Every Star Trek theme is great. Except one. You know which one.
It appears that you lack faith of the heart, my dear doctor.
The version of the TOS theme with lyrics?
Okay, two.
Reminds me of the time I was once in a novelty ukulele band.
The Enterprise theme actually played over the end credits - was called "Archer's Theme"
For me the Prodigy and Lower Decks theme songs are among the best in the franchise because they're versatile. You can have a slow, tender violin motif from the LD theme such as when Tendi was telling Mariner that the Beta shifters were her family at the end of season 2. A slightly different part gets a brassy remix as the swelling Crisis Point theme music for the Cerritos.
Not all Trek melodies do this. Voyager's got a lovely melody that feels appropriate for a grand trip homeward, but they tried using it at some big plot moments and it just felt wrong. Disco and TNG have the opposite problem where their themes are CONSTANT INTENSITY, so you don't often see them used in softer moments. (The latter is very weird to me considering we have heard softer variations of the theme, maybe I just can't think of any such uses in the series offhand).
Every good show is made great by the sound track and music production.
Think of The Original Series, The Next Generation .... even Star Wars or Indiana Jones or the movie Jaws ... shows that were good but if you ever watched them, you can instantly identify them and appreciate them just by hearing the opening theme song or title song.
Most people don't realize but one of our most strongest senses is our sense of hearing ... it's directly wired to our core animal instincts of fight, flight, fear and anxiety. It's based on our old prehistoric animal ancestor brain that once lived in dark holes and lived in the dark ... they had to rely on that sense of hearing to survive. Hearing is more strongly tied to our animal brain than sight. I learned all this because this is the same mechanism that aggravates tinnitus, ringing in the ears. When you worry or are afraid, your sense of hearing increases, then you start hearing a ringing, when you hear ringing, it makes you worry that something is wrong, so you worry more, the more you worry, the more ringing and on and on.
That same mechanism is why we love hearing music and theme songs so much .... music is directly tied to our emotions and memory.
All of the Star Trek sound effects are iconic too. Any Star Trek fan can recognize the sound of a transporter, whether it's TOS era or TNG era. Same with the red alert sound.
Battlestar Galactica.
Honestly, I think everything about lower decks slaps. It’s felt much more like Star Trek than some of the newer shows that when it came out I was hooked instantly.
