Random Star Trek discussion

I didn't say that they were exactly alike, merely that they were echoes of one another. A nod, if you will, to something that you wanted to invoke a reminder of.

Usually, a director will prepare a "temp track" of music for a film that he slaps on a version of the film he gives to the composer. This gives the composer the kind of feel that the soundtrack is supposed to have. I don't know if Meyer did that for Horner or not, but I do know that Meyer gave Horner instructions that he didn't want anything like a military march for the battles and nebula sequence as he felt that it was too cliche. (A wise choice, I think.) So, if you want to give a scene a military feel, without using bog standard military-style music, how do you do it? Well, one way would be to give a nod to music that has an association to military themes because of how it was used in the past. Not saying that this is what happened, it could have all been unconscious or purely a coincidence. But given how good of a composer Horner was, and the fact that Jerry Goldsmith was one of the biggest names in movie soundtracks at the time, I think it was probably deliberate.

There's a full stop-motion version of Jurassic Park that they shot before they ever did the movie to give everyone an idea of what it should look like. Clips of it have surfaced from time to time, and I'd much rather watch the full version of that than the actual movie. Never thought I'd say the same about TWoK, but this has me wanting to see a full version.

"We don't want to go into the nebula, sir!"

"Haven't you paid attention? Of course we want to go into the nebula! Sauce for the goose, Mr. Saavik, er, I mean, unnamed Trill!"

I’ve got your Hollywood pissing all over your childhood, for ya. I’m scrolling through FB and I see this



That lame ass motherfucker was on TNG? As a Klingon, no less. I know it was the second season, but still! John Tesh as Klingon???? That shit deserves to get shit on.

Interesting. The music in the ad from the Happy Meal promotion sounds a lot like the TNG theme, which wouldn't be written for about 9 more years.

I haven't watched TMP in ~10 years, and I've only seen it once or twice before that, so it's not really something stuck in my memory. IIRC, the Starlog interview with the guy who wrote the TNG theme said that there wasn't any pressure on him to do nods to previous Trek themes, and I always assumed that this meant the theme didn't share any significant musical elements with previous themes or music.

When I was in college, most of my friends were in Recording Industry Management (think record producers, and audio engineers, produced by a school located 40 miles from Nashvegas, and lacking certain accreditation certifications because the university President, at the time, didn't think they needed the money to expand the school facilities, like the library, in order to get accreditation) and we had, in 1988, the same mixing gear used for TNG. We also had gear that probably dated from when TOS was made.

One of my buddies in the program would get me to hang out and be the gopher when he was doing recordings for class. When we started out, we were limited to using the old equipment, and aside from the temperamental issues one expects from old analog electronics, the engineering quality of the recordings was on par with anything you'd expect from a commercial source. (IOW, if someone asked you if the stuff was recorded in a professional facility or someone's house, you'd pick the former.) Then, a year or two in, my friend got access to the new studio with the TNG-style gear. He also discovered a particular mic. Neumann U87 (it was sold under a variety of names, and there's a lot of knockoffs of that mic). Turns out that it was really popular for recording music for a long period of time. To my ears, it sounds like absolute shite. No different than the Peavy PA system that my high school had (and we were poor, my graduating class was 56 people). My friend? He loved the sound quality of the mic for some reason (audiophiles believe some of the dumbest bullshit out there). So, anything and everything that he recorded, if he had the cash to rent the mic for the session, that's what he was using. Since he was now using the new studio with the fancy gear, the initial assumption was that because of some weirdness caused by the differences between the recording spaces, that was why things sounded so different to me.

Then, my friend played me something that he'd recorded with the old gear, but with the Neumann mic, instead of the mics that came with the facility where the old gear was. It sounded just as shitty to me. That's when we figured out that I was hearing the mic in a way that most people don't. For about 30 years now, my friend (and others who were also in the program) have tested my hearing on that mic. My record is a 100% success rate in detecting what was recorded by that mic, regardless of if it was done by one of my friends in our college recording studio, or tracks put out by internationally recognized artists. So, it's possible that the original was recorded with Neumann-style mics and you're picking up artifacting created by those mics.

You want a deep nerd cut? Here ya go!

Dig the name of the shuttle from S2E13 Time Squared.



It's named after Farouk El-Baz, he was the primary geologist who trained the Apollo crews before they went to the Moon. Apparently, all the Apollo astronauts respected the fuck out of him.

You know who suggested the name? Rick Sternback.