Tart Notes: Discovery

The Musical Heritage of the Newest Star Trek

By Olwyn Supeene
March 5, 2018

Welcome to Tart Notes, where we talk about the music that helps make everything else awesome.

(Please note that the following article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery.)

Whether or not you enjoyed Star Trek: Discovery, it can’t be denied that it’s a fresh approach to the universe (multiverse, really) that Gene Rodenberry created. Instead of focusing on a singular captain or commander and their senior staff and adjacent personnel, we’re shown a much more diverse picture, a glimpse “below stairs,” as it were, at some of the less traditionally important people. Our focus character, Michael Burnham, is a mutineer, stripped of rank within two episodes; her eventual roommate and friend on the Discovery, Sylvia Tilley, is a mere cadet. Though the Discovery ends up on the front lines of the brand-new war with the Klingons, she is explicitly and primarily a science vessel.

This difference of perspective demands a different approach to storytelling, which the show delivers, but you know me: I’m here for the music. Jeff Russo composed the new opening theme as well as the rest of the music throughout the show, and the more I listen to it, the more impressed I am. Russo very clearly respects the 50 years of Star Trek history that precede Discovery, but he equally clearly makes Discovery his own.

The elder Star Treks have their own distinctive openings, but there’s a good deal of common ground among them. (It should be apparent that I am not including Enterprise, and equally apparent why not. You’re welcome to fight me on this omission.) Beginning with Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS), we have the tonally ambiguous beginning with a wide-stepping brass melody that sets the trend for all subsequent Star Trek openings. Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) takes that opening and riffs on it for a bit, then sweeps into a heroic main body that is quite different from the more self-consciously romantic main theme of TOS, with its Latin beguine feel. Both are aggressively rhythmic and confident in their own ways, a trend which Deep Space Nine (DS9) does not continue.

DS9 opens slow, like TOS and TNG, but then flowers out into a much more staid and dignified main section, with almost excessive use of brass. This is where I really start to hear a style of music that I’m calling “American Aspirational”; it’s characterised by a melody that moves in wide leaps upwards or downwards, but uses a small step where it reverses direction. This melody is often played by a mellow brass instrument, usually either a cornet or French horn (in the case of DS9, both), and then harmonised with another using a natural harmonic series so as to maximally resemble the ceremonial instruments of old (which had no valves and were therefore limited to the notes of a single harmonic series). This is then generally followed by a thickly orchestrated sweeping statement of the original melody or a new one, with copious use of warm-sounding brass. Think of any American movie where you’re supposed to have a stirring feeling of patriotism or admiration for heroism: this is how they are all scored. This is how they get you.

Star Trek: Voyager follows in the mold of DS9 as far as having a more sedate main musical section. It also brings in elements of the American Aspirational style, though it uses the variant where the brass introduce an A theme, strings take a B theme, and then both are woven together in a complementary final section. (Please be advised that “American Aspirational” is not a formal classification, nor are any of its variants. I am merely generalising from my personal observations.)

From an examination of each prior Star Trek theme, it is apparent that, to put it simply, there is a common thread of brass, heroism and large intervals. Each main body section is then tailored to suit its particular show. TOS, with the sensual and passionate Captain Kirk, has its beguine feel. TNG is bold, active and resolute, like Captain Picard and his crew. DS9, on the other hand, turns things around with a theme that is much less energetic and boisterous, but still strong, reflecting the relative stability of the space station as compared with the earlier focus on starships. Voyager is even more calm in some ways, but certainly has its rhythmic undercurrents under the slow sweeping melodies -- it’s a long journey, but that certainly doesn’t mean nothing ever happens.

Discovery is set roughly ten years before the events of TOS. The music deliberately hearkens back to TOS with its sparse opening, adding itself to the brassy continuum with the entrance of the French horn melody in a nod to its American Aspirational forbears. Then, though, instead of a focus on brass and more brass, we focus on strings. Not just strings; strings for effect. Strings with personality. Immediately at the transition to the main section, right when we think something big is going to blossom, the texture drops away to feature a rhythmically ambiguous pattern in the lower strings and a cello solo. Only when this has made its statement does the blossoming occur, full orchestration around what is actually a fairly simple melody. To bookend the TOS references, we end with a direct quote from the beginning of TOS’s opening theme, truncated into a businesslike unison by the whole orchestra.

There’s a certain intrigue in that string transition, a subversion of expectations that presages the many shifting identities and dramatic ironies within the storylines of the show. There’s an absence of the combative energy that TOS and TNG possess; Discovery has a lot of fight in her, but it’s not about fight at all costs. This is a show about identity, about empathy, about should-haves and might-have-beens. As a Star Trek successor, it takes the possibilities in a new direction, and its theme music amply reflects that.

Jeff Russo — The Official Page of Discovery's Opening Theme Composer