Star Trek: Discovery composer Jeff Russo says scoring season 3 has been “extremely time consuming” and “extremely fulfilling”

Star Trek: Discovery composer Jeff Russo (middle right) in a Comic-Con@Home panel moderated by Mary Chieffo (bottom left)

Looking back to last week’s Star Trek Universe Comic-Con@Home panel, one thing some fans were hoping for (but did not get) was a release date for Star Trek: Discovery season three. While promotional materials still say “2020” and we know that Star Trek: Lower Decks will be finishing on October 8th, CBS All Access still has yet to confirm just when we’ll get to see Burnham et al in action once again.

However, yesterday, TrekMovie reported that in a different Comic-Con@Home panel, composer Jeff Russo gave some insight into how post-production for the latest series is coming along. Russo participated in the “Behind the Music” panel, which also featured composers Sean Callery from Homeland, Maggie Phillips from Fargo, Torin Borrowdale from Locke & Key, Amanda Jones from Twenties, and Nathaniel Blume from Prodigal Son. The panel was moderated by Star Trek’s own Mary Chieffo.

Russo described the painstaking process of scoring Discovery from home. He explained: “We had to put together a remote orchestra [...] which is 40 people all in their bedrooms or all in their garages. All of them talking to my engineer about where to put the mic, what mic to use. How to do this and how to do that to get the most out of that sound, so we can take all 40 of those performances and edit them together.”

While Russo did not offer any hints about when the job might be finished, he did take a positive attitude toward the process, saying it “has been EXTREMELY time consuming and extremely complicated but it has been also extremely fulfilling.”

You can catch up on seasons one and two of Star Trek: Discovery now on CBS All Access. And if you’d like to hear some of Russo’s previous work, the Discovery season one and Discovery season two soundtracks, along with Star Trek: Picard’s season one soundtrack, you can find those on Amazon.com, Apple Music, or wherever you get your music.