Star Trek: 10 Times Music Saved The Day

Star Trek: Insurrection carries on the grand tradition of Data's exploration of humanity, this time using Gilbert & Sullivan to bring the android back down to Earth. Data may have been malfunctioning but such is the power of music that he shrugs it off to hit those notes.

Insurrection, despite its heavy themes, is a far lighter film than both Generations and First Contact, so the appearance of a sing-along scene was hardly that much of a surprise. Having it serve such a key role may have been a bigger surprise but, in honesty, was it not Trek to its core? 

There may still have been phaser fire and unsafe velocities (just wait til they get their hands on the Argo) but A British Tar is one of the funnier, key moments of a funny, inoffensive film. Worf may not have had a chance to familiarise himself with all of the new crewmembers but, without them, Data might never have been able to expose the Son'a's dastardly plans.

Fantome, named for The Phantom Of The Opera by the Doctor, came from a species that had no language, insofar as expressing their meaning via words in English/Klingon/Vulcan etc. They did have an incredible ability to absorb and understand sound - which is where music came into play.

As the first of his race encountered by Voyager, Fantome learned how to communicate via musical notes taught to him by The Doctor. Through a stumbling start, such as extreme displeasure with Seven switching off the music, for a short time, he managed to create an entire language of musical notes.

When Voyager managed to escape the Void, this region of space in which it had become trapped, it first had to fight past other scavengers, all of whom were either intent on stopping the ship's escape or simply seizing it. Fantome, via his musical language, communicated successfully with others of his race - leading to their agreement to help the Starfleet ship. 

They may never have spoken a traditional word, but through music, Fantome and his species saved the day. 

Star Trek: Discovery's third season introduced Adira and Gray Tal, the Burn, and a fair amount of Cello music. The overarching mystery of what caused fleets of starships to suddenly explode over a century prior begins to quicken apace here, with the clues resting on strings and keys.

Adira, working closely with Stamets, identifies a tune that had been hummed by a Barzan family on the Tikhov as one their former host, Senna, remembered from childhood. This allows them to transpose the notes to the Cello (a skill inherited from their former host, Gray) and eventually, this is transposed into a distress call.

It is this distress call that leads the Discovery to the Verubian Nebula, to Su'kal, and eventually to the restoration of warp drive in the 32nd Century. It may have been quite the convoluted journey to get there but it was the music that lit the way.

Klingons are a funny thing. When they were introduced in Errand Of Mercy, they were displayed as conquerors, as well as merciless in their methods. Kor embodied the very worst of colonialism, though this aspect of the Empire was toned down as the years went on.

By the fourth season premiere for Deep Space Nine, The Way Of The Warrior, the Klingons had lost their teeth. The producers had been given a directive as the third season closed: put that Dominion War thing on pause, at least for the moment. Enter: The Klingons.

The fourth season was summarised as the Klingons finally going nuts, returning to the old ways, and breaking the treaty with the Federation. However, the scene had to be set. With no explanation as to the sudden arrival of a Klingon fleet, Sisko summons Lt. Commander Worf to the station. He wastes little time in reaching out to an old friend of the family and, over several bottles of blood wine, discovering the Empire's plans. 

It was also just after a rousing chorus of an old Klingon drinking song - one of the quickest ways to cut through the noise is simply to make more of it. 

Michael Eddington once told Odo that the best place to hide something was in plain sight. This little nugget would come back to haunt him when the Changeling displayed his crystal-clear memory, especially amid a criminal investigation.

Eddington, now fully unmasked as the leader of the Maquis, had begun attacking Cardassian colonies in the Demilitarised Zone, eventually escalating to biogenic weapons. These weapons were both his greatest asset and his eventual downfall. The USS Malinche, damaged as she was by the Maquis, still managed to intercept a coded Maquis message - one that sounded like Row, Row, Row Your Boat if both the singer and the audience had broken glass in their throat and ears.

The Breen nursery rhyme hidden within the message held no special meaning, other than the fact that it was Breen by nature. This tipped Odo off to Eddington's earlier clue, as he remembered the Breen colony on Portus V. Eddington would need cold storage units for these biogenic weapons and, as Sisko muses, no one knows how to keep things cold quite like the Breen.

They hit the road and discover Eddington in a fresh heist, none too happy to see them.

This third season episode of The Next Generation offers a clever use of background music to push the plot forward, though if it weren't for acting-ensign Wesley Crusher, Riker may have been stuck playing chess with an irritable Ferengi for the rest of his days.

Nibor, the Ferengi in question, has a bit of a tantrum after losing to Riker earlier in the episode, blaming the Algolian Ceremonial Chimes playing near - and loudly - beside their table. When Riker, Deanna, and Lwaxanna are kidnapped by DaiMon Tog, Nibor becomes the unwitting method by which they get a message back to the Enterprise.

Riker convinces him to play chess again, though this quickly ends up with Nibor out cold on the floor. It takes a few tries but Riker does get a message to the Enterprise - one that Crusher recognises as that same Algolian rhythm, thus revealing their missing crewmates' location. 

It is a fun little callback to earlier in the episode and leads into one of the most meme-d scenes in the franchise as Picard demonstrates his 'love' for Lwaxanna, to 'win' her back. 

Move Along Home is infamous among audiences for some of the wrong reasons, and conversely some of the right ones. As an early episode in Deep Space Nine's run, it delved into the silly side of things a little too early - although it did give us this banger.

Allamaraine is possibly one of the greatest songs ever written. It has the pathos of Cohen, the energy of Mercury, and indeed the staying power of Joel. It is pure and utter gold and honestly, if you're still with us at this point, you're our kind of silly.

The song is about as exciting as melting ice-cream, but it's no more offensive than that. The cast commit, with Avery Brooks deciding to treat it as grand opera. Without singing and dancing, they might never have moved on to the next shap, and after all, isn't that what it was all about?

Though it would have been very easy to slip the actual Star Trek musical in at number one on this list, it did feel a little cheeky. Let us instead concentrate on just how much fun - and critical to the plot - We Are One was in Subspace Rhapsody.

The magical MacGuffin (the subspace fold, and the required 344 giga electron volts) aren't really the point of the episode, though they combine to inspire the final, uplifting showstopper. Uhura has the crew of the Enterprise - and Garkog's crew aboard the Klingon D-7 - join in a song about the importance of working together and feeling part of something bigger.

It raises the audience's spirits, as well as the voltage, shattering the subspace field and ending the musical episode. Without it, one could imagine the music would still be playing somewhere...

This news really changes everything...

Reuniting Star Trek with the Beastie Boys was an excellent execution in Star Trek Beyond. Though the film is, to date, the final entry in the Kelvin series, the adventure went out with a bang. Thousands of them, if we're counting.

Jaylah, played by Sofia Boutella and criminally underrepresented here on TrekCulture, slices through the film with a no-nonsense approach to proceedings. She was exactly what the film required - an outside view of how things are done, one who could succinctly cut through the bullsh*t. Her taste in music helps to save the day as well.

In homage to Jim Kirk's (almost) introduction in Star Trek, Jaylah helps to choose the beats and shouting that will confuse the Altamid Swarm, then currently attacking Starbase Yorktown. With a turn as choreographed as a Nimbus Fan Dance, she hits play at exactly the right moment - before those wee beasts begin their beat.

The scene - as silly as anything Star Trek has ever done - is a punch-the-air moment in the film, accompanied by fire, swarming, and Sulu's little dance at his controls. 

Magic.

Admiral! There be whales here!

Scotty was well within his rights to show such excitement as, without George and Gracie, the Earth as we know it would have been doomed in the 23rd Century. The visiting Cetacean Probe was in the process of vaporizing the planet's oceans until those whales 'told it what to go do with itself.'

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is unofficially titled The One With The Whales for good reason: it is whale song, sung by two creatures flung forwards in time, that truly saves the day. Though we may never know what they said to the Probe, it was enough to convince it to leave orbit and turn all of the lights back on!

In a franchise with a musical episode, countless pieces of background singing, and alien codes within codes, one may be surprised to find the crooning cetaceans in the top spot. But, after all:

Only Human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man.