This is the author's accepted manuscript, and the publisher's official version is available electronically from: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.06.12.2/mto.06.12.2.murphy.htmlIn the 2002 film Treasure Planet, composer James Newton Howard accompanies the primary shot of the
titular orb with an undulation between two major triads a tritone apart. I offer three approaches to
understanding the appropriateness of this image/music pairing. First, I present several scenes from
recent Hollywood films that conspicuously combine this triadic progression with settings of, or objects
from, outer space. Second, I relay ways in which the intrinsic harmonic and voice-leading characteristics
of this triadic progression invoke the concepts of great distance, ambiguity, and unfamiliarity. Third, I
conclude with a more thorough study of Howard's harmonic language in the score for Treasure Planet,
suggesting that this progression and the scene it accompanies represents the culmination of musical and
visual/narrative processes, respectively
