After Action Report: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (June 6, 2025)

[Bandit LOAF]

Greetings WingNuts,

It's no secret that most of us love Star Trek and we generally felt that The Motion Picture is a film that becomes more and more compelling the older it gets. What was once decried as slow and moody now feels impressive and relevant. And it's really the only of the Star Trek movies that directly follows the characters as they were in the original TV show.





The Wing Commander connection this time around was that Chris Roberts asked Wing Commander composer George "The Fatman" Sanger to pattern the original game's music after Jerry Goldsmith's spectacular Star Trek The Motion Picture score. I have a tin ear, but others in our party did claim they could hear the inspiration! Here are the main themes for both if you'd like to compare them yourself.

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Another connection between ST:TMP and Wing Commander is that the film was Syd Mead's first project as a concept artist for film. He was brought in to design the enemy V'Ger spacecraft... the same role he would play decades later on Wing Commander Prophecy where he designed the look of the Nephilim enemy!

Sully also likes eliminating carbon units.
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Original update published on June 6, 2025

 

[kingmakeress]

TMP is quite underrated 🖖

 

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The Wing Commander connection this time around was that Chris Roberts asked Wing Commander composer George "The Fatman" Sanger to pattern the original game's music after Jerry Goldsmith's spectacular Star Trek The Motion Picture score. I have a tin ear, but others in our party did claim they could hear the inspiration! Here are the main themes for both if you'd like to compare them yourself.

I messed with this a bit and I can definitely hear the Star Trek inspirations. The entire structure of the ST theme doesn't line up but there's several parts that when you slow the WC theme down to 80 percent they have striking similarities in style and feel, though WC's theme is slight like a flat/more somber sounding version...

also the forums don't like MP3s? Hmm

WC VS Star Trek.mp3

drive.google.com

WC VS Star Trek2.mp3

drive.google.com

 

[Bob McDob]

This is (arguably) true of the main theme but having listened through the soundtrack I can't find any similarities. In the first place Wing Commander is pretty active and jaunty. I'm not well versed in musical terminology but I think it would be called melodic? It has that in common with a lot of video game soundtracks from the period where a more complex and subtle symphonic score would have come out muddled. Also Goldsmith's score is much more subdued and slower, like the film it services.

It bewilders me that Chris would choose the score from Star Trek － and Star Trek The Motion Picture at that! － to base the soundtrack for his action game on instead of Star Wars or 633 Squadron or virtually anything else. Dave Govett must have agreed because the rest of the music has little in common. If anything it's closer to the score for the movie, although even there Kiner's work is significantly more active than Goldsmith's!

 

[kingmakeress]

In the first place Wing Commander is pretty active and jaunty

My thought as well. Maybe the main theme of TMP is powerful, but the rest of the score has another direction, especially Ilia's theme.

 

[kingmakeress]

Also speaking about Star Trek, it is interesting that in 5:08 this video credits the Wing Commander Amiga port for making possible porting Star Trek: 25 Anniversary. Be careful, it is a very long video.

 

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Also speaking about Star Trek, it is interesting that in 5:08 this video credits the Wing Commander Amiga port for making possible porting Star Trek: 25 Anniversary. Be careful, it is a very long video.

Maybe I missed something, but all I hear them say is that the spaceflight combat in the game is obvously influenced by WC.

 

[kingmakeress]

Maybe I was misled by the discussion taking place before that point about the technical aspects of porting ST25.