What Happened to the Original Star Trek Theme Music?

Out of curiosity, why was the score for Star Trek dropped after TOS ended? When I finally watched TMP, imagine my surprise when I heard the score commonly associated with The Next Generation! You don't even hear overtones of the old operatic theme song in the movie!

 

When I finally watched TNG, imagine my surprise when I heard the score originally associated with The Motion Picture!

 

Because they had the budget to record new music...

 

Yes, you do. Both of the times that Kirk's captain's log voiceover is heard in the movie, the musical accompaniment is the TOS theme, and they actually brought in Alexander Courage himself to arrange it for those cues. What you don't hear in TMP is the "fanfare" part, the first half of the TOS title music that plays under the "Space, the final frontier" narration. It's the only Trek movie that doesn't use that portion of the theme, but it does use the other portion.

(And the TOS theme was hardly "operatic." It was written in the style of popular songs of the day, basically a pastiche of "Beyond the Blue Horizon" with a bossa nova rhythm evoking "Begin the Beguine." It even had lyrics written by Roddenberry, but they weren't very good.)

The reason they used a different theme is because they hired Jerry Goldsmith to do the movie instead of Alexander Courage. In the same way, the animated series had a different theme because Ray Ellis did it instead of Courage (though it was a close pastiche of the Courage theme). It's not uncommon for movie sequels, revival TV series, animated adaptations, etc. to have different music than the original did. Sometimes a series will even change its own theme music sometime during its run (e.g. Lost in Space, the 2000 Invisible Man, or Andromeda), either because they get a new composer or just want to convey something different.

 

Honestly, I'm not complaining! I sort of like the grand march theme better anyways! Although I think it has something to do with John Williams and the success of Star Wars IV.

 

Well, to some extent that's true. Of course, Jerry Goldsmith at the time was probably a bigger name in the industry than Williams, with a lot more film credits under his belt, though they'd been in the business for roughly the same length of time and had both begun in television. But according to the liner notes for the recently-released La-La Land Records Limited Edition TMP soundtrack box set, written by Jeff Bond and Mike Mattesino:

So something to do with it, yes, but indirectly. And it's not like Williams's influence was the reason they didn't use the Courage theme. They didn't use the Courage theme because they hired Goldsmith instead of Courage.

Also -- at the time, it wasn't "Star Wars IV." It was just Star Wars.

 

It's funny now in hindsight, but around 1988 or so, I started thinking if there ever was a "Star Trek: The Third Generation," it should use James Horner's main theme from Star Trek II.

 

It was operatic alright albeit an incongrous exotic opera with the syncopated congo drums vrs the high legato soprano large leaps and hitting that high B flat.

What I was really upset about was TNG's mock up of TMP where the opening Kirk fanfare went up only a minor third at the end of it instead of a major one like it should have.

What made the theme foe GQ so funny was the tight intervalic baby steps it takes of the scale and struggles to find the dominant right away never travelling more than a perfect fifth the whole tune and then modulatindg up a minor third. It doesn't even cadence on a major fifth but a flat seventh that turns into a dominant fifth finally. The lyrics might have been, 'Here we go out into space again for what I have no idea'.

 

I think my head just exploded.


Yup.

 

An updated version of the original theme also was played under the closing credits in the Abrams movie.

 

^^ Sounds like the theme to Galaxy Quest.

 

You mean the theme commonly associated with TNG. The score commonly associated with TNG consists of roughly two notes played with slightly different instrumentation and volume, for hours upon end.

 

I was very happy to hear it again at the end of the 2009 movie!

 

I had this Star Trek album, first on cassette and then on CD with a composition by Jerry Goldsmith entitled Star Trek Suite. It alternates the Alexander Courage original title music with the Goldsmith Enterprise theme, back and forth nicely. It's one of my favorite pieces of Trek music.

 

That's not really true. It may be true for the middle of season 4 onward, when Ron Jones was fired.. but it's not at all true of the first 3.5 seasons.