Working from the oral history in The Five Year Mission: The next 25 years, this is a fascinating deep dive that answers the question “How did a recycled cover of a 1998 song written for Rod Stewart, ‘Where My Heart Will Take Me’ aka ‘Faith of the Heart’ become the title music for Enterprise?”
Also, after resisting melodic scoring in all the 90s shows, it turns out this was the music Rick Berman liked?!!
“…I, for one, can tell you that I thought it was a great opening and I’m not alone in that. I don’t think I’m in the majority, but I’m not alone."
And it seems the song does have its own subniche of supporters who share Berman’s view. (But not I.)
I honestly think that music did more to hurt the show than anything else. It was the musical equivalent of starting EVERY EPISODE with a voiceover saying: “we hate all that old star trek. This is the new WB Network Star Trek, with 70% more down home, Midwestern American values! Yeehaw!”
people did react that way, but I liked the song well enough, and grew to like it more.
It’s like root beer. The worst part is after a while you actually start to like it.
To quote the great Nicholas Meyer (Director of Wrath of Khan) who spoke on this topic:
“Roddenberry had his own utopian vision about the perfectibility of man, and I never really believed that. And I don’t think the show demonstrates that. I think it is about gunboat diplomacy. In the final analysis, the Enterprise fires. They’re always shooting and bringing civilization, and coming to worlds where they don’t approve of tyrannical enterprises – no pun intended – and they substitute their own quote unquote enlightened version of how society is supposed to work, which is essentially American.”
Gotta love how after hearing everyone complain about how bad it was, they doubled down and made a “jazzy” version for later seasons.
Yep … completely agree and I’ve said the same before. Whether the producers liked it or not, the opening and its vibe is part of Trek. If you want to do a different kind of show … cool … but you’ve gotta meet fans somewhere in the middle. Starting the whole thing off with a complete undoing of the whole vibe of the thing is not the right way to meet fans in the middle.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but when I first saw enterprise, I honestly thought it was a cheap rip off that was bound to get sued, and the song was a huuuuge part in the that impression. “No Star Trek would start with that song, this is some weird corporatised shit”.
And the effect of that … to this day, even though I didn’t mind ENT S4, I don’t count it as part of (my) Trek (it also did particularly bad on the bechdel test). And to this day, even with new-Trek, we’re struggling to get new series that push Trek forward without being nostalgia driven, a reboot, prequel or maybe even all of the above (looking at you SNW!). Lower Decks, in this way, really does stand out (Prodigy too, though I haven’t seen it).
