"London Calling" by Michael Giacchino

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a big fan of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. That said, I'm a definite fan of Michael Giacchino's score for the film. Building upon a fantastic score from STAR TREK (2009), Giacchino adds in a number of themes while expanding and tweaking existing material.

One of the more striking cues comes early in the film, where we see a young girl who appears to be gravely ill. Ultimately we see her father make a deal with John Harriso-er-Khan. Giacchino chooses to score these sequences with a very minimal orchestration largely focused on piano. Not only is it one of the few uses of solo piano in all of Star Trek, it powerfully underscores the tragedy of someone having their grief exploited to the point where he agrees to do something awful (and sacrifice himself in the process) to save his daughter's life.