Thursday, May 14, 2009

Star Trek: The Musical

Wait... did I say Star Trek Month was over? I have one more thing to post... videos of all the Star Trek captains singing! Let's see if I can actually pull this off:

Captain Kirk / William Shatner (The Original Series)
Finding footage of Shatner singing is easy. As Captain Kirk, not so much. But that's ok since it's pretty much impossible to separate the two anyway. Though, I guess you can't really call what he does "singing" so much as "talking slowly and passionately with some music in the background." Whatever it is... it's something. It is sad there were no episodes of Star Trek where Kirk sang, but this is close enough:




Jean Luc-Picard / Patrick Stewart (Next Generation)
If you're on a show that lasts seven seasons, at some point you're going to have to sing a song. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a clip of Picard singing that drinking song from the episode Allegiance (yeah, that's right), so I have to imbed this clip from Insurrection instead:



But this is even better:




Benjamin Sisko / Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine)

Here is one of my all time favorite scenes from Deep Space Nine. I don't think it needs any comment:




Kathryn Janeway / Kate Mulgrew (Voyager)

I can't think of any episodes of Voyager where Janeway sang, so I did a generic youtube search. This is the best I could find:




Jonathan Archer / Scott Bakula (Enterprise)
Scott Bakula is actually a pretty good singer, but I don't think Captain Archer ever sang on Enterprise. But Sam Beckett used to sing all the damn time. This was my favorite:

Somewhere in the Night/Scott Bakula



Bonus Videos

Just for fun, here are some videos of the various crew members singing. By no means is this any attempt at a complete or comprehensive list of all Star Trek music moments. These are just a few of my favorites.

Vic Fontaine / James Darren (Deep Space Nine)
Vic used to sing all the time on DS9. He was a lounge singer, after all. Those were always fun scenes, but this one is my all time favorite. This is from one of the very few good Holodeck-themed episodes. What's especially awesome about this clip is that, taken out of context, it becomes the weirdest music video of all time. Check it out:




The Doctor / Robert Picardo (Voyager)
Bad show, but the Doctor was always awesome:




Mr Data / Brent Spiner (Next Generation)
Brent Spiner actually has a few albums out where he sings some old standards, and he has a fairly decent voice, if you're into that sort of thing. Here are a couple funny little bits:






Kira / Nana Visitor (Deep Space Nine)
Of course I'm going to include this one! Vic's intro is far better than anything I could write, so let's just get to it:




Odo / Rene Auberjonois (Deep Space Nine)
From the same episode as the one above, this is just a cute little moment:




Uhura / Nichelle Nichols & Mr Spock . Leonard Nimoy (The Original Series)

And here's the first Trek musical sequence that started it all rolling, and it's still the best:



And even though Shatner is the most famous Star Trek "singer," the work of Leonard Nimoy goes woefully unappreciated. Here are some highlights:





3 comments:

tep said...

i could listen to patrick stewart sing all day long. voice of an angel, that one.

Justin Garrett Blum said...

A few comments:

The Gilbert & Sullivan scene in Insurrection is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I love that little head shake that Worf gives when Picard tries to rouse him to sing along.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Avery Brooks can sing, though I _am_ surprised he hits such sweet baritone notes.

Not having any notion of the context of that Nog montage, that clip blew my mind. I had absolutely no idea what I was watching there.

Donald said...

It's from the episode... Papermoon, I think. Or It's Only a Papermoon. Or something like that. It's worth watching.

After Nog gets his leg blown off during a battle in the Dominion War, he decides to live on the Holodeck in the Vic Fontaine program. And who wouldn't?

Still... I wish they'd play that video as is on MTV sometime. I love it.

And Avery Brooks can do anything. There's a clip on Youtube where he's at a convention and somebody asks him to sing, so he does this really weird version of "If Ever I Would Leave You," that starts out really slow but then gets louder and dramatic as it goes on. Check it out.