melding is a nonlinguistic mode of communication—leaves the cetaceans
and their song vulnerable to Western colonial exploitation. George and Gracie’s
rehoming, their capture and forced migration across space and time, is violence in
the guise of stewardship. Human arrogance has not abated from the dystopian
past to the utopian future. In the former, whales, whom Spock points out are
“indigenous” to Earth and preceded humans by “4,000 years,” are either captive
or hunted. In the latter, whales don’t exist until they’re compulsorily transported
there. During the centuries of coexistence between cetaceans and Western man,
and even after whales’ extinction at man’s hands, it seems the younger species’
dominant members haven’t learned to listen.
 Songs of the Final Frontier 255

Section III: Listening to Whales

How might we begin to listen to the songs of whales? Indeed, how might we begin to
listen ethically across species? Such work has of course already begun, but is persis-
tently ignored by reigning, white male-dominated scientific and humanistic dis-
courses alike. Reading Katy Payne’s prolific scientific and popular writing on
humpback whale vocalization from decades back, I’ve been struck by her lack of
projection: Payne never imposes linguistic meaning onto the whale songs she ana-
lyzes. As a scholar of music and acoustics, and thus as one trained in the art of in-
terpreting sound as such, Payne listens to vocalization in lieu of common language.
Her speculative work spurns determinism. In one of my favorite passages, she writes,

[O]ne rarely hears a whale singing alone. Usually we heard … many voices
simultaneously, overlapping randomly and sometimes producing the
cacophony that New Zealand whale listeners refer to as the barnyard
chorus. When we separated out the various voices … we discovered all the
whales were repeating the same phrases and themes in the same order, but
not in synchrony with one another.30

Payne’s descriptions of what my collaborator and friend, the L.A.-based vocalist,

composer, and cantor Daniela Gesundheit, calls “leaderless collaboration,” focus
not on the extraction of intelligible language but on what can occur in the space
of collective vocalization, shimmering with utopian possibility.31
Inspired by Payne’s speculative research, Gesundheit has developed a practice
of “apprenticing” herself to humpback whales.32 In extended performances,
Gesundheit brings together groups of trained and rookie singers to apply the prin-
ciples of humpback whale song explored in Payne’s writing and spectrograms
to human song. The experience is humbling. Using a simple tune like “Twinkle
Twinkle, Little Star,” the group models its repetitions and innovations on what is
known of the structuration of whale song—with the understanding that there’s a
whole lot that’s unknown. As Gesundheit’s collective actions unfold, participants
walk slowly through space, singing units, phrases, and themes, together producing a
remixed version of the source material that models whale song’s fundamental
principle of continual, constant, and progressive change.33 The change through
which whale song survives and thrives is rooted in listening. One’s individual tunes
are retuned in response to others’ vocalizations; left alone, they would stagnate.
Gesundheit’s practice of human apprenticeship to whales offers a template for
addressing some of Western environmentalism’s deepest pitfalls. When we talk
about “saving the environment,” we often invoke “stewardship”: “the conducting,
supervising, or managing of something.”34 The definition of apprenticeship es-
chews management and favors artisanship: an apprentice is “an inexperienced
person (novice)” or “one who is learning by practical experience under skilled
workers a trade, art, or calling.”35 A steward presides; an apprentice listens,
256 Sarah Rebecca Kessler

shadowing someone else’s craft, ability, and strategic brilliance. What will we
discover if we shift our environmental approach from stewardship to apprentice-
ship? From management to emulation? From speaking for to listening?
In her 2017 book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne
maree brown proposes a related approach, one rooted in the Black feminist science
fiction work of Octavia E. Butler. brown argues that within the stratified context
of white supremacist imperialist capitalist heteropatriarchy, those building move-
ments for justice and liberation must begin to recognize and emulate the constancy
of ecological change at the granular level—rather than simply at the macro-level of,
say, “climate change.”36 The movements brown envisions are directly inspired by
those encountered in the “natural world”;37 brown cites biomimicry and perma-
culture as two of emergent strategy’s biggest “crushes,” since both are human
problem-solving systems that listen to, imitate, and simulate processes within
nature.38 Placed alongside brown’s generous and generative framework for
movement-building, Gesundheit’s apprenticeship to humpback whales via close
listening to the continual, constant, and progressive change of their song can be
heard as an emergent strategic practice.
So too can the work of prolific poet, scholar, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs,
whose 2020 book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals describes
the author’s own “marine mammal apprenticeship” as the “task” of “see[ing] what
happens when I rethink and re-feel my own relations, possibilities, and practices
inspired by the relations, possibilities, and practices of advanced marine mammal
life”—a task Gumbs explicitly labels an emergent strategy.39 Anticipating Undrowned,
Gumbs’s 2019 essay, “Whale Songs,” describes attending to whale vocalization in
particular as a practice of ancestral listening. Channeling theorist Sylvia Wynter’s
Black feminist critique of the human—her trenchant undoing of the fallacy of
Western Man—Gumbs writes with whale song, whose movements suggest a
decolonial epistemology. Her practice diverges from that of the Save the Whales
movement, which used whale song as a rationale for its own imperial (and always
already anthropocentric) environmentalism. Gumbs listens to whales for the echoes
of past futures still yet to come:

we assert that it was not the song of the whales that saved them. if singing
could save we’d be god. it was the fact of other sources of oil to move on
to, other deep black resources to extract. it was a fact. they could save the
whales once they knew they didn’t need them. it was as simple as that. …
so we listened. and we started with the top of the head. we listened from
the opening of the womb for the futures not yet forgotten.40

Notes
1 Star Trek, Season 1, episode 1, “The Man Trap,” directed by Marc Daniels, aired
September 8, 1966, Paramount, 2007, DVD.
 Songs of the Final Frontier 257

2 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy (1986; Hollywood, CA:
Paramount), film. From this point forward, the film will be referred to as The Voyage
Home. All quotes are directly from the film. The full script is available at Scifiscripts.com,
“Star Trek IV,” accessed December 28, 2020, http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/
Trek/Star_Trek_IV.htm
3 Daniel Bernardi, “‘Star Trek’ in the 1960s: Liberal-Humanism and the Production of
Race,” Science Fiction Studies 24, no. 2 (1997): 209–25.
4 Gumbs’s brand new volume (at the time of writing), Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons
from Marine Mammals, came out while this essay was en route to publication. Its insights
will continue to be central to my thinking on the topics herein, even though I was not
able to fully engage the book’s richness this time around. In it, Gumbs writes, “the
languages of deviance and denigration … awkwardly binary assignments of biological
sex, and a strange criminalization of mammals that escaped the gaze of biologists showed
up in what would call itself the ‘neutral’ scientific language of marine guidebooks. I
just wanted to know which whale was which, but I found myself confronted with the
colonial, racist, sexist, heteropatriarchalizing capitalist constructs that are trying to
kill me—the net I am already caught in, so to speak. So how can I tell you who and what
I saw?” Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020), 6.
5 Both Gesundheit and Gumbs use this word to describe their engagements with whales
(and in Gumbs’s case with marine mammals more broadly). See Gesundheit’s promo-
tional materials for whale song workshops held at Human Resources in Los Angeles in
2018 (Human Resources, “Whale Song: A Workshop,” accessed December 28, 2020,
https://www.h-r.la/event/whale-song-a-workshop/), the Berkeley Art Museum and
Pacific Film Archive in 2020 (Facebook, “Off-Site Workshop: Whale Song,” accessed
December 28, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/events/2531735933588889/), and
the Nocturne art festival within Mi’kma’ki in 2020 (Nocturne, “Returning Current,”
accessed December 28, 2020, https://nocturnehalifax.ca/projects/returning-current/).
See the description of Gumbs’s 2019 lecture at The Cooper Union, entitled “Saltwater
Apprenticeship: Black Being Beyond the Human” (The Cooper Union, “Alexis Pauline
Gumbs, ‘Saltwater Apprenticeship: Black Being Beyond the Human,’” accessed
December 28, 2020, https://cooper.edu/events-and-exhibitions/events/alexis-pauline-
gumbs-saltwater-apprenticeship-black-being-beyond), as well as the description of her
2020 summer course at the University of Washington, “Black Feminist Apprenticeship:
Cultivating Listening and Learning Beyond the Human” (College of Education,
University of Washington, “Black Feminist Apprenticeship: Cultivating Listening and
Learning Beyond the Human,” accessed December 28, 2020, https://www.education.
uw.edu/cej/files/2020/02/Gumbs-2020-Summer-Scholar.pdf). In Undrowned, Gumbs
writes, “I see this book as an offering to you and as an artifact of a process I am in the
midst of called Marine Mammal Apprenticeship. If there was ever a time to humbly submit
to the mentorship of marine mammals it is now. … This is a pragmatic course of study.”
Gumbs, Undrowned, 7.
6 Flipper, directed by James B. Clark (1963; Beverly Hills, CA: Metro Goldwyn-Mayer),
film; Robert Merle, Un animal doué de raison (1967; Paris: Gallimard), film; The Day
of the Dolphin, directed by Mike Nichols (1973: Los Angeles, CA: Avco Embassy
Pictures), film.
7 Margaret Grebowicz, Whale Song (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 3.
8 Ursula Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2016), 24.
9 See, for context, Joni Adamson, “Whale as Cosmos: Multi-Species Ethnography and
Contemporary Indigenous Cosmopolitics,” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 64
(2012): 29–45.
10 Grebowicz, Whale Song, 3.
258 Sarah Rebecca Kessler

11 See, for black-and-white reproductions of some of Payne’s spectrograms, Katharine Payne

and Roger Payne, “Large Scale Changes over 19 Years in Songs of Humpback Whales in
Bermuda,” Ethology 68, no. 2 (1985): 89–114). See, for a contemporary account of Payne’s
career, Katharine Payne, interview by Library of Congress, April 7, 2017, transcript,
Library of Congress, accessed December 28, 2020, https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/
national-recording-preservation-board/documents/KatyPayneInterview.pdf
12 Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by Roger Payne (1970: CRM Records), LP.
13 Songs of the Humpback Whale.
14 Grebowicz, Whale Songs, 3.
15 Grebowicz, Whale Songs, 14.
16 Stefan Helmreich, Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and
Beyond (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 142.
17 Helmreich, Sounding the Limits of Life, 137.
18 Helmreich, Sounding the Limits of Life, 142. See also Nina Eidsheim, Sensing Sound: Singing
and Listening as Vibrational Practice (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 27–57.
19 Katharine Payne, “Singing in Humpback Whales,” Whalewatcher Magazine, Spring 1985, 6.
20 Payne, “Singing in Humpback Whales,” 6.
21 Payne, “Singing in Humpback Whales,” 4.
22 Payne, “Singing in Humpback Whales,” 4.
23 Songs of the Humpback Whale.
24 Merriam Webster, “cry,” Merriam Webster, Inc., accessed January 25, 2020, https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cries
25 Thanks are due to Tracy Fullerton, Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of
Southern California, for this observation, given during a faculty and student retreat
sponsored by USC’s Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study on Catalina
Island in May 2018. Her thinking falls in line with what I’ve elsewhere called the
cultural politics of synchronization, which legislates relations between sounds and
images as well as voices and bodies to frame some combinations as normative while
rendering others aberrant.
26 Kirk’s words, in the film.
27 Payne, “Singing in Humpback Whales,” 3.
28 Natalia Cecire, Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 1–47.
29 Neda Ulaby, “He Was, And Will Always Be, Our Friend,” NPR, February 27, 2015,
accessed December 28, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2015/02/27/389520008/he-
was-and-will-always-be-our-friend-remembering-leonard-nimoy
30 Payne, “Singing in Humpback Whales,” 3.
31 See this description of a workshop co-facilitated by Payne and Gesundheit (postponed
due to Covid-19) for the latter’s use of this phrase: Cornell University, “Postponed:
Whale Song, A Workshop: CU Music,” accessed December 28, 2020, http://events.
cornell.edu/event/whale_song_a_workshop_cu_music
32 See endnote 5 of the present chapter for Gesundheit’s references to “apprenticeship.”
33 Payne and Payne, “Large Scale Changes,” 89–114.
34 Merriam Webster, “stewardship,” Merriam Webster, Inc., accessed January 25, 2020,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stewardship
35 Merriam Webster, “apprenticeship,” Merriam Webster, Inc., accessed January 25, 2020,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apprenticeship
36 adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico,
CA: AK Press, 2017), 25.
37 brown, Emergent Strategy, 26.
38 brown, Emergent Strategy, 23.
39 Gumbs, Undrowned, 7, 9.
40 Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Whale Songs,” Meridians 18, no. 1 (2019), 10–11.
14
DAYS OF UTOPIA PAST
Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack

Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

This chapter is dedicated to Rob Fairbanks, who has been, and always shall be, my
friend.

“Trekkies Bash New Film as ‘Fun,’ ‘Watchable’” reads the headline for a 2009
report by The Onion.1 Poking fun at a long history of Star Trek fandom, the
satirical story pinpointed something significant about director J.J. Abrams’s
venture into the franchise: thanks to the 2009 film, Star Trek was on the cusp of
becoming mainstream. Star Trek (2009), hereafter referred to as ST09, was the
first Trek film to be honored with an Academy Award. In addition to critical
accolades, it was the highest-grossing Star Trek film to date, and its 2013 sequel,
Star Trek Into Darkness, went on to earn more.2
When Abrams signed onto the project, ST09’s success was dubious. No Trek
movie had appeared in theaters since the 2002 box-office flop Star Trek Nemesis.
Critics considered the franchise’s early 2000s ventures on television equally med-
iocre; Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001) often fell short of the high expectations
established by Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) and Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine (1993–1999).3 The subsequent series, Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005), was
wanting in energy and direction. As a prequel to the original Star Trek (1966–1969)
television series (hereafter TOS), Enterprise struggled to connect the utopic future
depicted in TOS with the dismal early 2000s that, in the United States, were de-
fined by the 9/11 attacks, a second Iraq War, and an endless War on Terror.
Enterprise’s meandering storylines and Scott Bakula’s lackluster Captain Archer
adequately capture the atmosphere of the United States’ George W. Bush years. It
was not until its final season that Enterprise realized its true potential as a prequel to
TOS by including numerous references to characters and events that would
eventually impact the crew led by James Tiberius Kirk (William Shatner).4 This
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-14
260 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

limited success clued the heads at Paramount and CBS into something many fans
already sensed: the utopic hopes and dreams of TOS lay not in the future, and
certainly not in the present. The franchise could recapture its playful effervescence
only by turning to its own past.
After Enterprise was cancelled in 2005, Star Trek took an extended hiatus, until
J.J. Abrams, in the midst of his success with the television show Lost (2004–2010),
expressed interest in producing a new Trek film, and then, later, in directing it.
Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, both of whom had collaborated with Abrams on
Alias (2001–2006) and Fringe (2008–2013), penned the script. The composer
Michael Giacchino, another colleague from the aforementioned series, joined the
team to reimagine the world and characters of TOS for a new era.5 The film draws
on nostalgia for TOS and the original-cast films while updating the franchise with
the sleek mise-en-scène expected in post-2000 science fiction action cinema.
ST09’s team combined twenty-first-century visual aesthetics and pacing with
nostalgia for the 1960s show and its sensibilities. These sensibilities were liberal-
humanist, witty, and lighthearted, but at times also misogynistic and racist.6 ST09
conceals its own conservatism with updated visuals and superficial narrative ele-
ments, but the impulse to turn backwards is always close at hand. The soundtrack
depicts this as much as the mise-en-scène and script do.7 Just as ST09’s story re-
configures the franchise’s narrative past by creating an alternate timeline, so too does
the soundtrack reckon with the franchise’s aural past. After explaining the general
relationship between music, nostalgia, and utopia, I offer a short synopsis of ST09
and an overview of its soundtrack elements. I then focus on a prominent moment
of musical diegesis in the film, before turning my attention to three orchestral cues
that exemplify ST09’s nostalgic impulse: the main theme, the Spock theme, and the
final two cues, “To Boldly Go” and “End Credits.” The audible nostalgia of ST09’s
sound effects and music tethers the reboot to TOS’s problematic utopic vision.

Nostalgia, Utopia, Music

In her monograph Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostalgia, and Hollywood, Caryl Flinn
unearthed many connections between film music and the idea of utopia. While
Flinn primarily deals with Hollywood film scores of the classical era, many of her
assessments hold true for post-classical scores like Giacchino’s for ST09. Flinn
describes the relationship between nostalgia and utopia:

Much of the utopian ideology of classical film music is founded on the ideas
of nostalgia, a word derived from the Greek nostos, to return home, and
algia, a mournful or painful condition. … Significantly, the word’s entry
into our vocabulary corresponds to certain developments in the expansion
of market and industrial capitalism, a system that, it should be stressed, also
necessitates the idea of “homesickness” through its long history of
colonization—the word nostalgia in fact was initially used to describe the
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 261

melancholia of soldiers fighting on foreign soil—and through capitalism’s

slow but inexorable disengagement of private from public sphere.8

With Flinn’s observation in mind, it comes as no surprise that a wave of rebooted

films, television shows, and long-awaited sequels should appear in an era when
capitalism and the neoliberal model are no longer morally viable.9 The more
dystopic the present becomes, the more utopic the past seems, and the more
nostalgic the (typically white, male, affluent) beneficiaries of past systems of power
become. The idea of home and safety from foreign external threats becomes more
enticing in an age of economic uncertainty. While Flinn wrote her words in re-
sponse to the nostalgic utopias in cinema primarily of the 1930s and ’40s, when the
world seemed on the edge of collapse with the rise of militarism and fascist pro-
paganda, her description equally resonates with early twenty-first-century trends.
This is especially true of the political climate of the United States, on which Star
Trek has always obliquely commented.10 The rhetoric of nostalgia is a rhetoric of
conservatism; the jingoistic Trump-era slogan “Make America Great Again” en-
compasses the act of looking to past ideologies to venerate a racist and misogynist
worldview. Likewise, mass culture responds to an uncertain and bleak future with a
turn to an idealized past. The nostalgic impulse drives Hollywood as much as it does
the American white supremacy movements, and while during difficult times it is
tempting to take shelter in nostalgia, it is never a benign trip down memory lane.
When politics and mass culture fan the flames of nostalgia, it behooves us to be-
come critical consumers, especially of the things we love most.

Star Trek (2009): Synopsis and Nostalgia in Sound Design

Star Trek (2009) weaves nostalgia into the world of Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock
(Zachary Quinto) both narratively and musically. And while it never openly
promotes intolerance (on the surface it purports to do the opposite), it cannot avoid
the political thorniness that a turn backwards entails.11 This is true of the emotional
core of the film, which lies in parental relationships (the Freudian version of
the ultimate genetic home) and the homosocial relationship between Kirk and
Spock. The film opens with an extended prelude depicting the monumental event
of Kirk’s birth. His father, George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) assumes command of
the U.S.S. Kelvin after a large Romulan ship led by Nero (Eric Bana) emerges from
a lightning storm and attacks the vessel. George sacrifices himself in order to save
the fleeing crew, which includes his wife (Jennifer Morrison) deep in the throes of
labor pains. The origin story is compelling: the baby who will be captain comes into
being in the midst of a galactic battle. George Kirk’s absence goes on to define his
son’s life. Following the main title cards, James Kirk is immediately established as a
rebel. He disdains authority until approached by a replacement father in the form of
Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who convinces “the only genius-
level repeat offender in the Midwest” to join Starfleet.
262 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

A parallel sequence on the planet Vulcan depicts the maturation of Spock as he

deals with the travails of being inter-species. Kirk and Spock are opposites; Kirk is
the quintessential brash, heterosexual hero and Spock is the austere, cerebral, and
yet emotionally intense competitor/companion. The film centers around the
mystery of the Romulan ship that attacked the Kelvin and its reappearance
twenty-five years later, when it first destroys a Klingon base and then annihilates
the planet Vulcan. Spock loses his mother (Winona Ryder) in the attack, mir-
roring Kirk’s loss of his father. Over the course of the film, it is revealed that
Nero travelled from the future on a mission of revenge upon Spock and the
Federation. With some help from Spock Prime (the Spock from Nero’s timeline,
played by Leonard Nimoy), the Enterprise and its bridge crew defeat Nero, save
Earth, and establish relationships that will carry them into the ship’s five-year
mission. In addition to featuring characters familiar to fans of TOS, ST09 includes
several references to previously established franchise elements, including Klingons,
Orions, the Kobayashi Maru scenario, tribbles, and the famous quip from Doctor
McCoy (DeForest Kelley/Karl Urban), “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a —!” The
sequel film, Star Trek Into Darkness, even goes so far as to retell the story of Khan
Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban/Benedict Cumberbatch), a ruthless product
of the Eugenics Wars who appears in both TOS and in Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan (1982).12 Abrams’ rebooted Trek universe is invested in re-presenting the past
to suit contemporary tastes. In this, the film participates in a project of nostalgia tied
to upholding disparate American economic and social structures, and a longing for
something “great” that, for many people, never really was.
Sound effects and music contribute to the film’s construction of this nostalgic
utopic vision. Although most of the effects in ST09 are the requisite hyper-
rendered explosions and thuds common to the action genre, certain effects possess a
nostalgic resonance. This is thanks in part to Ben Burtt, of Star Wars fame, who led
ST09’s special sound effects team. Burtt, a longtime Star Trek fan, harnessed and
refreshed TOS’s soundscape for the 2009 film.13 In the case of ST09, he created
effects inspired by TOS’s sound library, including the symphony of whirs and beeps
produced by the starships and Starfleet gadgets.14 In an interview with CineMontage,
Burtt explained his approach to working on ST09 and how he connected it with
the 1960s television series. He related:

The supervising sound editor on the original series was Douglas Grindstaff
and, with the urging of Gene Roddenberry, he and his team really raised the
bar and did some things that no one had ever done before in science fiction.
They articulated sounds for the entire ship––every room sounded different,
and every piece of equipment had a unique sound to it. Secondly, they used
real motors and radio sounds, to give it a sense of reality, but also a lot of
musical sounds and tones. If someone pressed a button on a console, it made a
little musical melody. There was sensitivity to making things that had an
emotional feel to them, and the detail they went into was unprecedented.15
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 263

In reimagining TOS soundscapes for a twenty-first century audience, Burtt added

an element of nostalgia. He emphasized the physical creation of sound effects in
the 1960s as an important part of creating the ST09 sound world:

I was interested in making sounds using some of the same techniques that
may have been used in the ’60s. It meant going back to things like test
oscillators, spring reverb chambers, feedback and mechanical sounds. I
wanted to recapture the sense of sound effects done with a musical
sensitivity. I wanted to not only pay homage, but to expand and translate
those original concepts into something grander and more powerful.16

By calling attention to the physical rather than digital creation of sound effects in
his account, Burtt also participated in nostalgia for the past era of Hollywood’s
“sound men” and their musical creativity. For example, he recreated the original
photon torpedo effect by striking a long spring and combining its sound with that
of a cannon. “It recalled the style and feeling of the original, while translating well
into the very different visuals of the movie.”17 Burtt performed similar analog
work to create the hum of the warp core. He replicated the TOS effect by
recording a 1960s oscillator and then rendered it with a reverberation effect.
Likewise, he recreated the sound of the transporter not exactly, but instead
through impression; the ST09 effect includes the shimmery sound of the original
while including a lower range of pitches different from the TOS effect. Burtt’s keen
sense of sound’s musicality allows the effects to function as if they were music.18 This
blurring of the boundaries between sound effects and music is in line with the
sound world of TOS. As Tim Summers points out concerning the 1960s series,
“Using musical instruments/musical sounds for diegetic sound effects … creates a
shared, instrumented musical middle ground between score and sound effect,
which ties the score’s descriptive power closer to the visual text.”19 So, in both its
creation and application, ST09’s sound design rests on a foundation of nostalgia.
In addition to inciting nostalgic reflection, sound effects offer narrative in-
formation. One of the most singular qualities about the sound design in ST09 is
the way it is manipulated to become “fantastical.” Robynn Stilwell describes her
concept of the fantastical gap as a space in which sound and music float between
the diegetic and non-diegetic worlds of a given film or television show. Almost
magically, the nebulous nature of music and sound rarely disrupts the illusion of
cinematic reality.20 The “fantastical gap” is apparent in the moment of Kirk’s
birth. During the “Labor of Love” cue, the film cross-cuts between Kirk’s
mother in the birthing room and Kirk’s father commanding the bridge.21 Effects
and even dialogue slowly retreat beneath the underscore until the moment in
which a baby’s cry echoes through the soundtrack. From his entrance into the
world, James Kirk is acoustically in command. A similar act of audio legerdemain
occurs in a scene depicting Spock’s youth; enraged, a young Spock physically
beats a classmate who derided his mother. The echoes of Spock’s fists and cries lag
264 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

into the next scene, a shot of his father, Sarek (Ben Cross) approaching his son. The
reverberating sound of fisticuffs lingers in young Spock’s mind as an aural reminder
of the emotional outbreak that haunts him into adulthood. Sound in ST09, as in
TOS, performs narrative and emotional work, activities that are typically the
purview of the underscore. In sum, sound design in ST09 generates an atmosphere
of nostalgia for the TOS series, enshrining the past’s soundscape as utopic.

Popular Music and Diegetic Nostalgia

Like the sound effects, diegetic music in ST09 draws on nostalgia to buttress
utopic ideals. This practice is common across the Star Trek franchise. The shows
and films occasionally feature pre-existing diegetic source music, though the
genres that appear tend to be either European classical music, or—later in
the franchise history—jazz.22 American culture has enshrined both genres as
intellectual. As a result, the music that predominates the diegesis in the twenty-
third and twenty-fourth centuries is the music considered most worthy of con-
sumption in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Star Trek generally portrays
classical music and jazz as ahistorical and universal; in other words, these are
utopic musical genres.
Sometimes, though, popular genres appear. This music works differently from
classical and jazz music in that it tends to reference specific dates and locations, usually
the United States.23 Popular music also contrasts the imagined future world of Star
Trek with our more dystopic times. The punk music in Star Trek IV: The Voyage
Home (1986), in which the 1980s are clearly painted in a dystopic light compared to
the enlightened twenty-third century, evidences this clearly.24 Conversely, Roy
Orbison’s 1956 song “Ooby Dooby” in Star Trek: First Contact (1996) paints a utopic
past. In the film, largely set in 2063, Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell), the in-
ventor of the warp drive, enjoys the tune, ancient by pop music standards of the
1990s. For Cochrane, “Ooby Dooby” references a place and time prior to the post-
apocalyptic world he lives in. In this way, Orbison’s tune represents Cochrane’s
nostalgic longing for an Earth prior to the Eugenics Wars and World War III.
Following franchise tradition, popular music in ST09 bridges the non-fictional
world of the audience with the fictional world of the film. Moreover, it acts as a
narrative cueing device and provides unity across the rebooted film series. In
particular, the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” from the 1994 album Ill Communication
contributes to Kirk’s character development.25 The song appears in a scene from
Kirk’s rebellious childhood. Young Kirk (Jimmy Bennett) steals his stepfather’s
prized antique convertible and drives it off a cliff as the punk-rap anthem blasts from
the car radio. The tune ties the audience’s nostalgia for the song with the world of
Star Trek, a connection reinforced by the appearance of the Nokia ringtone when
Kirk’s stepfather calls to interrupt the joy ride—the ringtone acts as an index of real
sound in the imagined Trek world. By incorporating contemporary music and
sound, the film makes its utopic vision seem more attainable.
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 265

Additionally, “Sabotage” acts connotatively, illustrating key events in the se-

quence. Kirk turns the radio on as a response to his stepfather’s threats. His shout of
joy is synchronized with the song’s vocals as he speeds down the road. Still, while the
music is clearly sourced in the car, there is no attempt to make it seem realistic in terms
of volume. It floats in the ether of the fantastical gap, a trick put to great effect when
the guitar solo accompanies Kirk jumping in slow motion from the car, followed by
the synchronization of a shot of the highway patroller’s boot with the enunciation
of “why” in the song. The tune’s entrance into the non-diegetic realm indicates first
that this music is empathetic to the unruly Kirk, and second that “Sabotage” is
functionally equal to the romantic aspirations of the orchestral underscore.
By the third film in the series, Star Trek Beyond (2016), “Sabotage” triggers
nostalgia both in viewers familiar with the song and in those familiar with ST09.26
It similarly kindles nostalgic feelings in a world-weary Kirk.27 In a climactic scene
from Star Trek Beyond, Kirk recovers his adventurous joie de vivre while defeating a
swarm of enemy drones by blasting the mechanical swarm with the soundwaves
of “Sabotage.” The musical act of happy destruction suits the grinning Kirk, and
soon the rest of the crew is tapping their feet to the tune as they literally sabotage
the plans of the antagonist Krall (Idris Elba).28 In this moment, “Sabotage” acts
not only as Kirk’s music in this moment, but as the music of all of the Enterprise
characters, creating a link between the individual’s destiny and that of the col-
lective.29 In the scene’s comic aside, McCoy asks Spock, “Is that classical music?”
Spock confirms that it is. In this way, the rap rock popular genre that was once
understood as anti-authority and dystopic is, thanks to its connection to the
reinvigorated Captain Kirk, admitted into the high art realm of the timeless
musical utopia. It is no coincidence that the song, associated with Kirk, was
created by three white American men. “Sabotage” acquires cultural clout in
the twenty-third century that reinscribes the Western classical concert hall’s
enshrinement of dead white men. The underscore’s main theme performs a
corresponding patriarchal sleight of hand.

The ST09 Main Theme: Myth and Masculinity

The main theme for ST09, simply dubbed “Star Trek” on the soundtrack album,
fulfills an ascriptive role in the score and draws on topoi from the European
classical tradition, similar to the original TOS cue.30 In her article analyzing the
TOS title cue, Jessica Getman outlines the diverse ways the original cue, and
especially its fanfare, works within the show. She describes the TOS fanfare as
“pensive but heroic,” citing how the use of brass in this context references the
topoi of militarism and Romantic-style bucolics associated with hunting horns
(Example 14.1).31 Getman further delineates the TOS title cue’s other main
components, the space theme and the beguine. She explains how the title cue
collectively acts as a framing device, connotative marker, and leitmotif connected
primarily to Kirk.
266 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

EXAMPLE 14.1 The fanfare from the original Star Trek television series’ title cue by
Alexander Courage. Transcribed by Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender.”
Used with permission

EXAMPLE 14.2 The space theme from the original Star Trek television series’ title cue
by Alexander Courage. Transcribed by Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender.”
Used with permission

EXAMPLE 14.3 The beguine from the original Star Trek television series’ title cue by
Alexander Courage. Transcribed by Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender.”
Used with permission 32

The ST09 main theme functions in the same way as Alexander Courage’s TOS
title cue. Like the opening fanfare, the ST09 main theme commonly appears in
the brass, and it too portrays “a hybrid of military and the magical that evokes the
potential of the noble adventurer in the face of unknown frontiers and fantastic
quests.”33 But Giacchino’s theme distinguishes itself from the original in some
notable ways.34 For example, the opening material for Giacchino’s theme is in
D minor and does not feature the large leaps that characterize the TOS title.
Instead, the ST09 main theme progresses primarily in stepwise motion in two
neatly blocked, eight-bar phrases (see Example 14.4). It pushes upward, but not
with the same force as the TOS fanfare. Instead, the ST09 theme is more tre-
pidatious. For each ascension, there is a corresponding movement downward. In
its second iteration, the melody begins a half-step higher. Melodically, the ST09
main theme configures a constant striving upwards, symbolizing humanity’s ef-
forts to reach for the stars, but, unlike the 1960s cue, this melody stumbles,
recovers, and tries again.
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 267

EXAMPLE 14.4 The main theme from Star Trek (2009) by Michael Giacchino.
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 35

The ST09 theme harmonically depicts heroic struggle as well. While firmly
beginning in D minor, the following B♭ major chord in bars 2–3 of the example
acts as a V/♭II in the harmonic progression. The E♭ chord that begins the next
phrase represents both upward progress and a potential departure from the
D minor tonality as it leads into a V chord in second inversion. However, instead
of modulating, the second eight-bar phrase matches the previous one until the
sixth bar. Underpinned by the ♭II harmony, the melody lingers on G before
leaping a minor third to B♭ and then back down to A in an appoggiatura-like
gesture in the penultimate measure. In the final measure, the inner-voiced A
moves down a perfect fourth to E. This same gesture appears in the space theme
that opens the TOS title cue. Finally, the inclusion of a triplet figure in the ST09
theme imitates the triplet figures in the TOS title cue’s fanfare and beguine.
Altogether, the ST09 main theme conjures the familiar heroic tropes of classical
music and the TOS title cue, fusing Star Trek’s musical past with its present.
Akin to the TOS title cue, the ST09 main theme also works as a framing device,
appearing at the beginning and ending of the movie. When first heard, a solo French
horn intones the melody at an adagio tempo while the company logos for
Paramount, Spyglass Entertainment, and Bad Robot emerge on the screen. The
rustling of dissonant chimes, harp, strings, and a wordless chorus surface in the score.
The cue concludes with the brass blaring the tonic D at increasing volume. The note
sweeps into a whirlwind crescendo with added strings that immediately cuts off with
the first glimpse and sound of the film proper: the exterior of the U.S.S. Kelvin and
its bridge’s bloops and whistles. In this case, the ST09 theme works as a reference to
the franchise’s history of brass title cue fanfares, and as a cinematic bookend.
But it does something more. By inviting us into the aural world of ST09 during
the title cards, the cue asks us, as James Buhler notes, to “forget—or at least help[s]
268 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

us not to resent—the corporate origins that lie at its base and incorporate us into its
economic circuits.”36 ST09’s main theme becomes an aural corporate logo for the
franchise, a function clarified eleven-and-a-half minutes into the film when a fully
orchestrated realization of the main theme, heralded by brass and timpani, appears
in synchronization with the title card.37 The sequel films Star Trek Into Darkness and
Star Trek Beyond open with this main theme, solidifying it as the Kelvin timeline’s
musical trademark. In this way it contributes to the myth that the Star Trek fran-
chise’s nostalgia exists outside of neoliberal capitalism.
The main theme also bolsters Kirk’s mythos. The melody pervades the un-
derscore in various guises, appearing in at least fourteen scenes not including the
end credits.38 It is developed, re-orchestrated, set both homophonically and
polyphonically, and generally manipulated to reflect narrative context that pri-
marily relates to Kirk and, secondarily, to the Enterprise crew. Two instances of
the theme in the underscore exemplify how it is developed in relation to Kirk
and the film’s narrative. For example, in the cue “Hella Bar Talk,” which plays as
Pike dares Kirk to do better in Starfleet than his deceased father, the theme
appears in the strings and woodwinds.39 Along with the orchestration, the slow
tempo of the theme in this cue creates a sense of heightened emotion as Kirk
ponders a starship-shaped salt shaker. The film then cuts to a series of shots of
Kirk riding a motorcycle across the open Iowan farmland and the music increases
in tempo and volume. The sequence culminates in an over-the-shoulder shot of a
starship shipyard (see Figure 14.1). Kirk, like the as-yet-unfinished Enterprise in
the background, is not yet complete as a character.40 The music swells as it
becomes clear that Kirk has made the decision to join Starfleet. The theme re-
peats, its texture changing to one of pronounced percussion and brass indicating
militarism as Kirk pulls into the shipyard to depart for cadet training. Altogether,
the main theme’s appearance in the “Hella Bar Talk” cue musically depicts Kirk
first pondering his father’s sacrifice and finally deciding to similarly devote his life
to Starfleet.

FIGURE 14.1 James T. Kirk admires the unfinished U.S.S. Enterprise as he prepares to
join Starfleet. Screenshot from Star Trek (2009) 41
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 269

Later in the movie, the ST09 main theme reappears in the cue called
“Enterprising Young Men” as Starfleet mobilizes to defend Vulcan from Nero’s
attack.42 Initially, its slow tempo and fragmentation signal Kirk’s disappointment
at not being called to service. The theme emerges throughout the sequence in
various guises while the image track cuts to cadets preparing for their first as-
signments; the melody’s increasing prominence in the soundtrack throughout the
scene clarifies that while initially the ST09 main theme is associated with Kirk, it
also comes to represent Starfleet and the Enterprise. “Enterprising Young Men”
reprises in the underscore when Kirk and McCoy receive their first glimpse of the
completed Federation flagship.43 In this way, the main theme emphasizes Kirk’s
centrality and conflates him with the Enterprise and its crew. Kirk’s theme is the
theme for everyone under the yoke of Starfleet, aside from Spock. Kirk’s music,
the music of a white and heterosexual male character, is the default for all
characters regardless of race and gender. In ST09, as in TOS, “Kirk is the head of
a group of almost fully othered characters, presenting white, male viewers with an
image of themselves as benevolent leaders and not oppressors.”44 As such, ST09’s
main theme amplifies a utopic vision that teeters towards conservatism.

Scoring Spock
The musical portrayal of character relationships in ST09 hints at this conservatism.
It is worth noting that instead of the Kirk–Spock–McCoy homosocial triangle
highlighted in TOS, ST09 foregrounds the Kirk–Spock–Uhura relationship.
However, Spock, not Kirk, is at the apex of this triangle. Spock and Uhura (Zoe
Saldaña) are surreptitious lovers, but Kirk and Spock are bound for something
presented as more noble—lifelong friendship. Spock Prime’s greeting to Chris
Pine’s Kirk underlines this fact: “I have been, and always shall be, your friend.”45
The score clarifies the primacy of Kirk and Spock’s relationship; aurally and nar-
ratively, they are equals in that they both receive musical motives, while Uhura
surprisingly receives no special musical treatment in ST09 despite the character’s
established musicality in TOS.46 Unlike the typical TOS tradition of scoring female
characters with romantic or exotic musical tropes, a funk-inflected diegetic tune
plays in the background at the bar where she and Kirk first meet. She explains to
Kirk that she is a xenolinguist and in response he makes a sex joke.
Despite Kirk’s flippancy, Uhura’s job and abilities are significant. Her role in
Starfleet aligns her with language and interpretative skills that are typically coded
masculine in golden era Hollywood.47 Uhura’s talent allows Kirk to prove that
his hypothesis about Nero’s attack on Vulcan is correct. Yet Uhura’s expertise
ultimately serves Kirk’s goals. And lest her role as an active listener and interpreter
of sound acquire too much agency, the film undercuts Uhura by linking her
romantically to Spock. Uhura’s emotional embrace of the stoic Spock and tearful
promise that she will be “monitoring his frequencies” as he heads to the enemy
Romulan ship transforms her from a positive Black female lead into a weepy
270 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

supportive girlfriend living in a futuristic utopia that still privileges men. The
underscore reinforces this depiction of Uhura by denying her musical material.
When music does accompany scenes featuring Uhura, it is usually either a version
of the main theme or the Spock theme. She is subsumed by Kirk and Spock’s
musical presence, a bystander to their homosocial companionship.
Spock is the only character equivalent to Kirk in both the film narrative and
musical underscore. Though the Spock themes in TOS and ST09 both express
the character’s interiority and employ elements of exoticism, they are aurally very
different. Gerald Fried, in describing his approach to composing the TOS Spock
theme, said he wanted to convey that the character “struggled to express emo-
tion.” So, Fried opted to put the theme in an emotionally detached instrument—
the bass guitar. A descending contour defines the melody, adding an ominous air
(Example 14.5).48

EXAMPLE 14.5 Spock’s theme from the original Star Trek television series by
Gerald Fried. Transcribed by Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender.” Used
with permission 49

Conversely, Giacchino’s theme for Spock is supremely emotional and draws on

Orientalist tropes established by Western Romantic music traditions and fre-
quently employed by TOS composers.50 The tune is most fully developed in the
cue “That New Car Smell,” though it appears in various moments throughout
the film in relation to Spock.51 The flexibility of the C minor harmony in this
cue highlights Spock’s Otherness as someone who navigates being both human
and Vulcan. When the lower strings enter, they outline an E♭ major triad,
suggesting a departure from the sorrowful minor mode to the relative major. The
rhythm of the lower line, a dotted quarter followed by an eighth note tied to a
quarter, and then a dotted half note, generates a cross-rhythm that evokes the
ST09 main theme’s triplet figure. The primary material for the Spock theme
concludes on octave tonics, the most stable of harmonies that has the potential to
shift to a major or minor mode (Example 14.6).
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 271

EXAMPLE 14.6 Spock’s theme from Star Trek (2009) by Michael Giacchino.
Transcribed by author and Evan Ware 52
272 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

The orchestration also accentuates Spock’s liminality. A lyrical solo on the erhu (a
two-stringed Chinese fiddle) defines the melodic material for the ST09 Spock
theme.53 The cue begins with high-pitched bells, horn, and harp intoning octaves
on the pitch of G.54 The strings lay a lush foundation for the distinctive timbre of
the erhu. The erhu’s cantabile melody moves in mostly stepwise motion at a
relaxed rubato tempo and the portamento technique common to erhu performance
gives the theme a sense of voice, intimating that Spock has an emotional inner
voice of his own. This melancholy theme oozes emotion. It is as if Spock’s heart
is singing what cannot be openly uttered. The melody marks Spock as Other; the
erhu has a timbre distinctive from that of the Western stringed instruments that
comprise the film’s orchestra. This is no mistake––Giacchino related that he
wanted to “give something for Spock that felt different from everyone else.”55
The erhu sounds different from the rest of the Western orchestra, just as Spock
stands apart from the Enterprise’s predominantly human bridge crew and is the
lone Vulcan in Starfleet. The tune’s sentimentality allows viewers to identify with
him but its exoticism never lets them forget his difference. The theme also
feminizes Spock. Its glistening opening texture, its harmonic vagueness, and the
rubato erhu solo’s portamento and vibrato qualities are all techniques deployed in
classic Hollywood film scoring to denote the feminine.56 Altogether, the Spock
theme’s components make it the contrasting companion to Kirk’s masculine
theme.
The encounter between Spock Prime and the marooned Kirk best illustrates
the Spock theme’s emotional potency.57 The erhu enters with the melody as
Spock Prime turns to face Kirk, whom he has rescued. Spock Prime is overcome
with sorrow for the loss of his home planet but also glad to see his “old friend.”
The theme subsides as the two meld minds. Spock Prime explains in a re-
verberant voiceover the events that led to this encounter. The intimacy of
emotional transfer brings tears to Kirk’s eyes. When Kirk asks if Spock knew
Kirk’s father in the Prime timeline, the strings enter with the ST09 main theme.58
Spock Prime confirms that he did and insists that Kirk must take his proper place
as captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The interweaving of the Spock theme and the
main theme in this conversation clarifies the film’s musical—and, by extension,
characters’—relationships. As Spock Prime and Kirk part ways, the Spock theme
transitions into an adagio setting of the main ST09 theme in the upper strings.59 In
this moment, emotion overwhelms the characters, while nostalgia overwhelms
fans who savor Leonard Nimoy reprising the role. The music subsides as Kirk
steels himself to emotionally compromise the Kelvin-timeline Spock, take com-
mand of the Enterprise, and embrace his destiny.60

The Beguine and Boldly Going Backwards

ST09’s conclusion and end credits consolidate the film’s nostalgic turn. The TOS
title cue, as Ron Rodman points out, is polysemic; it has the ability to connote,
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 273

denote, and convey narrative action, while also representing the Star Trek
brand.61 The latter function comes to the fore at the conclusion of ST09. In the
film’s dénouement, Kirk receives commendations and a promotion to starship
captain. As onlookers applaud and the ST09 main theme crescendos in the un-
derscore, Spock Prime watches from above. The music momentarily subsides as
he murmurs, “Thrusters on full.”62 The film then cuts to the Enterprise bridge,
with its crew and captain preparing to launch their first five-year mission. Filler
material in the brass accompanies the scene. The ST09 main theme cycles
through the orchestra, culminating in a resolution on the tonic in synchroniza-
tion with a hard cut to the exterior of the Enterprise.63
Prepared both narratively and musically, “To Boldly Go,” a modified version
of the original series’ title cue, emerges in the underscore.64 As the camera
swoops around the Enterprise’s exterior curves, the space theme’s tinkling pitches
resound while Leonard Nimoy’s voiceover intones the Star Trek prologue, be-
ginning with those famous four words: “Space, the final frontier.” When the
Enterprise leaps into warp, a re-orchestrated version of the beguine from the TOS
title cue accompanies the end credits.65 The melodic leaps are synchronized with
the camera’s sweeps across computer-generated images of celestial bodies.
Giacchino’s orchestrational palette allows for greater thematic development of
the beguine, as the theme circulates among instrumental groups, first appearing in
the brass and then the upper strings, with generic action music connecting the
iterations. The cue acquires new dexterity as the credits progress. The rolling
ascent and descent that defines the beguine’s melodic contour is broken down
into a single two-bar sequence that climbs upward in pitch. The horns then enter
with the ST09 main theme, which now acts as a countermelody. The layering of
the main themes from TOS and ST09 makes for a powerful musical signifier that
fuses the past with the present.
In reorchestrating the beguine, Giacchino employs a much larger orchestra
than that of the 1960s television series. The result is that the cue sounds fuller and
allows for some orchestrational adjustments. For example, the TOS beguine
prominently features bongos, endowing the tune with a Latin jazz flavor, con-
tributing to what Rebecca Leydon calls “space-age-bachelor-pad music.”66 This
percussion in the TOS version emphasizes the original cue’s emphasis on het-
eronormativity.67 In the ST09 version, instead of bongos the syncopated beat
appears in the snare; timpani and a solo on tom-toms round out the percussion
section. This switch from bongos to snare was no small decision. Whether made by
Giacchino, by the main orchestrator and conductor Tim Simonec, or by another
team member, it transforms the sexual component of the “bachelor pad music” into
something more militaristic.68
A similar effect occurs with the setting of the vocal part. Throughout ST09,
the underscore features wordless choruses at moments of heightened action, such
as during the destruction of Vulcan, the attack on Nero’s ship (the Narada), and
274 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

the Enterprise’s final leap into warp speed.69 “To Boldly Go” also incorporates a
wordless chorus, making the end credits seem like a momentous part of the film.
The beguine’s vocal line that was once assigned to a single singer becomes four-
part homophony.70 This resetting of the voice part complicates Getman’s reading
of the beguine as a romantic discourse between the single soprano feminine line
and the heroic, masculine horn melody.71 Like the replacement of bongos with
snare, the use of chorus here undermines the beguine’s romantic elements in
favor of communal harmony. Both orchestrational decisions act as musical
symbols of the Enterprise’s crew, now with Kirk in command and Spock as first
officer. Choral singing’s long history as a vehicle of nationalism and, in classical
film music scores, as divine, is especially relevant here.72 This communal singing
of the beguine theme merges the TOS “space-age-bachelor-pad” sound with the
militaristic nationalism of an Earth-centric (actually America-centric) Federation
and enshrines the Enterprise crew and its leaders as on a morally just mission to
the stars.
As Getman and Lerner note, the leap of a minor seventh in the beguine is a
key feature of its melody. It implies a sense of striving and “communicating not
only the potential for progress, but progress itself.”73 Melodically and harmoni-
cally, the beguine energetically pushes forward. However, its deployment at the
end of ST09 is a turn backwards narratively. The use of the original title cue
pinpoints the transition from the film’s world to the beginning of TOS’s five-year
mission. In this sense, the movie’s ending becomes the beginning of the fran-
chise’s history. The musical connection between the film and the series ensconces
ST09 in regressive values and aesthetics—albeit updated to make them more
palatable for twenty-first-century filmgoers.

Yesterday’s Utopia
In reimagining the characters of the original 1960s Star Trek series, the 2009 film
reconfigures the utopic dream. Burtt’s sound design, the Beastie Boys’
“Sabotage,” and Giacchino’s score all embrace a nostalgia for TOS, as well as for
the values, both positive and negative, that the series conveyed. While New York
Times critic Manohla Dargis hailed the film as “a bright, shiny blast from a newly
imagined past,” it is important to reckon what it means to “newly imagine” a past
such as this.74 The positive feedback by critics and fans alike reveals nostalgia’s
tantalizing fata morgana that entices those disillusioned by contemporary events.
When such nostalgia weaves its way into popular culture, we risk enshrining a
past that was better for only a small margin of people—those of a certain race,
gender, sexuality, and economic status. But if we, like many of Trek’s time tra-
velers, dwell on the past, we jeopardize any hope for the present and for a better,
more utopic and equitable future. In the end, humanity must embrace the un-
discovered country, the future, as its home.
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 275

Notes
1 “Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as ‘Fun, Watchable’,” The Onion, May 4, 2009,
accessed September 10, 2019, https://entertainment.theonion.com/trekkies-bash-
new-star-trek-film-as-fun-watchable-1819594814
2 Star Trek (2009) won an Academy Award for Best Makeup. According to Box Office
Mojo, ST09 earned $385.7 million. See “Star Trek,” Box Office Mojo, accessed September
10, 2019, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2003403777/weekend/. Star Trek
Into Darkness went on to earn $467.4 million. See “Star Trek Into Darkness,” Box Office
Mojo, accessed September 10, 2019, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/
rl2893252097/
3 Brandon Nowalk, “Star Trek: Voyager Accidentally Presided Over the Franchise’s
Decline,” AV Club, May 28, 2013, accessed September 10, 2020, https://tv.avclub.
com/star-trek-voyager-accidentally-presided-over-the-franc-1798238334
4 Enterprise’s final season, for example, features a young T’Pau as a rebel leader. See Star
Trek: Enterprise, Season 4, episode 8, “Awakening,” directed by Roxann Dawson,
aired November 26, 2004, Paramount, 2014, Blu-Ray. The fourth season of Enterprise
also included an entertaining two-part Mirror Universe storyline. See Star Trek:
Enterprise, Season 4, episode 18, “In a Mirror, Darkly,” directed by James L. Conway,
aired April 22, 2005, Paramount, 2014, Blu-Ray; Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4,
episode 19, “In a Mirror, Darkly Part II” directed by Marvin V. Rush, aired April 29,
2005, Paramount, 2014, Blu-Ray. Discovery learned this lesson from Enterprise well;
since its premiere in 2017, Discovery has made a point of linking elements in the show
to those of TOS. Some prominent examples of this include the appearance of the
Mirror Universe throughout Season 1 and of beloved characters such as Captain
Christopher Pike, Number One, and, of course, Mr. Spock in Season 2. Notably,
Discovery also saw the return of a favorite TOS antagonist, Harry Mudd. See Star Trek:
Discovery, Season 1, episode 7, “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” directed by
David M. Barrett, aired October 29, 2017, Paramount, 2018, Blu-Ray; Star Trek: Short
Treks, Season 1, episode 4, “The Escape Artist,” directed by Rainn Wilson, aired
January 3, 2019, Paramount, 2020, Blu-Ray.
5 Like the narrative of ST09, there are several Star Trek novels that deal with the early
years of Kirk and Spock. See Diane Duane, Spock’s World (New York: Pocket Books,
1988); Diane Carey, Best Destiny (New York: Pocket Books, 1992).
6 For more on these underlying issues in TOS see Jessica Getman, “Music, Race, and
Gender in the Original Series of Star Trek (1966–1969)” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Michigan, 2015).
7 Michael Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, Hollywood Studio
Symphony and Page L.A. Studio Voices, Varèse Sarabande, VSD-6966, 2009, iTunes.
8 Caryl Flinn, Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostalgia, and Hollywood Film Music (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992), 93.
9 To give a few examples of nostalgic reboots and returns, I offer the following: Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008); the many Star Wars prequels, sequels,
and spin-offs; Ghostbusters (2016); and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), in addition to
the Star Trek franchise’s Discovery (2017–), Picard (2020–), Lower Decks (2020–), and
Strange New Worlds (2021–). Television shows like Mad Men (2007–15) and Stranger
Things (2016–) also harness nostalgia as an efficacious narrative device.
10 See Jessica Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue,”
Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (August 2015): 296–97, 301–307.
11 For more on Star Trek and issues of race, see David Golumbia, “Black and White
World: Race, Ideology, and Utopia in ‘Triton’ and ‘Star Trek’,” Cultural Critique 32
(Winter 1995–96), 80–91.
276 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

12 Star Trek, Season 1, episode 22, “Space Seed,” directed by Marc Daniels, aired
February 16, 1967, Paramount 2015, DVD; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed
by Nicholas Meyer (1982; Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 2009), DVD; Star Trek
Into Darkness, directed by J.J. Abrams (2013; Hollywood: Paramount, 2013), Blu-Ray.
13 In a special feature, Burtt relates that he listened to tape recordings of TOS episodes
while in college before seeing the show on television. See Star Trek, Extras, “Ben Burtt
and the Sounds of Star Trek,” directed by J.J. Abrams (2009; Hollywood: Paramount
Pictures, 2010), DVD.
14 While not a sound effect, strictly speaking, another key sound connecting ST09 to
previous entries in the franchise is the use of Majel Barrett’s voice as the computer.
15 Michael Kunkes, “Sound Trek: The Audio Explorations of Ben Burtt,” Cinemontage:
Journal of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, May 1, 2009, accessed September 12, 2019,
https://cinemontage.org/sound-trek-ben-burtt/. Much of the material in the Cinemontage
interview is also presented in the film’s special feature cited in note 13.
16 Kunkes, “Sound Trek.”
17 Michael Kunkes, “More Sound Trekking with Ben Burtt,” Cinemontage: Journal of the
Motion Picture Editors Guild, May 13, 2009, accessed September 12, 2019, https://web.
archive.org/web/20090702235724/http://www.editorsguild.com/FromTheGuild.
cfm?FromTheGuildid=68
18 Throughout the interview, Burtt discusses the musicality of the TOS sound design and
the relationship between music and sound more generally.
19 Tim Summers, “Star Trek and the Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” Music,
Sound, and the Moving Image 7, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 23.
20 See Robynn Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic” in
Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema, eds. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence
Kramer, and Richard Leppert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 184–202.
21 Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “Labor of Love,” track 3.
22 For more on classical music and Star Trek, see Brooke McCorkle, “Fandom’s New
Frontier: Star Trek in the Concert Hall,” Journal of Fandom Studies 4, no. 2, (2016), 180–81.
Also see Jessica Getman and Tim Summer’s essays in this volume.
23 A complicated example of popular music in TOS is the famous “space hippies” epi-
sode, “The Way to Eden.” See Star Trek, Season 3, episode 20, “The Way to Eden,”
directed by David Alexander, aired February 21, 1969, Paramount, 2015, DVD. In the
episode, the disciples of Dr. Sevrin perform folk rock akin to popular music of the
1960s for the Enterprise crew, and even convince Mr. Spock to play alongside them.
Overall, the music is associated with the hippie movement’s naivety and the episode is
critical of their message of peace and love. Yet the diegetic music here, while it sounds
like generic popular music, is not pre-existing, so it has a different impact than the
popular music featured in Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek, and Star Trek Beyond.
Importantly, the latter film also features Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” a tune
associated with the female alien warrior Jaylah (Sofia Boutella). See Star Trek: First
Contact, directed by Jonathan Frakes (1996; Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 2009),
DVD; Star Trek (2009); Star Trek Beyond, directed by Justin Lin (2016; Hollywood:
Paramount Pictures, 2016), DVD.
24 Technically, the punk music appearing in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was not pre-
existing, but it works within generic codes associated with punk. The song “I Hate
You” was written by Kirk Thatcher, who worked on set and appeared as the punk on
the bus in The Voyage Home. See Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard
Nimoy (1986; Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 2009), DVD; Jon Mooallem, “Mr.
Know-It-All: Star Trek Teaches Us How Not to Confront Idiots with Loud Earbuds,”
Wired, December 23, 2014, accessed September 29, 2019, https://www.wired.com/
2014/12/mr-know-it-all-3/
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 277

25 The Beastie Boys, “Sabotage,” track 6, Ill Communication, Capitol Records, D 124717,
1994, compact disc.
26 Though, as Tim Summers points out, many fans were dismayed with the use of the
song in the first movie trailer for Star Trek Beyond. See Tim Summers, “From
‘Sabotage’ to ‘Sledgehammer’: Trailers, Songs, and the Musical Marketing of Star Trek
Beyond (2016),” Music and the Moving Image 11, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 41–45.
27 Another Beastie Boys’ song, “Body Movin’,” appears in Star Trek Into Darkness. The
diegetic music accompanies Kirk’s sexual escapades. In this manner, the Beastie Boys’
music literally serves as space-age-bachelor-pad music. The Beastie Boys, “Body
Movin’,” track 6, Hello Nasty, Capitol Records, C1724383771615, 1998, compact disc.
28 It is possible that the song is an oblique reference to Lieutenant Valeris’s explanation of
the etymology of “sabotage” in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). See Star
Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, directed by Nicholas Meyer (1991; Hollywood:
Paramount Pictures, 2009), DVD.
29 For more on this, see Michel Chion, Film: A Sound Art, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 423–28.
30 Rodman describes ascriptive as an adjective for themes that can signify multiple things
and take on multiple functions. See Rodman, Tuning In, 126–31.
31 Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 299, 302–303.
32 Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender,” 80.
33 Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 303.
34 In an interview, Giacchino compares Starfleet to the military and relates that he
wanted to convey not the grandeur of the task set before the Enterprise crew, but the
sheer difficulty of it. Star Trek (2009), Extras, “Score.”
35 Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “Star Trek,” track 1.
36 James Buhler, “Branding the Franchise: Music, Opening Credits, and the (Corporate)
Myth of Origin,” in Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle, ed. Stephen C. Meyer
(New York: Routledge, 2017), 8.
37 This appears as the opening track on the soundtrack album. Giacchino, Star Trek:
Music from the Motion Picture, “Star Trek,” track 1.
38 The main theme also appears throughout the other films in the Kelvin timeline, thus
giving a sense of musical unity to the reboots.
39 Time code 0:24:32–0:26:17, Star Trek (2009); Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the
Motion Picture, “Hella Bar Talk,” track 4.
40 Giacchino sought to musically align Kirk and the ship. In an interview, he related,
“Kirk and the Enterprise kind of share the same melody because they are eventually
going to be one and the same.” “Score,” Extras, Star Trek.
41 Star Trek (2009).
42 This can be heard at time code 0:35:32–40:52 in Star Trek (2009); Giacchino, Star
Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “Enterprising Young Men,” track 5.
43 The cue begins at time code 0:38:14. The shot of the Enterprise occurs at time code
0:38:55, Star Trek, (2009).
44 Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 313–14.
45 This is a famous quote from the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. J.J. Abrams
explained in a bonus feature that he wanted to make a “Kirk and Spock story.” Star
Trek (2009), Extras, “To Boldly Go.”
46 For more on this, see Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender,” 129–34.
47 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987), 79–82.
48 This theme appears first in the TOS episode “Amok Time.” See Star Trek, Season 2,
episode 1, “Amok Time,” directed by Joseph Pevney, aired September 15, 1967,
Paramount, 2015, DVD. Tim Summers designates this theme “Spock’s B Theme.” See
278 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

Summers, “Musical Depiction of the Alien Other,” 28–30. Also see Getman, “Music,
Race, and Gender,” 223–25.
49 Getman, “Music, Race, and Gender,” 225.
50 For more on this, see Summers, “Musical Depiction,” 30–33.
51 Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “That New Car Smell,” track 13.
Components of the cue are later used to refer to Vulcans more generally in ST09. In
the subsequent Kelvin timeline films, the theme and its textures return briefly during
moments that focus on Spock, such as when he prepares to die in the caldera of a
volcano in Star Trek Into Darkness and when discussing the passing of Spock Prime
with Doctor McCoy in Star Trek Beyond.
52 Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “That New Car Smell,” track 13.
53 The erhu is a two-stringed, bowed instrument that frequently accompanies Chinese
opera. The solo is performed by Karen Han, an internationally renowned performer
whose work appears on other film soundtracks including Joy Luck Club (1993) and
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). See “Karen Han, Erhu, and Her Love of Music,” Karen
Han Home Page, accessed January 31, 2020, http://www.karenhan.com/
54 The use of harp, horn, and bells here might be an allusion to the Vulcan music in the
TOS episode “Amok Time” and to Spock’s lyre performances in “Charlie X” and
“The Way to Eden.” See Star Trek, Season 2, episode 1, “Amok Time”; Star Trek,
Season 1, episode 2, “Charlie X,” directed by Lawrence Dobkin, aired September 15,
1966, Paramount, 2015, DVD; and Star Trek, “The Way to Eden.”
55 Star Trek, (2009), Extras, “Score.”
56 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 79–82.
57 Time code 1:15:16–1:15:52, Star Trek (2009).
58 This entrance can be heard in “That New Car Smell” though the orchestration in the
soundtrack recording is slightly different. Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion
Picture, “That New Car Smell,” track 13.
59 Time code 1:25:49–1:27:34, Star Trek (2009).
60 Spock’s theme is significantly less prominent in the scores for Star Trek Into Darkness
and Star Trek Beyond, indicating that the feminized alien other has been subsumed into
the patriarchal musical whole as represented by the main theme.
61 Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 121–31.
62 Time code 1:56:17, Star Trek, (2009). The pause in the score here reinforces the
centrality of voice in film hierarchies, and in particular the importance of Nimoy’s
voice to the Star Trek franchise.
63 Time code 1:57:53, Star Trek, (2009).
64 Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “To Boldly Go,” track 14. This
track is a reorchestration of the space theme and fanfare from the TOS main title cue.
65 Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the Motion Picture, “End Credits,” track 15.
66 See Rebecca Leydon, “‘Ces Nymphes, Je Les Veux Perpéteur’: The Post-War Pastoral
in Space-Age Bachelor-Pad Music,” Popular Music 22, no. 2 (May 2003): 159–72.
67 For more on this, see Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 305–307.
68 Other orchestrators for the score include Peter Boyer, Richard Bronskill, Jack Hayen,
Larry Kenton, Chad Seiter, and Chris Tilton. “Star Trek (2009),” International Movie
Database, accessed January 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/
fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
69 At one point in the score, the wordless chorus becomes a texted one. This text first
appears in the underscore around time code 1:44:17 in Star Trek (2009) in conjunction
with Spock blasting away from the Narada and destroying the drill with the twenty-
fourth-century Vulcan Science Academy ship. The chorus can also be heard on the
soundtrack album cue “Nero Death Experience.” Giacchino, Star Trek: Music from the
Motion Picture, “Nero Death Experience,” track 10.
 Nostalgia and the Star Trek (2009) Soundtrack 279

70 Getman relates that in order to cut costs, the theme was rerecorded for the third season
of TOS with an electronically synthesized vocal line. See Getman, “A Series on the
Edge,” 301, n23.
71 Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 306.
72 For more on choral singing and nationalism, see Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History
of Western Music: Music in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005), 703–704.
73 Neil Lerner, “Hearing the Boldly Goings: Tracking the Title Themes of the Star Trek
Franchise, 1966–2005,” in Tuned to the Future, ed. K. J. Donnelley and Philip Hayward
(New York: Routledge, 2012), 59; Getman, “A Series on the Edge,” 304.
74 Manohla Dargis, “A Franchise Goes Boldly Backward,” New York Times, May 7, 2009,
accessed September 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/movies/
08trek.html
15
EPILOGUE
The Conflicted Utopias of Star Trek’s
Renaissance (2017–)

Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

Few things are more frightening than the unknown.

While human societies have sought to buttress themselves against this fear,
global pressures in the early twenty-first century eroded those social bulwarks and
the unknown broke through with greater frequency and intensity. Over the early
decades of the 2000s, migration, global warming, racial and socioeconomic in-
equality, expanding civil rights, fragmenting media ecosystems, new modes of
interpersonal communication, and—most recently—disease have transformed the
United States. Americans have come face to face with the unknown and the
Other on so many occasions, and with such irrepressible force, it is perhaps
unsurprising that part of the social response has been from the knee-jerk impulse
of primal fear—manifested as tribalism, parochialism, authoritarianism, denialism,
and xenophobia. Just as it was in 1966, the world of 2017 was in profound
upheaval; it still is at the time of this book’s publication, with no sign of
abatement. In this context, it makes sense that the Star Trek franchise, with its
American focus and global reach, returned to television. Star Trek offers an op-
timistic vision of a future utopia balanced with contemporary political com-
mentary during times of strife.
As made evident by the chapters in this volume, Star Trek has, since its
inception, challenged viewers to confront the unknown. Its strange new worlds
are not just out in the cosmos but are—perhaps more importantly—reflections
on human society, politics, and psyches. Where the franchise stands in sharpest
contrast with the present moment, however, is in its core tenet that we can
overcome our fear. In the utopia Star Trek paints, there is hope. The franchise
maintains that it is only by embracing the unknown and the Other that humanity
can truly progress towards the ideal utopia of the twenty-third century and
beyond.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429463228-15
 Epilogue 281

This may seem a strange suggestion, given that Trek relishes narratives of
Others. Mr. Spock, Data, Odo, the Doctor, Seven of Nine—all these characters
are crucial foils to the central human (often white, male, cisgender, and het-
erosexual) leadership in each respective series. But the stories in Star Trek do
more than just present challenges for humanity, they propose solutions for how
we might overcome the gap between Self and Other. Star Trek’s penetrating
focus on what it means to be human is thus the soul of the franchise; by learning
to embrace the Other, the non-human, we move one step closer to a hopeful
future in which we might embrace one another in all our infinite diversity. It is
difficult to imagine a more opportune time for such an aspirational vision
than now.
The series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–), Star Trek: Picard (2020–), and Star Trek:
Lower Decks (2020–) all engage with this ambitious mission while also inter-
rogating the utopia of past series to which fans have become accustomed.1
Discovery’s Ash Tyler and Gabriel Lorca, for instance, can be understood to re-
present one of the great tensions of early twenty-first century America, riven as it
is by the anxiety of the enemy hiding in plain sight. In Picard, “synthetics”
(androids) have become an illegal class of being to be killed on sight, an un-
comfortable echo of the treatment of “illegal immigrants” who were fodder for
some of the Trump administration’s cruelest policies. Thus, in both Picard and
Discovery, the Federation becomes an institution that—much like the United
States—has strayed from its principles, whether because of xenophobia, disaster
(as with Discovery’s “The Burn”), or extremism (as with the Zhat Vash Romulan
sect in Picard). These tensions, of course, set in motion the struggle to retrieve the
humanist essence of Star Trek as one that overcomes fear and embraces the Other.

Discovery: Passing the Torch

Where goes the drama of a series, so goes its music. Thus, certain musical
components for the title cues and underscore in Discovery (DSC), Picard (PIC),
and Lower Decks (LDS) distinguish them from earlier series. Writing for the first
Trek television series since Enterprise (ENT) concluded in 2005, DSC composer
Jeff Russo was faced with the task of accurately signaling the direction of the new
show and its position within the canon.2 His solution was to keep the “space,”
“fanfare,” and “main theme” components of the original series (TOS) and Next
Generation (TNG) title cues while delivering them in the novel order of “space,”
“main theme,” and “fanfare.”3 Without reproducing the intervals of either of the
previous title cues (but while reproducing TOS’s opening pitch class A), the
“space” section of the cue nevertheless provides the non-triadic pandiatonicism
and heroic horn call tropes heard in TOS, TNG, Deep Space Nine (DS9), and
Voyager (VOY).4 This gesture clearly diverges from Enterprise’s soft rock in-
troduction and reinscribes the series in a sound world more legible to Star Trek
fans. It is a clear statement that classic Trek is, at least in some form, back.
282 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

The contents of the other familiar sections of the Discovery title cue diverge
significantly from past practice, however. An arpeggiated, mechanical-sounding
moto perpetuo lays down the textural bed for a chord loop (Dm-B♭-D♭-C) that, once
introduced, supports an aeolian melody (15.1). All three of these elements—moto
perpetuo, chord loop, and aeolian mode—are idiosyncratic in the history of Star
Trek television title cues. In fact, these elements have more to do with current,
twenty-first-century title cue scoring practices than with the history of the franchise
per se. Ramin Djawadi’s wildly successful title cue for HBO’s Game of Thrones
(2011–2018), for instance, features an ostinato-chord-loop main theme sequence
(also in aeolian) that, given the similarity, may well have served as a model for Jeff
Russo’s Discovery cue.5 Short chord loops and minor/aeolian mode-inflected
themes are also trappings of the J. J. Abrams Star Trek films scored by Michael
Giacchino.6 In using these elements, Russo situates Discovery’s main theme as
contemporary and appeals musically to the broader audiences for science fiction and
fantasy that Game of Thrones and the Abrams Trek films courted.7

EXAMPLE 15.1 The Discovery title cue. Transcribed by Evan Ware 8

Aligning with contemporary film and television title cue practices also helped
Russo underscore the dystopian elements of Discovery. It resulted in a main theme
that is darker and more anxious than previous franchise entries. Yet, this title cue
finishes with Alexander Courage’s classic Star Trek fanfare, a bookending that
may seem out of step with the churning emotions of the main theme or, at worst,
a lazy call-back. Up until Discovery, that fanfare had only ever been directly as-
sociated with the U.S.S. Enterprise and its crew (Captain James T. Kirk [William
Shatner] in particular), though, as Paul Sommerfeld argues in this volume, the
theme has supplied the materials for much underscore, albeit in myriad trans-
formations (see Chapter 10).
Russo’s subsequent incorporation of the TOS fanfare in Discovery’s under-
score, however, complicates the idea that this was simply fan service. In Season 1,
 Epilogue 283

it is used only once, at the conclusion of the final episode when Discovery is met
by the Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson
Mount); this is a completely conventional, and indeed canonical, use of the
fanfare.9 The underscore in Season 2 uses the fanfare more liberally, though al-
ways as a burst of a flavor among the scaffolding of all of Discovery’s leitmotifs. It
remains tied to the Enterprise through the personage of Pike, who is in temporary
command of Discovery.10
The fanfare’s use in Season 3, however, dislodges it completely from its ori-
ginal referents. Transported into the thirty-second century, which features a
greatly diminished Federation, Discovery and its crew become the only remaining
beings that maintain Starfleet’s essential principles, thus becoming a beacon of
hope in this new time. The fanfare comes forward in time with the ship, ac-
companying the exploits of its crew with greater frequency than in previous
seasons. This culminates in a complete appropriation of the beguine theme from
the TOS main title cue for the closing credits of the final episode of Season 3.11
Passing thematic material from TOS forward, and in particular the Star Trek
fanfare, thus acts as a musical torch that is passed from Star Trek’s legendary times
in the twenty-third century, evolving to include Pike and ultimately the Discovery
and its crew. By expanding the fanfare to represent a wider variety of people and
vessels, it becomes more abstracted. No longer just an index of the Enterprise or
Captain Kirk, it is now a musical symbol, at once nostalgic and motivational, that
represents the best ideals of the Federation amidst the new, dark times inhabited
by Discovery’s characters.

Picard: Fall and Redemption

A character study of the eponymous Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart),
Star Trek: Picard presents a more holistic accounting of the former Enterprise
captain than found in TNG (where the character originated), examining his
shortcomings as well as his strengths.12 In concert with this approach, Russo’s
title cue for the first season diverges most significantly from the form of any
previous series aside from the Enterprise title cue (see Chapter 11). An intimate,
gentle cello solo intones the main theme, a melody later taken up by the full
orchestra. A modally ambiguous introduction and conclusion bookend the cue.
The opening music first references Picard’s interiority with a lonely piccolo and
faint string chords high above a piano ostinato accompanying a sliver of the sky
falling on screen. The conclusion alludes to outer space, as the title card fades to a
star field. Thus “space > main theme > space” is the cue’s overall structure, set
against images from the first season—Picard’s vineyard, the Borg cube, synthetic
DNA—all shards that amalgamate as the face of Picard before the title card.13
Although novel in form and mood, this title cue draws on fragments of fa-
miliar music that, like the visual motif of shards assembling the man, assemble a
recognizable musical portrait. The opening piccolo solo is itself a strong textural
284 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

referent to the penny whistle used to score the Season 5 TNG episode “The
Inner Light.”14 Often cited as one of the best TNG episodes and noted by Patrick
Stewart as his personal favorite, “The Inner Light” focuses on Picard, who
experiences an entire life as a member of the Ressikans, an echo of an extinct
species, when a probe takes control of his mind.15 A study on “the road not
taken” in which Picard has a family, learns to play a Ressikan flute, and lives out
his life in a single community on one planet, this episode was a profoundly re-
vealing look into Picard’s character and was referenced later in the series.16
Russo’s decision to start the Picard title cue with a similar timbre is thus a
powerful reference for fans of TNG and a clear indication of the show’s focus on
the more vulnerable sides of Picard.

EXAMPLE 15.2 Opening bars from the Picard title cue. Transcribed by Evan Ware 17

Beyond the indexical relationship of the instrument to previous music, the theme
played by the piccolo echoes both the B section melody of TNG’s title cue and the
flute theme from “The Inner Light.” As seen in Example 15.2, the piccolo solo draws
on the melodic contour from both sources. Given their similarity, it is reasonable to
posit that composer Jay Chattaway drew on the TNG theme to compose the flute
solo for “The Inner Light,” adding an aspect of Picard into the Ressikan universe as a
way of conveying the truth of the captain’s situation. Russo, however, adopts the
gestures in fragmentary fashion over a major chromatic mediant progression: B♭-D.
This progression, often associated with the fantastical, changes the rising major sixth
of the TNG material to a rising minor sixth. A heavily coded musical gesture
signaling the minor mode, it is nevertheless undergirded only with major chords.
The arrival of the D major harmony has the melody hint at an augmented triad (B♭-
F#-D), unmooring the TNG material from its clear modal and tonal frameworks.
This quiet opening thus gives us a sense of uncertainty, of mystery, of disquiet.
 Epilogue 285

EXAMPLE 15.3 Cello solo from the Picard title cue. Transcribed by Evan Ware 18

The main theme section presents another iconoclastic choice: a solo cello playing
the melodic material. Far from the grandeur of TNG’s fully orchestral main
theme, this reproduces the intimate space of the extended (and unaccompanied)
flute solo in “The Inner Light.” Although the cello is accompanied, the pastoral
quality of the episode’s score is translated to Picard’s theme. A pedal tonic har-
mony, modal melody, and the grace-note articulations (another Trek television
title cue first) all echo the bucolic aspects of “The Inner Light,” which themselves
are steeped in Western musical tropes of nature.19 As the theme is taken up by the
full orchestra, the modal ambiguity of the opening returns, first with chromatic
harmonies, then with string echoes of the piccolo minor sixth. The whole cue
fades out with the visual of a starfield, a fragment of the cello theme in the full
string section exhausting itself into the familiar A section melody of the TNG
march, played on solo piccolo like a distant memory.
Contributing to the sense of dislocation, the visual images run against the title
sequence’s musical evocations. The unsettling quiet pads scenes of Picard’s vi-
neyard, while the pastoral cello theme is first heard against visuals of a Borg cube.
By combining sound and image in this way, and by complicating the pastoral
main theme with increasingly chromatic elements, Russo and the series’ pro-
ducers endeavor to match what has never been done in the franchise: a sustained
portrait of a single character struggling with a life whose moral ambiguities have
only become more difficult to disentangle. Thus, just as straightforward and
complex musical materials intertwine, Picard’s hubris in trying to single-handedly
save the Romulans (especially seen in the character of Elnor, played by Evan
Evagora) and his emotional remoteness (seen especially in his stilted description to
Soji Asha [Isa Briones] of his relationship with Data) live side by side with the
compassion that leads him to save the galaxy once again and his moving and
profound relationship with Data, which ultimately gets its due in their scene
together in the final episode.
286 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

Picard’s underscore features some equally murky uses of familiar themes,

particularly the Star Trek fanfare and the VOY main theme. The fanfare is
notably absent for much of Picard’s first season after its use in the first episode,
returning only in the sixth episode when it is used to punctuate Raffi’s
(Raffaela Musiker, played by Michelle Hurd) success at ramming through an
expedited visa for Picard to board the “artifact” (a defunct Borg cube captured
by the Romulans).20 Raffi achieves this while burning bridges permanently
with a friend and suffering from a serious bout of alcoholism. In the scene,
everyone claps for her accomplishment as she staggers off the bridge of La
Sirena, bottle of booze in hand, to continue getting drunk. In this way, the
personal cost of Raffi’s success casts a shadow over the fanfare’s usual brightness
and its use as a musical trope representing triumph. Equally unsettling is the use
of VOY’s main theme, scored for full horn section, to score Seven of Nine’s
(Jeri Ryan) transport down to the planet Freecloud to exact revenge against the
mobster Bjayzl (Necar Zadegan).21
Unlike Discovery, Picard establishes at its core the juxtaposition between the
optimistic vision of the late twentieth-century series (TNG, DS9, and VOY) and
the growing despondency in the early twenty-first century, in which America
carried out its longest war yet and experienced heightened racial violence. In
both TNG and VOY, the challenge of upholding the Federation’s utopian
principles—particularly the Prime Directive—in the face of trying circumstances
served as the shows’ central conflict. Crucial to both series was the story of how
both crews managed to do this, even if they bent the rules at times. Any such
circumvention was usually for the higher purpose of upholding the spirit, rather
than the letter, of the law. Being thus the high-water marks of utopianism in the
franchise (DS9 had far more dystopian elements than TNG or VOY), the act of
repurposing their musical material for moments of human frailty is a bitterly
effective means of highlighting just how conflicted the twenty-fourth century (or
rather the twenty-first century) has become. The way these themes demonstrate
the fallen nature of the late twenty-fourth century allows Russo to gradually re-
align them to their original optimistic meanings. The fanfare, for instance, returns
in the eighth episode of Picard, when Picard and Soji are finally reunited with the
rest of the crew of La Sirena, and again in the tenth episode when Picard de-
monstrates his commitment to the synthetics by (almost) single-handedly chal-
lenging the Romulan fleet.22 Just as in Picard’s title cue, the series offers us a stark
juxtaposition between utopia and reality, and the show’s narrative arc, both in
story and in music, seeks to find redemption through their realignment.

Lower Decks: Utopia Deconstructed

Star Trek: Lower Decks presents the greatest (and most loving) challenge to the
patriarchal utopian elements present in other Star Trek titles. By focusing its
 Epilogue 287

attention on the marginalized grunts of the U.S.S. Cerritos, Lower Decks is an

animated series not just about the future, but about Star Trek’s past. It looks to
preceding series for inspiration, but does so tongue-in-cheek, picking apart
the supposed Federation utopia we’ve seen throughout the franchise. While the
series’ composer Chris Westlake (who previously worked on Little People, Big
World [2010–2013] and Castle Rock [2018–2019]) created most of the Lower Decks
score—aiming for the “nautical but nice” aesthetic preferred by franchise pro-
ducers and composers from the original series through those of the early
2000s—there are a number of musical easter eggs tucked into the series’ first
season.23 Most are subtle, hiding in the underscore only for those listening clo-
sely. Some are blatant and even diegetic; nothing prompts a chuckle like Ensign
Bradward Boimler (voiced by Jack Quaid), alone in a turbolift, humming the
fanfare theme from TNG.24
But for discerning fans the most fulfilling moments are when the soundtrack
seems to be hiding references that only those in the know can identify. In
“Veritas” (Season 1, episode 8), Westlake quotes the “Captain Borg” cue from
TNG’s “Best of Both Worlds, Pt. 1” (Season 3, episode 26) as Ensign D’Vana
Tendi (Noël Wells) thrashes multiple Romulans single-handedly during a secret
mission.25 (In the original context, this cue plays as Captain Jean Luc Picard
[Patrick Stewart] fights against the Enterprise’s away team as they attempt to rescue
him from a Borg ship.) The series also parodies the infamous fight music from
the original series—the “Ancient Battle” cue. This cue, first heard in “Amok
Time” (TOS, Season 2, episode 1), was then employed throughout the rest of the
original series during tense battles, as in the arena fight between Kirk and multiple
opponents in “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (Season 2, episode 16).26 In the
third episode of Lower Decks (“Temporal Edict”), Commander Jack Ransom
(Jerry O’Connell) participates in an arena fight on Galnak V, and while the music
that accompanies this spectacle is not an exact quotation of “Ancient Battle,” it
clearly borrows the original cue’s angular, forceful approach for comedic effect.27
Another musical parody can be found in episode 9 (“Crisis Point”), when the
command staff of the U.S.S. Cerritos approaches the ship by shuttlecraft after her
refit. In this scene, an elongated cue based on the Lower Decks main theme is
employed, parodying a similar scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.28 Lower
Decks revels in allusions such as these.
Despite the humor underlying these moments, Westlake and his crew have
aimed for an overall serious tone in the series, finding that playing the music
straight against the show’s visual-, dialogue-, and plot-based parody enhances
the humor.29 In creating the title cue for Lower Decks, Westlake followed the
franchise’s usual formula, established by Alexander Courage for TOS, and
honed in subsequent shows: an introduction consisting of an adaptation of the
TOS space theme overlayed by a short brass call, followed by a full statement of
the main theme.30
288 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

EXAMPLE 15.4 Opening bars from the Lower Decks title cue. Transcribed by Jessica
Getman and Evan Ware 31

The Lower Decks main theme, with its strong melodic pull and clear mixolydian
diatonicism, utilizes the wind and string glissandos introduced in the TNG theme
and the wordless chorus that is heard in the Discovery title cue. The 12/8 rhythmic
ostinato set against the 4/4 fanfare displays the influence not only of the TNG
theme, but also of current twenty-first-century trends in scoring, as heard in the
main theme for Star Trek (2009) by Michael Giacchino.32 Although only a minute
in length, the title sequence for Lower Decks hits all the nostalgic buttons expected
from the science fiction adventure epic, but in doing so enhances the series’ humor
as the show pokes fun at the entire franchise—and its utopic vision.

Conclusion
If the above brief discussions of the new series are any indicator, Star Trek’s pro-
clivity for engaging with the anxieties of its various series’ zeitgeists has clearly not
diminished over fifty-five years—nor has the appeal for its vision of a better, fairer,
and more humane future. The authors in this volume have investigated the ways in
which the music of Star Trek constructs its conception of utopia for the viewer, as
well as the ways in which that utopia has—and must yet—evolve as Trek seeks to
remain a vibrant part of popular culture in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Their thoughts and analyses will spur further discussion, research, and publications
on this important body of work. Further inquiries might focus on issues of racial
representation and racial justice throughout the various series and films; the video
games of the franchise; Star Trek: The Animated Series; uses of Star Trek’s music in
other non-Star Trek media; issues of immigration and xenophobia; as well as en-
vironmental catastrophe and disease, just to name a few possible directions. Just as
our society is doing now, Star Trek—through Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks—is
 Epilogue 289

interrogating notions of Self and Other, of white privilege and patriarchy, of the
legality of beings, and of environmental disaster. How current and future Star Trek
stories will attempt to resolve the tension between the world-as-it-is and the world-
as-it-should-be is, as yet, an undiscovered country. Nevertheless, Star Trek has
been—and we hope always shall be—embracing of diversity in its utopian vision,
however imperfect its universe may be.

Notes
1 Star Trek: Discovery, created by Brian Fuller and Alex Kurtzman (2017–; https://www.
paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/); Star Trek: Picard, created by Akiva
Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman (2020–; https://www.
paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-picard/); Star Trek: Lower Decks, created by Mike
McMahan (2020–; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-lower-decks/).
2 Star Trek: Discovery; Star Trek: Enterprise, created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga
(2001–2005; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/enterprise/).
3 Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry (1966–69; https://www.paramountplus.
com/shows/star_trek/); Star Trek: The Next Generation, created by Gene Roddenberry
(1987–94; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/).
4 Star Trek; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, created by Rick
Berman and Michael Piller (1993–99; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_
trek_deep_space_nine/); Star Trek: Voyager, created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and
Jeri Taylor (1995–2001; https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_voyager/).
5 Game of Thrones, “Official Opening Credits: Game of Thrones (HBO),” YouTube, April
19, 2011, accessed July 10, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7L2PVdrb_8;
Larry Barnes, “Star Trek Discovery Opening Sequence (Without Titles),” YouTube,
September 25, 2017, accessed July 10, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
wX1byq2C9ng&t=9s
6 Michael Giacchino - Topic, “Star Trek Main Theme,” YouTube, July 30, 2018,
accessed July 10, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIyo8oC2cCE
7 Ryan Britt observes that “Though the opening flutes of the Discovery theme recall both
the Orignal [sic] Series and The Next Generation, the bulk of music feels more like a
contemporary cable drama than any previous Trek.” Ryan Britt, “‘Star Trek:
Discovery’ Music is ‘Westworld’ Meets Classic Trek,” Inverse, September 13, 2017,
accessed June 10, 2021, https://www.inverse.com/article/36392-star-trek-discovery-
theme-music-song-score-tos-jeff-russo
8 Star Trek: Discovery, title cue by Jeff Russo.
9 Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1, episode 15, “Will You Take My Hand?,” directed by
Akiva Goldsman, aired February 11, 2018, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/
star-trek-discovery/video/UUizTnBD8BDl2_4Tstu2rvDgwCA1l0Bd/star-trek-
discovery-will-you-take-my-hand-/
10 The fanfare, for example, is heard in the opening teaser for episode 8 of Season 2,
which features a young Spock and references the TOS episode “The Menagerie.” Star
Trek: Discovery, Season 2, episode 8, “If Memory Serves,” directed by T. J. Scott, aired
March 2, 2019, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/video/
4RYVG4r6g0dPlYAfG5hxdPCNmQmvuJXc/star-trek-discovery-if-memory-
serves/; Star Trek, Season 1, episodes 11 and 12, “The Menagerie Part I and II,”
directed by Marc Daniels and Robert Butler, aired November 17 and 24, 1966,
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/835965103/star-trek-the-
original-series-remastered-the-menagerie-part-i/, https://www.paramountplus.com/
shows/star_trek/video/835965417/star-trek-the-original-series-remastered-the-
menagerie-part-ii/
290 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

11 Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3, episode 13, “The Hope That Is You, Part II,” directed
by Olatunde Osunsanmi, aired January 7, 2021, https://www.paramountplus.com/
shows/star-trek-discovery/video/AYyrfh96xu9Ens2JQBktclGqFgGq3ZI2/star-trek-
discovery-that-hope-is-you-part-2/. The beguine theme also appears at the end of Star
Trek (2009).
12 It is also notable as the first Star Trek series to heavily rely on the work of a Black
female director, Hanelle Culpepper. “Hanelle M. Culpepper,” IMDb, accessed August
6, 2021, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0191697/
13 Nación Trek, “Star Trek Picard—Main Title Sequence,” YouTube, January 23, 2020,
accessed July 10, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBF_7bMlqNk
14 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, episode 25, “The Inner Light,” directed by
Peter Lauritson, aired June 1, 1992, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_
trek_the_next_generation/video/rR_RDMI7PCQ0pSUM653HcLRvVepI_9Du/
star-trek-the-next-generation-the-inner-light/
15 Stewart declared his preference on a Reddit AMA that was later reported in John
Wolfe, “Patrick Stewart Says This is His Favorite ‘Star Trek: TNG’ Episode,” Showbiz
CheatSheet, September 7, 2020, accessed June 24, 2021, https://www.cheatsheet.com/
entertainment/patrick-stewart-says-this-is-his-favorite-star-trek-tng-episode.html/
16 The Ressikan flute appears in “A Fistful of Datas,” “Lessons,” and Star Trek: Nemesis
(2002). Picard’s deep attachment to his own family and desire to have had children can be
seen in “We’ll Always Have Paris,” “Family,” and in Star Trek: Generations (1994). See
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6, episode 8, “A Fistful of Datas,” directed by
Patrick Stewart, aired November 9, 1992, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/
star_trek_the_next_generation/video/IoeLSylvZHScvfyJrO290zTu4DV7qb8P/star-
trek-the-next-generation-a-fistful-of-datas/; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6,
episode 19, “Lessons” directed by Robert Wiemer, aired April 5, 1993, https://www.
paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/video/mZK5NMYSpsVV
hbqwzYUf6d13hq137sk9/star-trek-the-next-generation-lessons/; Star Trek: Nemesis,
directed by Stuart Baird (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 2002), DVD; Star Trek:
The Next Generation, Season 1, episode 24, “We’ll Always Have Paris,” directed by
Robert Becker, aired May 2, 1988, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_
the_next_generation/video/Yvvfa8iQiBpBfYFLITe9etUph0y8eGBy/star-trek-the-
next-generation-we-ll-always-have-paris/; Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4,
episode 2, “Family,” directed by Les Landau, aired October 1, 1990, https://www.
paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek_the_next_generation/video/k7t59q_
TsN09s87t4AJKgKAUZANboXzz/star-trek-the-next-generation-family/; Star Trek
VII: Generations, directed by David Carson (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
1994), DVD.
17 Star Trek: Picard, title cue by Jeff Russo.
18 Star Trek: Picard, title cue by Jeff Russo.
19 See Raymond Monelle, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral (Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 2006) 185–271; Neil Lerner, “Copland’s Music of Wide
Open Spaces: Surveying the Pastoral Trope in Hollywood,” The Musical Quarterly 85,
no. 3 (2001): 477–515, accessed July 8, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3600994
20 Star Trek: Picard, Season 1, episode 6, “The Impossible Box,” directed by Maja Vrvilo, aired
February 27, 2020, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-picard/video/
ILu3u0v0pecOu3csQp_2vpwvTomMwj17/star-trek-picard-the-impossible-box/
21 Star Trek: Picard, Season 1, episode 5, “Stardust City Rag,” directed by Jonathan
Frakes, aired February 20, 2020, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-
picard/video/o1UkhNQZmPtcDud9Ku1fH4M6lHJ8abMw/star-trek-picard-
stardust-city-rag/
22 Star Trek: Picard, Season 1, episode 8, “Broken Pieces,” directed by Maja Vrvilo, aired
March 12, 2020, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-picard/video/
 Epilogue 291

YQqXfmwR39lrrJGR87_PRroedTeh1frX/star-trek-picard-broken-pieces/; Star Trek:

Picard, Season 1, episode 10, “Et in Arcadia Ego Part 2,” directed by Akiva Goldsman,
aired March 26, 2020, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-picard/
video/OByehBzRg7bOQxNbekLFzyoBLQ0Fwbv5/star-trek-picard-et-in-arcadia-
ego-part-2/
23 Ryan Britt, “Star Trek Composer Chris Westlake Breaks Down the Bold Audio Easter
Eggs in Lower Decks,” SyFy Wire, accessed June 28, 2021, https://www.syfy.com/
syfywire/star-trek-lower-decks-easter-eggs-music. Westlake was clear that they
wanted to “[give] Lower Deck its own sonic identity.”
24 Ian Cardona, “Star Trek: Lower Decks Makes a Popular Theme Song Canon,” CBR.com,
accessed June 28, 2021, https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-lower-decks-makes-tng-
theme-song-canon/; Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 1, episode 3, “Temporal Edict,”
directed by Bob Suarez, aired August 20, 2020, https://www.paramountplus.com/
shows/star-trek-lower-decks/video/uQw0LcZSvRsVFzXpUjkxJ0dxTR6q099N/star-
trek-lower-decks-temporal-edict/, time code 00:04:54.
25 Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, episode 26, “Best of Both Worlds, Pt. 1,”
directed by Cliff Bole, aired June 18, 1990, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/
star_trek_the_next_generation/video/BtXG6o31je8a94b4jaSsBptQ3RIvGsQO/star-
trek-the-next-generation-the-best-of-both-worlds-part-1/, time code 00:41:20; gow-
ronatemybaby7, “I Noticed Some Familiar TNG Music in the Most Recent Episode of
Lower Decks. Check Out this Edit I Did to Showcase It!” Reddit, September 27, 2020,
https://www.reddit.com/r/LowerDecks/comments/j0u37y/i_noticed_some_
familiar_tng_music_in_the_most/; Jerry Goldsmith and Ron Jones, “Captain Borg,”
track 11, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Vol. 2, The Best of Both Worlds, GNP Crescendo,
GNPD 8026, 1991, compact disc.
26 Star Trek, Season 2, episode 1, “Amok Time,” directed by Joseph Pevney, aired September
15, 1967, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/1226104276/star-
trek-the-original-series-remastered-amok-time/; Star Trek, Season 2, episode 16, “The
Gamesters of Triskelion,” directed by Gene Nelson, aired January 5, 1968, https://www.
paramountplus.com/shows/star_trek/video/1227398667/star-trek-the-original-series-
remastered-the-gamesters-of-triskelion/. The “Amok Time” scene was later parodied in
Cable Guy; Cable Guy, directed by Ben Stiller (Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures,
1996), DVD.
27 Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Temporal Edict,” time code 00:16:22; Britt, “Star Trek
Composer Chris Westlake.” “Ancient Battle” was also closely parodied in the
Star Trek: Short Treks episode, “Ephraim and Dot.” Star Trek: Short Treks, Season 2,
episode 4, “Ephraim and Dot,” directed by Michael Giacchino, comp. Michael
Giacchino, aired December 12, 2019, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-
trek-short-treks/video/9DfCIXiVZeUSDFCSoIhYd6vdlHXlkqFb/-ephraim-and-
dot-star-trek-short-treks/
28 Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 1, episode 9, “Crisis Point,” directed by Bob Suarez,
aired October 1, 2020, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-lower-
decks/video/vCX8_fo8cSRRxMIf8s3H4PYp6UdNePBV/star-trek-lower-decks-
crisis-point/; Star Trek: The Motion Picture, directed by Robert Wise (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 1979), DVD; Britt, “Star Trek Composer Chris Westlake.”
29 Britt, “Star Trek Composer Chris Westlake.”
30 For more information on the Star Trek title themes, see Neil Lerner, “Hearing the
Boldly Goings: Tracking the Title Themes of the Star Trek Television Franchise,
1966–2005,” in Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future, ed. K. J.
Donnelly and Philip Hayward (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012), pp. 52–71;
Jessica L. Getman, “A Series on the Edge: Social Tension in Star Trek’s Title Cue,”
Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (2015): 293–320, accessed July 3, 2021,
doi:10.1017/S1752196315000188
292 Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Evan Ware

31 Star Trek: Lower Decks, title cue by Chris Westlake.

32 The rhythmic ostinato may also be a result of the heavy influence of John Williams
(and perhaps Hans Zimmer) on Westlake’s aesthetic. We hear such ostinati in works
like Williams’s “Duel of the Fates” cue in Star Wars: Phantom Menace, and then later in
Hans Zimmer’s score for Batman Begins, especially in the “Molossus” cue. Star Wars:
Phantom Menace, directed by George Lucas (Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox,
1999), DVD; Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan (Burbank, CA: Warner
Bros. Pictures, 2005), DVD; Star Trek, directed by J. J. Abrams (Hollywood, CA:
Paramount Pictures, 2009), DVD; Britt, “Star Trek Composer Chris Westlake.” For
more on early twentieth-century action scoring, see Frank Lehman, “Manufacturing
the Epic Score: Hans Zimmer and the Sounds of Significance,” in Music in Epic Film,
ed. Stephen Meyer (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 27–55.
CONTRIBUTORS

Jay Chattaway is an Emmy award-winning composer, nominated seven times

for his work in television and particularly for the hit Star Trek franchise. He is also
the producer of many Grammy-winning music projects, working with artists as
diverse as Carly Simon, Bob James, Maynard Ferguson, Gato Barbieri, David
Byrne, The Talking Heads, The Fania All-Stars, Herb Alpert, and—most
recently—The Von Trapp Children. In addition to his television work, Jay has
composed the scores for over thirty feature films. He has served as Director of
A&R for CBS records, has been the President of the Society of Composers and
Lyricists, and Governor of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He has
both Bachelors and Masters degrees from West Virginia University, and did post-
graduate work at the Eastman School of Music. Jay serves as Distinguished
Composer-in-Residence at West Virginia University and received an Honorary
Doctorate from that institution in May 2019. He is in demand as a conductor,
having recently conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal
Albert Hall. Jay and his wife Terri divide their time between their home on
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and their sailboat Cadenza, cruising the Pacific
waters of Mexico.

James Deaville (School for Studies in Art & Culture: Music, Carleton
University) has published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal
of the Society for American Music, American Music, Journal of Musicological Research,
and Music and Politics, and has contributed to books published by Oxford,
Cambridge, and Routledge, among others. He also edited Music in Television:
Channels of Listening (Routledge, 2011) and co-edited Music and the Broadcast
Experience with Christina Baade (Oxford, 2016). He has co-edited the Oxford
294 Contributors

Handbook of Music and Advertising (2021), and is working on a monograph about

music in cinematic trailers and television promos.

Kate Galloway is on faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she teaches

in the Electronic Arts, Music, and Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences pro-
grams. Her research addresses sonic responses to environmentalism, sound studies,
digital culture and interactive media, and Indigenous musical modernities
and ecological knowledge. Her monograph Remix, Reuse, Recycle: Music, Media
Technologies, and Remediating the Environment, under contract with Oxford University
Press, examines how and why contemporary artists remix and recycle sounds, music,
and texts encoded with environmental knowledge. Her work is published in The
Soundtrack, American Music, MUSICultures, Tourist Studies, Sound Studies, Feminist
Media Histories, and Popular Music.

Jessica Getman is Assistant Professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology at

California State University, San Bernardino, and a film musicologist focusing on
music in television and science fiction media. Her research interests also include
popular music, amateur music, critical editing, historically-informed performance
practice, and twentieth-century American music, and she was formerly the
Managing Editor for The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition at the University
of Michigan.

Naomi Graber is an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia’s Hugh

Hodgson School of Music, specializing in the politics of U.S. film and theater of
the 1930s, the 1940s, and the contemporary era. Her book Kurt Weill’s America
explores the composer’s relationship with the nation in light of his status as an
immigrant, and her further publications have appeared in Studies in Musical
Theatre, Musical Quarterly, and the Journal for the Society of American Music. She is
also a co-editor of the website Trax on the Trail, a scholarly resource that tracks
and documents the use of music in presidential campaigns.

Amanda Keeler is an Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Diederich

College of Communication at Marquette University, where she teaches courses in
film and television aesthetics, radio and television history, and scriptwriting. She has
published several essays on radio and television, including work on Star Trek: Discovery,
Dimension X, Broadchurch, The ABC Afterschool Specials, and The Walking Dead.

Sarah Kessler is a media scholar and television critic. Her articles and essays have
appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly, In These Times, the
Journal of Popular Music Studies, Theory and Event, Triple Canopy, Women’s Studies
Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her book-in-progress, Anachronism Effects: Ventriloquism
and Popular Media, examines the politics of voice in transatlantic popular culture at
the turn of the twenty-first century with a focus on the dynamics of racialization,
 Contributors 295

gendering, and sexualization in live and mediated performances of ventriloquism.

Kessler is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Southern California
and the TV section editor at Public Books.

Brooke McCorkle Okazaki specializes in opera of the nineteenth and twen-

tieth centuries, film music, and the music of modern Japan. In addition to nu-
merous articles and book chapters, she is the co-author of Japan’s Green Monsters:
Environmental Commentary in Kaijū Cinema (2018) and the author of Shonen Knife’s
Happy Hour: Food, Gender, Rock and Roll (2021). In the 2019–20 academic year,
McCorkle Okazaki received a Japan Foundation Fellowship to complete her
monograph Searching for Wagner in Japan. She currently splits her time between
Osaka, Japan and Northfield, Minnesota, where she serves as an Assistant
Professor of Music at Carleton College.

Josh Morrison (aka Dr. Josh) is a faculty member in Women’s & Gender Studies
and English at the University of Saskatchewan. He holds a Ph.D. in Film,
Television, and Media studies from the University of Michigan, as well as two
M.A. degrees in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies (Universities of Arizona
and Western Ontario) and a Bachelor of Music Performance, Classical
Saxophone (University of Western Ontario). His research interests include
feminist, queer, and trans (media) theory, camp & kitsch studies, and critical
masculinities studies. His puggle princess, Liza Martini, is also a big Star Trek fan,
and heartily approves of this wonderful collection.

Louis Niebur is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Nevada,

Reno. His research examines postwar music that bridges the categories of high and
low culture through media technology. In particular, he has written about the
development of electronic music in Britain, primarily through the mediums of
radio and television. His book Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press. He re-
ceived his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Paul Sommerfeld is a Music Specialist in the Library of Congress Music

Division. His research focuses on music and sound in film, television, and other
media. Previous work has explored musical branding and iconicity in the greater
Star Trek franchise. He teaches graduate courses on film music and music bib-
liography at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.

Tim Summers researches and teaches music in Western popular culture at

Royal Holloway University of London, with a particular focus on music for film,
television and video games. The recurring theme in this research is an attempt to
understand the musical experiences and educations that mass media provide for
the huge audiences they address.
296 Contributors

Evan Ware is a composer, music theorist, and educator whose scholarship is

focused on musical reinterpretation and cover songs, film and television music, and
racial justice in music theory pedagogy. His chapter on Sid Vicious’s “cannibali-
zation” of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” was published in Hardcore, Punk, and Other
Junk (Lexington, 2014), and his pedagogical work on George Walker’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning work Lilacs will be published in Expanding the Canon: Black
Composers in the Music Theory Classroom (Routledge, forthcoming). He has pre-
sented at conferences across North America, including the Society for Music
Theory, Music and the Moving Image, and the Society for Film and Media Studies.
Evan is currently Assistant Professor of Music at California Polytechnic University,
Pomona, having previously taught at Central Michigan University, Georgia State
University, Madonna University, and the University of Michigan.

Reba Wissner is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at Columbus State University.

She is the author of A Dimension of Sound: Music in The Twilight Zone, We Will Control
All That You Hear: The Outer Limits and the Aural Imagination, and Music and the Atomic
Bomb on American Television, 1950–1969. She also co-edited an essay collection,
Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds (2021), with Katherine Reed.
INDEX

2001: A Space Odyssey 233, 235 anxiety 121, 142, 164–65, 281, 288;
technological 108–10, 115, 121,
Abrams, J.J. 8, 80, 259–60, 262, 282 126, 128
action figures 65–67 Archer, Jonathan (character) 146–47, 259
Adami, Kai Winn (character) 137 artifice 11, 96–97, 99, 102, 108–33, 170
Adams, John 143 artificial intelligence (AI) 11, 108–10,
The Adventures of Robin Hood 240 112–13, 115–16, 122–23, 127–28
advertising 18, 41–44, 46, 57–58, 70, 201 artificiality 32, 34, 110, 113, 115–16
Africa 92 artist 65, 164, 166, 247
African American 9, 136, 166–68, 178, Asha, Soji (character) 285–86
182, 249, 256, 269 Asia 92, 146
agency 172, 191, 269 assimilation 3, 124, 165
Airiam (character) 109, 127 Auberjonois, René (Odo) 95, 155
Alaimo, Marc 135 autonomy 116, 118, 122–23, 127
Alice in Wonderland 31
Alien 240 Bach, Johann Sebastian 119
alienation 141, 166, 234, 242 Baillargeon, Paul 146, 221
Allen, Irwin 44, 47 Bajor 90, 96, 135–37, 143–45, 178–80,
allusion 100, 217, 287 185–87
alterity 20, 236–37 Bajorans 90, 100, 134–37, 142–44, 154,
American 9, 170, 201, 250, 252, 280 172, 180, 185–88; Pah-wraiths 135,
American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 141, 144–45
41, 43–44 Bakula, Scott (Jonathan Archer) 146, 259
analog 71, 135, 180, 203, 211, 263 Bama, James 49–50, 50
Andoria 147 Bana, Eric (Nero) 261
android 109–13, 116, 126, 234, 281 Bareil Antos (character) 101, 137,
The Andromeda Strain 238–39 141–42, 144
Anglim, Philip (Bareil Antos) 101, 137 Barrett Roddenberry, Majel (Number
anomaly 95, 100, 191 One, Christine Chapel, Lwaxana Troi)
anthropocentrism 246–47, 252–53, 256 10, 18, 86–87, 91, 94, 96, 99, 103
298 Index

Barron, Louis and Bebe 233, 238 Burns, Jack 43, 50–51, 53
Barry, John 238 Burton, LeVar (Geordi LaForge) 116
Basehart, Richard (Harriman Nelson) 47 Burtt, Ben 262–63, 274
Bashir, Julian (character) 101, 161–63, 165, Butler, Octavia E. 256
170, 186 Butler, Robert 16
Basie, William James “Count” 169
battle 53, 156, 178, 182, 261, 287 Campio (character) 94–95, 98
Battle Beyond the Stars 234, 242 canon 88–90, 98, 119, 156, 281
Battle of Betazed 88, 95, 101–2 capitalism 2, 233, 247, 256, 260–61, 268
Battlestar Galactica 2 Capricorn One 241
Bax, Arnold 242 Captain Picard Day 62, 64, 81
Beastie Boys, “Sabotage” 264–65, 274 captivity 19, 21–22, 24, 253–54
Beethoven, Ludwig van 119, 234 Cardassian 90, 135, 141–44, 179, 187, 194
Behr, Ira Steven 137, 155, 163, 170 Carlos, Wendy 234, 238
Bell, David 145, 145, 152, 221 Carpenter, John 235–36, 239
Beltran, Robert (Chakotay) 125, 137 Carr, Paul (Lee Kelso) 52
Bennett, Jimmy (James T. Kirk) 264 casino 156, 166, 168
Berlioz, Hector 119 Cassidy, Ted (Ruk) 110
Berman, Rick 8, 13, 138, 171, 178, Castle Rock 287
199, 203 cetacean 246–54
Beta III 104, 136 Ceti Alpha V 6, 237
Betazed 86, 88, 95, 98, 101 Chakotay (character) 125–26, 137–38
Betazoids 86, 94–96, 98, 100–103 Chao, Rosalind (Keiko O’Brien) 101
Bewitched 42 Chapel, Christine (character) 86
BioShock 1 Chattaway, Jay 11, 158, 177–78, 178, 180,
Bjayzl (character) 286 180, 185, 189–94, 189, 191–93,
Black American see African American 221, 284
Black Hole 238–39 Cheesman, Hannah (Airiam) 109
Black Mirror 2 Chekov, Pavel (character) 6, 35, 80
Blade Runner 233, 235 childhood 20, 91–92, 139, 248
Blalock, Jolene (T’Pol) 137 Cho, John (Hikaru Sulu) 91
Bloch, Ernst 96, 179 Chopin, Frédéric 119, 125
bodies 74–75, 95, 106, 250; disabled 17, Christian (religion) 92, 136, 143
24–25, 146 Christmas ornaments 65, 70, 81
Boimler, Bradward (character) 287 Chrystal, Lola (character) 156, 157
Bonsall, Brian (Alexander Rozhenko) 93 The City 33
Borg xx, 108–10, 113–15, 114–15, 124–27, civilization 25, 212, 225
124, 177, 182–84, 188, 192, 283–87 civil rights 166–67, 249, 280
Boyce, Phillip (character) 19–20, 23 Clarke, Arthur C. 148
Braga, Brannon 199 climate change 9, 252, 256
Brahms, Johannes 119, 121, 154 A Clockwork Orange 234
Brave New World 29 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 239
Briones, Isa (Soji Asha) 285 Cochrane, Zefram (character) 264
Brooks, Avery (Benjamin Sisko) 90, 119, codes, musical 5–6, 138, 200, 211, 284
137, 178 Cold War 4, 41, 246
Brophy, Brian (Bruce Maddox) 122 colonialism 89–93, 97, 99, 103, 246, 254,
Bruckner, Anton 7, 204 260; decolonial 247, 256;
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century 202 postcolonial 246
Buddhism 149 colony 32, 148, 179
budget 18, 44, 57, 233, 236–37 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) 8,
Bunch, Velton Ray 146 41, 43–44, 47–48, 88, 130, 260
Burke, Michael Reilly (Koss) 146 comedy 149, 166, 287
 Index 299

commerce 8, 178–79, 202–3, 225, diegesis 45, 180, 260, 264

242, 249 diegetic 118, 154, 171, 238, 240, 263–64,
commercials 49, 70, 201 287; music 6, 20, 31, 109–10, 116, 119,
communities 34, 63, 90, 135, 144, 154, 171, 239–40, 264, 269, 287; non-
148–49, 284 diegetic 6, 19, 28, 109, 171–72, 238,
Conan Doyle, Arthur 116 240, 265
consciousness 109, 114, 126, 147 disaster 135, 145, 281, 289
conservation 247–48 discrimination 166–67
conservatism 2, 89, 260–61, 269 distress 38, 141, 250
Constant, Marius 48 diva 10, 86–87, 90, 93, 96–97, 99–103
consumerism 65, 74, 80, 88–89, 108, divine 93, 136–37, 144, 274
261, 264 Djawadi, Ramin 282
Copland, Aaron 33, 39, 204, 229, 290 Doctor Who 9
Cordero, Eugene (Samanthan Dominion 88, 101–2, 163, 187, 194;
Rutherford) 127 Dominion War 93, 102, 141, 154, 162
cosmos 214, 254, 257, 280 door chime 66, 75–77, 76
costumes 94, 96, 138, 199 Dorn, Michael (Worf) 97, 136–37, 154
Courage, Alexander 4, 17, 19–21, 24, 44, Dorsey, Tommy 158
52, 56, 266, 266, 282, 287 Dukat (character) 141, 144–46
Coutts, Emily (Kayla Detmer) 126 Duryea, Peter (Ash Tyler) 20
credits 212, 222–23, 268, 272–74, 283 Dvořák, Antonín 119
Crescenzo, Vincenzo de 119 dystopia 1–2, 5, 10, 17, 22–25, 29–30, 177,
Cromwell, James (Zefram Cochrane) 264 225, 233–34, 246, 251, 254, 261,
Crosby, Denise (Tasha Yar) 162 264–65, 282, 286
Crusher, Wesley (character) 92–93
Cruz, Wilson (Hugh Culber) 91 ecology 65, 248, 256, 280
Culber, Hugh (character) 91 economics 43, 261, 268, 274
Cumberbatch, Benedict (Khan Noonien Eisenberg, Aron (Nog) 163
Singh) 262 Elba, Idris (Krall) 265
cybernetics 108, 125–27 Elfman, Danny 236
cyborgs 108–9, 114, 126–28, 182 Elnor (character) 285
embodiment 74, 99, 179, 185, 218
Darren, James 154–55, 172 Emergency Medical Hologram (also The
Data (character) 95, 109, 112–13, 112, 116, Doctor; character) 109–10, 116–19,
117, 121–22 117, 121–28, 125, 154, 190, 281
Davis Jr., Sammy 166–68 Emissary 137, 141, 144–45, 185–86
Dawson, Roxann (B’Elanna Torres) empathy 69, 249–50
92, 139 enemy 114, 141, 162–63, 188, 265,
Dax, Jadzia (character) 91–92, 101, 154, 269, 281
161–62 entertainment 81, 95, 156, 166, 214
The Day of the Dolphin 248 environment 28–32, 37, 48, 53, 146, 255;
The Day the Earth Stood Still 233, 236 environmental 1, 6, 65, 247, 249–50,
Deep Space Nine (space station) 90, 94–95, 256; environmentalism 246–47, 255–56
103, 154–56, 162–63, 166–67, 169, 171, epistemology 10, 128, 200
179, 181, 209–10 erasure 1, 91, 115, 125, 149, 170
Dehner, Elizabeth (character) 53 eroticism 18, 101
de Lancie, John (Q) 79, 194 Escape from New York 235
Delta Quadrant 179, 189–90, 192 espionage 43, 146
Delta Vega 53 ethics 137, 168, 177, 188, 190, 192, 234,
Desilu Productions 16 247, 253–55
Detmer, Kayla (character) 126 ethnic 138, 140, 168
Dickens, Charles 68 Eugenics Wars 262, 264
300 Index

Evagora, Evan (Elnor) 285 genre (film): action 262; adventure 240–42;
exotic 21–22, 138–39, 144, 148, 269 blockbuster 114, 242; fantasy 3, 6, 9,
exoticism 4, 92, 135, 138, 148, 270, 272 41–42, 138, 282; film noir 235; horror
The Expanse 9 241, 251, 254; science fiction 2–4, 44,
explosions 35, 41, 47, 53, 163, 248, 251, 262 49–50, 58, 109, 232–33, 242, 260, 288;
extinction 247, 249, 251, 253–54, 284 space opera 44, 48–49
Get Smart 42
faith 11, 134–37, 144–46, 148–49 Giacchino, Michael 11, 260, 266–67, 267,
“Faith of the Heart” see Star Trek: Enterprise 270–74, 271, 282, 288
(ENT), cues: title cue Gidget 155
false utopia 10, 28–33, 35, 37 Gilbert, W.S. and Arthur Sullivan 120
fandom 3, 5, 8–10, 62–82, 88–90, 96, gods 134, 137, 148, 155, 172, 185
99–100, 103, 162, 199–203, 208, 212, Goldberg, Whoopi (Guinan) 122
221, 225, 259, 262, 274, 281, 284, 287; Golden Gate Bridge 251–53
anti-fandom 11, 199, 203, 225; Brony Goldsmith, Jerry 113–15, 115, 181, 181,
79–80; participatory 10, 62–63, 65–71, 190, 210, 220, 232–43
74–77, 79–81; Pony Trek 63, 77–81, 78; Goldsmith, Joel 114–15, 115
unboxing videos 63, 74–76 Gorn 56
fantastical gap 6, 263, 265 Great American Songbook 155–56,
fantasy 19, 21, 23, 30–32, 101, 251; 159–61, 163, 170
fantastic 6–7, 44, 46, 48, 212, 214, Greenwood, Bruce (Christopher Pike) 77, 261
216–17, 222, 263, 266, 284 greeting cards 63, 65–74, 69, 72–3, 81
Farrell, Terry (Jadzia Dax) 91, 155 Griffith, Charles B. 237
fear 22, 37, 98, 102, 115, 140, 162, Grindstaff, Douglas 262
164–66, 234, 280–81 Guinan (character) 122
feminine 67, 250, 272
Ferengi 98, 101, 136, 161, 163, 167, 172 HAL 9000 108
fight 1, 53, 90, 97, 101–2, 139, 261, 287 Hallmark 69–71, 72–3
Firefly 202, 221 Halvorsen, Johan 120
Fletcher, Louise (Kai Winn Adami) 137 Händel, George Friedrich 120
Flipper 248 harmony: atonal 113, 116, 233–34, 236, 238,
The Fog 239 240; bass 115, 139, 237, 242; chromatic 7,
Fontaine, Vic (character) xx, 11, 116, 36, 112, 116, 180, 213, 222, 235–37, 239,
154–72, 157–58 242, 284–85; dissonant 6, 47, 112, 116,
Forbidden Planet 233, 238 147, 208, 232–33, 237–40; dominant
Foxworth, Robert (V’Las) 147 function 211, 215, 222; octave 181, 189,
Frakes, Jonathan (William Riker) 92, 119 204–5, 214, 222, 270; pedals 204–6, 208,
Freecloud 286 210, 215–17, 219, 222; pitch class 208–9,
Fried, Gerald 28, 31, 33, 34–37, 36, 37, 219, 281; pitch collections 204, 210;
135, 139–41, 140, 270 progression class 214, 217, 222; syntax
Fringe 260 6–7, 213
Frizzell, John 147–48 Haydn, Franz Joseph 120
frontier 4, 41, 205, 208, 225, 246–47, 266 Hedison, David 47
Funny Face 127, 127 hegemony 97, 108, 122, 170
Hell is for Heroes 162
Game of Thrones 9, 282 Hemsworth, Chris (George Kirk) 261
Gamma Trianguli VI 34 heroism 213–14, 222
Garak, Elim (character) 194 Herrmann, Bernard 233, 236
Garden of Eden 28–29, 35 heteronormative 9, 87–93, 98–99, 101–3, 273
gay 87, 91, 98 heterosexual 88, 92, 98, 101, 126, 160,
gender 18, 82, 86, 89, 92, 136, 160, 168, 269, 281
250, 269, 274, 281 Hinduism 136, 149
 Index 301

Hodge, Aldis (Craft) 127 choir 267, 273–74, 288; clarinet 19,
Hollywood 31, 33, 36, 113, 160, 261, 119–20, 193, 241; cowhorn and cowbell
263, 272 33; drums 1, 37, 206, 211, 218, 224,
Holocaust 144, 149 273–74; electric bass 205, 217, 224, 270;
holodeck xx, 4, 116–17, 125, 146, 162–64, electric guitar 1, 21, 32, 48, 50, 211,
167, 171 218, 224, 265; electric keyboard xix;
hologram 95, 118, 154, 156, 167 electronic xix, 29, 110, 113–14, 236;
holographic xx, 11, 116, 118, 123, 125, ensemble 156, 205, 219, 237, 273; erhu
156, 160, 164 146, 272; flute xx, 1, 19, 29, 31–36, 36,
Holst, Gustav 242 138–39, 146–47, 183, 186, 191, 241,
Horner, James 6, 232–40, 242–43 284–85; glass harmonica 235, 237;
Horta (character) 56 glockenspiel 236; gongs 95, 146;
Hoyt, John (Phillip Boyce) 19 Hammond organ 32, 236; harp 1, 20,
humanism 37, 57, 118, 134–36, 178, 182, 29, 31, 48, 236–37, 267; heckelphone
247, 253, 255, 281 21; horn 31–32, 36, 53, 183–87, 189,
humanoid 108, 110, 118, 235, 237 191–94, 207, 213, 217, 265, 267,
Humanoids from the Deep 237 272–74, 286; Indonesian angklung 236;
humor 30, 106, 166, 287–88 low brass 53, 55, 110, 139, 142, 183,
Hunger Games 1, 12 188, 236, 242; oboe 19, 21, 31, 33, 35,
Hunter, Jeffrey (Captain Christopher Pike) 237; pads 112, 285; pan flute xix; penny
16, 18–19 whistle 284; percussion xix–xx, 19, 110,
Huxley, Aldous 29 114, 202, 236–37, 242, 268, 273; piano
Huxley, Craig 238–39 35, 48, 119–20, 124–26, 159, 171, 239;
hydrophone 247–49 piccolo 283–85; Polynesian flute 37;
Ressikan flute xx, 284; shofar 237;
Icheb (character) 92 strings 1, 29, 32–33, 36–37, 52, 110,
identity 53, 74–75, 80, 89, 93, 98, 100, 110, 138, 147, 181, 184, 191, 204, 206–7,
116, 118, 126, 160, 165, 167, 170, 234 209, 215–16, 221–22, 224, 232, 237,
ideology 3–4, 11, 17, 25, 90–92, 177, 179, 241–42, 267–68, 270, 272, 285;
181–82, 185, 188, 190, 200–203, 221, synthesizer 57, 113–15, 186, 206–8,
225, 260–61 232, 234–36, 238–39; tambourine 141;
imaginary 29, 103, 126, 274 timpani 208, 210–11, 268, 273; trumpet
imagination 2, 30, 47, 110, 200, 218, 32, 139, 168, 181, 183, 207–11, 213–14,
240–41 217, 237; ukulele 37; vibraphones 33,
immigration 9, 281, 288 236; viola 120, 192; violin 29, 116–17,
imperialism 247–48, 250–51, 253 119–20, 192–93; violoncello 32, 119,
indigenous 32, 92, 106, 248–49, 254 147, 205, 217–18, 224, 283, 285; voice
individual 122, 136, 164, 170 114, 147, 202, 205, 217, 219, 228, 251;
individualism 160, 224 Vulcan lute 154; woodwinds 19–21, 29,
institutions 4, 91, 281 32, 37, 110, 120, 141, 186, 268, 288
instrumentation 31–32, 35, 171, 180, 183, Internet 42, 65, 74, 88, 94
191, 217–18, 235; band 78–79, 156–59, intertextuality 6, 170, 194
171; electronic 29, 48–49, 113–14, 116, intimacy 21, 63, 65, 77, 96, 272, 285
138, 232–39, 243; orchestra xix, xxi, 1, 71, The Invaders 41
171, 217–18, 232–33, 236–37, 239–40, irony 169, 246, 250–51
242, 260, 265, 272–73, 283, 285 Islam 135–36, 143–44, 148–49
instruments: acoustic guitar 205–6, Islamic Society of North America
217–18, 224; bagpipe 33; bass 37, 237; (ISNA) 144
bells 272; Blaster Beam 236–39, 242; Israel 144
bongos 273–74; brass 19, 32, 34, 49, 52,
138, 141, 180, 184, 187, 192, 202, 215, Jackson, Peter 9
222–23, 236, 241–42, 265–68, 273; Janeway, Kathryn (character) 92, 122–23,
Brazilian cuica 236; chimes 31, 267; 179, 182, 188–94
302 Index

Jaws 237 Lofton, Cirroc (Jake Sisko) 93

Jay, Tony (Campio) 94 Logan’s Run 237, 239
Jem’Hadar 101–2 logic 68, 113, 121, 134, 136, 139–40, 212
Johnson, Penny (Kasidy Yates) 92, loneliness 1, 55, 95–96, 181, 250–51
167, 188 Lorca, Gabriel 281
Jones, Quincy 158, 169 The Lord of the Rings (franchise) 9
Jones, Ron 112–15, 113, 115 Lore (character) 109, 112–13, 112, 115
Judaism 135, 140–41, 143–44, 149, 151–52 Lost 88, 260
Justman, Robert 16, 18 Lost in Space 41–42, 44, 45, 46–50, 202, 240
lounge xx, 161–62, 170
Kahn, Lenara (character) 91–92 love 30, 67, 86–87, 102–3, 146, 155, 172,
Kaplan, Sol 17, 24 241, 261; romantic 20–22, 31–32, 34,
Kellerman, Sally (Elizabeth Dehner) 53 91–92, 94–95, 97–98, 160–61, 239
Kelley, DeForest (Leonard McCoy) lovers 157, 160, 164, 269
139, 262 Lucas, George 240
Kelso, Lee (character) 52 lyrical 32, 183, 233, 237, 240, 272
Kim, Harry (character) 119, 189, 192 lyrics 78, 160–61, 200, 202, 219
Kiner, Kevin 147
King Solomon’s Mines 240, 245 Maddox, Bruce (character) 122
Kira Nerys (character) 92, 97–98, 101, 135, magic 31, 79, 99, 121, 136, 148, 154, 172,
141–44, 142, 148–49, 155, 157, 254, 266
159–61, 170, 180 Mahler, Gustav 120, 138, 142, 204
Kirk, George (character) 261 The Mandalorian 9
Kirk, James T. (character) 1, 16, 18, 24–25, 28, Maquis 90, 179, 188–89
30–37, 49, 52–56, 58, 68–69, 69, 71, 92, marketing 9, 42, 44, 47, 51, 54, 200, 239
110–11, 111, 134, 136, 139, 179, 184–85, marriage 20, 91–92, 134, 139–40, 161
190–91, 204, 241, 246–47, 251–54, 259, Martel, Arlene (T’Pring) 139
282–83, 287; Kelvin universe 77–78, 80, Martin, Dean 156, 166
261–65, 268–70, 268, 272–74 masculinity 98, 156, 160, 162, 165–66,
Klein, Paul 54 249, 265
Klingons xx, 93, 136, 154, 161–62, 167, Matsushita, Betty (T’Pau) 134
187, 194, 236–37, 242, 262; May, Billie 156–58, 157–58
Sto’Vo’Kor 136 McCarthy, Dennis 138, 142, 143, 145,
Korngold, Erich 232, 240 147, 177–78, 178, 181, 181, 183–84,
Koss (character) 146 183–84, 187, 194, 220–21
Kowalski (character) 47 McCoy, Leonard (character) 30–31, 36,
Kubrick, Stanley 233–35 78, 139, 252, 262, 265, 269
Kurtzman, Alex 8–9, 260 McNeill, Robert Duncan (Tom Paris) 189
Meaney, Colm (Miles O’Brien) 155
Laangard, Rued 204, 229 mechanical 114, 121, 238, 263, 265
Lady Gaga 96, 100 Mellé, Gil 238
LaForge, Geordi (character) 116 melody: aeolian 282; chromatic 141,
Land of the Giants 44 183–84, 191; contour 31, 139, 183, 270;
Landru (character) 136 countermelodies 31, 115, 273; hook
Lang, Fritz 1 47–48; intervallic 181, 187, 191, 208;
Las Vegas 154–56, 164–69 leitmotif 3, 35, 110, 189, 232–33, 240,
Latin America 92 265, 283; melodic-harmonic divorce
Lee, Peggy 156–57 219–20, 224; mixolydian 209, 214–15,
Leila (character) 32–33 217, 222, 288; motive xix–xx, 20–22,
Lenard, Mark (Sarek) 121 24–25, 28–29, 32, 52–53, 110, 114, 181,
Ligeti, Györgi 233, 236, 240 189, 191, 207–8, 213, 215, 235, 269;
Little People, Big World 287 register 28–36, 141–42, 145, 147, 180,
Lockwood, Gary (Gary Mitchell) 52 212, 215, 218–20, 222–23, 236, 272–73
 Index 303

Melville, Herman 247 expansion 189, 195, 208, 220, 224;

Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix 120 fugue 110; modulation 75, 215–16, 222,
Mendez, J.I. (character) 24 242; phrase 181, 190, 192, 215, 220,
Merle, Robert 248 266–67; verse 202, 205–6, 211,
metaphor 23, 134–35, 146–48, 180–82, 218–19, 224
186, 194, 235, 249 musical style 5, 7, 41, 119, 138, 202, 264,
Meyer, Nicholas 242 273; action xix, 49–50, 52, 273; avant-
migration 248, 254, 280 garde 235–38, 240–41; fight 3, 6, 135,
militarism 261, 265, 268 139–41, 287; jazz xx, 4, 171, 235, 264,
militaristic 236, 273–74 273; neoromantic 232–34, 240, 242;
military 1, 49, 93–94, 178, 249, 252, 266 popular 7–8, 96, 157, 169, 202, 219,
misogyny 92, 260–61 234–36, 242, 264–65; romantic 3, 31,
Mitchell, Gary (character) 52–53 161, 238–39, 241, 243, 269–70; serial
Mitich, Sara (Airiam) 109 35, 110, 113; swing 157–59, 168–69,
Moby-Dick 247 172; Western classical 7, 30, 119, 233,
modernism 138, 169, 232–35, 237, 238, 240, 264–65, 267
239–40, 243 musicality 81, 109, 116, 119, 122, 126–28,
Mompou, Federico 120 263, 269
Monroe, Del (Kowalski) 47 musical texture 57, 74, 142, 171, 181, 191,
monster 42, 47, 126 202, 204, 211, 242, 250, 268, 272,
montage 77–78, 82, 171, 191, 205, 224 282–83; accompaniment 53, 157,
Montalbán, Ricardo (Khan Noonien 191–92, 209, 219; articulation 183, 207,
Singh) 237, 262 285; drone 112, 146–47; duet 125, 125,
moral ambiguity 159, 177, 190–91, 158, 169, 209; orchestration xix, 10,
194, 285 28–29, 31, 35, 37, 141, 192, 236, 268,
morality 4, 9, 29, 54, 91, 118, 138, 144, 272–74; ostinato 145, 205, 237, 282–83,
147, 162, 180, 190, 192–93 288; timbre 7, 28–31, 33, 35, 37, 48, 56,
Morricone, Ennio xx 62, 66, 113, 115–16, 139, 146, 215, 222,
Morrison, Jennifer (Winona Kirk) 261 235–36, 239, 242, 272, 284
motif 194, 283 musical themes: Kirk 110, 111; Spock 260,
Mount, Anson (Christopher Pike) 148, 283 270–72, 270–71; Tahiti Syndrome
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 119, 120 36–37, 36; Vina 20–22
M’Ress (character) 86 music editors 28–29, 134, 138
Mr. Homn (character) 98 musicking 10, 63, 65, 81
Mulgrew, Kate (Kathryn Janeway) 118, Musiker, Raffaela (character) 286
179, 188 Mussorgsky, Modest 141
Murphy, Scott 3, 7, 12, 14 My Little Pony 77–81
musical connotation 6–7, 19, 24, 213–14, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic 63, 66,
216, 265, 272; bucolic 29, 204, 265; 77–80
departure 215, 220, 222, 242, 267, 270; myth 4, 24, 29, 136, 147, 201, 241,
pastoral 31, 33, 119, 181, 241, 285; 265, 268
tension 47, 208, 212, 217, 220, 222,
237; topics 3–4, 6, 11, 29–30, 35, 113, narration 43–56, 71, 74–77, 82, 172
115, 214, 265; tropes 30, 33, 121, 140, National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
239, 267, 269, 281, 286 16–18, 22, 41, 43–44, 49–58, 50
musical form 6, 177, 201–2, 212–18, 233, Native American 35–37, 137, 139,
241, 283; antecedent phrase 50, 214–15; 149, 185
cadence xx, 180, 211, 213, 215–17, Neelix (character) 190–92
219–24; chorus 206, 211–12, 218–20, Nero (character) 261–62, 269, 273, 278
224; climax 53, 209, 212–17, 220–24; Nichols, Nichelle (Nyota Uhura) 24,
consequent phrase 212–13, 215; 119, 146
304 Index

Nimoy, Leonard (Spock) 1, 16, 18, 52, 55, Pike, Christopher (character) 8, 10, 16–25,
70, 119, 135, 140–41, 182, 234, 251, 77, 148, 261, 268, 283
254, 262, 272–73 Piller, Michael 178
noise 52–53, 91, 94, 97, 236, 248–49, 252 Pine, Chris (James T. Kirk) 77, 261
nostalgia 4, 11, 31, 90–92, 232, 235, Planet of the Apes 113, 233, 235, 237,
240–41, 259–65, 274, 283, 288 239, 241
Nouri, Michael (Syrran) 147 politics 2, 4–5, 17, 25, 28, 44, 89, 91, 93,
Number One (character) 18, 86 109, 135, 141, 144, 146–48, 172,
180–81, 249, 251, 261, 280
O’Brien, Keiko (character) 101 posthuman 109–10, 116, 118, 128;
O’Brien, Kirayoshi (character) 92 posthumanism 108, 128
O’Brien, Miles (character) 155 postmodernism 166, 169–70, 172, 233,
Ocean’s 11 156, 166, 168 235, 240
O’Connell, Jerry (Jack Ransom) 287 postwar 160, 165
Odo (character) 95–98, 100, 145, 155, 157, power 101–2, 109, 121, 137, 172, 238, 252,
158–61, 170, 281 263; institutional 18, 90, 92, 112, 119,
Oliver, Susan (Vina) 18 122, 137, 147, 166–67, 261; mental 23,
Omicron Ceti III 1, 32 53, 99–100; technological 108, 127, 239
Once Upon a Time in the West xx prejudices 100, 136, 166
Orbison, Roy 264 previews 42–44, 50–51, 54, 57–58
Orci, Roberto 8, 260 Prime Directive 37, 286
orientalism 4, 234–36, 270 probe 19, 246, 251–54, 284
Orions 21–22, 262 producers xix–xx, 5, 7–8, 16, 46, 80,
The Orville 9 171–72, 203, 285
Otherness 18, 87, 97–98, 142, 148 Prokofiev, Sergei 242
Others 20, 87, 144, 203 promos 41–58, 45, 50, 56
The Outer Limits 41 Prophets (wormhole aliens) 135, 137, 141,
outsiders 77, 128, 135, 144 144–45, 185, 187
Puccini, Giacomo 120
Palestinians 135, 143–44 Pulaski, Katherine (character) 137
paradise 1, 28–31, 33–37, 225
Paramount Studios 178, 199, 239 Qomar 118, 122–23
paratexts 42–43, 57–58, 201, 203 Quaid, Jack (Bradward Boimler) 287
Paris, Tom (character) 189 Quark (character) 161, 170, 187
parody 31, 78–79, 82, 121, 127, 287 queer 10, 86–93, 96–103
Patch Adams 200 Queer as Folk 89
patriarchy 11, 119, 247, 265, 286, 289 Quinto, Zachary (Spock) 261
peace 25, 32, 35–36, 90, 139, 187, 194
perfection 2–3, 19, 25, 32–33, 37, 124 race 11, 28, 122, 166–67, 269, 274,
performance, musical 118, 121, 159–60, 286, 288
162–64, 166, 169, 171, 218, 255, 272 racism 9, 25, 93, 149, 166–67, 249, 260–61
performativity 65–67, 97, 99 radio 164, 202, 248, 262, 264–65
performer 157–58, 166–67, 169, 200, Ransom Jack (character) 287
202, 218 Rapp Anthony (Paul Stamets) 91
philosophy 4–5, 109, 127–29, 139, 242 Rat Pack xx, 166–68
Picard, Jean-Luc (character) 62–63, 79, 81, Ravel, Maurice 140
87, 92, 94–95, 98, 100, 102, 119, 122, Reddit 200
126, 177, 183–84, 194, 204, 283–87 Reicha, Anton 120
Picardo, Robert (Emergency Medical religion 4, 11, 134–49, 166, 178,
Hologram) 109, 190 182–87, 194
 Index 305

Ressikans 284 Seven of Nine (character) 109–10, 124–28,

revenge 141, 262, 286 124–25, 281, 286
rhythm 31, 33, 94, 193, 202, 241, 248–49, sexism 93, 95, 257
270; downbeat 181, 205, 208 sexual 100, 106, 140, 269, 273
Rigel VII 20–21 sexuality 86, 89, 93, 95, 98, 106, 136,
Riker, William (character) 62–63, 81, 140, 274
92, 119 Shakespeare 82, 98
ritual 6, 94, 98, 136–37, 139, 144, 146, shapeshifter 159–60, 167, 172
154, 182, 221 Shatner, William (James T. Kirk) 1, 16, 18,
Robin and the 7 Hoods 156 52, 55, 58, 134, 136, 155, 179, 204, 246,
Robinson, Andrew (Garak) 194 259, 282
robots 108, 128 Sherlock Holmes 116
Roddenberry, Gene 4, 16, 18, 24, 29, 49, Shimerman, Armin (Quark) 101, 161
52, 135–37, 139, 177–78, 262; vision Shore, Howard 236
xxi, 2, 19, 25, 44, 54, 134–35, 159, 200 Siddig, Alexander (Julian Bashir) 101, 161, 186
Rom (character) 157 signification 30, 35, 112, 140, 179, 221,
romance 37, 92, 124, 159–61, 170–71 232–33, 273
Romulans 9, 261–62, 281, 285–87 Sikhism 149
root beer 194 Simonec, Tim 273
Rosenman, Leonard 242 Sinatra, Frank 154–61, 157, 163–67,
Rozhenko, Alexander (character) 92–94, 169–70, 172
97–98 Singh, Khan Noonien (character) 80,
Ruk (character) 110 237, 262
Russ, Tim (Tuvok) 121 singing 119, 125–26, 154–56, 159–65, 169,
Russo, Jeff 281–82, 284–86 234, 247, 250–56, 274
Ruth (character) 31–32 Sirtis, Marina (Deanna Troi) 87, 94
Rutherford, Samanthan (character) 127 Sisko, Benjamin (character) 90, 92, 101,
Ryan, Jeri (Seven of Nine) 109, 286 119, 137, 141, 145, 157–58, 162,
Ryder, Winona (Amanda Grayson) 262 167–69, 178–79, 182–88, 194
Sisko, Jake (character) 92–93, 167, 183
Saldaña, Zoe (Nyota Uhura) 269 Skynet 108
Sandoval, Elias (character) 32 social media 65–66, 81, 83
San Francisco 246, 251–53 socioeconomics 67, 280
Sarek (character) 121, 154, 252, 264 Solow, Herbert F. 18
Satie, Erik 120 song 78–80, 154–72, 199–200, 202, 206,
Scarlatti, Domenico 120 212, 218–19, 221, 246–56, 264–65
Scharf, Sabrina 54 soul 22, 102, 141, 182, 281
Schreiber, Avery 43, 50–51 sound design 48, 261, 263–64
Schumann, Robert 120 sound editing 53, 262
scientist 188, 247–50, 253 soundscape 69, 91, 264
Scott, Montgomery (character) 78 sound worlds 63, 69, 180, 194, 237,
Scott, Ridley 235, 240 239–40, 263, 281
Seahawk 232 Spielberg, Steven 240
secular 11, 136–37, 140, 144, 147, 186 Spiner, Brent (Data) 95, 109
seduction 19, 21, 98 spirituality 134–37, 139, 141, 143,
self 93, 96, 98, 138, 160, 170, 172, 146–49, 186
281, 289 Spock (character) 1, 10–11, 16–19, 24, 31–33,
selfhood 118, 122–23 36, 49, 52, 54–56, 58, 62, 68–71, 69, 75,
sensory 43, 50, 63, 74–75, 77, 100, 235 78, 80, 119, 121, 135, 139–41, 143–44,
sentience 108, 110, 118, 122–23, 127 146–47, 149, 234–35, 247, 251–54,
sentimental 37, 69, 224, 272 261–63, 265, 269–70, 272–74, 281
306 Index

Spoliansky, Mischa 240 Star Trek (original series) (TOS), episodes:

Stamets, Paul (character) 91 “The Alternative Factor” 71; “Amok
Starfleet 1, 24, 77, 87–93, 95–97, 101–3, Time” 6, 134, 139–41, 140, 147–48,
122–24, 137, 141, 162, 184–85, 189, 287; “The Apple” 28–29, 33–35, 34;
251–52, 261–62, 268–69, 272, 283 “Arena” 55–56; “The Cage” 10,
Star Fleet Battles 88 16–20, 22–25; “Dagger of the Mind”
starships: H.M.S. Bounty 252–53; La 112; “Devil in the Dark” 55–56; “The
Sirena 286; Narada 273; S.S. Columbia Enemy Within” 54, 190–91; “The
18, 20–21, 158; U.S.S. Cerritos 287; Gamesters of Triskelion” 287; “The
U.S.S. Defiant 90; U.S.S. Discovery 8, Man Trap” 256; “The Menagerie” 10,
127, 148, 283; U.S.S. Enterprise xxi, 1, 17, 24; “The Paradise Syndrome”
7–8, 11, 15–21, 24–25, 30–32, 34–35, 28–30, 33, 35–37, 36, 37, 185; “The
37, 49, 51–57, 51, 52, 55, 56, 60, Return of the Archons” 39, 136–37;
62–63, 70–71, 75–77, 80–82, 86–88, “Shore Leave” 3, 28–33, 33, 35; “The
90, 93–95, 101–4, 110, 114, 116, 130, Squire of Gothos” 112; “This Side of
134, 136, 139, 147, 149–50, 152–53, Paradise” 1–2, 28–32, 55;
179, 186, 190, 199–221, 223–31, 234, “Tomorrow is Yesterday” 112, 130;
241, 252–53, 259–60, 262–63, 265, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
267–69, 268, 272–77, 281–83, 109–10, 111; “Where No Man Has
286–87, 289; U.S.S. Kelvin 261–62, Gone Before” 51; “Who Mourns for
267; U.S.S. Saratoga 251; U.S.S. Adonais?” 137
Voyager 125, 179, 181–82, 214 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (ST:WOK)
Star Trek (2009) (ST09) 8, 77, 86, 6, 11, 68, 184, 232, 235–37, 240,
259–74, 288 242, 262
Star Trek (2009) (ST09), cues: title cue Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (ST:WOK),
260, 265–70, 267, 272–73, 288; “End cues: “The Eels of Ceti Alpha V” 237;
Credits” 260; “Enterprising Young “Khan’s Pets” 237
Men” 269; “Hella Bar Talk” 268; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (ST:SFS)
“Labor of Love” 263; “That New Car 11, 182, 232, 235, 237, 240, 242
Smell” 270; “To Boldly Go” Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (ST:VH)
260, 273 11, 243, 246–47, 251, 253–54, 264
Star Trek (original series) (TOS) 1–4, 6, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (ST:FF)
8, 10–11, 16–18, 20, 24–25, 28–35, 134, 136
37, 41–42, 44, 46, 49–52, 54–55, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
57–58, 71, 75, 77, 79, 86, 89–90, (ST:UC) 243
109–11, 113, 120, 134–41, 143–44, Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS) 86, 88,
146, 177–85, 187–91, 193–94, 204, 288
199–200, 202–4, 208, 221, 236–38, Star Trek Beyond 4, 91, 265, 268
240, 246, 259–60, 262–64, 266, Star Trek: Coda 88
269–70, 273–74, 281, 283, 287 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) xx, 3, 6,
Star Trek (original series) (TOS), cues: title 11, 86–92, 94–95, 97, 100–103, 116,
cue 4, 6, 17, 71, 177, 179, 181–82, 120, 134–35, 137–38, 141–46, 148–49,
184–95, 201–2, 208, 242, 265–67, 266, 154–57, 159–61, 163, 166–72, 177–88,
272–74, 281–83, 287–88; “2nd 194, 203–4, 206–7, 209–11, 216–17,
Kroykah” 135; “2nd Ruth” 31–33; 259, 281, 286
“The Amerinds” 35–36, 36; “Ancient Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), cues: title
Battle” 135, 287; “Android Kirk” 111; cue 6, 145, 168, 171, 177, 180–81, 181,
“Big Ruk” 111; “Fight Music” 135, 183–89, 206–7, 207, 209–11, 210, 217,
139–41, 140; “New Planet” 31; “Olde 217; “The Followers Throw the Pills”
English” 32–33, 33; “Pine Trees” 145; M11 from “The Adversary” 185;
35–36, 36; “Talosians’ theme” 21; M11 from “The Collaborator” 180;
“White Rabbit” 31 “Orbosity,” 142, 143, 148
 Index 307

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), episodes: Star Trek: Lower Decks (LDS), title cue
“Accession” 185; “The Adversary” 185, 287–88, 288
185; “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” 158, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP) 7,
166, 171; “The Circle” 135, 141–43, 11, 232–34, 236–41, 287; cue, “The
142–43; “The Collaborator” 180, 180; Cloud” 7, 139
“Covenant” 135, 141, 144–46, 145; Star Trek Nemesis (ST:NEM) 93, 120,
“Emissary” 182–84, 183–84; 226, 259
“Fascination” 100–101; “The Forsaken” Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG)
95–97, 106; “His Way” 154–55, 157, xix–xx, 2, 6–8, 62, 79, 86–90, 92–94,
159, 171; “Image in the Sand” 157, 161; 96, 109, 112–17, 119–22, 126, 134–37,
“In the Pale Moonlight” 101; “It’s Only 141, 143–44, 149, 154, 162, 171,
a Paper Moon” 158, 163; “Our Man 177–85, 188, 200, 203–6, 208–9,
Bashir” xx; “Rapture” 186; “Rejoined” 214–17, 259, 281, 283–87
91; “The Siege of AR-558” 157, Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG),
162–64, 170; “Tears of the Prophets” cues: title cue 6, 181, 181, 183–84, 188,
157, 161; “The Way You Look 206–9, 206, 209, 214–17, 214–16, 281,
Tonight” 158; “What You Leave 284–85, 287–88; “Borg Engaged” 115;
Behind” 158, 171, 187, 187 “Captain Borg” 287; “Data’s
Star Trek: Discovery (DSC) 8–9, 88, 91–92, Beginning” 113; “Data’s Brother” 113;
109, 116, 120, 126–27, 148, 225, “Yellow Alert” 115
281–83, 286, 288 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG),
Star Trek: Discovery (DSC), episodes: episodes: “The Best of Both Worlds, Pt. I”
“Battle at the Binary Stars” 126; “New 114, 115, 287; “Cost of Living” 87, 94,
Eden” 148 97, 102; “Dark Page” 96; “Datalore”
Star Trek: Discovery (DSC), title cue 112–13, 112, 113; “Devil’s Due” 137;
281–82, 282, 288 “Elementary, Dear Data” 116, 117;
Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT) 8, 11, 88, 114, “Ensign Ro” 143; “A Fistful of Datas” xx;
120, 134–35, 137–38, 146, 148, 178, “Half A Life” 94, 98; “The Icarus Factor”
199–203, 205, 211–12, 216–21, 225, 137; “The Inner Light” xx, 284–85;
259, 281 “Justice” 2; “Manhunt” 87, 95, 98; “The
Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT), cues: title cue Measure of a Man” 122; “Ménage à Troi”
11, 199–203, 205–6, 205, 208, 211–12, 99, 101; “The Outcast” 92; “The
211, 217–21, 218–20, 224–25, 281, Pegasus” 62–64, 64, 81; “Q Who” 114,
283; “Kir’Shara Activated” 148 114, 115; “Sarek” 121; “Tapestry” 126
Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT), episodes: “The Star Trek: Picard (PIC) 3, 7–9, 119, 126, 225,
Andorian Incident” 146; “Awakening” 281, 283–86, 288; episode, “et in Arcadia
135; “The Forge” 135, 147; “Home” Ego, Pt. II” 126; title cue 283–86, 284–85
146; “Kir’Shara” 135, 147; Star Trek: Prodigy 8
“Regeneration” 114 Star Trek: Short Treks 8, 120, 127; episode,
Star Trek: First Contact (ST:FC) 114–15, “Calypso,” 127, 127, 133
119, 126, 264; cue, “Borg Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 8
Montage” 115 Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) 4, 11, 92, 109,
Star Trek Generations (ST:GEN) 184, 204; 116–26, 134, 137–38, 154, 177–82,
title cue 204 188–94, 199, 203–4, 207–17, 259,
Star Trek Insurrection (ST:INS) 119–20 281, 286
Star Trek Into Darkness 80, 259, 262, 268 Star Trek: Voyager (VOY), cues: title cue
Star Trek: Lower Decks (LDS) 8, 104, 127, 177, 181–82, 188–94, 204, 208–11,
225, 281, 286–88 208, 210, 213, 213–14, 215, 227, 286;
Star Trek: Lower Decks (LDS), episodes: M42 from “Tuvix” 191; M54 from
“Crisis Point” 287; “No Small Parts” “Tuvix” 192; M65 from “Endgame”
104; “Temporal Edict” 287; 193; M66Rev from “Endgame” 193;
“Veritas” 287 M84Rev2 from “Caretaker” 189
308 Index

Star Trek: Voyager (VOY), episodes: “Barge T.J. Hooker 155

of the Dead” 137; “Caretaker” 188–89, Torias (character) 92
189; “Endgame” 126, 192–93, 193; Torres, B’Elanna (character) 92, 139
“Equinox, Parts I & II” 188, 197; T’Pau (character) 134–35, 139, 147, 149
“Human Error” 125; “Mortal Coil” T’Pol (character) 137, 146–47, 149
137; “The Muse” 97–98; “The Omega T’Pring (character) 139
Directive” 137; “Sacred Ground” 137; trailers 4, 41–44, 77, 80
“Scorpion Pts. I & II,” 124, 188; transporters 18, 20, 190–91, 199, 263
“Someone to Watch Over Me” 124; transsexuality 91, 96
“Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy” 121; trauma 96, 149, 162, 166, 170
“Tuvix” 188, 190–92, 191–92; Trill 91–92, 101, 161
“Virtuoso” 117, 118, 122; “Year of Troi, Deanna (character) 62, 87, 92, 94–98,
Hell, Pts. I & II” 188 100–102
Star Wars (franchise) xix, 88, 233, Troi, Lwaxana (character) 86–103
239–42, 262 Tumblr 82
Steiner, Fred 4, 17, 24, 110–12, 111 turbolift 87, 95, 287
Steiner, Max 240 Tuvix (character) 190–92
Stewart, Patrick (Jean Luc Picard) xx, 87, Tuvok (character) 121, 190–92
94, 119, 183, 204, 283–84, 287 The Twilight Zone 41, 48
Stewart, Rod 200 Twitter 66, 82
Stiers, David Ogden (Dr. Timicin) 94 Tyler, Ash (character) 20, 281
The Stone Tape 238, 244
Stranger Things 9 Uhura, Nyota (character) 24, 78, 80, 119,
Strauss, Richard 120, 140–41 146, 252, 269–70
Stravinsky, Igor 6, 139, 236–37 United Federation of Planets 3, 9, 37,
Striga, Sash (Zora) 127 86–87, 90–97, 100, 102–3, 110, 118,
Struycken, Carel (Mr. Homn) 98 137, 141, 144, 146–47, 178–91, 194,
sublime 6, 97, 99–100 199, 252, 262, 274, 281, 283, 286–87
Sulu, Hikaru (character) 30–31, 91 universe, Kelvin 146, 268, 272
Surak (character) 139, 147
The Swarm 239, 241 Vaal (character) 34, 34–35
symbol, musical 3, 274, 283 Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas
synchronization 52, 201, 265, 268, 273 Papathanassíou) 233, 235
synthetics 9, 281, 283, 286 Vaughan Williams, Ralph 242
Syrran (character) 147 Verdi, Giuseppe 119, 120
Syrrannites 147–48 V’ger 7, 232, 238
video games 1, 4–6, 8, 288
A Tale of Two Cities 68 villains 6, 79, 90, 114, 147
Talosians 10, 16, 19–24 Vina (character) 18–25
Talos IV 17–21, 23–25 violence 19, 91–92, 102, 162, 180, 247, 254
Tárrega Francisco 120 visions 7, 102, 141, 144, 186–87
Taylor, Gillian (character) 251–53 Visitor, Nana (Kira Nerys) 92, 135, 155, 180
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr 120 Vivaldi, Antonio 120
telepathy 87, 95, 99–102 V’Las (character) 147
Tendi, D’Vana (character) 287 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 41, 44–48, 45
terrorism 147–48, 180 Vulcan 139, 147, 238, 262, 269, 273
Thomas, Danny 54 Vulcans 55, 121, 134–37, 140, 143,
Thompson, Susanna (Lenara Kahn) 91 146–48, 154, 182, 199, 234–35, 237,
Throne, Malachi (J.I. Mendez) 24 252–53, 270, 272; Kir’Shara 147–48;
Time Tunnel 41, 44 kolinahr 136, 238; mind meld 253–54,
Timicin (character) 94, 98 272; pon farr 121, 139
 Index 309

Wagner, Richard 7, 120 Wheaton, Wil (Wesley Crusher) 93

Wallis, Annabelle (Zora) 127 Wildeman, Naomi (character) 92
Walton, William 242 Williams, John 48–49, 138, 232–33, 235,
Wang, Garrett (Harry Kim) 119, 189 239–42
war 2, 4, 23, 25, 28, 36, 41, 88, 102, 147, Wise, Robert 238, 241
154–55, 159, 164–65, 172, 177–78, 188, Worf (character) 97–98, 136, 144, 154,
250, 286; Iraq Wars 147, 259; War on 161–62, 170
Terror 135, 259; World War I 248; wormhole 178, 184–86
World War II 156, 164; World War writers, Star Trek 17, 25, 134–35, 141,
III 264 143–44, 146, 148–49, 199
Warhol, Andy 99
warp drive 91, 172, 205, 209, 223–24, Xenakis, Iannis 236, 240
263–64, 273–74 xenophobia 236, 280–81, 288
Warren, Diane 199 Xindi 147
Watson, Russell 218
weapons 48, 101–2, 147 Yar, Tasha (character) 162
Wells, H.G. 1 Yates, Kasidy (character) 92, 167, 170, 188
Wells, Noël (D’Vana Tendi) 287 YouTube 42, 57, 63–82
Westlake, Chris 287
Westworld 9 Zadegan, Necar (Bjayzl) 286
whale, humpback 246–56 Zediker, Kara (T’Pau) 135
whale song xix–xx, 11, 246–56 zeitgeist 9, 201, 288
whaling xix–xx, 11, 247, 251, 253 Zora (character) 116, 127, 127