Why did the music change so much

After season 3? The music in Best of Both Worlds and before was great, but it slowly got worse and generic as hell as the show went on. I'm reading that they fired the guy?! What?

 

they fired the guy, yeah. The "BOBW" music is truly outstanding.


Rick Berman apparently thought that really good music actually detracted from the show by drawing too much attention or something.

Yes it sounds like a joke, but that's the story.

 

That should've set off the warning signals for the guys at the top

 

Why would it? TNG was hardly the only show at the time that favored non-distracting "atmospheric" music in place of more melodic, thematically-driven music. That was actually a widespread preference in TV scoring from the late '80s to the early '00s. (Just listen to Mark Snow's scores for The X-Files and Smallville, for instance. They make TNG's music sound positively lush by comparison.) Berman was in step with that general trend, so there's no reason "the guys at the top" would've disapproved. It's only in recent years, thanks to composers like Michael Giacchino and Bear McCreary, that TV music has started to become melodic and motif-driven again.

 

It is interesting to watch how the first two seasons of TNG are stylistically a lot like watching TOS, especially when it comes to the music. By Season 3, though, the music pretty much turned into the standard TNG style ... even for their seasons, the BOBW episodes were more the exception than the rule.

 

Christopher,

I trust you are not defending this trend?

Their are a long list of miscalculation by Rick Berman and others. Despite running a successful show.
As merely one example, Garret Wang of ST: Voyager noted in a some what recent interview that Rick Berman instructed the human character to down play their performances so that the alien characters would have more appeal. His notions on proper Sci-Fi, perhaps. But it had the effect of casting the human performances as wooden (i.e. Robert Beltran & Garrett Wong; IMHO).

The
S H A T I N A T O R

 

Rick Berman's take on it from an interview at StarTrek.com.

 

What's to defend? He's saying it was the way things were done at the time, and, at the time it worked. Why change it if it's working and ratings are climbing?

Sure, years later (and maybe even at the time a little) it's easy to say "what was he thinking, listen to this!" but at the time there may not have been anything to even question.

It's like sitcoms with laugh-tracks. You don't see as many anymore, but that was the standard for the longest time. You can't watch "I Love Lucy" and say "Why did they have a laugh track, the producers were idiots, shows without laugh tracks are much funnier!"

 

So, we're saying "everybody else is doing it" is an excuse for mediocrity and mind numbing blandness? For me, Star Trek should be breaking the mould.

 

I don't know if saying it was a product of the times really is applicable as shows like Babylon 5 produced at the same time as TNG's later seasons had very good music IMO. However if it was Bermans goal was to make the music in later seasons as bland as the music in The X-Files, he definately succeeded.

 

Absolutely not. I love melodic, motif-driven music, and the ubiquity of "atmospheric" music in the past couple of decades has long been an annoyance to me. But my personal tastes are a separate question from the objective realities of the situation. What I'm saying is that there's no reason why Berman's musical choices would've been perceived by "the guys at the top" as some kind of "warning signal," because by their standards, the standards of TV executives in the '80s and '90s, there was nothing exceptional or wrong about favoring a more atmospheric approach to music. I'm talking about their preferences, not my own.

Whereas I couldn't stand Christopher Franke's B5 music. It was very much a part of the trend to use repetitive atmospherics in place of melodic, thematic material. It got to the point that it seemed like half the music he did was built around the same two-note "ping, ping" repeating ad nauseam, which I got profoundly sick of hearing. (When I first saw the B5 pilot with its original Stuart Townsend score, I disliked the music because it was so different from the orchestral sound I was used to, but in retrospect I greatly prefer Townsend's pilot score to Franke's work on the series and the recut pilot.)

Ohh, nothing could be as bland as Mark Snow's X-Files/Smallville scores. The music of TNG/DS9/VGR/ENT was vastly more enjoyable to me, even at its most repetitive.

 

The Idiot Berman decreed that the music should be nothing but sonic wallpaper. That was his term. He didn't understand music, or its role in storytelling. It's a damn shame.

 

It didn't stop with TV. GEN used that same “atmospheric” approach and it’s terrible.

 

^Oh, hardly. Dennis McCarthy's score for Generations is much more melodic and motif-driven than his work on the show usually was -- it's like his work in the first or second season, but bigger and bolder. Generations had a number of distinct recurring themes, just the sort of thing that the composers for the shows weren't allowed to do. It's not atmospheric at all. It's probably the most gorgeous score McCarthy's ever done, and one of my favorite Trek film scores.

 

^ On that point Christopher, I agree with you.

 

Because proper underscoring is to highlight the emotional, character and plot beats of the show. They aren't supposed to over shadow them,or over play them.

First three years, how many times was Earth truly in danger on TNG? Twice. How many times was the Ship literally about to be utterly destroyed, very rarely.

Episodes like Defector (truly not in much danger due to Picard's planning, so while the drama should increase, it should be end of your life peril. Survivor the ship is not in any real danger. Neutral Zone ship isn't in any real danger, ect, ect, ect.

For real palpable danger it's Q-Who, Conspiracy, Best of Both Worlds, and Yesterday's Enterprise. And really that is it.

Romantic themes, how many times due characters truly find love in the first three seasons? Still waiting. None I believe, so we shouldn't see lush over powering romantic music because none of the characters seem to experience those emotions.

DS9 and ENT had much more sweeping large romantic and bombastic music, because they portrayed larger then life events a lot more often.

And yes Berman did tell actors to underplay it. That's also a very legitimate acting choice, to help sell the situations and characters, so they don't appear over the top. A good actor can be sedate and really ground the character in a realistic performance.

 

OR "this is what's work, people are watching, in fact, viewership is INCREASING, let's keep things going in this direction and not change things up drastically."

People weren't exactly tuning out from watching because of the music. In fact, the opposite was happening.

 

Stewart Copeland is the composer I think you mean. I don't really care for his work on "The Gathering," but I can agree that Franke's music could often be repetitive and uninteresting.

Of course, Franke's work is far preferable to the obnoxious score by Evan Chen for "A Call to Arms" and Crusade.

 

^Yeah, Copeland, that's right. I wasn't sure of the name but I didn't bother to verify it.

I was actually rather fond of his "Gathering" score once I got used to it. It's got a lot more vitality and energy than Franke's stuff, and has some interesting experimental qualities, I guess you'd call them.

And yeah, I couldn't deal with Chen's scores. The music in A Call to Arms was so dissonant that it caused me genuine discomfort to listen to it. I've never been able to watch that movie again. The music in Crusade wasn't as out-and-out painful, though. I think they had Chen dial back his style somewhat.

 

Just reached best of both worlds, first time in about 5 years!