star trek enterprise theme song

The Story Behind The Star Trek Franchise's Most Controversial Theme Song

It's hard to imagine there are many Trekkies in the world who are immensely fond of Russell Watson's rendition of "Where My Heart Will Take Me," the theme song to "Star Trek: Enterprise." Imagine if Rod Stewart were straining to produce a particularly stubborn bowel movement, and you can hear the gravelly strains of Mr. Watson's vocals. The insipid lyrics wax elegiac about the progress we've made "getting from there to here," and how the singer's "time is finally near." No one can hold back the song's narrator as he has "faith of the heart." Nothing's gonna bend or break him. The effect of the song is more or less equivalent to a black-bordered inspirational poster hung on a corporate office wall next to a cubicle. You have strength of the soul. 

One might be able to see why the makers of "Star Trek: Enterprise" wanted a pop song, with lyrics, to lead into their new 2001 TV series. The previous "Star Trek" shows all began with bold, orchestral themes that evoke the excitement and exhilaration of jetting off into the cosmos. "Enterprise" was to be the fourth new "Trek" series in 14 years, and would be the first to run by itself since the debut of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" in 1993. The series wanted to set itself apart, and a pop song seemed like the way to go. 

In the helpful oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, the shows creators, writers, and directors all talked about the theme song and what led to their (dubious) decision to include Russell "The Voice" Watson's dulcet groans into official "Star Trek" canon. 

It's been a long road...

I didn't mention Rod Stewart above by accident. "Where Will Heart Will Take Me" actually began its life as a 1998 Stewart song called "Faith of the Heart," written by serially Oscar-nominated songwriter Dianne Warren. It was initially penned for Tom Shadyac's execrable, treacle-smeared Hollywood biopic "Patch Adams," and the song's ultra-sentimental tone perfectly matches the corniness of the movie itself. "Faith of the Heart" hit #20 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts, and peaked at #4 in Canada. A 1999 cover by Christian/Country artist Susan Ashton made it as far as #51 on the Hot Country Songs chart. 

Russell Watson began his singing career as a mere lad and began winning radio singing contests in his 20s. In 1999, he sang "God Save the Queen" at the rugby Challenge Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, and England really took notice. Two years later, Watson released his first album, "The Voice" (not related to the TV game show of the same name) and it was a massive success; "The Voice" is the first album to hold the #1 spot on both the U.S. and U.K. classical charts at the same time. Watson, lacking in the "stuffy" pretensions of modern opera and willing to sing pop songs, gained the nickname of "The People's Tenor." He was also called, rather theatrically, "The Voice," after that first album. In short, he was hot s*** in 2001.

Brannon Braga and Rick Berman, the creators of "Star Trek: Enterprise," likely knew all about Watson and his cresting popularity. The two wanted a pop song — mostly at Berman's insistence — but, as it turns out, not that pop song. Braga remembers what he wanted to use, and how awful he thought "Where My Heart Will Take Me" was.

Getting from there to here...

Braga originally wanted a temp track they were using to become the actual "Enterprise" theme song. He was a big U2 fan, it seems. He was not, however, a fan of Russell Watson. Braga said: 

"Rick and I felt that a song would set the slightly more contemporary feeling we were going after with Enterprise. For the longest time, we had a temporary song we cut the main titles to, U2's 'Beautiful Day.' If we had used that—or could have afforded it-that would have been a great song. Those main titles with U2 are amazing. It's hip and cool, whereas the song we ended up with is awful. I'm a big fan of Diane Warren, she's a great songwriter, but this particular song and the way it was sung was tacky." 

For the record, "Beautiful Day" doesn't really have the "bold" qualities of classic "Star Trek" orchestral openings, but it is a sight better than what we got. Braga continued: 

"I still cringe when I hear it and, by the way, I think the song had a lot to do with people's adverse reaction to the show. If you look at the main titles themselves, it's a really cool sequence. But the song is awful, just awful." 

If it was that awful, why was it selected as the theme song for "Enterprise"? Berman revealed that it was the culmination of ideas that all seemed great at the time, but that ultimately combined very poorly. Opening montage, lyrics about progress, talented songwriter, hot pop singer. It seemed like all the pieces were correct, and everything was on track to be great. They could reach any star.

It's been a long time...

Berman remembers the process well. He said: 

"This is another example of my being stubborn, right or wrong. I thought it would be nice to have a theme song. Nobody had ever done it before. I knew that I wanted the animation at the opening instead of just being the flying-through-space stuff that had existed on all the other 'Star Trek' shows. But I wanted it to be sort of a compilation of the science and the people that led up to the space flight. Our visual effects people put together an amazing visual montage. Then we went to a very famous, contemporary composer named Diane Warren, who's written huge hits."

So far, so good. For the record, the opening montage is wonderful. It begins with footage of the first sailing ships on Earth in long-ago times, and quickly walks the audience through the history of navigation. There is a three-masted sailing vessel, a modern ship, a space shuttle. At some point, the montage passes from real-world ships into the fictional crafts of "Star Trek." It ends with the title vessel, warping into adventure.  

Berman recalls Warren:

"...[W]ent through a whole bunch of songs and we came up with this tune that she had written. The lyrics seemed perfect. Then she got all excited, there was a British singer named Russell Watson and he was a very hot performer — kind of semi-operatic and pop performer — and he agreed to sing it. It basically spoke to exactly what we were looking for a dream of going out into the unknown and the whole idea of bringing one's heart to what matters. We recorded the song and put it to the animation and everybody thought it was terrific. And the audience hated it."

But my time is finally near...

Indeed. The semi-operatic sound of "Where My Heart Will Take Me" was hated pretty much unilaterally. The idea of opening a "Star Trek" show with a pop song wasn't a bad idea in itself, necessarily, but audiences made it quite clear that Watson's wailings weren't wanted. Eventually, at the start of the show's third season, the song was remixed to add more electric guitars and drums, hoping to trick audiences into thinking it was more upbeat. Watson's vocals, perhaps unfortunately, remained. Berman liked the remix. No one else did. He said: 

"In the second or third year, the network said to us, 'Can you rewrite the song and could you make the song hipper?' We left the vocal on, but we did a completely different instrumental with a lot more electric guitars and things to make it a little more rock 'n' roll. I don't know if anybody was truly satisfied with that. I, for one, can tell you that I thought it was a great opening and I'm not alone in that. I don't think I'm in the majority, but I'm not alone." 

Many of the other producers and writers on "Enterprise" were fine with moving away from a Jerry Goldsmith or Alexander Courage-penned orchestral overture, but none of them liked "Where My Heart Will Take Me." Writer Mike Sussman liked the shake-up, but not "kind of shaking it up in many of the wrong ways. Let's say all the wrong ways." Producer Antoinette Stella recalled that everyone was "shocked" when they heard the song at the series' first screening. "Everybody talked about it after we saw the pilot," she said. "Sometimes you try to be different and they work ... and sometimes they don't."

I will see my dreams come alive at night...

Chris Black, one of the staff writers on "Enterprise" noted that the song was perhaps terrible, but that it was ultimately perfect for the tone of the show. It was about aspiring and touching the furthest star, etc. etc. There were worse things in the world that one should reserve their hate for. Black said: 

"If you listen to the lyrics of that song, they're appropriate. Are the lyrics cheesy? Absolutely. But is it saying something about the characters of the Star Trek universe that I think is appropriate? Absolutely. I don't hate it or love it. Everybody hates it. I don't hate it. I hate Nazis. I don't hate the theme song from 'Enterprise.'"

The editor of Film Score Monthly, Lukas Kendall, noted that "Where My Heart Will Take Me" has aged like fine milk. It was derided in 2001 and still has no fans 22 years later. He asked:

"Is there anybody who likes that song? The choice was ridiculed at the time and comes across no better today. I would not be opposed to the use of a song in principle, but it was the wrong one-a Diane Warren power ballad from 'Patch Adams?' Really? Even the producers seemed to hedge when they had the backing track redone for season three, but they had too much invested to dump it entirely."

In the pages of /Film, it was previously written that modern pop music always feels a little out of place in "Star Trek." The franchise takes place in a post-capitalist society. Adding recognizable commercial pop into the proceedings adds an unavoidable corporate element to Trek. Kendall noted the clash between Trek's typically classical bent and its own need for an insufferable power ballad. 

I will touch the sky

Kendall continued: 

"The producers broke one of their own rules: 'Star Trek' has become pop culture, but there is no pop culture within 'Star Trek,' because it punctures the reality. They tried rebranding with a mainstream radio song instead of another 'space theme for nerds,' so to speak — the desperate attempt to reach a bigger audience — but it was cheesy and lame." 

Many years later, the makers of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" got to affectionally (?) take a swipe at "Where My Heart Will Take Me." William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), while serving as captain on board the U.S.S. Titan, liked to while away his free time interacting with the "Enterprise" characters on the ship's holodeck. This was a reference to the final episode of "Enterprise," wherein Riker did that very thing. As he returned to the bridge after one of his holographic sojourns, he idly commented that he loved visiting the past and that "it's been a long road, getting from there to here." Trekkies instantly recognized Dianne Warren's opening lyric. 

It's worth noting that all the "Star Trek" shows to follow "Enterprise" went enthusiastically back to the "space theme for nerds" model, providing each series with a unique orchestral score. The third season of "Stra Trek: Picard" even repurposed Jerry Goldsmith's theme for "Star Trek: First Contact" wholesale.

Fun trivia: in what might have been a fit whimsical irony, "Where My Heart Will Take Me" was used as the wake-up alarm for mission specialist Richard Mastracchio on the Space Shuttle Endeavour  in 2007.

Hearts were broken. Lessons were learned. "Star Trek" will never again have The Voice.

Why Star Trek: Enterprise Had THAT Terrible Theme Song

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Among Star Trek: Enterprise ’s more contentious quirks was its opening theme song: a reworked version of Rod Stewart’s “Faith of the Heart” entitled “Where My Heart Will Take Me.” It’s very much a product of its time, and in the ensuing years has become something of a guilty pleasure among the Star Trek faithful. It’s the kind of infectious earworm that takes days to get rid of, and it’s definitely an anomaly among Star Trek themes. Fans at the time did not take it well.

Before Enterprise , Star Trek shows stuck resolutely to classic orchestral themes. That started with Alexander Courage’s iconic introduction to the original Star Trek , and was emulated by The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Star Trek: The Next Generation appropriated Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which is telling: all of them aimed for an operatic sound indicative of epic theatrical films. When Enterprise began, the producers wanted to break from that tradition in a big way.

RELATED:  Star Trek's Longest Running Series, Revealed

It Was Supposed to Help Enterprise Bridge Our Present with Trek’s Future

Enterprise was posited as a prequel to the original series: detailing the early days of humanity’s exploration of the stars, and the eventual formation of the Federation. Producer Brannon Braga told Starlog magazine that he felt the era had more unexplored dramatic potential than something closer to the original series, and that the characters would respond to challenges differently than the characters in other Trek series had. The song was intended as part of that principle: a firm break from what Trek had become, but also a link between the present day and the bright future the franchise promised.

That, however, could have found better expression elsewhere. The song adopted a soft-rock power ballad format, presumably in order to reach as wide an audience demographic as possible. But the supposedly inspiring lyrics fell flat against Enterprise’s impressive visual title montage of real-life heroes like Amelia Earhart and Gus Grissom. And while the orchestral scores from earlier Trek shows felt evergreen, this one dated itself almost as soon as it had dropped.

RELATED:  Star Trek: The Next Generation - Why the Beloved Series Ended

The Song Itself Had a Difficult Background

The choice of song was strange too. Rather than commissioning their own, the producers simply reskinned the Stewart song with new lyrics, giving it the air of a cheap knock-off. Stewart himself – a notorious womanizer – left his second wife less than a month before the song hit the charts, rendering its heartfelt tone disingenuous from the start. A few hastily added lyrics weren’t going to change that. Furthermore, Stewart wrote it for Patch Adams , the infamous Robin Williams tearjerker reviled for its excess sentimentalism.

In short, it felt very corporate: assembled for reasons that had little to do with Star Trek and presented as a change of pace that went badly off the mark. Trekkies responded as Trekkies sometimes do: with anger, rejection and organized demands to replace the song with something else. Enterprise stuck with it, however, and kept it as part of the opening credits for the whole of its run.

The song has since attained a kind of scruffy charm among the Trek faithful, and an apt companion to Enterprise, which similarly took some time for parts of the Star Trek community to warm to. Today the two are intertwined, and the high quality of the show itself lends the comparatively clunky theme song an affection it might otherwise merit. It even earned a playful dig on Star Trek:  Lower Decks   -- as sure a sign as ever that Trekkies are ready to forgive if not forget.

KEEP READING:  Why Star Trek: Enterprise's Series Finale Is So Hated by Fans

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Star Trek - Enterprise - Theme Song

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Faith Of The Heart by Rod Stewart

Songfacts®:

• This song was written by accomplished American songwriter Diane Warren. It was originally recorded by Stewart for the 1998 Robin Williams movie Patch Adams , where it fit with the theme of believing in yourself.
• In 2001, the song was re-recorded by British opera singer Russell Watson under the title "Where My Heart Will Take Me," to be used as the theme song for Enterprise , the fifth TV series in the Star Trek franchise and a prequel to the original series. Like many other aspects of the Enterprise series, the choice of this song as the theme music became a point of controversy among longtime Star Trek devotees. In 2003, Watson's version was remixed to coincide with the show's rebranding as Star Trek: Enterprise . Ironically, this livelier mix of the theme song came as the plot of the series itself took a darker turn.
• Watson performed a slightly edited version of the song during the opening ceremony of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, UK. >> Suggestion credit : Joshua - Twin Cities, MN, for all above
• More songs from Rod Stewart
• More songs written by Diane Warren
• More songs about confidence or courage
• More TV show theme songs
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• More songs from 1998
• Lyrics to Faith Of The Heart
• Rod Stewart Artistfacts

Comments: 1

• Diane from Walnut Grove, Al I am looking for both Sheet Music and CD for the song: "Faith of the Heart" by Rod Stewart. I would love to find a dependable/honest/reasonable site to purchase this song with Sheet Music and CD Can anyone help me??????

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Russell Watson

Russell Watson ( born 24 November 1966 ; age 57) is an English vocalist and tenor who sang the opening theme song from Star Trek: Enterprise entitled " Where My Heart Will Take Me ", which was originally recorded as "Faith of the Heart" by Rod Stewart for the film Patch Adams . The song was remixed with a faster beat for Enterprise 's third season .

Hailing from Salford, Greater Manchester, England, Watson initially was not seeking a career as a professional singer. Working as a bolt-cutter in Manchester, Watson began accepting singing engagements to earn extra money. His reputation and popularity increased through these engagements, ultimately leading to his being chosen to sing at the Rugby Challenge Cup final in Wembley Stadium in 1999. His performance there was so successful that he was later invited to sing at the UEFA Champions League soccer final in Barcelona. Following this, his career took off, and his first album – entitled The Voice – followed in 2001. Both that album and his next, 2002's Encore , won Album of the Year at the Classical Brit Awards in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Watson recently took part in the BBC reality series Just the Two of Us , in which British celebrities were paired up with professional singers (including Watson) for a duet-singer showdown. Watson was paired with actress Sian Reeves and was actually a late arrival, having replaced singer Rick Astley after the latter abandoned the show.

In 2006 Watson was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, and underwent an emergency operation to remove it on 24 September 2006. [1] On 24 October 2007 a regrowth of the tumor was discovered, and he had a second round of emergency surgery. [2] On 4 February 2008 Watson announced that he was soon to complete a five-week course of radiotherapy, writing on his official blog that he had suffered draining side-effects but was "hanging in there." He also added that feared damage to his voice had not occurred. [3]

Following his recovery, in the summer of 2008 Watson served as a panel judge on the BBC reality TV singing contest Last Choir Standing in the UK. [4]

External links [ ]

• Russell-Watson.com – official site
• Russell Watson at Wikipedia
• Russell Watson at the Internet Movie Database
• 1 Bell Riots
• 3 Christopher Russell

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Every STAR TREK Opening Theme Song Ranked from Worst to Best

Find out which is the greatest opening in Star Trek television history. Star Trek is the most iconic television show ever. It’s also spawned one of the most successful movie franchises ever made.

Part of its success is the Star Trek theme song. The original song is so iconic people know it even if they’ve never seen an episode of the show. Over the years there have been many spin-offs of the show which each used a new theme song. Some have been brilliant and some have been horrible.

Most recently Star Trek: Discovery is airing   on CBS All-Access . Soon the upcoming Picard series will introduce a new theme song. We don’t know if the opening for Picard will match up with some of the others. But it’s time to look back at the history of the Star Trek opening songs and rank them from worst to best.

Make it so.

11. Star Trek: Enterprise Season 3-4 (2003–2005)

Composed by Dennis McCarthy

Enterprise’s theme song is the first (and last) time Star Trek uses a contemporary song for the opening. Dennis McCarthy scored the pilot episode. Executive producer Rick Berman promised something new for Star Trek’s sixth spin-off series. He said the opening would “be using a little bit more contemporary kind of music. […] It’s not all of a sudden that the show is going to be scored with electric guitars. It’s going to be a little hipper.”

The song “Faith of the Heart” is written by Diane Warren and sung by Rod Stewart for Robin Williams’ comedic-drama Patch Adams (1998). The song was a hit and charted at number three on the US Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and number 60 on the UK Singles Chart. It’s used for Star Trek and sung by Russell Watson . It’s a good song and some of the lyrics match up with the idea of space travel.

You have to inspire the courage of the producers for trying something new but it doesn’t work. There’s a tradition of Star Trek shows opening with a grand orchestral theme. This song sounds like a Rod Stewart concert. After fans complained the song is different in the third and final season of Enterprise .

The new version has a higher pitch and is sped up. They added tambourine and a more pronounced electric guitar. Star Trek managed to make a bad decision even worse.

10.  Star Trek: Enterprise  Season 1-2 (2001–2002)

Dennis McCarthy first made music for the Next Generation pilot episode and scored dozens of other episodes. McCarthy later composed the theme for the shows  Deep Space Nine and  Voyager. Plus he scored the soundtrack for movies like  Star Trek: Generations . 

The opening of  Enterprise uses the song “Faith of the Heart” sung by British crossover opera singer Russell Watson. Fans hated it so much that fans created many petitions to get rid of it. “[We] urgently request that you remove [‘Faith of the Heart’] and in its place utilize a score that is without vocals, as traditionally used by [the] ‘Star Trek’ television series,” one petition said.

“We wish to express our unmitigated disgust with the theme song that has been selected for the new ‘Enterprise’ series,” another online petition said. “It is not fit to be scraped off the bottom of a Klingon’s boot.”

“I’m in the horrible minority of people who like the song,” Rick Berman defended the song telling Sci-Fi Wire . “I think it fits beautifully. I think it’s a song that’s got a lot of hopefulness and uplifting qualities to it. And I like it. I’ve met a lot of other people who like it, but I’ve also heard a tremendous amount of banter about people who don’t. And what’s a Star Trek series without something for people to hate?”

Whatever you think of the song it was used as a wakeup call for NASA missions .

9. Star Trek: Enterprise Season 4 “Mirror Darkly” (2005)

Composed by Dennis McCarthy & Kevin Kiner

In 2005 the series Enterprise traveled to an alternate “evil mirror universe” for several episodes. To complete the feel that the show had traveled to another world they changed the opening. The theme song has a more militaristic tone and a darker feel.

It works well, especially when shown along with images showing how Earth entered into a long-standing war. Considering it replaced a pop song it’s even more impressive. Unfortunately, it only lasted a few episodes before going back to “Faith of the Heart”.

8. Star Trek: Discovery  (2017-2019)

Composed by Jeff Russo

When CBS started work on the Star Trek prequel Star Trek: Discovery they hired Jeff Russo to compose a new opening theme. Russo has started in a ’90s alternative rock band named “Tonic”. After that, he started composing songs for video games and television shows. He won an Emmy for his work on the FX series Fargo .

He describes himself as a life-long fan of Star Trek and Jerry Goldsmith’s work on The Next Generation in particular. The theme for Discovery sets itself apart because they decided to focus on emotion rather than exploration. It starts with the familiar fanfare for Star Trek and then uses stringed instruments to give a sense of mystery and hope. It ends with the theme again which implies the future of the franchise.

It’s a solid piece that relies on fan recognition. So it doesn’t stand out on its own.

7. Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969)

Composed by Alexander Courage

The theme for Star Trek played over every episode in the show’s three seasons. It’s called “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. It’s an instrumental piece and opens with a monologue by William Shatner starting with “Space. The final frontier”. The song itself relied on wind instruments and percussion by bongo drums, which was a popular instrument at the time.

Alexander Mair “Sandy” Courage Jr. was an Academy Award-nominated, Emmy Award-winning composer, arranger, conductor, and orchestrator of television shows and movies like Jurassic Park (1993), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and Hello, Dolly! (1964).

Courage was inspired by the Richard Whiting song “Beyond the Blue Horizon,” giving him the idea for a song which was a “long thing that…keeps going out into space…over a fast-moving accompaniment.”

The original song is a masterpiece of its time evoking a feel of adventure and excitement and has been used in several pieces for Star Trek since then. Unfortunately, it feels dated. Bongo drums fell out of fashion decades ago. The operatic singing by  Loulie Jean Norman feels out-of-place. Iconic, but not quite as good as others.

6. Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974)

Composed by Ray Ellis (Yvette Blais), Norm Prescott (Jeff Michaels)

Raymond Spencer Ellis arranged many hit records in the 1950s and 1960s. He later started working with Filmation on their animated series. He used his wife’s name “Yvette Blais” as a pseudonym. Norman Prescott was co-founder and executive producer at Filmation Associates and worked with Ellis on the theme song. He used the pseudonym “Jeff Michael” after his sons Jeff and Michael.

Paramount decided to revive the original series for a Saturday morning cartoon. They decided to make the theme more modern.

Like the original song, it starts with Shatner’s monologue “where no man had gone before”. Then it moves onto a song with a much faster pace and tone than the original. The tone is slightly different as well but manages to capture the same feel of the original song. Plus, there’s no singing.

5. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1-3 (1993–1995)

Jerry Goldsmith was contacted to do the theme song but declined because of scheduling problems. Dennis McCarthy has done a ton of work on Star Trek and he admired the Star Trek: The Next Generation song. He said that he loved the trumpets and French horns in the theme so McCarthy used wind instruments to write the song for DS9 .

It’s different from other songs because it’s the first show to focus on a starbase instead of a spaceship. So the feel of the song is very different for the fourth television spin-off. Berman said he wanted to emphasize the loneliness of the station. McCarthy told SyFy he wanted the theme to say, “We are alone” and he accomplished it. It’s different but beautiful. In 1993 he won an Emmy for “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Main Title Theme Music” on DS9.

4. Star Trek: Picard (2019-)

Composed by Jeff Russo

CBS All Access went in a different direction with the theme song for Picard. Instead of relying on strings and a large orchestra to play the song it goes smaller. The song is thoughtful, serene and melodic. It’s not bombastic like the N ext Generation  theme or slow like  Deep Space Nine.

But it does owe a debt to the 90s Star Trek series. In the TNG episode “The Inner Light” Picard is knocked unconscious by an alien probe. He lives 40 years of life as an alien scientist named Kamin in the span of a few minutes. During the episode, he hears a flute song played by his “son” Batai (Daniel Stewart). After Picard returns to his normal life, he still remembers how to play and plays a melody on a flute. That flute and song have a special place in Picard’s life since it’s the family he never had but “lost”. It’s not a coincidence. The composer said he wanted to use a flute to evoke some of the feelings from the episode.

Russo told  The Ready Room  he wanted to “change to a feeling of emotional contentment for him because as we come to see, he lives on a chateau. And it’s sort of what we always thought would happen at the end of The Next Generation, and those movies where he would always sort of end up … That was his happy place. And then I wanted to … evoke how he has been awoken again.”

It ends with a small section of the theme from  Star Trek: The Next Generation . It’s lovely, thoughtful and moving.

3. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 4-9 (1996–1999)

For the fourth season to the final season, the song changed. It’s actually better in many ways. The show had changed by the fourth season. New characters joined the show like Leeta (Chase Masterson) the Dabo girl. Other characters, like Worf (Michael Dorn) from Next Generation, returned. The starship USS Defiant was added to allow the show to travel to different parts of space.

All these changes led the producers and McCarthy to rework the theme song to make it lighter. The reworked song makes the show brighter and gives more hope. Star Trek is all about hope and it fits wonderfully.

2. Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)

Composed by Jerry Goldsmith

Jerry Goldsmith is a legend in the industry with a long list of awards including 18 Academy Award nominations. He won an Oscar for The Omen (1976) and was nominated for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.

Unlike The Next Generation which used music from his movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture, he decided to write a new song. The song is a beautiful sweeping theme that has stunning pictures of the ship soaring through space. The Voyager theme is somber and lonely but not sad. It’s uplifting.

The Voyager opening theme song is wonderful.

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1-7 (1987–1994)

Composed by Dennis McCarthy, Jay Chattaway, Ron Jones, Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith

When the producers were planning out the first Star Trek show in decades they wanted to make sure the music would meet fan expectations. So they turned to the work of Jerry Goldsmith and used a piece from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Specifically, they took a piece that played several times in the soundtrack. The first time is before the Enterprise’s first warp test.

The song is perfect for the opening as it has a feel of hope and majesty. The original song was performed by a 100-piece orchestra. Too much for a TV show so they scaled it back and McCarthy led the original orchestration of a slightly different version of the song.

It opens with the opening of the original Star Trek theme. Then Patrick Stewart says a version of the “Where no man has gone before” monologue. After that, the song begins and blows the doors off. It’s the best theme Star Trek has ever had and set the standard for all other openings.

Which is your favorite Star Trek theme song? Which one do you hate? Let us know in the comments below!

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