Is this piece of music TOS related?

[digger]

Tonight, my wife and I watched Puppet Master 5 from 1994. Several times throughout it, there's been a snippet of background music that sounds so familiar. For some reason, I have in my head that it's from TOS. Or at least reminiscent of something from TOS. Can anyone tell me if they recognize it?

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Here is a link to the full movie on YouTube. (It is in German, but that can be ignored.) The specific snippet plays for about 10 seconds starting at 57:04.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Maurice]

If you right click on the timeline of a video on YouTube you can copy a link to the specific time index, like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_8-2n7KqE&t=3423 (goes directly to the clip).

Honestly, it sounds like 100 things I've heard before on TV and movies.

 

[johnnybear]

Actually there is a piece of music from Tyburn's The Ghoul (1975) that they ripped off from Trek! It's the chasing music in episodes like A Private Little War but since The Ghoul is not commercially available on DVD it's hard to prove!
JB

 

[Maurice]

Actually there is a piece of music from Tyburn's The Ghoul (1975) that they ripped off from Trek! It's the chasing music in episodes like A Private Little War but since The Ghoul is not commercially available on DVD it's hard to prove!
JB

Here it is (link). Now give us a time index.

 

[johnnybear]

Daphne and John Hurt at the gates to Peter Cushing's house! About 19.40 minutes thanks, Maurice!
JB

 

[Christopher]

No, that cue from The Ghoul isn't from Star Trek. It does have a couple of bars that sound quite similar to the piano riff from 2:04 in the "Racial Memories / Captain Kirk / Mace Fight" cue in Gerald Fried's "Catspaw" score, but it's just similar, not identical. As for the thing from The Puppet Master, it doesn't sound like anything specific from Trek at all.

The thing about music is that it's built from patterns, and patterns recur. There are only so many ways to put notes together in a way that sounds good or conveys a certain effect, so naturally different works of music will have similar melodies or patterns or riffs in them, not because they're directly copying each other, but because the range of possibilities is finite. That particular piano riff has a bit of a bluesy sound to it, I think, so it's probably an ostinato that would show up in a number of scores by composers who grew up in the jazz/blues age.

 

[johnnybear]

Well it's not exactly the same but I still think they ripped it from Trek! Only a long term Trek fan would have realised back in 1974/75 I'm sure!
JB

 

[plynch]

Dang close.

 

[Phaser Two]

Very similar.

 

[Maurice]

There's a handful of notes for a few bars.

You want similar music to Star Trek? Check out the processional at 7:10 and 8:50 in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The My Friend the Gorilla Affair" (link), in which Gerald Fried uses music he'll later re-work for Star Trek in "Catspaw".