Category: Star Trek

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2009 Film S Soundtracks Star Trek

Star Trek – music by Michael Giacchino

Star Trek - music by Michael GiacchinoThe moment that it was announced that J.J. Abrams would be taking the helm of the Enterprise for its next big-screen voyage, the first thought that entered my head wasn’t a question of loving or hating the movie over a year in advance; rather, it was “I hope Michael Giacchino is doing the music.” It actually would’ve been a massive surprise – bigger than any on-screen plot twist imaginable – if that hadn’t turned out to be the case: Giacchino’s music has accompanied Alias and Lost on TV, and Mission: Impossible III on film, all projects headed up by Abrams. Furthermore, with non-Abrams films like Speed Racer, Ratatouille and The Incredibles (whose music earned an Oscar nomination), Giacchino has proven himself to be at the forefront of a new generation of composers, and certainly a dependable one.

The question is: can he handle the final frontier? The Star Trek franchise has seen – and heard – some of the very best works of talents such as Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, and some of the TV music hasn’t been bad either. Star Trek has established themes aplenty and a rich musical legacy – a lot for even an A-list composer take on. From the opening notes of his score album for the new Star Trek film, Giacchino makes it clear that he’s trying to forge his own path. The score does incorporate the immortal Alexander Courage theme, but not right at the beginning. A rather low-key, somber theme opens the movie, says its piece and gets off the stage very quickly. It’s not entirely unlike – but also not madly similar to – the unusual opening numbers of Star Trek VI and Star Trek Nemesis, and it certainly sets a different tone, shortly before doing the musical equivalent of crashing into something abruptly.

This theme recurs throughout the selections presented here, and though its first statement is somewhat downbeat, it’s driven through major keys and triumphant arrangements as well. “Nailin’ The Kelvin”, a cue accompanying a chaotic early scene in the film in which James T. Kirk is literally born in battle, features this theme in a bittersweet rendition, while “Enterprising Young Men” turns the motif into a bold anthem. A simple but menacing theme for Nero, the movie’s villain, surfaces in “Nero Sighted”, which also brings some of Giacchino’s trademark dissonant action music to the fore (one of the few places where I honestly listened to the soundtrack and thought, “Hey, that sounds a bit like Lost”). More Giacchino action music signatures can be found in “Run And Shoot Offense”, which also introduces a vaguely Eastern motif, and “Nero Death Experience”, which features a rare (for a Star Trek film score) choral interlude or two and resolves to a triumphant statement of the main theme before layering it into a boisterous action cue.

But there really aren’t many places where the Star Trek score is a dead ringer for Lost. Whether it’s a larger orchestral ensemble at Giacchino’s disposal, or a different approach to orchestration, the score is very, very traditional Hollywood blockbuster – at times, it reminds me more of John Williams than anything. Electronics seem to be kept under a tight rein, and the most exotic the selections on the album really get is a lonely ehru motif for Spock’s alien heritage. (Science fiction TV and film scores may be the ehru’s best friend in western music – see/hear also the new Battlestar Galactica and Earth: Final Conflict.)

And the original series theme as composed by Alexander Courage? Its opening fanfare makes a triumphant comeback in “To Boldly Go”, and the end credit suite then takes up a glorious full statement of the entire theme from start to finish, with a very pleasing arrangement that balances the French horns just right – sounding very much like Courage’s original orchestration, except with a full choir standing in for the soprano solo of the original theme. Over the considerable length of the end credit suite, Giacchino weaves Courage’s theme into his own material repeatedly, including one incredibly clever section where he demonstrates that the new movie’s theme can fit inside the original series theme as a running counterpoint composition, melding with the Courage theme and not straining against it. Gorgeous and very well thought-out.

4 out of 4Some fans may be a little displeased that the entire score isn’t constantly calling back the themes of the original series and movies, but why should it? It’s clear from the outset that this is a different Star Trek, with fundamental changes made to select parts of the underlying premise. It’s still about James T. Kirk and Spock and the Enterprise and her gallant crew, but the movie spins these basic conceits into a different direction – and yet not not a drastically different one, just a way to open up new stories in a universe whose cat’s cradle of continuity had, by the time the last TV series ended, become almost too tangled for its own good. And if there is room for new Star Trek stories, then there’s room for new Star Trek music – and one gets the hint, during the end credits, that the next movie’s music might have a slightly more familiar feel to it. Judging by this album, hopefully Michael Giacchino will be giving the next movie its sound too. Star Trek probably isn’t what most Trek soundtrack fans are expecting – but maybe that’s not a bad thing.

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  1. Star Trek (1:03)
  2. Nailin’ The Kelvin (2:09)
  3. Labor Of Love (2:51)
  4. Hella Bar Talk (1:55)
  5. Enterprising Young Men (2:39)
  6. Nero Sighted (3:23)
  7. Nice To Meld You (3:13)
  8. Run And Shoot Offense (2:04)
  9. Does It Still McFly? (2:03)
  10. Nero Death Experience (5:38)
  11. Nero Fiddles, Narada Burns (2:34)
  12. Back From Black (:59)
  13. That New Car Smell (4:46)
  14. To Boldly Go (:26)
  15. End Credits (9:11)

Released by: Varese Sarabande
Release date: 2009
Total running time: 44:52

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Categories
2007 S Soundtracks Star Trek Television

Sliders – Music By Dennis McCarthy

3 min read

Released through composer Dennis McCarthy’s web site, the music from the first and last episodes of the first season of Fox’s 1995 SF series Sliders will probably sound familiar to fans of McCarthy’s Star Trek work. It’s more of the same of McCarthy’s signature style, though it’s just possible that he gets to cut loose a bit more here – there are more action setpieces in the music than one would expect to find in the average episode of Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. This CD includes selections from the two episodes McCarthy scored in the first season – the two-hour pilot movie and the season finale Luck Of The Draw.

McCarthy’s trademark foreboding style is all over the pilot; with the exception of a few more exciting than usual action cues, much of his pilot score might as well be a Star Trek score, if a slightly more energetic one than usual. Cues like “The Ice Tornado” are big, bustling action cues of precisely the kind that executive producer Rick Berman discouraged at nearly all costs on Trek; fortunately, though, this isn’t Trek.

McCarthy splits the difference between his orchestral style and something a bit more contemporary with the cues from Luck Of The Draw, the first season finale episode which involved a parallel Earth that uses lotttery-selected suicide as a means of population control. For action cues that don’t have to musically illustrate that society, McCarthy slips back into full orchestral mode, again a little more boisterously than he generally would’ve been allowed to be in that other SF universe.

The rest of the first season was scored by Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo fame), who also composed the series’ main theme; his contributions don’t appear here.

Wrapping up the Sliders CD is a McCarthy original, “Past, Present & Future Suite”, which combines a wild electric guitar intro with some of the composer’s favorite Trek cues, including the heroic opening from the second season opener The Child, and some completely original “rock” material. The opening minute or so of this piece is just awe-inspiring, but its more contemporary middle section peters out about before getting back to business. Still, it’s basically a piece of Next Generation music that hasn’t been heard elsewhere, which is why I’ve got this in the database as a Star Trek soundtrack.

3 out of 4The Sliders soundtrack is an interesting piece of work, and fans of his work (or even listeners who thought he was playing action sequences awfully tame on Star Trek) will probably dig it, whether they’ve seen the show in question or not.

  1. Main Title (1:38)
  2. The Wormhole (1:56)
  3. The First Slide (4:42)
  4. The Ice World (3:16)
  5. Ice Tornado (4:11)
  6. Strange Land (3:33)
  7. The Rescue (2:23)
  8. Wade’s Death? (1:46)
  9. Sliders Escape (2:28)
  10. Interlude (1:11)
  11. Finale / End Credits (1:38)
  12. Slide In (0:29)
  13. A New World (1:15)
  14. The Girl’s Suicide (2:51)
  15. Jail Break (2:26)
  16. Wade In Danger (1:23)
  17. Slide Out / Quinn Shot (3:12)
  18. Past, Present And Future Suite (2:40)

Released by: Dennis McCarthy
Release date: 2007
Total running time: 42:58

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Categories
2007 S Soundtracks Star Trek Video Game / Computer Game

Star Trek: Borg – music by Dennis McCarthy

Star Trek: BorgComposed to accompany the 1996 CD-ROM game Star Trek: Borg, the music on this CD was recently released by Dennis McCarthy, who also composed more episodes of the various Star Trek spinoffs than anyone else. However, if you’re expecting more of that relatively sedate sound here, you may be in for a shock. Star Trek: Borg may have looked like a television episode, what with John de Lancie starring and Jonathan Frakes directing, but freed from the restrictions usually placed on the scoring of Star Trek TV episodes, the music is quite a bit more involved than you may be expecting.

While Borg lacked the restrictions of the TV series’ music, it also lacked the budget that the TV series – at least in 1996 – lavished on music. McCarthy relies on frequent-flyer collaborator Kevin Kiner to bring his orchestrated score to life, and if there’s really a weak point with the Borg soundtrack, that’s where it is, but more due to the state of synthesizer/sequencer technology than the talent involved. (McCarthy and Kiner collaborated on many future projects where their music had to be synthesized instead of played by a real orchestra, including McCarthy’s Stargate SG-1 scores and, ultimately, the reduced-budget final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.) The orchestral textures just aren’t quite “real,” though it’s no exaggeration to say that the technology to achieve this has improved by leaps and bounds since 1996.

The style is also very different from McCarthy’s usual Trek “house style,” with some of the short cues almost resembling some of Jerry Goldsmith’s “spacedock” music from the first Star Trek movie (including one cue explicitly labeled “Goldsmith Has Been Assimilated”). The synth-chorus as a signature sound for the Borg is also revived here as well. There’s a recurring “orchestral stab” sound also used in conjunction with the Borg, but without the accompanying visuals, this makes the music sound like a late ’80s/early ’90s horror movie score. There are a few hints of McCarthy’s trademark panoramic chords from his TV Treks, but overall it’s very different.

The final three tracks are comprised of music McCarthy created for the “Borg Invasion 4-D” ride at the Las Vegas Hilton’s Star Trek Experience, and there’s a huge world of difference here (then again, we’re talking about an 8-year gap). The Borg Invasion suites are some of the most invigorating music I’ve heard from Dennis McCarthy, sounding both more like his usual Trek TV music and less like it (with pulsating guitar samples and almost Matrix-y passages) at the same time. The series would’ve benefitted tremendously from allowing him to cut loose on the music like this.

One can only hope that maybe the composer can sneak out some of the better examples of his Star Trek TV music on CD in private pressings like this, though from a rights perspective, there’s probably a vast difference 3 out of 4in doing that with this material and music composed for TV shows that are still, on DVD at least, a going concern. There are quite a few I could nominate (namely “The Homecoming” / “The Circle” / “The Siege” trilogy that opened Deep Space Nine’s second season) but only time will tell if Dennis McCarthy will keep sneaking gems from the Star Trek music archives out of the vaults for us. At the time of this writing, Star Trek: Borg is still available from the composer’s web site.

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  1. Main Theme (1:02)
  2. The Legend Of The Borg (1:24)
  3. Battle At Wolf 359 (2:58)
  4. The Battle Rages (0:58)
  5. Club Q (0:55)
  6. “I Am Berman Of Borg” (1:37)
  7. “Goldsmith Has Been Assimilated!” (1:37)
  8. “Welcome To The Collective, Cadet” (2:21)
  9. Searching The Borg Ship (2:21)
  10. Time Is Running Out (1:17)
  11. Escape From The Borg Collective (1:44)
  12. Borg Hell (2:03)
  13. “You Will Be Assimilated, Have A Nice Day” (2:21)
  14. “Resistance Is Futile, My Ass!” / Finale (7:28)
  15. End Titles (1:02)
  16. Borg Invasion Suite Part 1 (6:32)
  17. Borg Invasion Suite Part 2 (2:51)
  18. Borg Invasion Suite Part 3 (7:24)

Released by: DennisMcCarthy.com
Release date: 2007
Total running time: 48:21

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Categories
1997 S Soundtracks Star Trek Video Game / Computer Game

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

4 min read

This is an item that took years to track down for my soundtrack collection, and the history of Starfleet Command – and its rarity – is a story unto itself. Bearing the slightly inaccurate legend “Award-winning music from the composer of numerous TV series and Star Trek movies, Ron Jones” (Jones never scored a Trek movie, and over half of the CD’s music was composed by someone else), this CD is the soundtrack from the hit computer game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. But what’s with the rarity? Surely anything bearing the Star Trek name would be mass-marketed to a fault, wouldn’t it?

In 1998, indie label Sonic Images (started by Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream and at the time best known for its ongoing series of Babylon 5 “episodic” CDs, each containing the entire score to just one show), won the license to give the Starfleet Academy soundtrack a general release. And around the same time, Sony was prepping its nicely remastered and gorgeously packaged re-release on CD of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack, which had been out of print for several years.

But there was one other thing that happened in 1998 that nixed both of those releases: Paramount wanted to give priority to marketing the then-upcoming Star Trek: Insurrection. The studio told Sony and Sonic Images to hold their releases back; Sony later released The Motion Picture 2-CD set in 1999 (which worked better anyway, as that was the film’s 20th anniversary), but Sonic Images’ license was not renewed by Paramount. The label had a warehouse full of pressed CDs, and wanted to renew the license and release that inventory. But Paramount wouldn’t budge – and so Starfleet Academy‘s soundtrack, for most, never saw the light of day.

Rumors abounded about the cause of the cancellation, including the possibility that Rick Berman, who had input into Star Trek product licensing, nixed the release to retaliate against former Star Trek: The Next Generation composer Ron Jones’ less-than-flattering comments about his time on the series. Whatever the reason, the only copies of Starfleet Academy that made it into the public’s hands came in the form of premium offers, a limited edition run of the game which included the soundtrack CD, and advance copies of the CD sent out to video game and music journalists ahead of the Sonic Images release. With its cutscenes starring William Shatner and George Takei, and its lush musical score composed and conducted by someone who had actually been connected to the franchise, Starfleet Academy was something of a big deal at the time. Thus ends the tumultuous story of the soundtrack’s premature demise.

Where the music itself is concerned, the first ten tracks will be familiar to those who fondly recall Jones’ music from the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. His signature sound is sweeping, nautical, and dramatic, paying homage equally to the Star Trek film scores of James Horner and the late, great Jerry Goldsmith and melding those sensibilities nicely. Some of the passages of Starfleet Academy’s musical score are very reminiscent of Jones’ fourth-season Next Generation episode The Nth Degree, and it’s all great stuff – the sort of adventurous bombast that became verboten on the TV series, and yet makes the soundtrack for this computer game sound like a legitimate entry in the movie series.

Jones protegè Brian Luzietti provides the remainder of the music for Starfleet Academy, and while it’s interesting to hear someone attempt to reach toward the same style, some of Luzietti’s tracks don’t quite have the “oomph” of Jones’ music. Then again, that’s probably also a side effect of hearing the music outside of its intended medium – these things would probably Rating: 4 out of 4go unnoticed buried under the layers of sound effects and pre-recorded dialogue that typically accompany a computer game from the 1990s. Luzietti is at his best when he’s doing his own thing and not trying to meet Jones halfway stylistically, and some of his tracks are quite listenable indeed – and legitimately Trekkish, with throwbacks to the Alexander Courage fanfare for the original series.

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  1. Starfleet Academy Theme (4:07)
  2. Surrounded (2:22)
  3. Evasive Maneuvers (2:22)
  4. Exploring The Unknown (1:57)
  5. On The Edge (2:49)
  6. Crew Introduction (1:50)
  7. Red Alert (2:49)
  8. On To Victory (2:22)
  9. Discovery (1:59)
  10. No Way Out (2:22)
  11. To Stop The Vanguard (3:41)
  12. Personal Problems (0:40)
  13. Romulan Suicide (1:04)
  14. Kirk’s Briefing (1:19)
  15. Venturi Suite (3:03)
  16. Sneaking Instincts (1:21)
  17. The Vanguard’s Plans (1:35)
  18. Log – Looking Grim (1:04)
  19. Log – Mission Accomplished (1:04)
  20. Log – Situation Normal (1:05)
  21. Thoughts Before The Briefing (1:38)
  22. Forester – Captain Of The Enterprise (4:00)

Released by: Interplay Productions (1998 Sonic Images release cancelled)
Release date: 1997
Total running time: 46:44

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Categories
2002 Film S Soundtracks Star Trek

Star Trek: Nemesis – music by Jerry Goldsmith

3 min read

So help me, Jerry Goldsmith almost pulled it out of his hat with this one, very nearly giving Star Trek: Nemesis a completely unique musical score – note almost, as I found the ever-present theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (to say nothing of the recurring four-note Enterprise motif which Goldsmith has been recycling since Star Trek V‘s soundtrack) a bit grating. The bits in between, though, are what matter, and the sooner you can tune out Goldsmith’s reheated themes, the better – the dark recesses of Romulan intrigue make for some interesting musical exploration.

Note that I’m reviewing this soundtrack without having seen the movie (the CD hit the shelves two weeks ahead of the theatrical release date), and – as was the case with my somewhat cryptic review of the soundtrack from Star Wars Episode II – I’ve deliberately avoided exposure to anything except the movie trailers where Nemesis is concerned. I can’t tell you if the music fits the plot or the characters, and I certainly can’t comment on whether or not it melds with the action scenes. But I can tell you that the sense of building dread in most of Goldsmith’s score is a refreshing change of pace, reminding me in some ways of Cliff Eidelman’s criminally underrated music from Star Trek VI. There’s a nice surge of dark power, and a much darker, more desperate edge to some of the action cues (“Lateral Run”).

Goldsmith’s lighter touch, as well as his classical training, elevate the music to a whole new level of sheer beauty on tracks such as “Final Flight” and adding a somewhat cryptic quote from “Blue Skies” to the unusually somber, piano-based beginning of “A New Ending” (I’m sure there are plot reasons for the song quote, I just don’t know what they are as yet). The usual bombast is there, and God, am I sick of hearing that ST:TMP theme over and over again for the end credits, but if you can overlook the recycled material, it’s a good soundtrack – hopefully for a good movie.

In the end, though, the recycling bugs me a bit. Consider this: Nemesis is the tenth Star Trek movie, and it’s the fifth to be scored by Goldsmith. His music for the first movie was stunning, still standing as one of the finest SF film scores in the history of the genre. His music for First Contact was impressive, and Nemesis comes in at a close third musically. But given that each successive iteration of the theme from the first film loses more and more of its “oomph” – not only due to overexposure, but due to some less than enthusiastic cut-and-paste arrangement – perhaps next time Paramount needs to bring some new musical talent to the table. The 3 out of 4previously un-Trek-tried writer and director on Nemesis were a good start, and one can see where the studio might have wanted Goldsmith around to provide a safety net of identifiable themes to ground the new movie. But if the gamble on the new talent pays off with a box office blockbuster, why not extend that willingness to experiment to a new composer next time?

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  1. Remus (1:57)
  2. The Box (2:21)
  3. My Right Arm (1:04)
  4. Odds And Ends (4:37)
  5. Repairs (6:25)
  6. The Knife (3:09)
  7. Ideals (2:16)
  8. The Mirror (5:21)
  9. The Scorpion (2:23)
  10. Lateral Run (3:54)
  11. Engage (2:12)
  12. Final Flight (3:48)
  13. A New Friend (2:38)
  14. A New Ending (6:06)

Released by: Varese Sarabande
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 48:11

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Categories
2002 E S Soundtracks Star Trek Television

Star Trek: Enterprise – music by Dennis McCarthy

5 min read

Order this CDMy sincere apologies to Dennis McCarthy. I initially shrugged off the music from Enterprise when I watched the pilot movie – I liked the theme song and opening credits (and, by the sound of things, I’m one of approximately five people who openly admit to liking the song, and one of the others is Rick Berman, if that tells you anything). Now I realize that my beef is with Berman, not McCarthy. The newly released soundtrack from the pilot movie is actually a fine addition to the musical canon of Star Trek.

Topped and tailed with two different versions of Russell Watson’s rendition of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” (originally written by Diane Warren), the Enterprise soundtrack CD features most of the hour-long score, excluding a few source music cues, recorded for the two-hour episode. One of the nicer things about the score from Broken Bow, the two-hour pilot movie, is the all-American-flavored theme used for both Captain Archer and the Enterprise herself (which you do actually get to hear in the show each week – as the end credit music, on the rare occasion that UPN doesn’t do the annoying but almost ubiquitous credit squeeze). Like the theme McCarthy coined for Captain Picard some 15 years ago, Archer’s theme fits perfectly and has its own grand sweep (though sadly, like Picard’s theme, it seems to have disappeared from regular use over the course of the show’s first season, probably due to Berman’s aversion to any of the composers creating specific themes associated with any character). Many of the tracks are infused with an edgy energy that may come from the musicians’ and conductor’s reactions to other events that occurred on the second day of the scoring sessions for the pilot: September 11th, 2001. (In his liner notes, McCarthy dedicates the music on this CD to victims of that tragedy.)

Some of the music will sound familiar – “Klingon Chase / Shotgunned” in particular, though it’s among my favorite tracks, sounds like it could easily be slotted into the soundtrack from Star Trek: Generations. (I do like that menacing downbeat chord combination, though.) McCarthy even steps right up to the edge of quoting his own theme music from Deep Space Nine in the next-to-last track, “New Horizons”. The music also gets slimy, low-key and discordant for scenes involving the shape-shifting Suliban, and downright weird (but in a good way) for the climactic, time-warped fight in the track “Temporal Battle”.

Some fans – those other four people out there who like the song (and I’m sure Berman’s already gotten his copy of the CD) – will also be pleased to hear both the long album version and the shortened TV version of “Where My Heart Will Take Me”. I still find it to be an inspiring little number, especially when combined with the show’s opening title montage. Quite why fandom has bared its teeth at this song and the opening credits, I just haven’t managed to comprehend yet. I actually thought it was a nice switch from the usual Goldsmithian-sounding opening credits that have become de rigeur for Star Trek spinoffs.

I was surprised to see this album appear on Decca, rather than GNP/Crescendo, which has done an excellent job of giving us one to two Star Trek (or related) CDs a year since 1991 or so. From what I understand, this is more to do with the behind-the-scenes negotiating needed to include Russell Watson’s theme song on the CD, not a reflection of any kind of dissatisfaction on Paramount’s part with Crescendo Records. GNP/Crescendo certainly could have done better with the packaging, which is kind of bland here – though there’s only so much you can do with those pre-launch publicity photos where the crew looks like they’re standing inside the round-patterned walls of Doctor Who’s TARDIS.

Hopefully more Enterprise music will be forthcoming, whether Decca or Crescendo issues it. Some of the first season’s episodes have had very interesting music, with the most notable being the surprisingly melodic Vox Sola, with its sly, sinewy theme for the parasitic life form. Crescendo has already turned out a “Best Of Season One” CD for Stargate SG-1, and hopefully they may follow suit with Enterprise – even if it means ditching “Where My Heart Will Take Me” from future releases; after all, we have it on this CD. (Sadly missing, however, is the 4 out of 4acoustic guitar rendition of that song which was heard only on the un-squished end credits of the pilot episode; the track “Archer’s Theme” is now used as the end credit music.)

Love it or hate it, Enterprise is worth a listen. Kudos to Dennis McCarthy for introducing some new energy and material into his Trek repertoire – don’t stop now, Dennis! The show desperately needs it.

  1. Where My Heart Will Take Me – Album Version (4:09)
  2. New Enterprise (1:40)
  3. Klingon Chase / Shotgunned (2:05)
  4. Enterprise First Flight (2:50)
  5. Klang-Napped (2:10)
  6. Morph-o-Mama / Suli-Nabbed (2:45)
  7. Phaser Fight (5:53)
  8. Breakthrough (2:01)
  9. Grappled (4:09)
  10. The Rescue (6:40)
  11. Temporal Battle (8:05)
  12. Blood Work (2:11)
  13. New Horizons (1:26)
  14. Archer’s Theme (1:24)
  15. Where My Heart Will Take Me – TV Version (1:28)

Released by: Decca / Universal
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 49:22

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2000 Compilation S Soundtracks Star Trek Television

The Best of Star Trek, Volume Two

5 min read

Order this CDThis new collection of previously unreleased suites from various episodes of all of Star Trek’s live-action incarnations includes some of the most requested music from all of the series – and a few extras as well.

The classic series is easily the show best represented by this CD, with music from The Corbomite Maneuver, Balance Of Terror, What Are Little Girls Made Of? and a “lounge” version of the show’s main theme which was used in a small number of episodes as background source music. Though the Corbomite and Balance scores have been re-recorded in part on past releases by Varese Sarabande, it’s always nice to hear the original recordings rolled out and remastered. They sound great.

Deep Space Nine is represented by a suite from the fourth season opener, The Way Of The Warrior, which introduced Worf as a permanent feature of the DS9 landscape. The music is big and bold…and, by and large, lifted directly from the music of Star Trek: Generations. Go ahead – listen to the “Final Fight” track on the Generations CD and then the Way Of The Warrior suite, back-to-back. The similarities are stunning. Not to say that it’s bad music…just that we’d heard it before. I would much rather have heard some music from season two’s three-part epic premiere.

Also included in the DS9 section is the televised mix of the main theme from seasons 4-7 (a previous version, heard on the original Best Of Star Trek CD in 1996, featured more percussion than the version actually used to open each episode), as well as Nana Visitor’s version of “Fever” from His Way (the first Vic Fontaine episode). The latter is quite nice – Nana’s no Shirley Bassey, but “Fever” is supposed to be moaned and growled more than it’s sung anyway. It’s a nice companion to Jimmy Darren’s album of tunes performed by Vic on DS9.

The DS9 suite is also plagued by another problem – an incorrect table of contents in the CD’s liner notes booklet which omits a track of Warrior score and adds one more track of music from the Voyager suite than actually appears on the CD. The track list below is the correct track list.

Voyager is also represented by an uncharacteristically bombastic score, David Bell’s music from The Bride Of Chaotica. Incredibly atypical of the most recent Trek spinoff’s usually somnolent scoring, Bell’s music is an over-the-top homage to Flash Gordon-style pulp sci-fi radio epics of yesteryear. Some of the most interesting moments in the Chaotica score occur when the music shifts gears abruptly between the retro-40’s music and Bell’s more frequently-used style. Sadly, in these few very brief “modern” passages, one hears – more or less – the entire gamut of Bell’s typical Voyager score, as he too has fallen victim to replicating his own work under the constraints of time and – in all likelihood – the limited inspiration provided by the average Voyager episode.

The album does at least pick a good note on which to close, however: several minutes of music from Dennis McCarthy’s score from the Next Generation finale, All Good Things. This score, though it too features some musical repetition, features some of the best moments from the last episode. The “Saved Again” cue accompanies the memorable scene of the refitted Enterprise saving the collective butts of the crew of Beverly Crusher’s doomed U.S.S. Pasteur, and the cryptically titled “I Have A Gun” is the wonderful final shot of the episode, in which the crew’s last poker game dissolves into the Enterprise’s flight into an alien sunset, set to the strains of Alexander Courage’s Star Trek fanfare, bringing things nicely full-circle. (Shouldn’t this track have been called “The Sky’s The Limit”?)

There’s one cue I wish they’d included though: Picard’s first view of the Enterprise as Tasha ferries him to the ship for the first time via shuttle.

Overall, the second volume of The Best Of Star Trek will satisfy fans of nearly every one of the 4 out of 4show’s incarnations, particularly fans of the classic series that started it all. Here’s hoping that it won’t take four more years for volume three. There’s enough unreleased Trek music to merit a yearly release (hell, there’s enough unreleased music to fill a monthly CD magazine, but the economics of that kind of venture would be nightmarish for both label and consumer, so I’d settle for a yearly release).

  1. Theme from Star Trek – string arrangement (0:51)
  2. The Corbomite Maneuver (4:29)
  3. Balance Of Terror (3:42)
  4. What Are Little Girls Made Of? (4:39)
  5. In Chapel (1:18)
  6. Theme from Star Trek – lounge mix (1:39)

    Suite from The Way Of The Warrior

  7. Theme from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – season 4 (1:55)
  8. Dry Run (1:31)
  9. Medieval Harp source (2:57)
  10. Worf (1:35)
  11. “Yo!” (4:08)
  12. Worf II (1:47)
  13. Fever (2:01)

    Suite from The Bride Of Chaotica

  14. Theme from Star Trek: Voyager (1:47)
  15. Begin Chapter 18 (4:21)
  16. Presenting…Arachnia (3:07)
  17. Chaotica Is Defeated / Distortions (3:43)
  18. Chaotica’s Last Words / The End (1:05)

    Suite from All Good Things…

  19. Theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation – season 2 (1:40)
  20. Here Comes The Judge II / To The Rescue (5:59)
  21. Primalosity (2:29)
  22. Courage (3:31)
  23. Saved Again (2:26)
  24. I Have A Gun (0:52)

Released by: GNP Crescendo
Release date: 2000
Total running time: 63:42

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Categories
S Soundtracks Star Trek Video Game / Computer Game

Star Trek: Starfleet Command

Star Trek: Starfleet Command soundtrackAfter the fiasco that was the non-release of Ron Jones’ Starfleet Academy CD by Sonic Images, Interplay Software decided to cut out the middle man and distribute the music directly. That’s right – this review doesn’t cover an actual CD release, but a collection of MP3 files made available to the public by Jones and Interplay Software. Starfleet Command, a new, flashy rebirth for the Starfleet Battles tactical role playing game, is due for release soon, and in addition to a limited demo version of the game, Interplay has released the music. Jones kicks this new Star Trek game score off with Alexander Courage’s signature fanfare, but after that, wastes no time diving into his own action-packed style. Perhaps my bittersweet feelings about this score come from the fact that, if Jones was still working for Paramount, this is what Star Trek’s television productions could sound like today: active, exciting, and multi-layered. There are some nice Trek scores on TV these days – Dennis McCarthy’s music for the DS9 finale was no slouch – but Ron Jones, who earned the fans’ favor with the pivotal 1990 Best Of Both Worlds two-parter (which probably cemented the future of the Trek TV franchise more than anything 4 out of 4else), has the most distinctive sound of all the neo-Trek composers who have scored the various new series. Furthermore, Jones has some surprises with his Klingon and Romulan themes from the game, not parroting previous themes (even his own). He also introduces new themes for the Gorn and other races. So go download the files from Interplay’s FTP site and judge for yourself…is this what Star Trek should sound like today?

  1. Intro Movie (0:52)
  2. Federation Menu Screen (2:07)
  3. Federation Mission Failure (1:08)
  4. Gorn Menu Screen (2:09)
  5. Gorn Mission Success (1:08)
  6. Hydran Menu Screen (2:09)
  7. Hydran Mission Success (1:08)
  8. Klingon Menu Screen (2:09)
  9. Lyran Menu Screen (2:06)
  10. Lyran Mission Failure (1:07)
  11. Romulan Menu Screen (2:09)

Editor’s note: Interplay has since closed its doors, and took down the FTP site with this music.

Released by: Interplay Productions
Release date: 1999
Total running time: 18:12

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Categories
1979 1999 Film S Soundtracks Star Trek

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – 20th Anniversary Edition

Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack 20th Anniversary EditionThank God! After years of waiting – literally years – the remastered Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack is available. Up until the 11th hour in December 1998, this 2-CD set was intended to be released at the same time as Star Trek: Insurrection‘s soundtrack and Ron Jones’ original music from the CD-ROM game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. But Paramount’s marketing wing blanched at the thought of three simultaneous Star Trek music releases, and demanded that this collection and the Starfleet Academy album be held back indefinitely. Alas, Sonic Images’ Starfleet Academy CD has yet to see the light of day, but after hearing this digitally remastered soundtrack with its wealth of previously unreleased material, I begin to see why the Paramount brass was so worried. The power, exotic beauty and timelessness of the first Trek film’s soundtrack – even though composed by the same man who scored Star Trek: Insurrection – easily outshines damn near any other Star Trek CD that could’ve been released at the same time.

Disc one not only adds nearly half an hour of previously unreleased music from that first movie, but every cue is crisply remastered and sequenced in order of its original appearance in the movie. This places the lovely theme for the short-lived Lt. Ilia first on the disc, since it appeared in the movie as an overture over a blank screen. The second disc includes the entire contents of the hitherto hard-to-find Inside Star Trek LP released by Columbia in 1976. Inside Star Trek features several late luminaries – Gene Roddenberry, Mark Lenard, Isaac Asimov – discussing and lecturing on science fiction in general, and of course, Star Trek in particular. William Shatner and DeForest Kelley also appear on the album, which now has newly-recorded introductory and closing material by Nichelle Nichols. Inside Star Trek is seriously fannish novelty material. I have the original LP, given to me by a friend several years ago, and having heard it long ago, never expected to see an official CD release.

But back to the music from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. One quickly realizes that most of the material which is being heard on CD for the first time here makes up some of the score’s quieter moments – “Total Logic”, the cue which accompanies Spock’s rejection of Kolinahr; “Games”, a nicely understated cue which played under a scene of Decker trying to reacquaint an alien probe in the form of Lt. Ilia with her original memories, and a few others. Many of them are less otherworldly-sounding than the blaster beam laden V’Ger cues, but all of them are epic in scale and amazing to hear at full blast.

4 out of 4Though the “bonus CD” renders this a slightly more expensive purchase than usual, I cannot recommend the 20th anniversary edition of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack highly enough. Though the long wait for this release has been frustrating, to say the least, it’s definitely worth the wait.

Order this CD

    Disc one
  1. Ilia’s Theme (3:01)
  2. Main Title (1:23)
  3. Klingon Attack (5:27)
  4. Total Logic (3:34)
  5. Floating Office (1:03)
  6. The Enterprise (5:59)
  7. Leaving Drydock (3:29)
  8. Spock’s Arrival (1:58)
  9. The Cloud (4:58)
  10. V’Ger Flyover (4:57)
  11. The Force Field (5:03)
  12. Games (3:41)
  13. Spock Walk (4:19)
  14. Inner Workings (3:09)
  15. V’Ger Speaks (3:50)
  16. The Meld (3:09)
  17. A Good Start (2:26)
  18. End Title (3:16)
    Disc two
  1. Star Trek Theme (1:34)
  2. Introduction – Nichelle Nichols (1:13)
  3. Inside Star Trek (1:04)
  4. William Shatner Meets Captain Kirk (9:12)
  5. Introduction to live show (0:25)
  6. About Science Fiction (0:40)
  7. The Origin of Spock (1:45)
  8. Sarek’s Son Spock – Mark Lenard (7:21)
  9. The Questor Affair (3:49)
  10. The Genesis II Pilot (2:34)
  11. Cyborg Tools and E.T. Life Forms (4:06)
  12. McCoy’s Rx for Life – DeForest Kelley (6:14)
  13. The Star Trek Philosophy – Gene Roddenberry (4:40)
  14. Asimov’s World of Science Fiction – Isaac Asimov (6:27)
  15. The Enterprise Runs Aground (1:50)
  16. A Letter from a Network Censor – Gene Roddenberry (5:03)
  17. The Star Trek Dream (Ballad I/Ballad II) (5:43)
  18. Sign-Off – Nichelle Nichols (0:50)

Released by: Columbia / Sony Legacy
Release date: 1999
Disc one total running time: 67:12
Disc two total running time:

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Categories
1998 Film S Soundtracks Star Trek

Star Trek: Insurrection – music by Jerry Goldsmith

3 min read

Order this CDJerry Goldsmith returns once again to the Trekkian realm for the most recent feature film exploits of the Enterprise crew, and the results are…well…familiar.

Now, I’m not putting Mr. Goldsmith in the same category as a certain Mr. Horner, who only seems to come up with an original melody once every dozen years or so. Far from it. Whatever Jerry Goldsmith does, its stamp belongs solely to that one movie. But the style is what seals it for me in the case of Star Trek: Insurrection. So much of this album sounds so much like Star Trek: First Contact that it’s hard not to make the comparison.

Surprisingly, for a film that dealt with the Borg and virtually reinvented their entire mythos (just in time for a Borg revival on Star Trek: Voyager), First Contact‘s primary theme was surprisingly, if pleasantly, pastoral and calm. And Insurrection opens on the same note. Actually, every Trek film that Goldsmith has scored since 1989 has opened with the same notes: the segue from the Alexander Courage theme into the Star Trek: The Motion Picture theme that was first heard in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Thereafter, the music takes on a gentle, flowing feel, and at least this time there are peaceful scenes of an idyllic Ba’ku village (also the title of the first track on the CD) to back up the music, rather than out-of-focus credits. (To be fair, that’s more a comparison of the films’ visuals, not the music.)

Before long, a sinister tone creeps into the proceedings as Data appears to go on the rampage. An electronic arpeggio motif makes its first appearance at this point in the music, and that same motif runs through virtually every action cue on the disc. Not that the action cues aren’t good, but this electronic arpeggio makes all of those pieces sound more similar than they actually are in musical terms. Some of the best music occurs in “The Healing Process”, an early version of the film’s final action cue (the packaging notes that this isn’t the final version of the cue) whose fierce action culminates in a grandiose burst of electronics, acoustic instruments, and a brief hint of synthesized choir. That moment comes closer to the sweeping majesty of Goldsmith’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture score than any other frame of Trek that he has scored since 1979. It’s a neat bit of music, to say the least!

Overall, one gets the distinct impression that Jerry Goldsmith’s heart just isn’t into making music for Star Trek movies anymore, and having composed the music for nearly half of those films thus far, he’s entitled to feel 2 out of 4that way. Though the man is still obviously a musical genius, the repetition inherent in the Star Trek: Insurrection soundtrack could be a sign that, sometime early in the next century when the tenth Star Trek movie goes before the cameras, with or without all of its stars, it may be time to hand the composing duties to someone new.

  1. Ba’ku Village (6:52)
  2. In Custody (1:14)
  3. Children’s Story (1:47)
  4. Not Functioning (1:45)
  5. New Sight (5:44)
  6. The Drones Attack (4:18)
  7. The Riker Maneuver (3:09)
  8. The Same Race (1:16)
  9. No Threat (4:12)
  10. The Healing Process (7:15)
  11. End Credits (5:25)

Released by: GNP Crescendo
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 41:29

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