10 Times Pop Music Was Heard In Star Trek

"During the second arpeggio of the first movement, I noticed that you played an F minor chord instead of a diminished D." ~ Actual thing Captain Picard actually once said (to Lt. Commander Nella Daren). (The Next Generation, Lessons)

With that level of musical banter between his shipmates, it's perhaps little wonder that Worf had his head in his hands over Data's song selection at the Troi-Riker wedding reception in Star Trek: Nemesis. He'd probably had enough of those long journeys to distant planets during which Picard no doubt talked for hours about his favourite key signature and the delights of effective rubato. That was almost worse than Number One's bring your trombone to work day.

Still, whether you're too much of a warrior for Irving Berlin or not, the song is a must for your Trek playlist. Not only is it a calmer interlude to some of the other (hard) rock songs on this list – wistfully happy in tone – it is also pivotal to the plot of Nemesis, and after.

Berlin wrote Blue Skies in 1926 as a Christmas gift for his newborn daughter, and the song found success after being added to the musical Betsy that same year. Blue Skies has been covered by an array of artists in the years since, but, but, but but but… and hold on to your cowboy hats and poker visors… Brent Spiner recorded the full track, and it really is just as good as you would expect. It is available here. You're welcome! We would also recommend the Ella Fitzgerald 1958/9 version for road trip perfection.

In Nemesis, Blue Skies begins at an optimistic point in Data's storyline; his friends have gotten married, and the future looks bright for the android, soon to be second-in-command to Picard. By the end of the film, of course, Data has sacrificed his own life to save his crewmates. The song gains a bitter-sweet resonance, then, when Noonian Soong word-play of the week B-4 begins to mutter the first lines of the tune, raising hopes that the transfer of Data's memory files was a success. Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack picks up the Blue Skies motif on the piano before progressing into an arrangement of the Star Trek/The Motion Picture/The Next Generation Theme.

The song makes a final appearance in the season one finale of Star Trek: Picard as part of a poignant send-off to Data. As Picard honours Data's request to terminate his reconstructed consciousness that has been running inside a quantum simulation, Blue Skies plays. This particular version was performed beautifully by Isa Briones aka Soji, Dahj, Sutra, and Kore Soong.