Refrigerator Moment: Star Trek 2

Since Star Trek has been in the news lately as the re-boot starts shooting this month, I've been in a few discussions recently about the cult show. I have to say, the new Spock looks good with the ears, even if the whole cast is a little 90210 for my taste.

Anyways, Star Trek is home to one of my favorite "Refrigerator Moments." For the uninitiated, a "Refrigerator Moment," is after you've seen the movie, enjoyed it and gone to bed, you get up for a glass of water. While the refrigerator door is open you think to yourself "wait a minute, what was THAT about?"

Here's my favorite Star Trek refrigerator moment. At the end of Star Trek 2, Spock has died saving the Enterprise and they shoot him into space, on a photon torpedo, into the planet pumped up on Genesis, while Amazing Grace plays on the bagpipes in the background. It's a very effective scene with a infinitely mockable Shatner moment.

"He was the most...sniffle....Human."

Real men don't cry, even over a Vulcan.

Anyways, my moment came when I got up, opened the fridge and thought "wait...why are the playing a traditional Christian hymn on the Scottish bagpipes for a Vulcan funeral?" Surely the planet Vulcan has it's own customs, it's own songwriters. There must be a pointy eared Lee Greenwood on Vulcan, going on and on about how we may bleed blue but our ears stay sharp, or something like that. Was "Amazing Grace" for the crew's benefit? For Kirk's? If so, how selfish. They're not slowly rotting, ready to be fired into the great beyond on an instrument of Klingon destruction. Nimoy ate radiation like Shatner eats doughnuts for God's sake, give the Vulcan a Vulcan song and kick Scotty's ass if he goes near those bagpipes again.

I guess, at the end of the day it's for the audience. They couldn't just play something Jerry Goldsmith pulled out of his ass.

I wonder what else they could do, using their musical selection criteria. How about "Flight of the Valkeries" as Praxis explodes? Maybe the Doors "The Other Side" as the Enterprise traveled back through time?

Or maybe I should just shut the fridge and go to bed.