[Stephen] And number two.
Season 3 of Picard is very different
than Seasons 1 and 2 just by the fact
that it's a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion.
And so that kind of demanded a bigger, larger orchestra,
a bigger cinematic sound.
So today we're at Warner Brothers doing a scoring session
and what we do is we get everything written,
scored out, and then they will come in here today,
they have not seen a single note.
They're obviously, because it's Star Trek,
there are some tunes they're pretty familiar with,
but they haven't seen the notes.
So, they walk in, and literally the first take
is pretty much you know, usable,
and then the second take is perfect.
We knew right away
that there were several Star Trek themes
we had to bring back and honor.
We also wanted to earn these themes,
it wasn't just bring them back just to,
"Hey wasn't that cool?"
So that we wanted to tie them in to the plot,
make it emotional,
and make it a love letter to Star Trek in general.
I think the biggest emotion
that we're really trying to evoke
is a mixture of tension, but then also this idea of family,
and that was one of the things I think
Terry and I chatted very early on about,
was that we needed a thematic element,
we needed a family theme.
There's a kind of interesting juxtaposition
with the Star Trek thing of like,
this is a crew and a ship, that are sort of family,
but what about real family?
You know, do those things come into conflict?
And then which comes above the other?
I think when we came to score Season 3 of Picard,
we wanted to sort of pay a homage
to the entire canon of music
that's been done for Star Trek.
This season needed to be
the last Star Trek: The Next Generation movie,
which means you needed Jerry Goldsmith,
which means you needed that sound.
And along the way, it's impossible to ignore the others
that came along too, James Horner, Dennis McCarthy,
all these incredible artists that added so much.
We wanted to bring that back,
and wanted to bring those feelings back,
and let the fans experience that one more time.
I think the thing we realized quite early on,
was there was just an insane quantity of music needed.
[Horn Player] Oh my God, that's a lot of music.
So we found this incredible young composer,
Frederik Wiedmann.
We were using his music for a movie he did
in our temp score, and it was so good and I was like,
"Why don't we reach out to him to see if he could help us?"
I came in at Episode 7.
Stephen Barton, the other composer, had already
scored all of the first six episodes,
and basically set up this musical world for Season 3.
So, my job was more adjusting
to what he had created and set up,
and continuing that musical journey
that he's basically prepared for all of us.
The scene where I felt the most pressure
as a composer to write the score for,
the entire crew of the Enterprise
enter the old ship once again,
which is now in a museum,
and they're standing on this bridge
that they have spent the entire Next Generation series on,
and it's such an amazing moment.
I mean, the way they recreated the Enterprise
to the smallest detail, it's just so beautifully done.
You know, it's interesting where, you know,
it's a show that's named after the main character,
and how it then sort of ties into both being
a story about him personally,
but then also we have so many threads
of all the family that he's come to know.
As Director and Showrunner of the last season
of essentially Star Trek: The Next Generation,
it was incredible to be on the bridge of the Enterprise
and direct this crew.
But it is nothing like being here.
Most things that you write music for
are always open-ended.
It's very rare that someone says to you, this is it.
There is gonna be no more.
That's actually very sort of liberating in a way,
because it allows you to sort of tie up ideas,
and push towards a sort of climax
that you know is a real climax.
[Terry] Being in a scoring session like this,
is what I have always wanted to do.
Leave behind all the work
of writing, showrunning, and directing,
and you just are there, and it's pure movie magic.
When you're watching this orchestra,
it's impossible not to get caught up in the music.