Second-best Star Trek music would be Jerry's First Contact; it certainly had its share of sharp, intense & fiercely emotional moments throughout. Nobody involved in Star Trek has written better music than Jerry Goldsmith; he was born for Star Trek.
Which of the films has your favourite score?
- Thread starter Shalashaska
- Start date
I think Horner's stuff is easily on a par. I didn't care much for insurrection's score, it felt like by the numbers goldsmith at that point, though I liked the score for nemesis.
Nah, Horner's stuff from that period all sounds exactly the same. It's like he wrote one big generic action movie score and kept fiddling slightly with it for 15 different movies. Hell, Goldsmith's TFF score is orchestrally more distinct from his TMP score than almost any two scores for wholly different films by Horner in the same period.
Well, that summer when I was playing TFF my brother walked into the room and asked why I was listening to Rambo. Goldsmith had a sound. He might not have followed it as exactly as Horner was wont to do but not all of his stuff sounded absolutely fresh. TMP and TWOK sound nothing alike but Innerspace and Hoosiers (or First Contact) have their overlap.
Onto the thread: I will not pick. I suppose I could probably group TMP, TWOK, and TSFS as THE Star Trek scores. There are things that TMP does that no other score does for me. But there are things that TWOK/TSFS does that TMP doesn't.
So pretty much there is 1-3 and there is everything else.
OTOH, there is not a TOS Movie score that I don't love. The TNG movies have some super highlights but there is some "treading water" kind of music (especially in the last two Goldmith scores).
(I ALMOST picked TMP just now. But I won't.)
One of the things I always liked best about TMP/TFF vs SFS is how Goldsmith came up with the iconic Klingon theme, then Horner did his version of it, so Goldsmith cranked it up several notches the next chance he got.
Yes, sure, i can smell a John Williams score at 50 paces, and there are similarities in many of Goldsmith's scores, and Elfman;s Batman Returns score sound like it could be underscore for The Nightmare Before Christmas. But Horner really did basically duplicate whole passages from one score to another with a minimum of fiddling.
It's tough...there are so many good ones. I actually voted for Into Darkness, which I think is wildly underrated. The piano theme in that just moves me so much and there is so much darkly epic material, I love it. I am a big Giacchino fan in general.
However, there's no doubt that Goldsmith and Horner did phenomenal work, so important and so imaginative, and of course TMP score is a standout. The First Contact theme is so beautiful, the Ba'ku Village theme from Insurrection is so pretty, the Klingon theme is everything it should be, etc, etc..It's all just great.
However, there's no doubt that Goldsmith and Horner did phenomenal work, so important and so imaginative, and of course TMP score is a standout. The First Contact theme is so beautiful, the Ba'ku Village theme from Insurrection is so pretty, the Klingon theme is everything it should be, etc, etc..It's all just great.
I went to a Star Wars vs. Star Trek concert at the Phoenix Symphony last year. Epilogue and End Credits from TWOK moved me to tears. But the unexpected stand out for me was the End Credits from Insurrection which included the Ba'ku Villiage suite. Wow. Just really really wow.
I will say that the Overture (formerly Ilia's Theme) from TMP was gorgeous and moving, and the soundtrack as a whole is entirely perfect for that movie, and while Horner lifts entire sections from his own works on several occasions, TWOK remains my favorite, aesthetically.
I would love to go to a Trek vs Wars concert, sounds amazing!
I'm going to a Star Trek concert in a couple of weeks, so I'm now using that as an excuse to listen through each one of the movie scores in a row in preparation. Maybe I'll come up with a definite favourite from all the immersion. But probably it'll just be harder to choose.
Similar threads
- Poll
