Category: 2022

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2022 S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Television

Star Trek: Picard – Season 2

4 min read

Order this CDThe jury will probably be out for quite a while on whether or not the second season of the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard was a creative success; the response to the show has definitely been in a love-it-or-hate-it mode, with very few critics choosing to stay in the middle ground. The return of Q, the time travel plotline, the on-the-nose “fascist future Earth” and the equally on-the-nose warnings that this, rather than Star Trek’s more inclusive future, could be where we’re headed if 21st century society is any indication… if there’s something that the second season of Picard may not have been in many places, it’s, in a word, subtle. (Of course, the argument could also be made that, after the past few years of real-life plot developments

The soundtrack opens with a more active, strident reading of the show’s established theme tune, before transitioning to a pair of wonderful orchestral tours-de-force, “Look Up” and “Let’s See What’s Out There”. The musical tone gets darker as the timeline takes a sudden shift, and here we run into one of my first complaints about this soundtrack. One of the highlights of the early part of the season was the revisiting of the sinister Borg theme from Star Trek: First Contact, here appearing in the show as the musical signature for the Borg Queen. And…those great new takes on that theme are nowhere to be found here. (It’s almost quoted – but not quite – in “Build Back Better Borg” later on in the album.)

The darker, more contemplative vibe continues, with some highlights including “Family Secrets”, “A Taste Of Freedom”, and “The Journey Inward”. Somewhere around “Build Back Better Borg”, the emphasis returns to action. The absence of the Borg theme becomes really baffling here, because the theme from Star Trek: First Contact itself is quoted in “Second Chances”, and Goldsmith’s theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which Russo has decided is Picard’s theme) is quoted in “Guardian At The Gate”.

The end of the album is rounded out with music from the Europa Mission shindig, including the band’s instrumental cover of “Fly Me To The Moon”, and yes, from Benatar to the Borg-Queen-to-be, “Shadows Of The Night” sung (surprisingly well) by Alison Pill. Two different takes on the end credits music close things out.

It’s already known that Russo is handing the composing duties off to Stephen Barton and Freddie Wiedman for season three, which will apparently be heavy on quotations of The Motion Picture theme (and Blaster Beam!), so this is his last hurrah for Star 3 out of 4Trek: Picard. What I liked about this season’s music – as heard in the show – was that Russo did a magnificent job weaving legacy themes into his own work, musically putting this season in the greater context of Star Trek mythology as a whole. My singular beef with the album is that, for whatever reason (including the less generous running time as compared to the season one soundtrack album), as a pure listening experience, it doesn’t reflect the amazing job its obviously talented composer did with that.

  1. Season 2 Main Title (1:59)
  2. Look Up (1:21)
  3. Let’s See What’s Out There (3:54)
  4. The Pressure of Legacy (1:12)
  5. Penance (3:03)
  6. Seek The Watcher (5:06)
  7. Best Laid Plans (4:49)
  8. What’s My Full Name? (2:44)
  9. Disappointment In Leadership (4:24)
  10. Family Secrets (2:05)
  11. Your Ancestor (1:07)
  12. A Melancholy (2:29)
  13. A Taste of Freedom (3:54)
  14. Maximum Security Function (1:20)
  15. Lies Upon Lies (2:22)
  16. The Journey Inward (3:12)
  17. The True Monster (3:05)
  18. My Spaceship (1:30)
  19. Deepest Truth (2:32)
  20. My Truth (2:55)
  21. Build Back Better Borg (4:53)
  22. Opening the Door (4:06)
  23. Honoring the Deal (3:41)
  24. The Travelers (1:36)
  25. Where You Belong (3:03)
  26. Guardian at The Gate (3:43)
  27. Second Chances (3:13)
  28. Fly Me To The Moon (1:42)
  29. Shadows of the Night (featuring Alison Pill) (1:28)
  30. Season 2 End Credits (201) (0:54)
  31. Season 2 End Credits (209) (0:53)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: April 29, 2022
Total running time: 84:15

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2022 Film Music Reviews S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Television Year

Star Trek Collection: The Final Frontier

2 min read

Order this CDI hit peak Star Trek superfandom in the late ’80s, just in time for the 1990s and the sudden rapid expansion of Star Trek as a genuine media franchise to kick in. There were so many shows on TV. A good few episodes of these various series had really good music. And the music…was nowhere to be found commercially. Star Trek: The Next Generation wound up with four individual CD releases through the end of the 1990s, while Deep Space Nine and Voyager merited one each, in each instance with (most of) the score from their pilot episodes. That pattern continued with the pilot episode of Enterprise in 2001, and then…it all went silent. Being in my early 20s, I didn’t get it. It seemed like GNP Crescendo had a license to print money – or at least a license to get their hands of copious amounts of my money – if only they’d keep releasing more Star Trek music. (I know nothing of musicians’ unions and re-use fees at the time, I just knew what I liked.) My attention drifted to other franchises that seemed to know full well that their fans wanted more music, not less – Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, the new Doctor Who… and then a magical thing happened in the late aughts. Suddenly Paramount seemed more open to the idea of mining its musical vaults. Long-out-of-print Star Trek movie soundtrack albums suddenly had newly expanded editions. On the television front, things went from famine to feast as massive box sets chronicled either the entire musical oeveure of the 1960s series, or the entire body of work of a beloved single Next Generation composer. And then all of the television series racked up not just one, but two 3-or-4-disc box sets covering music from their entire broadcast run. … Read more