Star Trek star helps bring music of franchise to WSO

John de Lancie knows a thing or two about obsessive fandoms.

“Back in the ’60s, and I certainly grew up in that, there was one fandom: sports. Those of us who read sci-fi and what have you, we were very much of a subculture, and Star Trek … provided a shade, a tent,” he says.

These days, the Hollywood actor — who reprises his iconic role as the mischievous Q in 60 Years of Star Trek & Beyond, presented by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra tonight — is no stranger to the Trekkie circuit.

And he’ll be meeting at least a few Trekkies tonight, as the WSO’s concert delves deep into the franchise’s musical heritage and lore. 60 Years of Star Trek & Beyond weaves the famous classical themes that inspired Star Trek’s sound with music from the franchise itself, along with new compositions by Nick DiBerardino, who joins de Lancie onstage for a theatrical and philosophical back-and-forth.

But a few years ago, de Lancie struck an unexpected relationship with a more avant-garde current of fandom nerds: bronies. Endlessly memed and mocked, and the subject of at least a couple of docs, bronies refer to mostly adult males smitten with a TV show targeted not just at kids, but mostly young girls: My Little Pony.

De Lancie’s distinguished resumé includes voicing Discord on MLP, a reality-warping prankster directly inspired by Star Trek’s Q. He was ambivalent at first about the bronies.

“A friend of mine said, oh, my God, what a strange community this is,’” says de Lancie. “But I got into that (fandom) frankly because he sent me a thing from Fox News where they said bronies were the latest degradation in our society, a bunch of homosexuals who live at home on food stamps and disability checks so that they can watch TV in their parents’ basement. I thought, ‘Oh, this so hateful.’”

De Lancie says that where there are always a few fanatics in any given fandom, his experience with those who show up to conventions for hit TV programs he played a role in, like Breaking Bad, Stargate SG-1, Star Trek and My Little Pony, have mostly been very positive.

“All of these fandoms have the same thing. They start out by people needing some shelter,” says de Lancie.

All the same, when DiBerardino — a Rhodes scholar and a passionate Trekkie — approached de Lancie at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where a performance of his Star Trek-inspired work Darmok & Jalad was about to unfold, he had a little trouble finding his words.

“He said, ‘I’m doing one of my pieces, and it’s called Darmok & Jalad.’ I had no idea what he was talking about, and I could see that he was crestfallen,” says de Lancie about DiBerardino’s piece, which references an especially famous Star Trek episode — ironically, itself about linguistic confusion between humans and aliens.

“My piece is about celebrating the achievement of shared understanding, especially when it’s difficult,” explains DiBerardino.

But the music’s emotion clicked with de Lancie once the orchestra began playing.

“When I listened to it, I went, ‘Oh, this is really good music. I mean, this is really good music.’ And after the show, I said, ‘Listen, are you interested in writing any more pieces which are inspired?’”

A creative friendship was struck.

To make the path to the WSO’s Star Trek show more circuitous, de Lancie — who clearly has a knack for finding his way into musical collaborations — had seen the orchestra, while working in Winnipeg, when he decided to take in a Saturday performance of Prokofiev.

“I walked away going, ‘Wow, that was really good. This is a really good symphony orchestra,’” he says.

Someone on the WSO’s staff recognized de Lancie, and though he’s “a little foggy” on how it all came together, by 2023 he was onstage at Centennial Concert Hall, lending his voice as a narrator to Grieg’s Peer Gynt.

He seems especially jazzed for 60 Years of Star Trek & Beyond — and DiBerardino has clearly found his voice.

“What I love about writing music about music that’s inspired by Star Trek, is it’s really rich intellectual territory. Star Trek asks philosophical questions about the reasons that we are here and how humanity can become better,” says DiBerardino.

Sometimes treated as the more cerebral, progressive counterpart to Star Wars, the Star Trek universe, where technocratic debates often stall squabbles and crises before weapons are drawn, has also arguably been the more prescient of the two.

It has anticipated, and in some cases helped inspire, certain now commonplace household gadgetry — from mobile phones, tablet computers and beyond — decades in advance.

But at a moment when some of the world’s most powerful (and Machiavellian) figures rise from the tech sector with messianic promises of a brave new world, does Star Trek’s techno-optimism hold up?

“One of the things for me that I particularly love about Star Trek is it’s optimistic in its view of what’s possible and of who people might become,” says de Lancie.

“(But) one of the reasons in which the script (of 60 Years of Star Trek & Beyond) is written the way it is: it’s a dialogue. It’s a Socratic dialogue to the extent that it asks questions. It does not present answers. I just thought it was important in this world during this time.”

conrad.sweatman@winnipegfreepress.com