Would you say it to be accurate that, aside from the movies and possibly the Voyager and DS9 Theme…there hasn’t been a memorable piece of Star Trek music since Ron Jones fantastic work in the early seasons of TNG? (Aside from that ep where Troi woke up as a Romulan around season five. And that was a one-off from a composer they brought in)
TOS had great work all throughout. And even though TNG was under a dictate to intentionally not have motifs and bombastic music, Ron Jones still did great work.
But its as if that dictate was successfully applied to ENT, DS9, VOY and DISC…cause if they’ve done anything that doesn’t sound like filler, I don’t know about it.
Generally, I pay little or no attention to the music from the Star Trek series other than the original one. That one had some great recurring themes, as well as some lovely themes during various episodes. The theme that accompanies Spock’s interactions with Leila Kalomi from “This Side of Paradise” is just lovely, and I can hear it in my head even now.
The one piece of music from TNG that everyone remembers, of course, is the penny-whistle tune from “The Inner Light.” It’s pretty haunting, especially when it’s played at the end of the episode. But honestly, I don’t recall much of any other music from that series (other than the theme song, of course).
I remember walking into a bar once and they happened to have female oil wrestling that night. Every time the girls would fight, the DJ would cue up TOS “fight” music.
The Best of Both Worlds has particularly good music but yeah that is early TNG. I think the Star Trek fanfare (Bum Bah BAH bah Bum bum bah BAH) is famous enough to make up for the rest of the music (from modern Treks) being kind of forgettable.
I would say that aside from the theme songs and The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah, there has never been a particularly memorable bit of music in Star Trek.
The score for that episode was written by Sol Kaplan. “Leila’s/Ruth’s Theme” was written by Gerald Fried.
In his book with Herb Solow, Bob Justman said certain composers were hired based on their ability to produce different themes, some tense and dramatic and others gentle and ethereal.
There were many more over the show’s three seasons. There are compilations of them available on YouTube.
It’s hard to believe, but Desilu was reportedly snubbed at the 1967 Emmy Awards when it came to music. The submissions from Star Trek and Mission: Impossible weren’t even considered. If Herb Solow is to be believed, *no *music awards were given out that year because the committee felt no pieces were worthy of them.
I gotta admit, I always found the Klingon themefrom ST: TMP to be a stirring and memorable piece of work. It’s a hunter’s song and pretty well gives us who they are.
If anyone cares and has Spotify…look up Star Trek Original music playlist…one guy put together a collection of great TOS music, cues, sound effects etc…