Watching the third season. The season when the opening theme was changed to be more upbeat - happy rhythm, strummy guitars, and a jaunty tambourine. What I find so funny is the juxtaposition of the bright music with the darkness of the story arc. There's so much violence, hopelessness, despair, disrepair, and mistrust in the stories. A lot of unwashed faces covered with soot and sweat. The Zindi, evil machinations, the Expanse, anomalies, T'Pol's addiction. You all know the scripts. And all of this preluded by a skippy tune with a tambourine. It's comical. I wonder if it was intentional.
Season Three Music vs. Episode Content
- Thread starter Lois007
- Start date
I expect the decision to pep up the theme tune and add "Star Trek" to the title were completely separate to the mood of the story arc.
Far more beneficial, I think, was how the production values so well reflected the state of Enterprise and its crew.
In addition to the "unwashed faces," etc. mentioned by Lois007, the ship communication system sounds like there's a speaker missing. And, the lines for ration packs in the mess hall. And how stuff hung in T'Pol's quarters are crooked. These all reinforced the storylines and character developments.
And the actors stepped up to the challenge.
Far more beneficial, I think, was how the production values so well reflected the state of Enterprise and its crew.
In addition to the "unwashed faces," etc. mentioned by Lois007, the ship communication system sounds like there's a speaker missing. And, the lines for ration packs in the mess hall. And how stuff hung in T'Pol's quarters are crooked. These all reinforced the storylines and character developments.
And the actors stepped up to the challenge.
Death, destruction, misery.
Tambourine music.
Sums up America, really. They were well ahead of their time.
Tambourine music.
Sums up America, really. They were well ahead of their time.
I dunno, I understand your criticism of the change of the theme, but personally I always just took its upbeat nature as signaling that the show had finally come into its own, with an energizing sense of direction and purpose. The musical equivalent of proclaiming “Let’s go!”, so to say. Going the other direction and making the theme more somber, darker and serious would also have been an option, but might have been a bit too on the nose.
Sure, it can be a bit jarring to go from the dark and serious teaser of an episode to the upbeat theme and then back to dark and serious again. But then again, one could also say the theme serves as a reminder of where these characters are coming from and the positive, pure and hopeful mission of scientific discovery they originally ventured out into space with. It’s like the theme is saying “Here’s what we’re fighting for”.
Sure, it can be a bit jarring to go from the dark and serious teaser of an episode to the upbeat theme and then back to dark and serious again. But then again, one could also say the theme serves as a reminder of where these characters are coming from and the positive, pure and hopeful mission of scientific discovery they originally ventured out into space with. It’s like the theme is saying “Here’s what we’re fighting for”.
It was more action oriented so they added more drums. I don't think the tone would have worked with the Season 1-2 music.