Picard Season 3 Took A ‘Brutal’ Toll On The Series’ Composer

“Star Trek” is typically more music-forward than a lot of TV shows currently airing, so Barton had his work cut out for him; it was essentially five features worth of sound, all needed on a TV schedule. Barton also wanted to make sure themes weren’t reused too much, requiring just that much more composition. He described the project thus: 

“We decided we were going to try to score all of it which meant writing seven hours of music. […] think about four hours in I was literally dead, absolutely. I was doing seven days weeks, 16-hour days, I hadn’t seen my family. It was absolutely brutal.”

Showrunner Terry Matalas was the one to notice that Barton was burning about a bit. By the time he had completed the first six of the season’s episodes, Barton must have looked like death on legs, as Matalas suggested he take a break and allow another composer — one who wasn’t about to drop from exhaustion — take his place. It seems that Frederik Wiedmann was game to pick up where Barton needed to leave off, but also that he almost missed the offer because of his e-mail spam filter. Wiedmann, also speaking at the Deadline event, said: 

“I almost missed that email that was supposed to reach me because it ended up in my spam folder from my website email contact form. […] It took me a week to finally see that, which was quite mortifying: Start this day, here’s episode seven, and go.”

And go they did.