"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale" of a time when television shows began with awesome TV Theme Songs. "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name" and sometimes you want to go back to when TV Theme songs were special. "Here's a story... of a lovely" time when TV Theme Songs served to identify, distinguish and set the stage for the television program that followed. "You take the good, take the bad, take them both and there you have" what unfortunately has become a lost artform. "Believe it or not", sadly it seems no effort or pride is taken in the TV Theme Song ever since Seinfeld proved a short synth-bass riff could be used instead. “Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!” This regular feature may not "make all our dreams come true", but it will remember some of the best TV Theme Songs from years past (with a focus on the '80s decade). "Come aboard, we're expecting you."
This time we will cover the theme song for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The series debuted in September of 1987 running seven seasons and 178 episodes. Gene Roddenberry, who was responsible for the original Star Trek television series in the '60s, Star Trek: The Animated Series in the '70s, and the first of a series of Star Trek films starting in 1979 and spanning the '80s, was tasked by Paramount Pictures in the late '80s with creating a new television series in the franchise. He decided to set it a century after the events of his original series with a brand new crew on the USS Enterprise led by Patrick Stewart's "Captain Jean-Luc Picard".
The theme song for Star Trek: The Next Generation combined the fanfare from the original series theme by Alexander Courage with Jerry Goldsmith's theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In the early 1970s, Goldsmith also wrote the themes for two wildly different TV series, Barnaby Jones and The Waltons before composing the score for 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Having been Gene Roddenberry's initial choice to compose the original Star Trek television pilot "The Cage" yet being unable to do so due to scheduling conflicts, Goldsmith was the first pick of both Paramount Pictures and director Robert Wise to compose a score for the film when it came time to need that. His score for The Motion Picture earned him both Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations. Goldsmith would later compose the scores for 1989's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (which included a revised arrangement of the theme from The Motion Picture), 1996's Star Trek: First Contact, 1998's Star Trek: Insurrection, and 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis, as well as the theme to the television series Star Trek: Voyager in 1995. In addition to his work in the Star Trek franchise, Goldsmith also scored such '80s films as Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Medicine Man, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Supergirl, Legend, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Explorers, Innerspace, Rambo III, and The 'Burbs among others. In a career spanning nearly 50 years, he was nominated for eighteen Academy Awards (winning in 1977 for The Omen), six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards and nine Golden Globe Awards.
During the opening for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart's voice-over introduction re-state's the starship's purpose:
Space... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Here is the opening for Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring the theme song...
The Star Trek theme song is one of the most iconic in television history thanks to the versions which have lived on in the films as well as television series especially including The Next Generation.
Hope you enjoyed tuning in for another "episode" of TV Theme Songs!