I listen to a lot of soundtracks while I work, and Star Trek is almost always in the mix. There's a wide variety in I-X, with Jerry Goldsmith obviously the most widely scored... But with an interesting variety of his own.
So, my main question - what's your favorite soundtrack, and why? Any you don't like?
The only problem I have with the soundtracks is that they're actually reasonably difficult to find - I bought some of the limited releases of the expanded II and III but if I ripped them to digital format, it's on a hard drive gathering dust somewhere while I don't have a CD drive handy to rip them again. I was looking on one streaming service for TMP and it ambitiously puts the release date of the set some time in the 2030's. There must be some wild rights issues going on, but if you're streaming often you're left with knock off "City of Prague Does X" or else you can take a look in dodgy sources.
For me, my notes on the films that stand out...
So, my main question - what's your favorite soundtrack, and why? Any you don't like?
The only problem I have with the soundtracks is that they're actually reasonably difficult to find - I bought some of the limited releases of the expanded II and III but if I ripped them to digital format, it's on a hard drive gathering dust somewhere while I don't have a CD drive handy to rip them again. I was looking on one streaming service for TMP and it ambitiously puts the release date of the set some time in the 2030's. There must be some wild rights issues going on, but if you're streaming often you're left with knock off "City of Prague Does X" or else you can take a look in dodgy sources.
For me, my notes on the films that stand out...
- TMP - The granddaddy, really. One of the advantages of TMP being such an OTT budget movie was they got Goldsmith and defining motifs that would be with us all the way through the rest of Star Trek up to the end of the TNG era movies. It stands apart though as a score - the mystical voyage through V'Ger, the romance, there's a lot of very unique elements
- TWOK & TSFS - What starts as "We couldn't afford Jerry" gave us another very defining Star Trek duo from James Horner. Blow that horn, baby. Battle->Countdown is a good 15 minutes of your life and Stealing the Enterprise is a lot of fun. If you get the expanded soundtracks, there's some amazing bonus tracks from the original release - Enterprise Attacks Reliant and Genesis Destruction come to mind.
- TVH and TUC (IV & VI) are two outliers, with different composers... I could take them or leave them on a given day. IV is very upbeat but also a bit more generic "fun 80's movie" in my opinion, and VI has a bit too much chanting for my liking, but very personal that opinion
- TFF brings back JG and the soundtrack is honestly the best thing about the movie - A bit less original maybe than TMP but a swashbuckling action movie with the trek elements returning from TMP... Life is a Dream set the stage for the ending of all the movies past First Contact
- Generations is a really interesting original by a one-shot movie composer with obviously a deep pedigree on TNG itself, Dennis McCarthy. Like VI it has a choir, but it's a lot less chanting and a lot more ethereal, and I like it. I always think of Generations as a Christmas movie (it was released in mid-November and obviously has the Nexus Christmas Carol storyline) and the soundtrack fits
- FC, INS & NEM... The latter two, the soundtrack is the best thing about the movies IMO and for FC it really matches the whole tone and tenor of the movie. Some originalish stuff, never quite as good as TMP and TFF, but to be fair they came at the tail of Goldsmith's long career and life
