On the Star Trek forum at WWdN I’ve witnessed some distaste regarding the new Enterprise show and its theme song. I was thinking about this and thought I’d try to capture my thoughts about the song and why I like it. I have to set up my reasoning with a little personal history:
I was born the same year Sputnik was launched, 1957, started reading SF in the second grade (1964). As I grew up, I explored the galaxy in my imagination thanks to some of my favorite authors: Silverberg, Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Norton, L’Engle. I’ve witnessed the space race from its infancy, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo. From 1964 to 1975 I lived on Edwards AFB where experimental rocket planes flew from the salt flats of the high desert out to the very edges of Earth’s atmosphere. The sounds of sonic booms were everyday occurrences. Sometimes my friends’ dads didn’t make a safe landing, I was exposed to the tragic side of reaching for the stars at an early age. I sat for hours in front of the television with my family the day Neil Armstrong first stepped on the Moon, tears in my eyes. Although I dreamed about a future where I might be a part of our first tentative steps into space, it wasn’t meant to be, but I never stopped reading SF and I never stopped believing it would happen. I was home from college the weekend the prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise made it’s maiden voyage and landed on Rogers Dry Lake. Years later I comforted my infant son when the sonic boom of other Shuttle landings startled him and I smiled to think of the astronauts who had just streaked past miles overhead. I grieved over the loss of Challenger. I still cry when I hear the poem “High Flight” because of the Challenger memorial:
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings:
Sunward I‘ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence: hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew --
And, while the silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Lately I’ve grieved again at the loss of Columbia; perhaps the loss of our national will to continue the space program. I thrill to the prospects of a successful fight by SpaceShipOne (http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/) and hope that it is the first real step towards a future where mankind regularly travels from Earth to other planets, maybe other stars.
When I discovered Star Trek in 1968 I was only 11, so I don’t think I had a conscious, well thought out reason for loving it. I know now that I liked it because it was a show which brought to life the worlds and situations of the science fiction I read and loved; it had become real and it was a reality that I think I understood even then was shared by thousands.
I became an immediate fan. I believe now that my attachment to the series comes from how Star Trek reinforced my deep held convictions about why we had to keep striving towards space. When the show went off the air I kept Star Trek a part of my life by reading all the novelizations by James Blish, then the series of books. Finally, The Movies! By this time I was an adult but I had never lost my love of SF or Star Trek. I didn’t really think too much about the music, either the themes or the internal sound tracks, but the music is as much a part of Star Trek as anything else, so I can see why there’s some energy around the current series’ theme.
The original series theme was perfect for the late 60’s and captured the feeling of anticipation about boldly going “where no man had gone before.” Then the movie themes that had one soaring through space with the Enterprise and gave one a sense of the drama waiting between the stars. It was completely appropriate for the later TV series of the 80’s and 90’s to continue with these types of themes, they were set in the same far future universe of the Federation, we’ve come into our own in the community of space, it’s about joint ventures with other races of the galaxy and the leading role we play in that community...this is big, grand, it should take a symphonic orchestra to capture that.
But Enterprise is about something smaller, more human, closer at hand…this story is about the descendants of Chuck Yeager, Gus Grissom, Buzz Aldrin…and hundreds of test pilots and astronauts of our time, as well as scientists and dreamers like me. Yes, there is something deeply flawed with the show, the writing and the plotting leave a lot to be desired, I agree, but sometimes there’s a glimmer of truth amongst all the dreck; an acknowledgement of the dream…I like the idea of Enterprise for that, for trying to show what we might finally achieve.
So, for some reason, because of all I have said above, the Enterprise theme hits the right chord with me. Forget the music for a moment and just read the words:
“It's been a long night
Trying to find my way
Been through the darkness
No I've finally had my day
And I will see my dream come alive at last
I will touch the sky
And I will see my dream come alive at last
I will touch the sky
And they're not gonna hold me down no more
No they're not gonna change my mind
'Cause I've got faith of the heart
I'm going where my heart will take me
I've got faith to believe
I can do anything
I've got strength of the soul
And no one's gonna bend or break me
I can reach any star
I've got faith, I’ve got faith, faith of the heart”