Posted in: Audio Dramas, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek, Star Trek: Khan

Star Trek: Khan Composers on Elevating Legacies of Space Seed & TWOK

Star Trek: Khan composers Marcus and Sam Bagala spoke with us about seeking inspiration from both within and outside of the franchise.

When composers Marcus & Sam Bagala were recruited to score the audio drama Star Trek: Khan, it was a dream come true since the brothers grew up on the franchise. The podcast's nature presented a challenge unlike anything they encountered before: how do you create an original theme for a group without any basis in Starfleet, since the 59-year history of the Trek franchise typically involved a Federation character? Khan Noonien Singh was never in Starfleet, but emerged as arguably The Original Series' greatest villain with his introduction in the season one episode "Space Seed" and solidified that status with the franchise's most successful film to date in The Wrath of Khan (1982). With director Nicholas Meyer back in the fold with help from franchise writers Kirsten Beyer and David Mack, the story fills in the gap on Ceti Alpha V in a tale of survival, tragedy, and ultimately, revenge. The Bagalas spoke to Bleeding Cool about their Trek roots, how they honored TOS composer Alexander Courage and TWOK composer James Horner's work in the podcast, and finding the perfect theme for Khan (Naveen Andrews), Marla (Wrenn Schmidt), and the Augments.

Star Trek: Khan Composers on Navigating Through Uncharted Territory on a Non-Federation Centric Story

What intrigued you about 'Star Trek: Khan', and how did you guys get involved?

Marcus: Yeah, so I have been involved in various ways with the project for quite a while. I was working with director Fred Greenhalgh on several projects around the time this one was starting to get off the ground. I've written an early piece of music when they were pitching the project that ended up sticking to it and made it all the way to the score that folks are going to hear in the podcast.

Sam and I both grew up watching 'Star Trek' with our parents. We watched 'Voyager' weekly and watched all the movies on weekends with our parents, so we've been Star Trek fans our whole lives. With this project, it's Kahn! 'The Wrath of Khan' is such an amazing, iconic film, and obviously, Nick Meyer is a genius, and it was exciting to get the chance to play in his world and in the world of Star Trek. We have this golden opportunity to explore it and contribute to that world in our own way. Do you have anything else you want to add to that?

Sam: No, you said it. [Marcus laughs]. I'll say more on other things, yeah.

When you guys approached the project, was it a blend of inspiration from the way Alexander Courage handled 'Space Seed,' and how you might blend that in with James Horner's 'The Wrath of Khan' score? Or did you want to take a more organic approach to both scores?

Marcus: Sam, do you want to talk about the Starfleet thing?

Sam: I was going to say it's all those things you just mentioned, Tom. One of the first things we did was compile a huge Spotify playlist, which had tons of Trek scores. What was also great was that we pulled out from films outside of the Trek world entirely, because we love these sounds. One thing with this project is that the point of view is not from Starfleet, so when you look at the whole canon, it's usually from the point of view of Starfleet. In this instance, we have Khan, who is this notorious villain and not going to have Starfleet music, which most would associate with, so we wanted to create that new…Marcus, if you want to speak to that.

Marcus: When you're thinking about how you use music in a film or a podcast, you want to key into the point of view of the storytelling. It felt like we were listening to all these great past Star Trek scores, like with 'Space Seed' and 'The Wrath of Khan, but all these other scores too. The thing that wasn't quite clicking was that these characters don't have this. They're not part of Starfleet and don't have the same code of conduct.

There's quite a different vibe to it, and we wanted to key into the fact that, like we often hear Khan's inner thoughts as he's recording audio logs. He's thinking about this and thinking about that, and we're in his head, so we wanted to make sure that the music felt like Star Trek, because this is a Star Trek project. Also, we wanted to bring a little something different to it, because we don't know if this point of view has ever been seen in a Star Trek project where it's not based around Starfleet characters. It's certainly not typical, so we are trying to find that line that still feels like Star Trek, but also brings a little bit of a new POV, whether that was the instruments that we're using or how we're using them, the types of themes and modes. It was a full audit of the stylistic things we could do.

In general, the way the Khan and the Augments are, the closest thing I think that compares is the Klingons in the sense that they're a proud, conquering warrior race. However, in previous canon, we've only seen this villain on the surface. How did you approach tapping his humanity? There are parts where he galvanizes his people as their leader, but must make those hard choices. How do you evoke his leadership?

Marcus: A lot of it just came from the story that Nick Meyer wrote, and then Kirsten and David took that and turned it into the series. They spent so much time and thought crafting a character who is complex, flawed, heroic at times, and villainous at other times. More of the things we were listening to informed us of our approach to the story, the music, and how the music helped tell the story. There were a couple of things we landed on. Did you hear any of the podcast?

The first four episodes.

Marcus: I'd say interestingly, the characters around Khan became the human aspect of it, specifically his relationship with Marla McGivers. She represents this human awakening in him, and so our music for her, we wanted to feel warm, and more evocative of the traditional Starfleet and Star Trek music. There's some instrumentation like we used, like Celesta and Vibraphone together, combined with horns and some other tonalities that felt more Trekkie to us to bring that humanity. It was more about the characters that were around him than specifically having a more human quality. Khan is still a type of human, but it's more about that and how other characters shape him.

Sam: I'll say for Kahn specifically, we settled on solo cello. What's amazing about the cello is that it has such an incredible range as an instrument, and it's so incredibly evocative and powerful. We had a wonderful cellist, who we stayed with throughout the series [for his theme], among other things.

The premiere episode of Star Trek: Khan, which also features the voices of Sonya Cassidy, Tim Russ, Olli Haaskivi, Maury Sterling, Mercy Malick, Zuri Washington, and George Takei, is now available with new episodes on Mondays through November 3rd.

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