The third season premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Grounded,” released for streaming on Paramount+ beginning on Thursday, August 25th, 2022, features plenty of allusions to every corner of the Star Trek universe, as expected. But one of the most exciting references plays an angle you’d never expect: Jerry Goldsmith’s work scoring a Disney theme park ride. While the allusion might seem farfetched initially, in the context of the episode, it’s crystal California Class clear!

Goldsmith was an Academy Award-winning composer whose work over several decades crossed into many genres of movies. His music was featured in well-renowned movies like 1968’s Planet of the Apes, 1982’s Poltergeist, and both 1984’s Gremlins and 1990’s Gremlins 2. His music also played a significant role in the Star Trek franchise. He scored 1980’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, for which he was nominated for (but did not win) an Oscar. And in 1987, Dennis McCarthy’s arrangement of Goldsmith’s theme from that movie, combined with the theme for Star Trek: The Original Series by Alexander Courage, was used for the theme song for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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That wasn’t Goldsmith’s only contribution to the music of the Trek franchise, either. He composed the theme for Star Trek: Voyager in 1995, which would earn him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Music. And with his eldest son, Joel Goldsmith, he composed the score for the 1996 feature film Star Trek: First Contact.

The Flight of the Phoenix

     Paramount+

In the Lower Decks episode “Grounded,” the Lower Deckers travel to Bozeman, Montana (also the home of Cowboy Captain Christopher Pike), where they visit an amusement park at the site Vulcans made first contact with humans, events depicted in First Contact. Throughout this sequence of the episode, the score from the movie is used.

When the Lower Deckers get in line to board the Phoenix experience, the queue resembles a real-life line for a ride at Disney’s California Adventure: Soarin’ Over California, now just called Soarin’. This ride’s queue depicts the early history of flight and features video monitors through which characters deliver messages to waiting guests, just like in Lower Decks. But why pay homage to this ride in the episode? It isn’t just because the Cerritos is California Class. It’s also because Jerry Goldsmith’s long list of musical compositions includes the score for Soarin’ Over California.

New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available for streaming on Paramount+ on Thursdays.