10 Times Pop Music Was Heard In Star Trek

Just as the music video for the Beastie Boys' hit Sabotage, released in 1994, is a parody of all those 70s cop shows, Star Trek (2009) has its own 90s, Thelma & Louise-style pastiche (although without Louise). When the film introduces us to a young James T. Kirk, he is equally on the run from the law. He has taken his stepdad's 'antique' car for a joyride, and the Beastie Boys' track is playing on full volume in the background. He then launches the convertible over the side of a canyon, but there's no fade-out death plunge for Kirk – he jumps to safety just in time.

Both the song and the scene set the tone for what is quite a different Kirk to the one we were used to. Having had a far less stable upbringing than his Prime counterpart, the James T. of the Kelvin split was more rebellious, got into repeated trouble with the law, and only really joined Starfleet "on a bet" from Captain Christopher Pike. This Kirk was suspended for 'cheating' on the Kobayashi Maru exam and had to sneak aboard the Enterprise when it was deployed to Vulcan.

Sabotage is, then, the perfect descriptor for this renegade, subversive version of Kirk – equally destructive of those around him as he is of himself when we first meet him. This particular piece of "classical music" was also used by Kirk and crew aboard the USS Franklin in the third Kelvin movie Star Trek: Beyond to help destroy Krall's swarm ships which had launched an assault on Starbase Yorktown.

The choice of such a contemporary song by Star Trek standards – more adept with actual classical music (so, so many string quartets!), opera (don't get The Doctor going), and big band numbers (more on that later) – is also representative of Star Trek (2009)'s general shift in aesthetic from that which went before, including the more 'modern' look of the Enterprise itself. To hear the likes of the Beastie Boys in Trek really was a novelty for the franchise.

Well, there was that magic carpet first warp ride…