"The First of Many" by Ron Jones

I’ll just say it: Ron Jones is my favorite composer from the early TNG era.

I know he gets flack from some for his #SpaceTingles and all that, but I’ve always enjoyed the way he approached every episode he scored as though it were its own movie. He would develop themes (partly what got him fired) with each story having its own distinct style.

In Season 2’s “Q Who?” which introduced Star Trek fans to that arch-enemy The Borg, Jones would write motifs and ideas that would later find their way into his epic score for “The Best of Both Worlds,” a season later.

For the cue “The First of Many” which is played over the crew’s first encounter with a member of the Borg Collective in engineering, Jones plays an unsettling synth ostinato thoughout as the Borg scout pokes around inside of Enterprise’s computer system. Jones introduces a play on the Alexander Courage fanfare before ramping the ostinato up another level and then brings in some low pedal synth chords that would be at home in a John Carpenter score. He also introduces a descending motif to represent the ship and crew.

The cue closes out with the same ostinato and pedal chords with odd percussive elements added that would also find their way into “The Best of Both Worlds.” All in all, an unsettling track that is a great example of Ron Jones’s use of synth in TNG.