[Nicolai P. Zwar]

There’s often the STAR TREK vs STAR WARS angle, so let’s get the most important part out of the way: If I had to choose the music of only one franchise for the rest of my life, every series, every film, every game, I’d choose STAR TREK. OK, now that that’s out of the way….

STAR TREK was — I’m pretty sure — my first encounter with science fiction. I was a small kid watching Kirk, Spock and McCoy navigate the universe with a mixture of swagger, logic and exasperated medical ethics. It felt important, even if I couldn’t yet articulate why. It still does. I don’t know how often I built the NCC 1701 USS Enterprise with my Lego blocks. It’s still perhaps the most beautiful spaceship I know.

STAR WARS is cinema, STAR WARS is mythic, operatic, built for the big screen and the big gesture. STAR TREK is television. It is conceptual, discursive, and at its best when the Enterprise crew is essentially doing what we were doing at home: sitting in chairs and staring at a large screen. The bridge is, in a sense, the universe’s most expensive living‑room setup. STAR TREK is television… even the characters in STAR TREK watch television most of the time. 🙂

I adore the original series and THE NEXT GENERATION. I’ve seen every episode. What made these shows tick? Perhaps the pleasure of watching familiar minds wrestle with unfamiliar problems. STAR TREK works because it’s built for that rhythm. There is an encounter with a strange culture or phenomenon, followed by the triangulation of perspectives: Kirk is action, Spock is logic, McCoy is humanity. TNG refined the formula with Picard’s liberal‑arts gravitas and Data’s ongoing quest to understand the species that built him and Worf’s “Klingon’s don’t cry” attitude.

This is where the STAR TREK’s heart beats: in the scientific, moral and philosophical discussions that unfold around the conference table. The special effects were always secondary in STAR TREK. There are some who decry STAR WARS for being “space fantasy” (which of course it is, nothing wrong with that), yet consider STAR TREK more scientifically sound… hahaha… yeah, and STAR TREK has interspecies offspring! Sorry, but that is just way more “fantasy” than Yoda juggling stones with his mind.

There is, of course, one glorious exception to my “Trek belongs on television” thesis: STAR TREK – THE MOTION PICTURE. I remember seeing the Enterprise on a cinema screen for the first time, bathed in Douglas Trumbull’s effects and propelled by Jerry Goldsmith’s glorious, all time favorite score, and feeling something close to awe. The film is slow, contemplative, occasionally self‑indulgent… and unmistakably aligned with Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. It’s the one Trek film that feels like an actual science fiction movie…

The rest of the films? Well, they try. Some succeed more than others. I have seen them all, some I like more than others (my second favorite STAR TREK movie is actually not THE WRATH OF KHAN but INSURRECTION), but the truth is that STAR TREK’s conceptual architecture is theatrically-stagey in the old sense. It is built for episodic exploration, not blockbuster escalation. When the franchise leans too hard into action and space battles what not, it usually falls flat. STAR WARS is much better at action scenes than STAR TREK.

As for the later series, I’ve seen quite a bit of DEEP SPACE NINE and dipped into VOYAGER, and the newer shows beyond that barely register beyond a polite nod. Haven’t seen any of the TV shows of recent years, though I’d probably find LOWER DECKS entertaining. The J.J. Abrams films were… forgettable. Pleasant enough for two hours, then gone from memory like a transporter beam that never bothered to reassemble. STAR TREK in name only. Best thing about them, once gain, was the music by Michael Giacchino.

So we’re back to the music! That is where STAR TREK becomes something else entirely. Goldsmith, Horner, Rosenman, Eidelman, McCarthy, Chattaway, Jones, Courage, Giacchino… a lineage of composers who treated the franchise a canvas for orchestral storytelling, Star Trek seems to get the best out of composers. All Star Trek scores are great (just some are “greater” than others, if you excuse the Orwell reference). I pretty much love them all. Even when the scripts wobble, the music stands tall.

In the end, STAR TREK is best when it invites discussion about who we are, who we might become…. So that’s a lot going for a small TV show that was cancelled after two, then three seasons.
So STAR TREK will always have a special place in my heart, even though I’m not at all interested in watching any of the new shows… from what I hear, they are all bad anyway.