Among Star Trek: Enterprise’s more contentious quirks was its opening theme song: a reworked version of Rod Stewart’s “Faith of the Heart” entitled “Where My Heart Will Take Me.” It’s very much a product of its time, and in the ensuing years has become something of a guilty pleasure among the Star Trek faithful. It’s the kind of infectious earworm that takes days to get rid of, and it’s definitely an anomaly among Star Trek themes. Fans at the time did not take it well.
Before Enterprise, Star Trek shows stuck resolutely to classic orchestral themes. That started with Alexander Courage’s iconic introduction to the original Star Trek, and was emulated by The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Star Trek: The Next Generation appropriated Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which is telling: all of them aimed for an operatic sound indicative of epic theatrical films. When Enterprise began, the producers wanted to break from that tradition in a big way.
Enterprise was posited as a prequel to the original series: detailing the early days of humanity’s exploration of the stars, and the eventual formation of the Federation. Producer Brannon Braga told Starlog magazine that he felt the era had more unexplored dramatic potential than something closer to the original series, and that the characters would respond to challenges differently than the characters in other Trek series had. The song was intended as part of that principle: a firm break from what Trek had become, but also a link between the present day and the bright future the franchise promised.
That, however, could have found better expression elsewhere. The song adopted a soft-rock power ballad format, presumably in order to reach as wide an audience demographic as possible. But the supposedly inspiring lyrics fell flat against Enterprise’s impressive visual title montage of real-life heroes like Amelia Earhart and Gus Grissom. And while the orchestral scores from earlier Trek shows felt evergreen, this one dated itself almost as soon as it had dropped.
The choice of song was strange too. Rather than commissioning their own, the producers simply reskinned the Stewart song with new lyrics, giving it the air of a cheap knock-off. Stewart himself – a notorious womanizer – left his second wife less than a month before the song hit the charts, rendering its heartfelt tone disingenuous from the start. A few hastily added lyrics weren’t going to change that. Furthermore, Stewart wrote it for Patch Adams, the infamous Robin Williams tearjerker reviled for its excess sentimentalism.
In short, it felt very corporate: assembled for reasons that had little to do with Star Trek and presented as a change of pace that went badly off the mark. Trekkies responded as Trekkies sometimes do: with anger, rejection and organized demands to replace the song with something else. Enterprise stuck with it, however, and kept it as part of the opening credits for the whole of its run.
The song has since attained a kind of scruffy charm among the Trek faithful, and an apt companion to Enterprise, which similarly took some time for parts of the Star Trek community to warm to. Today the two are intertwined, and the high quality of the show itself lends the comparatively clunky theme song an affection it might otherwise merit. It even earned a playful dig on Star Trek: Lower Decks -- as sure a sign as ever that Trekkies are ready to forgive if not forget.
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