20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
4. Jerry Goldsmith’s Iconic Theme Was A Do-Over
Because of all the post-production delays on the movie, Jerry Goldsmith spent an unusually long period of time writing and recording the movie’s score. When he started on August 1, 1979, the composer later said, “there was 40 minutes of film and a lot of ‘scene missing.’” He proceeded to write and record about 30 minutes of music—which you can hear on the La-La Land Records release of the score—and then waited for feedback from Robert Wise.
Wise didn’t pull any punches. “It’s not working,” he told Goldsmith. Wise struggled to articulate what was missing from the music, and Goldsmith even suggested hiring a different composer, but then it dawned on the director. “There’s no theme!” Wise exclaimed.
Goldsmith was at first crushed by the analysis, but after thinking about it for a week, he threw out much of the music he had written, put pen to paper, and came up with the now iconic main title march. Wise came over to Goldsmith’s house and the composer played the new theme on the piano. When the performance was complete, Wise exclaimed, “That’s it! Why didn’t you come up with that in the first place?”
Goldsmith would use the main title march in all five of his Star Trek movie scores, and Gene Roddenberry liked the music so much he used it as the main title for Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.