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Why no rock music in Star Trek?

I gave up on Bond films after about the second Timothy Dalton outing. I like Derek Flint much better, even if there were only two Flint films.

Oh, and let's see: Gounod. Prokofiev. Rimsky-Korsakov. Shostakovich. Holst. Ralph ("long-A, silent L") Vaughan Williams. . . .
 
Your exposure to both classical and jazz is clearly very limited.

Direct me to the Trek Episodes where they're listening to Rite of Spring or the end of Bolero at full volume. Seriously, get used to generalizations because they're part of the shorthand of how Hollywood writes. If it would make you feel better to be specific, the definitive Trek music isn't just "classical", it's light chamber music, the sort of thing you'd expect to hear as people pass Grey Poupon back and forth.

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It's not just rock music, there are large swathes of human culture that get crowded out in favour of alien stuff or just "high culture" human stuff. No-one seems to drink coffee anymore, it's raktajinos all round. Sisko's Dad bought us Creole/Cajun food, but beyond that what human meals have we seen our regulars enjoy lately? Would Klingons enjoy chilli? Or a curry? I'm betting even they might appreciate a glass of Laphroaig whiskey... sod bloodwine, that's a real warrior's drink.

No-one seems to watch TV anymore - granted they have holodecks but they need physical interaction... what do Trek characters do to "Netflix and chill"?
 
Captain Janeway was always a big coffee drinker.

And of course, in "The Trouble with Tribbles," Kirk walks up to a food slot, orders a chicken sandwich and coffee, and ends up with a large side order of live tribbles.

. . . Debussy. Copland. Alain. Gershwin. . . .
 
Captain Janeway was always a big coffee drinker.
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Yeah, lots of coffee drinking in TOS. Kirk was often sipping coffee on the bridge, sometimes served by Yeoman Rand, who once used a phaser to heat a pot of coffee as I recall.

And "There's coffee in that nebula" is one of Janeway's greatest lines.
 
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My feeling is the real reason there's a lack of rock/pop in Trek isn't so much to root it in the past as much as it's to make the people of the future appear cultured and intellectual. Jazz and classical are both genres for the intelligentsia. They're quiet genres to put into the background while everyone debates philosophy. (New age would work too if they wanted to incorporate it.) This is also why so many Star Trek episode titles refer to classic literature....

If that's the perception of jazz, then it's drifted quite far from its roots.

Kor
 
If that's the perception of jazz, then it's drifted quite far from its roots.
Given that the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has, to the best of my recollection, been included exactly twice, over the past third of a century, in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Jazz at the Bowl" series, and has, to the best of my recollection, made exactly one appearance in Disney Hall since it opened, and that the Hollywood Bowl Museum's current second-floor exhibition, on the history of jazz at the Bowl, doesn't appear to even mention them, I would take your statement as an axiom, and not just in a Star Trek context. (And yes, as a matter of fact, I have been known to sit through three consecutive sets at Preservation Hall. No food, no bar, no smoking; all they serve is traditional New Orleans jazz, in its absolute purest form.)
 
Music preserved in significant form:
Jazz: TNG, VOY
Classical: VOY (Mahler's 1st)
Opera: Berlioz, Klingon
Folk/rock: arguably everything else, from TOS to ENT
 
I don't think it's been mentioned, but Stamets' uncle apparently plays in a Beatles cover band. (But of course that doesn't make him John Lennon ;))
 
I don't think it's been mentioned, but Stamets' uncle apparently plays in a Beatles cover band. (But of course that doesn't make him John Lennon ;))
Hmm. My favorite "Beatles cover band" would have to be the Hampton String Quartet (with "The Off-White Album"). I don't have their Led Zeppelin cover album(s), though. I do have their Christmas albums, and one or two of their first rock covers.
 
Yeah, lots of coffee drinking in TOS

Sulu's tea cup smashed in TUC, which unlike the ship shaking was the one thing that automatically instigated red alert. Obviously Picard liked tea - however for breakfast he preferred coffee and croissants. Ticket and troi drank coffee in "lower decks", geordi had an iced coffee at some point I think.

Wesley turned down coffee when sharing a shuttle with Picard,

DS9 had much coffee - OBrien never drank it in the afternoon. According the Keiko anyway. While most characters admitted to raktajino I don't think Miles ever did.
 
The Beastie Boys worked for me--and I barely know who they are.

STAR TREK needed a jolt of rock-n-roll at that point, to give it a bit more youthful energy.

As opposed to, yes, debating philosophy while listening to classical music. It's possible to get a little too snobbishly highbrow and "intellectual" sometimes . . . even on STAR TREK. :)
Indeed. Also, Greg, stumbled upon a picture and thought of you:
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