Category: Star Trek

Categories
2023 Music Reviews S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Television Year

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 1 – music by Nami Melumad

5 min read

Order this CDIt seems like every new Star Trek series that comes along in the streaming age has its own slightly different sound. All of them stay in the orchestral film music wheelhouse, but do something a little bit different within that wheelhouse: Discovery started out more contemplative and piano-heavy, Lower Decks plays it very straightforward so its music isn’t part of its jokes, Picard eventually settled into Jerry Goldsmith jukebox mode, and Prodigy – probably the best of the bunch and yet simultaneously the most overlooked because it hails from Nickelodeon, which seems to be a signal to some adult viewers to steer clear of it – is big, bombastic, larger than life, and yet fun when it needs to be. Prodigy composer Nami Melumad, a Michael Giacchino protege who had previously scored one of the shorts from the now-apparently-extinct Short Treks series, quickly gained notice for her work on Star Trek’s most recent animated incarnation, and was tapped to provide music for the eagerly awaited Strange New Worlds.

Strange New Worlds is a series that was, for all intents and purposes, created by fan demand to see more of the pre-Kirk-era troika of Captain Pike, Number One, and a younger Spock, established in Star Trek’s original 1964 pilot The Cage and revived (and recast) in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. Set aboard the Enterprise years prior to Kirk’s command, but well after the events of The Cage, the series leans into its retro construction booth figurative (mostly-unconnected adventures to different worlds every week) and literal (its greatest gift to the younger members of the audience may be introducing them to mid-century modern furnishings). It’s a return to Star Trek’s roots – a message-of-the-week space opera, a modern formulation of the original series without the baked-in issues of the original series. It also has a bit of a retro sound, at least in the opening credits – there are hints and near-quotes of the Alexander Courage theme, and when the full quotation of that theme finally happens, it sounds like a theremin – a bit of a stylistic wink to the audience that, if the Star Trek was all started with was from the sixties, this is from even before then. The theme is by Jeff Russo, who previously created the opening themes for Discovery and Picard.

But the scores accounting for most of the album’s (and show’s) runtime are by Nami Melumad, and they boldly get down to business. The pilot episode (which was unafraid to very clearly state the series’ entire mission statement unambiguously) is represented by four tracks, three of which accompany the big setpieces of the episode: “Everyone Wants A Piece Of The Pike” accompanies Captain Pike’s retreat into a wilderness cabin, while “Eyes On The Enterprise” sets the backdrop for Pike’s return to his ship, and “Home Is Where The Helm Is” covers the aftermath of Pike revealing the Federation’s existence to a planet on the all-too-familiar brink of world war. (“Put A T’Pring On It” is the quietest of the four pilot tracks, as Spock has to decide between a call to duty and a call to somewhat more domestic duties.)

Generally speaking, the big musical setpieces of each episode of the season are represented here, with some episodes getting more coverage than others (I was surprised to see only one track for the fanciful late-season episode The Elysian Kingdom.) The album’s musical focus, perhaps quite rightly, is on the music from the cluster of episodes that represented a mid-season series of storytelling slam dunks: three tracks each from Memento Mori and Spock Amok, two from Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, and four from the Orion pirate romp The Serene Squall. Yes, Spock Amok‘s deceptively low-key riff on Gerald Fried’s immortal Amok time fight theme is here (“Are You A Vulcan Or A Vulcan’t?”); somewhat surprisingly, the season finale seems underrepresented by comparison, so we don’t get that episode’s take on Fred Steiner’s “Romulan Theme” from Balance Of Terror, the original series episode whose story A Quality Of Mercy spents much of its runtime riffing and remixing.

4 out of 4As was the case with her work on Prodigy, Melumad’s superpower is in her ability not just to kick butt with major action setpieces, but to make each episode’s more introspective moments memorable as well. Tracks like “Comet Away With Me” let her show off some less-percussive, non-action-oriented fireworks marking inner turmoil for the show’s characters. The solitary track from The Elysian Kingdom, “You’re My Mercury Stone”, is another track like that, and it’s simply gorgeous. Overall, the season one soundtrack hits a nice balance of music from action scenes and music from revelatory character moments as well. I look forward to hearing more of Nami Melumad’s work on both this series and Star Trek: Prodigy in the future. I don’t think it’s much a stretch to say that her work is the current sound of Star Trek at its best.

  1. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Main Title Theme) by Jeff Russo (01:52)
  2. Everyone Wants a Piece of the Pike (03:51)
  3. Put a T’Pring On It (02:56)
  4. Eyes on the Enterprise (04:42)
  5. Home is Where the Helm Is (04:17)
  6. Space Cadet (01:01)
  7. Comet Away With Me (02:36)
  8. Romancing the Comet (03:23)
  9. M’hanit and Greet (07:01)
  10. Since I First Saw the Stars (03:55)
  11. A Holding Pattern (04:44)
  12. Gorn With the Wind (05:29)
  13. The Pike Maneuver (02:03)
  14. Gorn But Not Forgotten (03:25)
  15. Are You a Vulcan or a Vulcan’t? (03:00)
  16. Spock Too Soon (02:03)
  17. Chris Crossed (03:44)
  18. Looking For Ascension in All the Wrong Places (03:04)
  19. Ascent-ial Questions (02:01)
  20. T’Pring It On (01:43)
  21. Pirates in the Sky (02:55)
  22. Will You Be My Vulcantine? (02:45)
  23. Won’t You Be My Pirate? (03:38)
  24. You’re My Mercury Stone (02:05)
  25. Don’t Leave in Uhurry (02:55)
  26. When the Hemmer Falls (04:09)
  27. No One’s Ever Neutral About Spaghetti (02:54)
  28. Throw Plasma From the Train (05:29)
  29. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (End Credits) by Jeff Russo (00:58)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: April 28, 2023
Total running time: 94:23

… Read more
Categories
2023 Music Reviews S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Television Year

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 – music by Stephen Barton and Frederik Wiedmann

6 min read

Order this CDThe third and final season of Star Trek: Picard has now unspooled in full on Paramount Plus, and its soundtrack is also now readily available. The third season was heavily promoted, promising a full reunion of the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and late in the season, even miraculously brought back the Next Generation’s beloved Enterprise from what we’d all assumed was its final resting place on the planet onto whose surface it crashed in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations. Of course, to bring all of the characters back to their original places on that iconic bridge, there had to be a tremendous threat that they’d risk everything to fight, and perhaps predictably, that turned out to be the Borg, a well-worn Star Trek foe getting its third wildly different treatment in as many consecutive seasons of Picard. Whether it all holds together as a story without relying on dropping nostalgia bombs on the audience to distract them from the predictability of the plot – look, space squirrel! – is something I suspect fans and critics will be debating for years to come. In the meantime, the actors got to work together one more time, save the universe one more time, and pay their mortgages.

Into this fray walked two composers new to the franchise. Where Jeff Russo – also the resident composer of Star Trek: Discovery – had performed similar duties for Picard’s first and second seasons, giving those proceedings a somewhat more contemplative feel with the obligatory ramping-up-to-maximum-orchestral-anxiety required by end-of-act and end-of-episode breaks, Picard’s showrunners opted to bring in some fresh talent for the show’s last season. It’s also possible that they were looking to bring in talent that wouldn’t balk at the producers’ requests to reference Jerry Goldsmith and other previous Star Trek composers often. (There’s less money to be made from a new arrangement of someone else’s composition than there is from composing something completely original, but make no mistake, with all of the other easter eggs in the show, the producers of Picard make it clear they wanted to hear Goldsmith themes and hear them often.) What a spot to be in: your name is appearing in a high-profile streaming show with the weight of the expectations of the entire franchise on your shoulders, but what you’ve been asked to do is play Jerry Goldsmith’s greatest hits, with some stylistic nods to James Horner’s nautical stylings from Star Trek II. What a musical Kobayashi Maru scenario. (And one that’s likely to keep repeating itself as various long-running IPs play the nostalgia card more blatantly.)

The good news is that the two composers get quite a few original licks in during their sprints between the Goldsmith-ian goalposts. Barton, who did the music for the game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and previously worked with Picard showrunner Terry Matalas on Syfy’s series adaptation of 12 Monkeys (of which Matalas was also the showrunner), and Wiedmann, whose credits include numerous DC Comics direct-to-video animation projects, are no strangers to the epic side of the genre, and they bring that sound in bucketfuls. Rapid-fire brass runs, sinister bass notes, and the requisite strings are all there in abundance, along with a very few fleeting hints of the legendary Blaster Beam, but when it’s time for Picard and company to save the day, the Goldsmith theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (adapted to serve as the theme for The Next Generation’s TV run) returns, along with hints of Goldsmith’s Star Trek: First Contact Theme. Ironically, it’s everything that the weekly episode scores for Next Generation were strictly forbidden to be by that show’s showrunner: loud, thematic, percussive, and developing Goldsmith’s theme(s) as a motif. Courage’s Star Trek theme is quoted occasionally as well, and especially in the suite of material from the first episode, there are audible references to the style, if not necessarily the melodies, of James Horner’s Star Trek II score. In tracks like “Blood In The Water” there are even hints of Don Davis’ action music stylings from The Matrix trilogy.

Some of the best-utilized quotes are the most understated: the track “Legacies”, accompanying the lovingly languid survey of the ships in Geordi’s Fleet Museum, quotes Dennis McCarthy’s Deep Space Nine theme, Courage’s original series theme, Goldsmith’s Star Trek: Voyager theme, and Leonard Rosenman’s theme from Star Trek IV (as that movie’s recovered Klingon ship is glimpsed), all in the space of three minutes with a lovely subtlety (which is good, because the scene it accompanied was not a thing of subtely, bringing the story to a standstill to wallow in its nostalgia grace notes). The Rosenman theme – and indeed, that movie’s entire underrated score – is often omitted from the Star Trek musical canon, and it’s nice to hear it reclaim its place. Maximum Goldsmithification resumes with the track “Make It So”, unveiling the restored Enterprise-D.

3 out of 4It’s all nicely put together, but it reminds me of when, in the 1990s, with my ridiculously massive 18-disc Pioneer magazine CD changer loaded down with every available Star Trek TV and film soundtrack, I would hit “shuffle” and just bask in it. What I liked about Russo’s approach was that it was very much in line with Star Trek: Picard’s original remit to move the character, and his universe, forward into a new context, filled with new and sometimes less-than-sympathetic characters we hadn’t met before. It was something new. Both this season of the show, and its soundtrack, try very hard to hit shuffle play on Star Trek’s greatest hits, and so a lot of it sounds like something you’ve heard before, which does a disservice to the decent original material that Barton and Wiedmann did manage to squeeze in between the musical references. The point of Picard, the series, in its original formulation, was to use one character as a jumping-off point into new territory for the franchise. This season seemed like a decisive step away from that goal. I wonder what we might have gotten if the two talented composers hired for this gig were told to avoid all the Jerry Goldsmith references and chart their own course.

  1. Beverly Crusher (3:02)
  2. Old Communicator (1:58)
  3. Hello, Beautiful (1:57)
  4. Leaving Spacedock (3:44)
  5. I Like That Seven! (3:29)
  6. Breaking the Beam (3:59)
  7. The Shrike (3:34)
  8. Picard’s Answer (4:08)
  9. Riker and Jack (2:08)
  10. Call Me Number One (2:02)
  11. No Win Scenario (3:57)
  12. Blood in the Water (2:58)
  13. Let’s Go Home (3:24)
  14. Flying Blind (5:51)
  15. A New Family (4:16)
  16. Klingons Never Disappoint (5:32)
  17. I Do See You (5:26)
  18. Legacies (3:15)
  19. Evolution (2:44)
  20. La Forges (2:08)
  21. Invisible Rescue (3:34)
  22. Catch Me First (2:32)
  23. Proteus (3:46)
  24. Dominion (7:04)
  25. Lower The Partition (3:38)
  26. Get Off My Bridge (4:26)
  27. Family Reunion (3:18)
  28. Impossible (1:37)
  29. Frontier Day (2:43)
  30. Hail The Fleet (4:03)
  31. You Have The Conn (3:44)
  32. Make It So (6:02)
  33. This Ends Tonight (3:07)
  34. Battle on the Bridge (2:58)
  35. All That’s Left (2:02)
  36. Annihilate (3:05)
  37. Trust Me (2:06)
  38. The Last Generation (2:51)
  39. Where It All Began (2:19)
  40. The Missing Part Of Me (4:30)
  41. Must Come To An End (1:32)
  42. A New Day (3:22)
  43. Legacy and Future (1:44)
  44. Names Mean Everything (1:43)
  45. The Stars – End Credits (2:59)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: April 20, 2023
Total running time: 2:30:15

… Read more
Categories
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

… Read more
Categories
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

Categories
2019 Film Soundtracks Star Trek W Year

What We Left Behind – music by Dennis McCarthy and Kevin Kiner

4 min read

If there was ever a way to gauge how passionately fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were willing to go to bat for a series that remains something of the bastard stepchild of the franchise, all one had to do was promise a documentary interviewing all of the major players, and then crowdfund that documentary. Then you just sit back and watch how many of the stretch goals go whizzing by as the production is funded.

One of those stretch goals was to hire the original composer of the Deep Space Nine theme and most of the series’ episodes, Dennis McCarthy, to score the documentary, What We Left Behind. McCarthy was not only game for returning to the Star Trek universe, but he brought with him Kevin Kiner, a frequent collaborator from McCarthy’s years providing music for the ratings-challenged, budget-addled Star Trek: Enterprise. As that show’s music budget was repeatedly slashed, McCarthy would lean on Kiner to bring the music to life electronically, since the money for an orchestra was no longer necessarily on the table. By the time McCarthy brought Kiner in the perform much the same function on What We Left Behind, Kiner was a composer in his own right, having scored nearly the entirety of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, numerous early episodes of Stargate SG-1, and a second animated series, Star Wars: Rebels.

There’s one component of the documentary where bringing McCarthy back into the fold really pays major dividends. The show’s storied writers’ room is reassembled – a room now made not of rookie TV writers, but of high-powered Hollywood showrunners in their own right – with their old boss, Ira Steven Behr (also the frequent narrator/muse of the documentary), to break down the story for an entirely hypothetical season 8 premiere. As they devise the story, it’s brought to life by artwork and by McCarthy’s music, which is authentic as one could get without actually digging up McCarthy’s 1990s session tapes. The result is an authentic Deep Space Nine story with authentic Deep Space Nine music, one of the highlights of the whole project. In a few other cases, McCarthy ends up rescoring scenes he originally scored in the ’90s. With Kiner’s considerable skill at electronically recreating orchestral bombast, the results are genuinely thrilling.

McCarthy and Kiner bring more modern sensibilities to tracks like “Mr. Brooks”, “Killing Will Robinson”, and “Racial Inequalities”. From the jauntiness to the electronic percussion elements of these tracks, there’s a clear musical dividing line between “documentary” and “breaking the story for an unmade season 8 premiere”.

The all-star barbershop quartet of DS9 veterans – Casey Biggs, Jeffrey Combs, Armin Shimerman, and Max Grodenchik – also appear on the soundtrack with their renditions of classic standards (now with Deep-Space-Nine-inspired lyrics, i.e. “I Left My Quark And Captain Sisko” to the tune of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”). These interludes were a highlight of a documentary that tried very hard to give the impression that it wasn’t taking itself too seriously, and is an extension of Biggs’ and Grodenchik’s convention party piece. (It’s especially nice to have these songs handy in a year where conventions have abruptly become as much a distant memory as the show itself.)

4 out of 4So if you were wondering why you should bother with a soundtrack that isn’t even from one of the Star Trek series, but rather a documentary about that series, it’s pretty simple: by bringing Dennis McCarthy and Kevin Kiner back into the Trek universe, the result is something that earns its place alongside the music from the series itself. Much like the entirely hypothetical season 8 premiere, it’s a tantalizing glimpse into a Star Trek tale that could’ve kept on going.

Order this CD

  1. Main Title (0:12)
  2. Through A Glass Darkly (0:57)
  3. I Left My Quark and Captain Sisko (2:10)
  4. Reunion (2:40)
  5. Big Space / Fun Voyages (0:37)
  6. Mr. Brooks (3:03)
  7. Concept Art / Production Design (2:47)
  8. Actor Interaction / DS9 Renaissance / Promise to be Back (3:05)
  9. Writers Intro / New Episode (4:58)
  10. Explosion (1:33)
  11. Evolving Characters I / Friendship to Romance (1:32)
  12. Grey Character (2:54)
  13. Evolving Characters II / Recurring Characters (1:46)
  14. Killing Will Robinson (2:29)
  15. Galactic War Saga / Sacrifice of Angels (3:04)
  16. Writers’ Room I (2:48)
  17. Haven’t Advanced Much (1:33)
  18. Racial Inequalities (1:45)
  19. Writers’ Room II (2:30)
  20. Action Barbie / Being Heard (3:03)
  21. Intro Ezri (1:28)
  22. Bashir (1:16)
  23. The Cost of War (1:16)
  24. Real World Issues (2:53)
  25. Section 31 (3:49)
  26. Finale (5:58)
  27. What We Left Behind (Vocal) (2:48)
  28. In Memorium (0:43)
  29. End Credits (3:12)
  30. DS9 Rocks (1:29)
  31. What We Left Behind Trailer (2:27)
  32. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Main Title for Solo Piano “After 3:00 AM at Quarks” (5:09)

Released by: BSX Records
Release date: October 11, 2019
Total running time: 1:17:54

… Read more
Categories
2016 Film S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Year

Star Trek Beyond (Deluxe) – music by Michael Giacchino

4 min read

Varese Sarabande’s handling of the soundtracks from the modern Star Trek movies has made me wise up: I didn’t even bother with Michael Giacchino’s score from Star Trek Beyond until the 2-CD Deluxe Edition was released. I’m just not in a position to fall for the double dip every time.

Sadly, the irony is that, while Beyond got the current iteration of Star Trek back “on message”, preaching the virtues of peace and compassion over the values of a violent, twisted being out for revenge, Giacchino’s third visit to the Trek well seems to be his least inspired of the three movies he’s scored to date.

That’s somewhat understandable: the after-the-fact heaping of criticism on the second movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, had to have a palpable effect on those involved in making it. (Ironically, Giacchino’s score from Into Darkness was one of the very, very few things I could find to enjoy about that otherwise lamentably derivative entry in the franchise.) It could be that his creative energies were sapped by the time he went to work on Beyond.

There are highlights, though. The appearances of Starbase Yorktown, a marvel of alternative-23rd-century Starfleet construction that would dwarf a 24th century Borg cube, are graced with a gorgeous fanfare, featuring a long melody line of the kind that seems like it went out of style after John Williams re-educated everyone about uses of the leitmotif. There are some nice cues covering the series of vignettes following the surviving members of the Enterprise crew trying to simply survive on the surface of the planet over which their ship was brought down, though those tend toward brevity.

The action scenes involving Krall’s attack on the Enterprise are frenetic and noisy, probably with the idea that they’d be competing with frenetic and noisy sound effects for dominance in the movie’s audio mix. As a listening experience with no accompanying visuals, they’re a bit much – compare to Giacchino’s more gracefully Williams-esque action scenes from Rogue One for an exercise in contrast.

Though I know some uppity Star Trek fans may recoil against the thought of including a track that could be even remotely considered R&B on their precious soundtrack albums – one can still hear the howls of protest over “Ooby Dooby” and “Magic Carpet Ride” 20 years after Star Trek: First Contact – I’m a bit disappointed to find that, even with a second disc worth of material and more breathing room – Rihanna’s “Sledgehammer” single wasn’t included here. I know there’s licensing, label politics, and yes, that whole blow-up among fans about whether the singer had any business dipping her toe into the world of Star Trek, a pointless
2 out of 4kerfuffle that, let’s face it, exposed some shocking racism among fans of a franchise that rails against racism at every turn. The song still belonged here, and I was disappointed to see it omitted.

At the time of this writing, there’s still no solid word on whether or not there will be a fourth movie with this cast, or indeed a fourth movie with Giacchino at the podium. In that context, it’s a bit of a bummer that he may well be leaving the Star Trek franchise on the weakest note that he had yet provided for it.

Order this CD

    Disc 1
  1. Logo And Prosper (1:47)
  2. Trick Or Treaty (:45)
  3. We Come In Pieces (1:17)
  4. Thank Your Lucky Star Date (2:14)
  5. Night On The Yorktown (5:36)
  6. To Thine Own Death Be True (3:32)
  7. We Make A Good Team (:22)
  8. The Dance Of The Nebula (2:22)
  9. A Swarm Reception (2:30)
  10. Krall Hell Breaks Loose (3:04)
  11. The Evacuation Variations (2:47)
  12. Hitting The Saucer A Little Hard (6:10)
  13. Scotland’s Worst Cliffhanger (:23)
  14. A Hive And Kicking (3:30)
  15. Port Of Krall (:52)
  16. Jaylah Damage (2:50)
  17. No Enterprise For Guessing (:37)
  18. In Artifacts As In Life (1:51)
  19. She’s One Hell Of A Dish (1:26)
  20. Make No Escape About It (2:04)
  21. Eat My Thrusters (3:56)
  22. The Krall Of The Wild (2:10)
  23. Spock’s Vulcan Grip On Death (1:31)
  24. Captain On Ice (:42)

    Disc 2

  25. Franklin, My Dear (2:50)
  26. Transporting Good Time (3:43)
  27. Krall Work And No Play (:37)
  28. A Lesson in Vulcan Mineralogy (5:17)
  29. The Cost Of Abronath (2:35)
  30. MotorCycles Of Relief (3:18)
  31. Mocking Jaylah (3:27)
  32. Jaylah House Rock (3:18)
  33. Bright Lights Big Velocity (Part 1) (:57)
  34. Bright Lights Big Velocity (Part 2) (2:59)
  35. Spock Speaks Hive (3:10)
  36. Crash Decisions (3:16)
  37. Krall-y Krall-y Oxen Free (4:23)
  38. Shutdown Happens (4:35)
  39. The Root Of Krall Evil (1:31)
  40. Cater-Krall In Zero G (2:17)
  41. The Dreaded Rear Admiral (2:02)
  42. Par-tay For The Course (2:46)
  43. Space, The Final Frontier (2:42)
  44. Jaylah’s Theme (2:36)
  45. Yorktown Theme (4:32)
  46. Star Trek Main Theme* (3:44)
  47. Krall Things Being Equal (4:25)

Released by: Varese Sarabande
Release date: December 12, 2016
Disc one total running time: 54:42
Disc two total running time: 1:11:18

… Read more
Categories
2016 Compilation Film S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Television Tribute / Reinterpretation Video Game / Computer Game

Star Trek: The 50th Anniversary Collection

9 min read

In the early ’90s, I was positively obsessed with Star Trek music – every new movie score released, any new television soundtracks that came along, anything was a cause for celebration, because I was in “maximum Trekkie” mode, and there never seemed to be enough of it.

Fast-forward a bit to the 21st century, in an era where we’re starving for the seemingly perpetually-delayed first new Star Trek TV series in a decade…and yet we’re positively drowning in music from the franchise’s glory days. I’ve gone from “not being to get enough Star Trek music” to “how in the hell do I organize this huge glut of music when I rip the latest box set worth of CDs to my hard drive straight out of the mail?”

Not that I’m complaining. The 50th Anniversary Collection from La-La Land Records is a fine buffet line adding to the embarrassment of riches we’ve gotten since 2009, a year during which the first J.J. Abrams movie (and yes, its soundtrack) came along, revitalized Trek as a media juggernaut, and convinced new Paramount music executive Randy Spendlove that maybe, just maybe, he should license some of the gems from the Trek music vaults to these specialty soundtrack labels that are clamoring to release it.

Rather than a laser-like focus on any one series, this four-disc set tries to patch some holes, right some wrongs, and answer some fannish prayers. The first disc consists, mostly, of remastered selections from the original series, piece of music of which better copies have been found since La-La Land’s monumental 2012 box set release of every note of music recorded for classic Trek. There are a few new 1960s gems as well: Wilbur Hatch’s “bumper” music, played over still slides of the Enterprise and the Star Trek logo as the show went to commercial during its broadcast premieres, is something I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. An alternate take of a cue from Star Trek: The Motion Picture also appears, but the big takeaway from disc one is the dialogue-free version of the end credits from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, a track which had previously only appeared on CD with the late Leonard Nimoy’s ethereal narration. Fans have been demanding this since Film Score Monthly released an otherwise complete Star Trek II score on CD in 2009, and at last, here it is.

The second disc, however, contains the box set’s biggest knock-me-over-with-a-feather surprises: virtually the entire music library from the 1973-74 Filmation animated Star Trek series, a segment of the franchise that’s often overlooked for no readily justifiable reason. These selections come courtesy not of a miraculous session tape find (stories have circulated for years about how the original tapes no longer exist), but from the box set’s restoration experts and producers painstakingly editing together all of the cues from the audio of the episodes themselves, meticulously splicing together dialogue-and-FX-free sections of music until they had the entire piece of music reconstructed. Fans have been trying to do this since the days of cassette tapes with moderate success, so to hear an expert reconstruction of this music is nothing short of amazing. (Sharp-eared Filmation fans will also recognize a lot of this music from its later reuse in the live-action series Jason Of Star Command.)

As the animated series’ music consists primarily of fairly short cues, the second disc is rounded out with Dennis McCarthy’s all-synth score from the PC game Star Trek: Borg (previously heard on a private-release CD sold by McCarthy himself) and something that I never would’ve anticipated hearing: new Ron Jones Star Trek music. Let me repeat, for emphasis: new Ron Jones Star Trek music. In 1991, Jones was effectively “let go” by the TNG producers for consistently pushing the bounds of both the show’s creative parameters and its music budget, and aside from scoring a couple of late ’90s computer games, Star Trek has been a thing that’s in Jones’ past…until he composed an original three-part concert suite that, free of having to match the timing or editing of film, simply conveys the spirit of Trek as Jones interpreted it. That music makes its debut as a recorded piece here, tacking a new coda onto Jones’ musical legacy with the franchise.

Discs three and four stay with TNG, offering highlights or nearly-complete scores from such episodes as Coming Of Age, Symbiosis, Contagion, The Bonding, The Hunted, Qpid, Tapestry, Parallels, and even the McCarthy-arranged cutdowns of Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture theme. There’s a nice slice of unreleased tracks from Jay Chattaway’s sophomore TNG effort, Tin Man (a score which, in many ways, he never topped); combined with the tracks released on CD by GNP Crescendo in the 1990s, you now have the entire score from Tin Man. The original synth demos for the Deep Space Nine and Voyager themes are heard for the first time, as well as the premiere of Jay Chattaway’s music from the “Klingon Encounter” ride at the much-missed Star Trek: The Experience attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton. A variety of source music is also made available – Q’s mariachi band from Deja Q, the Brahms string quartet piece from Sarek, and oddball source music from Voyager and Enterprise.

4 out of 4If nothing else on this box set has convinced you what a delightful dive into Trek’s musical deep cuts it is, the last track of the last disc should do it: it’s “Comminique (C)”, the piece of 1988 library techno music that graced TNG’s “next week” trailers in the early 1990s. Were thousands of Trek fans clamoring for this? Probably not, but La-La Land identified and licensed it for this set anyway.

The Star Trek 50th Anniversary Collection probably isn’t for the casual fan of Star Trek soundtracks. It’s for the obsessives, the diehards – the people who are still in “maximum Trekkie” mode and still can’t get enough of it.

Order this CDDisc 1 – Star Trek: The Original Series

  1. Third Season Theme Music – Main Title/End Title (soprano version, stereo) (1:14)
  2. Love Scene (1:15)
  3. Ship in Orbit (Big) (0:40)
  4. Sad and Thoughtful on Captain’s Theme (2:30)
  5. Captain Playoff No. 1 (Heavy) (0:08)
  6. Smooth Neutral Ship Theme (0:41)
  7. Playoff on M.T. Theme (0:23)
  8. Fight on Captain’s Theme (1:50)
  9. Captain Playoff No. 2 (Neutral—Slightly Ominous) (0:12)
  10. Stingers (0:51)
  11. New Sexy Exotic (2:17)
  12. Captain Playoff No. 3 (Sad and Alone) (0:20)
  13. Prime Specimen (“The Cage”) (3:13)
  14. Monster Illusion (“The Cage”) (2:34)
  15. Mr. Spock (“Captain’s Wig” From “The Naked Time”) (3:27)
  16. The Big Go (“The Naked Time”) (2:30)
  17. Mudd’s Perfidy (0:33)
  18. Zap the Cap (1:34)
  19. Zap the Cap take 1 (0:08)
  20. Zap the Cap take 2 (0:06)
  21. Zap the Spaceship (1:28)
  22. Zap the Spaceship (0:34)
  23. Zap the Spaceship (0:08)
  24. Ruk Attacks (1:41)
  25. 2nd Ruth (2:35)
  26. No Mind / Tense Meeting / Tracking the Alien / The Question (2:31)
  27. Survivors (1:42)
  28. Bottled (1:52)
  29. Monster Illusion (2:46)
  30. Monster Illusion (tag) (0:10)
  31. The Kibitzers (0:41)
  32. Vina’s Punishment (1:54)
  33. Vina’s Dance (1:53)
  34. Wrong Think (0:43)
  35. Act 1 Card (0:38)
  36. Crippled Ship (0:55)
  37. Speedy Reader (1:06)
  38. End Title (0:24)
  39. First Goner take 3 (0:48)
  40. First Goner take 4 (0:49)
  41. Dressing Down (0:08)
  42. Monitor Gizzard (0:14)
  43. Monitor Gizzard (0:09)
  44. Lazer Dazer (2:44)
  45. Dodo Girl (0:09)
  46. Drugged (1:23)
  47. Mace Fight (0:59)
  48. Mace Fight (0:18)
  49. Down the Throat (1:13)
  50. Arrows (1:25)
  51. Bumper (broadcast edit) (0:06)
  52. Bumpers (alternates) (0:25)
  53. Paramount Television I.D. (0:05)
  54. Paramount Television I.D. (alternate) (0:04)
  55. Inner Workings (alternate mix) (4:03)
  56. Star Trek II Epilogue / End Title (sans narration) (8:41)

Disc 2 – Star Trek: The Animated Series

  1. Title Theme (1:01)
  2. Captain’s Log (1:19)
  3. Something Ahead (0:54)
  4. Evasive Maneuvers (1:07)
  5. Sensor Data (1:07)
  6. Intercept Course (0:14)
  7. Fire Phasers (0:50)
  8. Enterprise Attacked (1:32)
  9. Illogical (0:13)
  10. Briefing (0:43)
  11. On the Viewscreen (1:02)
  12. New Heading (0:19)
  13. Scanning (0:54)
  14. Deflector Shields (0:19)
  15. Red Alert (0:33)
  16. Battle Stations (0:41)
  17. Surprise (0:07)
  18. Supplemental Log (0:49)
  19. Kirk’s Command (1:11)
  20. Sickbay (0:28)
  21. Library Computer (0:44)
  22. Full Power (0:28)
  23. Approaching Coordinates (0:08)
  24. The Bigger Meaning (1:15)
  25. Trouble in Engineering (0:29)
  26. Spock’s Analysis (0:42)
  27. Enterprise Wins the Space Race (0:43)
  28. McCoy’s Summary (0:16)
  29. Just Another Stardate (0:39)
  30. Ongoing Mission (0:18)
  31. Title Theme (alternate mix) (1:01)
  32. Sensor Data (alternate mix) (1:02)
  33. Enterprise Attacked (alternate opening) (1:42)
  34. Scanning (alternate mix) (0:54)
  35. Turbolift Music (0:29)
  36. Mr. Arex Lends an Extra Hand (0:38)
  37. Fascinating (0:17)
  38. Don’t Mess With M’Ress (0:22)
  39. Oh My (0:17)
  40. Spock’s Quick Analysis (0:22)
  41. Yellow Alert (0:26)
  42. Off Duty (0:15)
  43. Suite: Stingers and Act-Out Music (2:03)
    Music inspired by Star Trek – Ron Jones
  44. The Ascent (7:43)
  45. Meaning (2:27)
  46. Pathway to the Stars (3:17)
    Star Trek: Borg – Dennis McCarthy
  47. Main Theme (1:02)
  48. The Legend of the Borg (1:24)
  49. Battle at Wolf 359 (2:58)
  50. The Battle Rages (0:58)
  51. Club Q (0:55)
  52. I Am Berman of Borg (1:36)
  53. Goldsmith Has Been Assimilated! (1:37)
  54. Welcome to the Collective Cadet (2:22)
  55. Searching the Borg Ship (2:20)
  56. Time Is Running Out (1:17)
  57. Escape From the Borg Collective (1:42)
  58. Borg Hell (2:03)
  59. You Will Be Assimilated, Have a Nice Day (2:21)
  60. “Resistance Is Futile, My Ass!” / Finale (7:25)
  61. End Titles (1:03)

Disc 3 – Star Trek: The Next Generation

  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title (1st season, alternate take) (1:48)
    Coming Of Age
  2. Physics / Shuttle Fuss (3:35)
  3. Air Bounce (2:04)
  4. Competition (2:14)
  5. Decisions (2:04)
    Symbisos
  6. Flares (3:04)
  7. Precious Cargo (2:10)
  8. Four Out of Six (1:03)
    Unnatural Selection
  9. Searchin’ (1:10)
    The Measure Of A Man
  10. Memories (1:19)
    Contagion
  11. U.S.S. Yamato / Vaporized (1:22)
  12. Floral Tea / Otis’ Revenge (2:07)
  13. Romulan Misfire / Phasers / Escape / Goodbye Iconia (2:27)
    The Survivors
  14. Diversion (2:16)
    The Bonding
  15. Dad / Mom’s Double (2:04)
  16. Release / Ceremonial Worf / Off Into Space (4:01)
    The Enemy
  17. Into the Pit (3:01)
    The Hunted
  18. Escape Artist / Melee (3:28)
  19. Breakout (0:32)
  20. Phased / Geordi (4:14)
  21. Confronted / To the Stars (3:30)
    Sins Of The Father
  22. Condemned (1:22)
    Transfigurations
  23. Lookin’ Fine (1:44)
  24. Lazarus (3:48)
  25. Choke Hold / Explanatory / El Ascencio (5:11)
    Future Imperfect
  26. Delusionary (4:08)
    Tapestry
  27. Saint Q (2:05)
  28. It’s a Wonderful Life / Deja Vuosity / War Stories (3:18)
    Parallels
  29. Instant Family (2:42)
  30. Wolfman Riker (3:09)
    Trailer music
  31. Theme From Star Trek: The Motion Picture (30-second version) (0:33)

Disc 4

    Theme From Star Trek (“Gene Roddenberry 1921–1991” unused alternate) (0:10)
    Tin Man

  1. Soft / Student (1:04)
  2. Unique / Welcome / Data (0:48)
  3. Problems / Land of Living (1:41)
  4. Scared (broadcast version) (0:47)
  5. One Way Trip (1:08)
  6. All of It (0:57)
    Deja Q
  7. Tractor Moon / Hoisted (2:58)
  8. La Paloma (traditional) (1:13)
  9. Coffin Spike (0:45)
    Captain’s Holiday
  10. Planet Vegas (1:12)
    Qpid
  11. Hat Trick / Sir Guy / Nottingham Castle / Maid Marian (unused) / Betrayed (3:21)
  12. To the Block / Swordplay / Game’s Over (4:16)
  13. Adieu (1:04)
  14. Plucking Three (0:13)
    Elementary, Dear Data
  15. Sherlock Tones (0:55)
  16. Dead End / Turtleback (2:36)
  17. Short Goodbye (1:21)
    Ship In A Bottle
  18. Holo Tolodo! (4:02)
    Clues
  19. Peace Dividends / Gloria / Blown Away (1:39)
    Manhunt
  20. Juke Boxer (3:29)
  21. How High the Moon (3:36)
    Star Trek: First Contact
  22. Moonlight Becomes You (2:55)
    Unification II
  23. Andorian Blues (0:37)
  24. Aktuh and Maylota (0:49)
  25. Melor Famigal (0:58)
    Lessons
  26. Picard and Nella, Date #1 (Picard’s Cabin) (2:43)
  27. Picard and Nella, Date #2 (Jefferies Tube) (2:22)
    Sarek
  28. Sextet #1 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 (II, Andante) (1:53)
    Star Trek: The Experience
  29. Klingon Encounter (4:24)
  30. Borg Invasion 4D (7:22)
    Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  31. Main Title Demo (1:59)
  32. Single Bridge Demo (2:24)
    Star Trek: Voyager
  33. Main Title Demo (1:51)
  34. Lookover / Maiden Voyager (1:34)
  35. Opera Alla Alienosity (1:11)
    Star Trek: Enterprise
  36. Dance-O-Matic (2:28)
    Trailer music
  37. Communique (C) (2:33)

Released by: La-La Land Record
Release date: November 25, 2016
Disc one total running time: 1:16:13
Disc two total running time: 1:17:23
Disc three total running time: 1:18:57
Disc four total running time: 1:18:57
Box set total running time: 5:16:50

… Read more
Categories
1998 2013 Film S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Year

Star Trek: Insurrection (Newly Expanded Edition)

3 min read

GNP Crescendo’s final remastered score from one of the TNG-era Star Trek movies, Star Trek: Insurrection is a boisterous score to a movie that was trying so hard not to be a traditional action movie. Despite that (or perhaps because of it), Jerry Goldsmith was now the default option when it came to Star Trek movie music, having scored the previous feature film (1996’s Star Trek: Final Conflict to much acclaim. Goldsmith, this time operating on his own (First Contact had included significant input from his son, Joel Goldsmith), turned out a score with pastoral elements not unlike the main theme of First Contact, as well as the brand of pulsating action music which had been one of his hallmarks throughout his career.

The expanded release covers all the ground of Crescendo’s roughly-45-minute release from 1998, and fills in the blanks by completing the score and offering a few alternates and early takes on cues that were revised at the studio’s request. The difference between early drafts and final versions isn’t huge, as it turns out, but they offer some insight into the process of creating the movie’s music. Among the unreleased material, there’s quite a bit of repetition of the movie’s main action motif as well as its more serene themes for the peaceful Ba’ku, but at this point in the saga, the previously unreleased material isn’t as revelatory as it was with, say, Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Star Trek II. Goldsmith completists and Trek completists will be happy to have the unreleased segments of the score, but other than the upgrade in sound quality, there’s not much here to compel owners of the original 1998 release to upgrade.

One thing I noticed in listening to the full score: from an audio engineering standpoint, the entire score seems to be drenched with what can be most charitably described as an obnoxious amount of reverb. The orchestra is simply too echo-ey – it’s almost as if the microphones placed over specific instrument groups 3 out of 4didn’t record a signal, leaving the recording engineers with nothing but the wide-area room mic. At about 20 minutes in, I was growing very tired of that element of this soundtrack. I don’t recall if Insurrection always sounded this way, or if the shorter length of the 1998 release didn’t give the effect time to sink in. Insurrection is music that any action film would be happy to have, but by the high standards set by his other work in the franchise, it’s probably the dimmest corner of Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek constellation.

Order this CD

  1. Ba’ku Village (6:56)
  2. Out of Orbit / Take Us In (1:45)
  3. Come Out (2:36)
  4. In Custody (1:16)
  5. Warp Capability / The Planet / Children’s Story (2:27)
  6. The Holodeck (4:36)
  7. How Old Are You / New Sight (6:11)
  8. Lost Ship / Prepare the Ship (2:40)
  9. As Long As We Can (1:35)
  10. Not Functioning / Send Your Ships (2:48)
  11. Growing Up / Wild Flowers / Photon Torpedo (2:43)
  12. The Drones Attack (4:12)
  13. The Riker Maneuver (3:10)
  14. Stay With Me (1:44)
  15. The Same Race (2:52)
  16. The Collector (1:10)
  17. No Threat (4:11)
  18. Tractor Beam (0:40)
  19. The Healing Process (revised) (5:04)
  20. The Healing Process (original version) (7:15)
  21. End Credits (5:29)
  22. Ba’ku Village (alternate ending) (3:52)
  23. The Holodeck (alternate ending) (1:33)
  24. Growing Up (alternate) (1:18)
  25. Tractor Beam (alternate) (0:41)

Released by: GNP Crescendo Records
Release date: August 6, 2013
Total running time: 1:18:44

… Read more
Categories
S Soundtracks Star Trek Video Game / Computer Game

Star Trek: Music From The Video Games

3 min read

BSX Records has made something of a niche for itself with its series of re-arrangements (or more sweeping reinterpretations) of soundtrack music, whether its albums fixate on specific franchises such as Battlestar Galactica or Twilight, or the works of specific composers. One of BSX’s primary collaborators on these “cover” albums, synth wizard Dominik Hauser, turns his attention to the playable side of the Star Trek franchise with Star Trek: Music From The Video Games.

A long overdue side-step into the non-televised Trek universe, this collection focuses primarily on the games’ theme music, with only one game (Star Trek: Borg, composed by Trek TV composer Dennis McCarthy) deemed worthy of wider exposure. This is a bit of a pity: the original recordings of Star Trek: Borg‘s entire score have already been released by McCarthy, while games with very nice scores (Elite Force springs instantly to mind, since its theme music is represented here) still have no official score release. Hauser’s modern takes on McCarthy’s Borg soundtrack are quite nice, since he’s working with better synths and samples than McCarthy had at his disposal in the 1990s, but some of the other games’ scores could’ve used some of the same TLC.

Another oddity I have to question is the Star Trek: Bridge Commander theme – it’s basically the end credit suite from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with no original material specific to the game. Surely something that isn’t already in wide release could have filled that space.

3 out of 4BSX could mine this corner of the Star Trek universe again easily. Most of the Star Trek video and computer games have fine scores that have not been released in any way that the average Trek music fan can access, leaving a rich vein of material to choose from. Despite my reservations about this release, though it’s expertly arranged and performed, I hope it is but the first of a series whose future volumes may prove to be much more interesting.

Order this CD

  1. Star Trek: Online Main Title (2:41)
  2. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Main Title (4:08)
  3. Star Trek: Starfleet Command Main Title (3:53)
  4. Star Trek: Starfleet Command III Main Title (1:11)
  5. Star Trek: Legacy Main Title (2:24)
  6. Star Trek: Legacy – Kirk’s Theme (2:34)
  7. Star Trek: Aramada II Main Title (2:03)
  8. Star Trek The Next Generation: Birth of the Federation (1:19)
  9. Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Main Title (1:50)
  10. Star Trek: Away Team – Introduction (1:47)
  11. Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard – Kelshar (2:44)
  12. Star Trek: Klingon – Warrior’s Poem (2:19)
  13. Star Trek: Bridge Commander Main Title (4:07)

    Complete score from Star Trek: Borg

  14. Main Title (1:05)
  15. Legend of the Borg (1:25)
  16. Battle at Wolf 359 (2:57)
  17. The Battle Rages (0:58)
  18. Club Q (1:00)
  19. I Am Berman of Borg (1:39)
  20. Goldsmith Has Been Assimilated (1:38)
  21. Welcome to the Collective, Cadet (2:25)
  22. Searching the Borg Ship (2:23)
  23. Time is Running Out (1:19)
  24. Escape from the Borg Collective (1:45)
  25. Borg Hell (2:02)
  26. You Will be Assimilated. Have a Nice Day (2:24)
  27. Resistance is Futile, My Ass! (2:57)
  28. Finale (4:33)
  29. End Title (1:04)

Released by: BSX Records / Buysoundtrax.com
Release date: 2013
Total running time: 64:34

… Read more
Categories
Film S Soundtracks Star Trek

Star Trek: Generations (Newly Expanded Edition)

Let’s be clear – the Star Trek: Generations soundtrack that was released in 1994 was no slouch, featuring around 45 minutes of music, a collection of Generations and Star Trek: TNG sound effects, and a fridge magnet of the CD cover (no joke!). The soundtrack consumer demands a bit more these days, however, so the miraculously revived GNP Crescendo label has traded in the fridge magnet for an extra disc featuring the complete score from beginning to end.

And let’s be clear about another thing – this has always been one of the two best soundtracks from the TNG movies, demonstrating that Dennis McCarthy was not simply phoning in sonic wallpaper for TNG on TV (at least not willingly). Generations gives us McCarthy at his thunderous best, composing music with a real melody behind it and then giving a truly widescreen treatment. Of the previously unavailable cues, the one I was looking forward to hearing the most was “Distress Call / Harriman and the Ribbon”, whose first glimpse of the Nexus is a masterpiece of spine-tingling, otherworldly foreboding – the sound of laying eyes on something dangerously beyond comprehension.

The highlight of Generations remains “The Nexus / A Christmas Hug”, an eerily beautiful choral piece accompanying Picard’s disorienting fantasy of a perfect Christmas with a family that his Starfleet lifestyle would never allow him to have. McCarthy himself has always been justifiably proud of this piece, and the bonus tracks present us with this selection in choir-only form, with the orchestra mixed out completely (and it still holds up as a great piece of music).

Between this and the recent release of box sets of music from Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine (each of which devote at least one CD to McCarthy’s best from each series), I’d like to think that these 4 out of 4releases of his work are earning Dennis McCarthy a long-overdue reappraisal from Star Trek fandom, which seemed to indict him of the crime of not being Ron Jones for many years. McCarthy could always crank out a great tune; the strictures placed on Star Trek’s composers by its showrunner kept the music to a very dull roar (in every sense of the word “dull”). This is why you don’t have a 14-disc box set of McCarthy’s music. The expanded Generations soundtrack is a good start on redressing that balance, though.

Order this CD

    Disc One
  1. Main Title (2:54)
  2. Past Glory (1:19)
  3. The Enterprise B (0:42)
  4. Distress Call / Harriman and the Ribbon (4:27)
  5. Kirk Saves the Day / Deck 15 / HMS Enterprise (4:50)
  6. Picard’s Message / Raid Post Mortem (4:43)
  7. Data and the Emotions (0:54)
  8. Time is Running Out (1:11)
  9. Data Malfunctions (2:29)
  10. Soran Kidnaps Geordi (2:44)
  11. Guinan and the Nexus (2:47)
  12. Torture (1:37)
  13. Soran’s Plan Revealed (1:49)
  14. Prisoner Exchange (2:59)
  15. Outgunned (3:22)
  16. The Gap / Coolant Leak / Appointment with Eternity / Out of Control / Blasted / The Crash (5:43)
  17. Coming to Rest (1:00)
  18. The Nexus (1:32)
  19. A Christmas Hug / The Kitchen Debate (8:03)
  20. Coming to Rest (1:38)
  21. Two Captains / Crash Recap (2:04)
  22. The Final Fight (6:15)
  23. The Captain of the Enterprise (Kirk’s Death) (2:45)
  24. To Live Forever (2:40)
  25. Star Trek: Generations Overture (4:13)
    Disc Two
    Original 1994 album remastered
  1. Star Trek: Generations Overture (4:13)
  2. Main Title (2:54)
  3. The Enterprise B / Kirk Saves the Day (3:13)
  4. Deck 15 (1:41)
  5. Time is Running Out (1:11)
  6. Prisoner Exchange (2:58)
  7. Outgunned (3:22)
  8. Out of Control / The Crash (2:05)
  9. Coming to Rest (1:00)
  10. The Nexus / A Christmas Hug (7:07)
  11. Jumping the Ravine (1:38)
  12. Two Captains (1:34)
  13. The Final Fight (6:15)
  14. Kirk’s Death (2:45)
  15. To Live Forever (2:40)

    16. Sound Effects

  16. Enterprise B Bridge (3:13)
  17. Enterprise B Doors Open (0:13)
  18. Distress Call Alert (0:10)
  19. Enterprise B Helm Controls (0:16)
  20. Nexus Energy Ribbon (1:38)
  21. Enterprise B Deflector Beam (0:08)
  22. Enterprise B Warp Pass-by (0:14)
  23. Enterprise B Transporter (0:12)
  24. Tricorder (0:30)
  25. Hypo Injector (0:03)
  26. Communicator Chirp (0:06)
  27. Door Chime (0:07)
  28. Enterprise D Warp Out #1 (0:22)
  29. Bird of Prey Bridge / Explosion (2:51)
  30. Klingon Sensor Alert (0:08)
  31. Bird of Prey Cloaks (0:04)
  32. Bird of Prey De-cloaks (0:10)
  33. Klingon Transporter (0:12)
  34. Soran’s Gun (0:11)
  35. Soran’s Rocket De-cloaks (0:05)
  36. Shuttlecraft Pass-by (0:21)
  37. Enterprise D Bridge / Crash Sequence (3:21)
  38. Enterprise D Warp-Out #2 (0:09)

    39. Bonus Tracks

  39. Prisoner Exchange (film version) (2:59)
  40. A Christmas Hug (choir only) (1:22)
  41. Lifeforms (Vocal: Brent Spiner) (0:17)

Released by: GNP Crescendo
Release date: October 15, 2012
Disc one total running time: 75:39
Disc two total running time: 66:11

… Read more