STAR WARS
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STAR TREK
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FIREFLY
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SCI-FI
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Music from the Star Trek Series
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Soundtrack and music from the Star Trek series.
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Alexander Courage may have given the sprawling Star Trek franchise its signature musical fanfare, but for two decades it's been composer Jerry Goldsmith who's periodically infused the film and TV cycles with their crucial musical heart and soul or, as in the case of this rousing masterwork, their fire and fury. Giving nearly free reign to his notably modernist muse, the veteran has turned in a dark and driving orchestral maelstrom that's relieved only by its edgy, occasionally synth-burnished passages of alien intrigue and mounting suspense. Underpinned by bracing blasts of massive brass worthy of Bernard Herrmann and powered by Goldsmith's passionate sense of drama and mastery of orchestral color and dynamics, it's a score that not only ranks among the best of the imposing Trek musical catalog, but certainly one of the composer's most accomplished sci-fi scores of the last 20 years. --Jerry McCulley
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There's not much in the way of surprises in Jerry Goldsmith's fourth score for the Star Trek feature-film cycle (and second for the Next Generation incarnation), which isn't to say it's not a finely crafted piece of robust, action-adventure boilerplate. Unfortunately, the genre has come to rely on an orchestral palette that's about as subtle as a Klingon temper tantrum; divorced from its striking images and spectacular stunt sequences, it's often as inviting as Mahler on a Monday morning. Still, Goldsmith manages touches here that are as close to pastoral as the conventions allow, bookended by enough Wagnerian Sturm und Drang to push our Federation heroes on to victory once again. Goldsmith is responsible for some of the most inventive sci-fi and horror scores of the past 40 years (Planet of the Apes, the Omen trilogy, and The Twilight Zone among them), and the Trek cycle seems well enough entrenched for the producers to allow the composer at least as much adventure as they do the crew of the Enterprise. --Jerry McCulley
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After a decade of nascent cult fanaticism, Star Trek was finally reborn in 1979, given new life by an epic-sized feature-film production that all but squashed the quaint humanity that had been one of the original television series' most compelling elements (the producers got it right on Wrath of Khan and seldom looked back). Jerry Goldsmith's score, alternating robust heroics with alien mystique, is arguably the most memorable element of Star Trek: The Motion Picture; indeed, its main theme has heralded the voyages of the Enterprise in TV and film adventures ever since. This slipcased new edition resequences Goldsmith's music and supplements it with 25 minutes of previously unreleased, typically masterful cues. The set's "bonus" disc, Inside Star Trek with Gene Roddenberry, appeals to more polarized audiences: veteran Trekkers and shameless lovers of pop-culture kitsch. This 1976 artifact (previously unreleased on CD) was one of the first "official" efforts to address the show's burgeoning postcancellation popularity and features Trek creator Roddenberry ruminating earnestly about the show's origins and meanings with the likes of William Shatner and DeForest Kelley (who gives an eerily prescient lecture on the foibles of modern health care). Also features new narration by Nichelle "Uhuru" Nichols. Bonus points: Shatner doesn't sing! --Jerry McCulley
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science
fiction articles
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X-Files
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TWILIGHT ZONE
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BATTLESTAR
GALACTICA
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SCIENCE
FICTION
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