10 Times Pop Music Was Heard In Star Trek

We love James Darren/Vic Fontaine here at TrekCulture, but we had to take a deep breath, turn the safety protocols back on, and limit ourselves to just one big band song from his Star Trek oeuvre. Darren appeared as Fontaine in seven episodes of Deep Space Nine for a total of thirteen different songs, after all. He did release a whole album of everything he sang on the show – This One's From the Heart (1999) – so fear not! And who knows, we might reactivate him for another list.

The song we did choose, Come Fly With Me, written for Frank Sinatra in 1958, is inescapably synonymous with going away on holiday, featuring in just about every travel agency advert ever made and any documentary with the mere mention of an aircraft. It may be a little overdone, but you can't really get much better to keep you motivated on a road trip.

Fontaine sings the tune at the end of the THEY-FINALLY-GOT-TOGETHER episode of DS9, His Way. The episode was also the first appearance of the self-aware, "trust- me-he's-no-ordinary," hologram with "pretty sweet pipes for a light bulb". And "one side of a cube"?! O'Brien, you're such a square!

His Way features another hologram (Lola Chrystal), who looks strangely familiar, singing Fever in classic fashion atop a piano. Nana Visitor both chose and performed the song for that scene. Even the title of the episode can't avoid a reference to that other French song made famous in its English version by a certain member of the Rat Pack.

As Fontaine breaks into Come Fly With Me, Odo begins to click his fingers to the beat. We dare you not to do the same!

"I prefer Klingon opera."