This is a list of composers of music for the series Star Trek, and other articles about music associated with the franchise.

Composers The following individuals wrote movie scores, theme music, or incidental music for several episodes or installments of the Star Trek franchise.

Composer Movie score Series theme Incidental music Paul Baillargeon Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise David Bell Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise Velton Ray Bunch Enterprise Jay Chattaway The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise Alexander Courage Star Trek: The Original Series The Original Series, 6 episodes, including both pilots ("The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before") George Duning The Original Series, 6 episodes Cliff Eidelman Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Jerry FieldingThe Original Series, 2 episodes ("The Trouble With Tribbles" and "Spectre of the Gun")Gerald Fried The Original Series, 5 episodes (including "Amok Time," which introduced the famous "Star Trek fight music"'Star Trek' boldly going symphonic, Canadian Online Explorer. Retrieved 2010-08-23Music makes movies memorable, Canadian Online Explorer, June 11, 2000. Retrieved 2010-08-23) Michael Giacchino Star TrekStar Trek Into DarknessStar Trek Beyond Prodigy Jerry Goldsmith Star Trek: The Motion PictureStar Trek V: The Final FrontierStar Trek: First Contact (with son Joel)Star Trek: InsurrectionStar Trek: Nemesis The Next GenerationVoyager James Horner Star Trek II: The Wrath of KhanStar Trek III: The Search for Spock Ron Jones The Next Generation Sol Kaplan The Original Series, 2 episodes ("The Enemy Within," "The Doomsday Machine")Samuel MatlovskyThe Original Series, 1 episode ("I, Mudd") Dennis McCarthy Star Trek Generations Deep Space Nine The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, EnterpriseJoseph MullendoreThe Original Series, 1 episode ("The Conscience of the King") Nami Melumad Short Treks, 1 episode ("Q & A")ProdigyStrange New Worlds Leonard Rosenman Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Jeff Russo Star Trek: Section 31 DiscoveryPicardStrange New WorldsShort Treks DiscoveryPicardShort Treks (Season 1, Season 2 episode "Children of Mars") Fred Steiner The Original Series, 11 episodes; The Next Generation, 1 episode ("Code of Honor") Diane Warren Enterprise Chris Westlake Lower Decks Lower Decks

Other composers who contributed music to at least one episode include Don Davis, John Debney, Brian Tyler, George Romanis, Sahil Jindal, Andrea Datzman, and Kris Bowers.

Film soundtracks overview NumberFilmRelease dateComposer(s)SoundtrackSeries 1Star Trek: The Motion Picture December 7, 1979 Jerry Goldsmith Soundtrack The Original Series 2Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan June 4, 1982 James Horner Soundtrack 3Star Trek III: The Search for Spock June 1, 1984 Soundtrack 4Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home November 26, 1986 Leonard Rosenman Soundtrack 5Star Trek V: The Final Frontier June 9, 1989 Jerry Goldmith Soundtrack 6Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country December 6, 1991 Cliff Eidelman Soundtrack 7Star Trek Generations November 18, 1994 Dennis McCarthy Soundtrack The Next Generation 8Star Trek: First Contact November 22, 1996 Jerry GoldsmithJoel Goldsmith Soundtrack 9Star Trek: Insurrection December 11, 1998 Jerry Goldsmith Soundtrack 10Star Trek: Nemesis December 13, 2002 Soundtrack 11Star Trek May 8, 2009 Michael Giacchino Soundtrack Reboot cast 12Star Trek Into Darkness May 16, 2013 Soundtrack 13Star Trek Beyond July 22, 2016 Soundtrack 14Star Trek: Section 31 January 24, 2025 Jeff Russo Soundtrack Paramount+

The Original Series

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

The score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture was written by Jerry Goldsmith, who would later compose the scores Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis, as well as the themes to the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. Gene Roddenberry had originally wanted Goldsmith to score Star Trek's pilot episode, "The Cage", but the composer was unavailable.Goldsmith, Jerry. Star Trek: The Motion Picture Directors Edition [Disc 2]. Special features: Commentary. When Robert Wise signed on to direct the film, Paramount asked the director if he had any objection to using Goldsmith. Wise, who had worked with the composer for The Sand Pebbles, replied "Hell, no. He's great!" Wise would later consider his work with Goldsmith one of the best relationships he ever had with a composer.

Goldsmith was influenced by the style of the romantic, sweeping music of Star Wars. "When you stop and think about it, space is a very romantic thought. It is, to me, like the Old West, we're up in the universe. It's about discovery and new life [...] it's really the basic premise of Star Trek," he said. Goldsmith's initial bombastic main theme reminded Ramsay and Wise of sailing ships. Unable to articulate what he felt was wrong with the piece, Wise recommended writing an entirely different piece. Although irked by the rejection, Goldsmith consented to re-work his initial ideas. The rewriting of the theme required changes to several sequences Goldsmith had scored without writing the main title piece. The approach of Kirk and Scott to the drydocked Enterprise by shuttle lasted a ponderous five minutes due to the effect shots coming in late and unedited, requiring Goldsmith to maintain interest with a revised and developed cue.. Lone Eagle Publishing Co., 1999. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the only Star Trek film to have a true overture, using "Ilia's Theme" in this role. Star Trek and The Black Hole would be the only feature films to use an overture from the end of 1979 until the year 2000 (with the movie Dancer in the Dark).

Much of the recording equipment used to create the movie's intricately complicated sound effects was, at the time, extremely cutting edge. Among these pieces of equipment was the ADS (Advanced Digital Synthesizer) 11, manufactured by Pasadena, California custom synthesizer manufacturer Con Brio, Inc. The movie provided major publicity and was used to advertise the synthesizer, though no price was given. The film's soundtrack also provided a debut for the Blaster Beam, an electronic instrument long. It was created by musician Craig Huxley, who played a small role in two episodes of the original television series. The Blaster had steel wires connected to amplifiers fitted to the main piece of aluminum; the device was played with an artillery shell. Goldsmith heard it and immediately decided to use it for V'ger's cues. An enormous pipe organ first plays the V'ger theme on the Enterprises approach, a literal indication of the machine's power.

Goldsmith scored The Motion Picture over three to four months, a relatively relaxed schedule compared to typical production, but time pressures resulted in Goldsmith bringing on colleagues to assist in the work. Alexander Courage, composer of the original Star Trek theme, provided arrangements to accompany Kirk's log entries, while Fred Steiner wrote the music to accompany the Enterprise achieving warp speed and first meeting V'ger. The rush to finish the rest of the film impacted the score. The final recording session finished at 2:00am on December 1, only five days before the film's release.

A soundtrack featuring the film's music was released in 1979 together with the film debut and was one of Goldsmith's best-selling scores. Sony's Legacy Recordings released an expanded two-disc edition of the soundtrack on November 10, 1998. The album added 21 minutes of music to supplement the original tracklist, and was resequenced to reflect the storyline of the film. The first disc features the expanded score, while the sequence disc contains "Inside Star Trek", a spoken word documentary. In 2012, La-La Land Records released a comprehensive 3 CD special edition which includes the complete score along with alternates and outtakes remastered from restored original 16 track masters, the original digital album master, and popular cover versions of the film's love theme.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

While Jerry Goldsmith had composed the music for The Motion Picture, he was not an option for The Wrath of Khan due to a budget reduction; director Nicholas Meyer's composer for Time After Time, Miklós Rózsa, was likewise prohibitively expensive. Meyer and producer Harve Bennett wanted the music for the sequel to go in a different direction but had not decided on a composer by the time filming began. Initially, Meyer hoped to hire an associate named John Morgan, but Morgan lacked film experience, which would have troubled the studio.

Paramount's vice-president of music Joel Sill took a liking to a 28-year-old composer named James Horner, feeling that his demo tapes stood out from generic film music. Horner was introduced to Bennett, Meyer, and Salin.Anderson, 71. Horner said that "[The producers] did not want the kind of score they had gotten before. They did not want a John Williams score, per se. They wanted something different, more modern." When asked about how he landed the assignment, the composer replied that "the producers loved my work for Wolfen, and had heard my music for several other projects, and I think, so far as I've been told, they liked my versatility very much. I wanted the assignment, and I met with them, we all got along well, they were impressed with my music, and that's how it happened." Horner agreed with the producers' expectations and agreed to begin work in mid-January 1982.

In keeping with the nautical tone, Meyer wanted music evocative of seafaring and swashbuckling, and the director and composer worked together closely, becoming friends in the process. As a classical music fan, Meyer was able to describe the effects and sounds he wanted in the music. While Horner's style was described as "echoing both the bombastic and elegiac elements of John Williams' Star Wars and Jerry Goldsmith's original Star Trek (The Motion Picture) scores," Horner was expressly told not to use any of Goldsmith's score. Instead, Horner adapted the opening fanfare of Alexander Courage's Star Trek television theme. "The fanfare draws you in immediately—you know you're going to get a good movie," Horner said.

In comparison to the flowing main theme, Khan's leitmotif was designed as a percussive texture that could be overlaid with other music and emphasized the character's insanity. The seven-note brass theme was echoplexed to emphasize the character's ruminations about the past while on Ceti Alpha V, but does not play fully until Reliants attack on the Enterprise. Many elements drew from Horner's previous work (a rhythm that accompanies Khan's theme during the surprise attack borrows from an attack theme from Wolfen, in turn influenced by Goldsmith's score for Alien. Musical moments from the original television series are also heard during investigation of the Regula space station and elsewhere.

To Horner, the "stuff underneath" the main story was what needed to be addressed by the score; in The Wrath of Khan, this was the relationship between Kirk and Spock. The main theme serves as Kirk's theme, with a mellower section following that is the theme for the Starship Enterprise. Horner also wrote a motif for Spock, to emphasize the character's depth: "By putting a theme over Spock, it warms him and he becomes three-dimensional rather than a collection of schticks."Anderson, 72. The difference in the short, French horn-based cues for the villain and longer melodies for the heroes helped to differentiate characters and ships during the battle sequences.