As the show’s composer, Jeff Russo, later said, he was reviewing this scene back when it only had temp music in it. His memory was a bit fuzzy, but he recalled that “maybe Tilly was listening to some music or something.” At this point, the Star Trek composer had a great idea that he ran by Alex Kurtzman: he wanted to do “an eight-bit electronic version” of the show’s theme song.
It’s easy to overlook the presence of the Star Trek: Discovery theme song in this scene, and that’s by design: as Russo described it, he wanted to “sneak the main theme in,” and it would go mostly unnoticed because it “doesn’t sound like our score” and “it’s not very like our show to have this moment.”