All the composers for Star Trek have been incredible in their own right. Everyone has their preferred (James Horner) but I have yet to not enjoy a Star Trek opening. And yes, that includes Enterprise. It tried to break the mold and failed, but I give it a pass because the visual sequence with it gets me still.
I will say that First Contact's theme is damn good. Especially when used at the end with the Vulcan meeting.
Honestly, the change on Enterprise being a lyrical song kind of fits because they aren't the Federation yet. It's a prequel. So it has this country tune playing in the intro instead.
I think I like the Enterprise version different. It's an arrangement that does what the better themes like TNG do, where you start off gentle and build to something more exciting. Not as good to me as TNG, but it accomplishes the task of getting you into the mindset for the show.
I saw a lot of opinions back in the day about it, and it almost seems like people were offended that they even tried to break the mold at all.
I don’t actually mind Faith Of The Heart for the intro. My biggest problem with it is that its not an original song - it was written specifically for a movie that was completely unrelated to Star Trek.
I would probably appreciate it more if they wrote their own song for ENT - it could even be a country/pop song like FOTH, but it would still be a Star Trek song.
They definitely cherry picked the best bits of the song for the intro though. I like their cover more than the original.
It was received very poorly, even tainting reception of the show (which turned out to be appreciated and wanting more, long after it was gone). People just expected a classical sounding instrumental, and it hit wrong. They probably should have test marketed the idea and had some fallbacks. Still, I remember seeing the opening of the first episode and catching the frigate "Enterprize", and thinking this was great regardless.
Yea … me too and many others. It’s the proof that they missed the mark with the show’s presentation. Many thought it wasn’t actually Trek and something had gone wrong. I thought it was a cheap rip off. And sure, maybe we all had expectations we were too stubborn about, but by the same token, you have to meet your audience where they are. TNG, as I understand, was mindful that they had to get the older Trek fans, and Enterprise should have been mindful that they basically had to do the same and find the middle ground between everything being new and it still feeling like Trek.
Literally starting off with that theme was the wrong move. It’s out of place, and for many of us, Country music is an awful cringey genre while classical/orchestral is far more universal. Stay with the orchestral theme and you would have us at least past the opening credits.
I thought it was weird at first, but actually liked it. I didn’t really get the hate - there’s plenty of shows I like a lot that I like the theme a lot less and especially today you can easily skip it.
Now you have me thinking of other movie songs that might've fit Enterprise, though. For some reason "Don't you forget about me" comes immediately to mind.