That is weird. The abrupt atonality of that transition is so at odds with the melodic portions before and after that is seems Horner had a very specific idea he was trying to convey. I wonder if he had to compose some of the music prior to the finished cut. I recall seeing and interview somewhere where ahorner said he had even less time to score III than he did II. The bridge lighting up is an effects shot -maybe Horner was given a different idea of what the transition would be like? Some ambitious zoom in on space dock from earth with a push in on the Enterprise that got scaled back? Or maybe and older draft of the script gave more detail on what Uhura did after the Mr. Adventure scene. The sequencing of the film was changed in the edit (with the Grissom /genesis into pushed back later in favor of opening with the Enterprise, so I maybe there was talk about doing some pickups to bridge that sequence? Unfortunately we can’t ask Horner anymore. Wonder if the music editor Robert Badami ever visits the board. On another note that sequence confused me a lot as a kid - the way the bridge lights came on made it seem to me like they were windows and the light was coming from the inside of the bridge. I kept trying to find those “windows” in the inside of the set, thinking they were up on the ceiling somewhere.
Since the "windows" lit up well in advance of the ship getting underway, it made me wonder why Scotty would not take better care not to signal his intent to Spacedock with bright lights... Here would be the perfect opening for a "silent running" scene where little things actually matter! Sure, it would all get pretty futile when Scotty turned on the warp nacelles, but the "windows" preceded that. A good heist otherwise, though. Caters for all sorts of plot developments, justifies those where tech limitations dictate the outcome (when those seldom did in those eps where the ship was crewed and functional), brings emotional depth to others, saves on set expenses (a less conspicuous getaway vehicle would probably be preferable in-universe, but the preexisting sets were already taken to their limits here in portraying multiple vessels)... ...Why leave Uhura ashore in the first place? It's not as if, say, Chekov would have been essential to this part of the adventure. Timo Saloniemi
I dunno. The scripts I have are the sequence before the scenes shuffled around in editing, so this is the order it was meant to be. <shrug>