michael giacchino star trek beyond

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Published Oct 14, 2022

Michael Giacchino on Scoring and Directing Star Trek

The prolific composer's career spans many beloved franchises, from Pixar to Star Trek to Marvel and beyond.

Getty Images / StarTrek.com - Rob DeHart

Michael Giacchino is having a fantastic week. In addition to celebrating his birthday earlier in the week, the prolific composer just recently released the wildly refreshing and thrilling Werewolf by Night , a Marvel Studios presentation which sees him helming both directing and composing duties.

While Werewolf by Night may be Giacchino’s feature directorial debut, StarTrek.com has decided to look back at his illustrious contributions to the Star Trek universe, from scoring the 2009 Star Trek film with longtime collaborator J.J. Abrams, to directing the Star Trek: Short Treks episode, “Ephraim and Dot,” to the full theme score for Star Trek: Prodigy , which returns with new episodes for his premiere season next week.

Prior to directing Werewolf by Night , Giacchino directed an episode of Star Trek: Short Treks , “Ephraim and Dot.” In the bonus content, “Inside Short Treks: Ephraim and Dot,” Giacchino revealed how he got involved with the project, specifically coming on as a director.

Giacchino noted that executive producer Alex Kurtzman reached out to him one day, gauging his interest in directing Star Trek: Short Treks , presenting both live action and animated options. “[Alex] goes, ‘We have two different animated ones; I’ll let you choose which one you want because I know already which one you’re going to pick,’” shared Giacchino.

As to why he leapt at the chance on working on the short that featured a tardigrade and a DOT-7, he revealed, "I would love to do an emotional Tom and Jerry that takes place on the Enterprise ," honing in on the core of the story. "It's about sort of their relationship, and Dot trying to get Ephraim off the ship because that's his job. As a robot, he has one job; he sees something, get rid of it. That's it."

In addition to telling a story full of emotion and heart, what also drew Giacchino to the project was its scope, "We were able to bridge the entire Star Trek history from the beginning of TOS to the destruction of the Enterprise over the Genesis planet."

Episode Preview | Star Trek: Short Treks - Ephraim and Dot

Giacchino has had an incredible career spanning multiple decades and beloved franchises, including Pixar's Incredibles , Ratatouille , Up , and Coco ; Lost , Star Wars , Jurassic World , The Batman , and Marvel Studios' Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and Werewolf by Night , to name a few.

He delights in the projects he takes on, last sharing what consistently pulls him back into the Star Trek universe, "It's always fun when you get to play in the Star Trek canon. To recreate any of those original moments and to revisit those things, it's always very exciting and very scary at the same time because you want to make sure that you're doing them justice, and that there's something that the passionate fan base is going to be happy with."

"I love Star Trek because it is about inclusion," continued Giacchino. "And it's about discovery, and it's about reaching out to new things that you don't know anything about but yet accepting them. To have a popular show that is based around those ideals, that's so important. And I think that's why we still have Star Trek in our lives."

Michael Giacchino's Musical Journey On Star Trek: Short Treks

Giacchino himself upholds those ideals by inviting others to go on the musical journey across the universe with him. When presented with the opportunity to score all the shorts for Star Trek: Short Treks , due to bandwidth and timing, Giacchino wanted to "take a real sort of Star Trek approach" and enlist as many collaborators as possible and give them a shot at scoring a Trek project. "It was a huge learning experience for me," reflected Giacchino. "We are so lucky to do what we do, and that we've been able to do what we've been doing for so long, and for us not to sort of reach out to the community to bring that next generation in to do this, that would be wrong if we didn't do that."

Star Trek: Prodigy is the franchise's first foray into creating content geared towards a much younger audience.

Giacchino previously shared, “I am excited that I had the opportunity to write the main theme for Kevin and Dan [Hageman's] latest project, and as always am thrilled to be a part of the Star Trek family."

Star Trek: Prodigy Opening Title Sequence

While he only scored the opening theme, Giacchino expressed excitement for the series' composer, "I'm especially looking forward to everyone hearing the incredible work of composer Nami Melumad, who will take the reins of scoring the episodes," citing her extreme talent.

Speaking to StarTrek.com back in 2013 , Giacchino explained whether he viewed music in the lead actor or a supporting player role.

"I tend to think of the music as one of the characters," he stated. "It’s another character in the movie. It’s sort of that character that sits there and gently nudges you and says, 'You need to feel this' or 'You need to notice this.'”

"It’s sort of the subtext of everything that is going on," continued Giacchino. "I can take a picture of you starting at me, and I can score that any number of ways, and I could show those versions to people, and they would think either, 'You’re plotting to kill me' or 'You’re really happy right now.' There are so many different things involved, but it’s all within how you play the scene, how you score it. It’s actually a very dangerous tool to have."

Recalling an exchange with one his longtime collaborators during the scoring of The Incredibles , Giacchino shared the responsibility of his own role in the storytelling process, "Brad Bird once told me, 'Now, you’re going to have to be very careful....Your music can ruin my movie.' And he was right. What he meant was that, if you’re not totally right on target, then the audience will be thinking something that he doesn’t want them thinking. So you’ve got to be careful."

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Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix outside of markets including Canada where it is available on CTV.ca and the CTV App, France on France Televisions channels and Okoo, in Iceland on Sjonvarp Simans Premium, as well as on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Prodigy is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

• Music as Written for the Film:   ***
• Music as Heard on the Varèse Regular Album:   ***
• Music as Heard on the Varèse Deluxe Album:   ****
• Overall:   ***

Michael Giacchino scores Star Trek Beyond

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Dan Goldwasser

In May and June of this year, Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino returned to the final frontier to score the third entry in the rebooted Star Trek series, Star Trek Beyond . Directed by Fast and Furious director Justin Lin, recording for the score took place at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox, and we’re thrilled to share our exclusive photos from the sessions with our readers!

For the orchestral portion of the score, longtime conductor/orchestrator Tim Simonec led a 98-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony. While he uses the main themes he established for the rebooted film back in 2009, Giacchino created new themes for the film, befitting the new alien races and villains encountered.

Taking the music to new heights was a 70-person choir, which was used to give a dramatic sense of weight and epicness to the score.

In the booth, composer Michael Giacchino was joined by director Justin Lin, who gave feedback on the music. Scoring mixer Joel Iwataki, music editor Steve Davis, orchestrator Jeff Kryka and ProTools recordist Vinni Cirilli were also on hand to give comments. (Running between the dub stage at Universal and the scoring stage at Fox were assistant music editors Warren Brown and Erig Wegener, who might appear in some photos.)

In an historic "first", the score for Star Trek Beyond was performed live-to-picture by the San Diego Symphony for the World Premiere at Comic-Con this week. As such, during the recording sessions, live score conductor Richard Kaufman and live score consultant Mae Crosby were taking diligent notes, since everything would have to be recreated for the performance.

Star Trek Beyond opens nationwide in theaters today. A soundtrack album is available from Varese Sarabande records digitally today, and physically next week.

You've only seen 23 images - click here for 54 more scoring session images for this project !

Star Trek Beyond (Music From The Original Motion Picture / Deluxe Edition)

January 1, 2016 47 Songs, 2 hours, 6 minutes ℗ 2016 Paramount Pictures, Under exclusive license to Varèse Sarabande. Distributed by Concord.

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Star Trek [Music From the Motion Picture]

Michael giacchino.

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Ratatouille (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Michael Giacchino

24 SONGS • 1 HOUR AND 2 MINUTES • JUN 26 2007

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Composer and director Michael Giacchino grew up fascinated with both movies and music, and he's gone on to an ideal career writing acclaimed scores for numerous films and television series. Best known for scoring many Pixar animated films plus latter-day installments of franchises spanning Mission: Impossible and Marvel, Giacchino has also scored video games and done pivotal work for the television series Lost and Alias. After building his résumé with work on a few low-budget films alongside prestige DreamWorks video games with fully orchestrated scores in the late '90s, Giacchino had his box-office-topping big-screen breakthrough with 2004's The Incredibles, his first collaboration with Pixar. He received his first Academy Award nomination and Grammy win for the animation studio's Ratatouille (2007). His first Emmy win followed in 2008, for Lost, before he took home an Oscar and a BAFTA for Pixar's Up (2009). Some of Hollywood's biggest film franchises soon came calling, and throughout the 2010s, Giacchino worked on the likes of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), Jurassic World (2015), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017). In the meantime, he continued his relationship with Pixar, scoring 2017's Coco and 2018's Incredibles 2. In 2022 alone, Giacchino provided music for The Batman, Jurassic World Dominion, Lightyear (for Pixar), and the Marvel entry Thor: Love and Thunder. He also made is full-length directorial debut, helming the Marvel Studios Halloween special Werewolf by Night.

Giacchino was born in Riverside Township, New Jersey, on October 10, 1967, and grew up in nearby Edgewater Park. As a child, he developed an interest in animation and began making stop-motion cartoons, but discovered his favorite part was selecting the music that would match the action. After high school, Giacchino received a degree in film production at New York's School of Visual Arts and then went on to study music at Lincoln Center's Juilliard School. Giacchino supported himself as a publicist for the New York offices of Universal Pictures and Disney, and after completing his studies, he relocated to Burbank, California, where he worked for Disney's feature film publicity department. He moved on to Disney Interactive, assisting with production on video game projects as he continued to hone his craft in music.

After contributing music to several Disney games, he took a position with DreamWorks Interactive in 1997 and scored the video game The Lost World: Jurassic Park, released as a tie-in with the sci-fi blockbuster; the same year, he also scored a low-budget live-action thriller, Legal Deceit. Giacchino composed scores for a number of other video games, including the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty franchises, and in 2001, when producer J.J. Abrams was assembling his creative team for the television series Alias, he invited Giacchino to write music for the show, having been impressed with his video game work.

After working together successfully on Alias, Abrams hired Giacchino to compose music for the cult favorite series Lost, which earned him an Emmy Award for outstanding dramatic score in 2005; Giacchino also wrote music for Abrams' short-lived but critically acclaimed show Fringe. In 2004, he was part of a team credited with music for Star Trek: The Final Darkness, and Brad Bird invited Giacchino to write the music for the Pixar animated feature The Incredibles. It was the first of several projects he scored for Pixar. Following work on Abrams' Mission: Impossible 3 (2006), his second Pixar film, 2007's Ratatouille, made Giacchino an Oscar nominee and a Grammy winner (Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media). He worked on films including 2008's Cloverfield (produced by Abrams) and Speed Racer, and 2009's Star Trek (directed by Abrams), before winning an Academy Award in 2010 for the Pixar release Up (2009). It also garnered a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack Album.

After Lost ended its six-season run in May 2010, Giacchino's music could be heard in films including Let Me In (2010), Pixar's Cars 2 (2011), Abrams' Super 8 (2011), and the Brad Bird-directed Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). The action fare continued in the form of Star Trek: Into Darkness (Abrams, 2013), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), and 2015's Tomorrowland, a collaboration between Bird and Lost creator Damon Lindelof. That year brought another Jurassic Park sequel, Jurassic World, and Giacchino's fifth Pixar movie, Inside Out. His stock only continued to increase as 2016 saw the release of Disney's Zootopia, Star Trek Beyond, Marvel's Doctor Strange, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, all with scores by Giacchino. Spider-Man: Homecoming followed in 2017, as did another Planet of the Apes series entry, War for the Planet of the Apes, and another Pixar film, Coco, which featured songs by Germaine Franco, Adrian Molina, Robert Lopez, and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and a Grammy-nominated score by Giacchino. Among his film work to finish out the decade were Pixar's Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Spider-Man: Far from Home, and the World War II satire Jojo Rabbit.

The composer branched out to another animation studio, Montreal's Cinesite Animation, to pen music with his son, Mick Giacchino, for 2021's Extinct. That year, he also had sole credit on Spider-Man: No Way Home. Giacchino kicked off 2022 with The Batman in March and both Jurassic World Dominion and Toy Story spin-off Lightyear in June. Marvel Studios' Thor: Love and Thunder followed a month later. Having previously directed the short film, Monster Challenge starring Patton Oswalt, Giacchino also made his full-length directorial debut with the Marvel Studios Disney Plus Halloween special Werewolf by Night, which he also scored. ~ Mark Deming & Marcy Donelson

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03 jun 2:30 pm Star Trek Beyond - London Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra 2:30 pm

Event Details

As part of a Star Trek weekend, Star Trek Beyond – In Concert will be screened in the Royal Albert Hall, with Michael Giacchino’s score performed live by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra conducted

As part of a Star Trek weekend,  Star Trek Beyond – In Concert  will be screened in the Royal Albert Hall, with Michael Giacchino’s score performed live by the  Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra  conducted by  Ernst Van Tiel .

From director Justin Lin,  Star Trek Beyond  (2016) is the third installment in the reboot series, starring Idris Elba, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zach Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Karl Urban.

Acclaimed by critics and fans alike,  Star Trek Beyond  was universally hailed as an epic sci-fi adventure that honors the series’ roots while delivering the mind-blowing action expected of today’s hottest movie blockbusters. Its soaring new orchestral score by Oscar®-winning composer Michael Giacchino not only breaks new ground, but also reprises many of the beloved musical themes he created for the prior  Star Trek  installments.

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"Star Trek: Discovery" makes a case for Michael Burnham as the last great Starfleet captain

Our "discovery" protagonist was never going to have it easy. the start of her last run solidifies her greatness, by melanie mcfarland.

Michael Burnham's " Star Trek " journey was destined to be among the franchise's toughest and most complex. Some of us knew this from the moment Sonequa Martin-Green was cast to play her, especially Black women who are sci-fi geeks. We have never been few, but until recently, we were far less visible than we are now.

To some, this visibility symbolizes everything that has supposedly gone wrong with this franchise and others. The reach of " Star Trek: Discovery " goes even further by assembling a truly inclusive cast that blew apart the original series' longstanding heteronormativity.

All this further angered culture war trolls and self-appointed arbiters of what is so-called "real" "Star Trek." These people have a vested interest in downvoting any such divergences from what has gone before.

Mainly it was — as it continues to be — the purists who wrote off "Discovery" as "not Trek" during  its first season in 2017 . Looking back from its final season — and from the perspective of Burnham's 900-year journey — we can say that despite how its thematic shading looked to us then , "Discovery" never abandoned Gene Roddenberry's optimism . It has simply evolved its interpretation.

In the first season, not even Burnham would believe this to hold true. A human raised on Vulcan by Spock's  father, Sarek, and as his sister, Burnham earns her first officer role through superior conduct and logic, divorcing herself from sentiment.

Burnham's smug sense of rectitude gets her superior officer killed. She is charged with mutiny, stripped of her rank and sentenced to life in prison.

From there, she stops a rogue galactic A.I. from annihilating the Federation and leaps nine centuries into the future (thereby largely freeing herself and the show from restrictive canon) to find a universe where Starfleet as it used to be is a dream, and the Federation and its ideals are broken.

"Discovery's" swansong season finds Burnham in the year 3191, with enough of the Federation's trust to take on a highly classified mission alongside Captain Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie), who has already earned the same commendations as Kirk and Picard. His reputation precedes him, in other words. Their quest relates to a Picard-era discovery that Starfleet fears can be used to eradicate all humanoid life in the universe.

"Discovery" never abandoned Gene Roddenberry's optimism. It has simply evolved its interpretation. 

Their success should place her on par with the greats, an honor that showrunner Michelle Paradise and the show's co-creator Alex Kurtzman have been driving toward all this time.

Some indicators of that goal aren't as obvious as others, like the sequence in which Rayner defies Burnham during an away mission, trusting in his overconfidence instead of her strategic acumen. His snap judgment endangers a planet's civilian population, leaving her to fix the crisis he has created.

Women watching this — especially Black women, I would wager — might have experienced a slight rage triggering in their soul that was mollified by Burnham pulling the very Obama-esque move of asking Rayner to replace her trusted friend Saru (Doug Jones) as her first officer. (The job was coming open, anyway; Saru is shifting into diplomacy mode and getting married.)

This is the move of a great leader. Then again, like Kate Mulgrew's long underappreciated Captain Janeway, it may not be appreciated by the fandom for many, many years.

Burnham's arc contradicts what we know about the great Starfleet captains profiled in this franchise, most of whom are white and male.

Burnham's arc contradicts what we know about the great Starfleet captains profiled in this franchise, most of whom are white and male, though if that were the extent of what differentiates her from the rest, it would barely be worth mentioning.

Records of their histories come to us as snippets of dialogue from secondary characters or contextualizing conversations from what the official logs have to say about past missions. We hear about who served under whom, granting legitimacy to the likes of, say, Christopher Pike to claim the captain's chair long before Anson Mount made us ecstatic to see that happen.

Burnham's path to the helm's command begins with what should be a life- and career-ending mistake. It's constantly defined by humility and doubt. No one is harder on Burnham than she is on herself — and nobody takes as many risks with their career or reputation to keep their crew alive. Her optimism is one guided by the hope that all obstacles can be overcome and all outcomes are possible, including for herself.

Despite all of this, it will take a lot of convincing for some people to consider Burnham among the top ranks of Starfleet captains in those occasional fan polls that tend to place Jean-Luc Picard or James T. Kirk in the top positions, though Captain Pike has offered stiff competition since "Strange New Worlds" first aired.

But our relatively newfound love of Pike and that show wouldn't be possible without "Discovery" venturing into the unmapped asteroid field that is the public's willingness to boldly go back to a dormant franchise in a wildly disunified era.

This doesn't merely refer to the role of "Discovery" introducing Mount's Pike, in addition to launching every other new "Trek" spinoff along with the streaming service currently known as Paramount+ . It did all this along with shouldering the more precarious mission of serving as the franchise's vanguard in a cynical age.

If you love "Lower Decks" and "Strange New Worlds," this is in part due to the producers' listening to the fandom's programming desires accordingly. Notice, for example, how unlike the first season of "Picard"  is from the third . Initially, "Picard" tried to do something different with the beloved character. It ended his adventures by reassembling the band for the spectacular last ride their films denied them. The new "Star Trek" series have a goal of delivering something for everyone, including kids. "Discovery" helped its custodians figure that out.

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And if you love "Discovery," its devotion to showcasing those who long felt unseen in this franchise may kindle that affection. "Discovery" gave us an Asian woman as a Starship captain in Michelle Yeoh's Philippa Georgiou and a happily married duo to root for in Wilson Cruz's Dr. Hugh Culber in Anthony Rapp's Paul Stamets.

It introduced Tig Notaro in its second season as Jett Reno, a decision for which everyone should be grateful. The third gave us the franchise's first transgender and non-binary characters in Ian Alexander's Trill Gray and Blu del Barrio's Adira Tal.

Through it all, we have also entirely fallen for Mary Wiseman's Sylvia Tilly, a woman who also knew a few things about self-doubt and, therefore, values being understood.

What some would cite as humanizing traits, others might write off as maudlin, along with the fact that Burnham was able to experience a fully realized love affair that began with a partnership of equals with a courier named Booker (David Ajala).

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter , Crash Course.

It's only one of the many ways that "Discovery" is consciously disparate from "Star Trek" as we have long known it, daring to change everything from the look of the Klingons to its star character's role in igniting a war between them and the United Federation of Planets.

That was then. Hundreds of years after that moment, Captain Burnham has figured herself out, proving to the many who doubted her that she deserves to be there.

She has traveled the longest road through imposter syndrome of any Starfleet captain — most of a millennium, actually — and we have witnessed every major moment that forged her. Burnham may never win the major "Star Trek" popularity contests for favorite captains, but without a doubt, she's the last great one we may ride with in this universe.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Discovery" stream Thursdays on Paramount +.

stories about "Star Trek"

• "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" considers the weight of Khan's wrathful legacy
• How "Strange New Worlds" uses Rebecca Romijn's Number One to place prejudice on trial
• "Pike made jambalaya": How "Strange New Worlds" Captain Pike expresses care and diplomacy with food

Melanie McFarland is Salon's award-winning senior culture critic. Follow her on Twitter: @McTelevision

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