Soundtrack Review: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

This is a review of the motion picture score Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Jerry Goldsmith.

“You cannot call yourself a true film music lover until you’ve truly experienced this music.  To do otherwise would be…illogical.”

Most people may rave about Star Wars, yet both it and Star Trek seem to have the same number of generally accepted “classics” (4 and 5 for Wars, 2 and 4 for Trek) and have a renowned musical heritage that began with genre defining classics (then again, what do I know, I’ve never seen a Trek film!).  While both starter scores in the series are undeniably brilliant and rank among my favorites, for my money the first Star Trek score is the finer work, perhaps lacking the fun and action-packed excitement of John Williams’s work but making up for it with unbelievable innovation and a wealth of thematic diversity and development.  It is truly a score that boldly went where no score had gone before, and it is also widely credited with saving its otherwise stagnant film.

Fanfare

The obvious starting point would be the fanfare, one of the most swelling, optimistically heroic ideas ever to grace your ears.  Every time you hear it you’ll feel like soaring away, especially in its two legendary highlights “The Enterprise” gives the theme a varied, mammoth workout, slowly building up the majesty of the ship into a resounding orchestral explosion.  “Leaving Drydock” unleashes the theme at its most militantly heroic, and the otherwordly sound effect hovering around is a fantastic futuristic touch.  It’s Goldsmith at his most exciting and perhaps his best orchestrated, with every section rising up in a musical feast.  Of the following works, only James Horner’s sea-faring theme for the second and third films came close to the same level of quality, though it remains to be seen what Michael Giacchino can pull off with Alexander Courage’s original TV theme in the upcoming series reboot.

Love Theme

Oh, and the raving only gets better with “Ilia’s Theme”, a timeless romantic venture that is amongst Goldsmith’s best love themes.  Lush strings take over a gorgeous melody surrounded by a magical chime and woodwind background.  It’s a damn shame future films didn’t require this theme (spoiler!).  Laudable is that it retains its balletic innocence even as Goldsmith surrounds it with darker material like the blaster beam in “No Goodbyes”, “Micro Exam”, and “Games”.  In contrast to this, we have the more minimal, mysterious theme for Spock that pops up in “Total Logic” and gets a more fluttering introduction in the fantastic “Spock’s Arrival.”  Cues like “Spock Walk” and “Red Alert” do a fantastic job at making the music sound likes it’s thinking, conveying the logical intellectualism of the character superbly.

Mentioned earlier was the blaster beam, the dark, otherwordly, slightly electronic sound used to represent the ominous Vejur.  It creates suspense, wonder, and terror all at once, whether grinding at the end of “Klingon Battle” or menacingly layering the surrounding orchestra.  When mixed with the rolling thematic idea for the being, it’s raw musical awe at its finest, demonstrated best by the near 20-minute classic stretch from “Red Alert” to “Force Field” that stands as perhaps the finest suspense music ever composed.  Varying between string and harp plucking, rising organ crescendos amidst brass sailing out with the Vejur theme (somewhat infrequent, which makes the suspense all the better), piano, muted trumpet, and the ever-present blaster beam (which slowly increases its presence to fine effect), it inspires equal doses of awe, curiosity, and darkness without ever becoming too much, which I don’t think can be said of any other stretch of music this long.  The monumental brilliance of these cues is why I never gripe about the lack of the fanfare throughout the score’s middle.

Conclusion

Later parts delve into quieter, darker explorations of themes for Spock, Ilia, and the Veju, all leading into the most mammoth romantic buildup of the score in “The Meld/A Good Start”.  Then the Vejur theme gets a surprisingly melodic statement amidst the blaster beam rising up like a timpani, and soon we’re back to the sweeping tones of the fanfare to ferry us on our way to the “End Credits”.  You will leave this album floored, impressed, and dying to go back for more of this unique, gripping musical journey.  Even the little parts, like the brief introduction to the Klingon theme Goldsmith would use in his later scores or the wondrous but short “Flying Office”, dazzle in their intricacy.  It’s no wonder I feel this to be Goldsmith’s finest score, for it enraptures you like few other works, plus it boasts a wealth of themes and variations that no future Trek score comes anywhere close to.  With most Trek scores nowhere close to this level of quality, the original shines even brighter than it did 30 years ago. You cannot call yourself a true film music lover (or “soundtrack geek”, for benefit of our site name) until you’ve truly experienced this music.  To do otherwise would be…illogical.

Album Situation: 1986 album is obsolete as it is only 40 minutes and is not listed.  1999 album should satisfy most listeners, especially Trekkies who wish to dig into the interviews on the second disc.  For those looking for the complete picture, an additional 14 minutes can be found on bootleg, featuring a number of shorter cues, like the exciting “Warp One” and “Warp Seven”, the classic beginning to the middle that is “Red Alert”, an extension of the final suspense material, and more work on Ilia’s theme.  A 3rd disc features notable alternate cues (the original Enterprise cue that Goldsmith felt had “no theme”) as well as a track of Goldsmith conducting versions of the end titles

Best Album: 3-Disc

1999 Album (74:27)
1.  Ilia’s Theme (03:01)
2.  Main Title (01:23)
3.  Klingon Battle (05:27)
4.  Total Logic (03:44)
5.  Floating Office (01:03)
6.  The Enterprise (05:59)
7.  Leaving Drydock (03:29)
8.  Spock’s Arrival (01:58)
9.  The Cloud (04:58)
10.  Vejur Flyover (04:57)
11.  The Force Field (05:03)
12.  Games (03:41)
13.  Spock Walk (04:19)
14.  Inner Workings (03:01)
15.  Vejur Speaks (03:50)
16.  The Meld (03:09)
17.  A Good Start (02:26)
18.  End Title (03:16)

3-CD Bootleg (88:01)
Disc 1
1.    Ilia’s Theme (3:01)
2.    Main Title/Klingon Battle (6:50)
3.    Total Logic (3:44)
4.    Floating Office (1:01)
5.    The Enterprise (5:57)
6.    Transporter Malfunction (1:25)
7.    Crew Briefing (0:33)
8.    Destruction of Epsilon 9 (1:09)
9.    Pre-Launch (0:25)
10.    Leaving Drydock (3:28)
11.    Stardate 7412.6 (0:18)
12.    Warp One (0:24)
13.    No Goodbyes (0:52)
14.    Spock’s Arrival (1:58)
15.    Stardate 7413.4 (0:36)
16.    Warp Seven (1:02)
17.    Red Alert (2:59)
18.    Ilia Helps Chekov (0:36)
Disc 2
1.    The Cloud (4:58)
2.    Vejur Flyover (4:56)
3.    The Force Field (5:03)
4.    Ilia’s Probe (0:53)
5.    Micro Exam (1:11)
6.    Stardate 7414.1 (0:36)
7.    Games (3:42)
8.    Thruster Suit (1:49)
9.    Spock Walk (4:18)
10.    Vejur Signals the Creator (0:33)
11.    Systems Inoperative (1:58)
12.    Hidden Information (5:30)
13.    Inner Workings (3:05)
14.    Voyager 6! (0:50)
15.    Vejur Speaks (3:51)
16.    The Meld/A Good Start (5:35)
17.    End Credits (3:16)

Disc 3
1.  Ilia’s Theme (Overture Session)
2.  Main Title (Take #1 and Take #2)

3.  The Enterprise (Early Version)
4.  Leaving Drydock (Early Version)
5.  Spock’s Arrival (Early Version)
6.  The Force Field (Alternate)
7.  Micro Exam (Alternate)
8.  Games (Alternate #1)
9.  Games (Alternate #2)

10.  Ilia’s Theme (Alternate)
11.  Inner Workings (Alternate #1)
12.  Inner Workings (Alternate #2)
13.  End Title (Alternate)
14.  Star Trek – The Motion Picture Suite

Listen to Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Jerry Goldsmith below:

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Other articles of interest:

• Soundtrack Review: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• Soundtrack Review: Star Trek: The Final Frontier (1989)
• Soundtrack Review: The Karate Kid (2010)
• Soundtrack Review: The Last Airbender (2010)
• Soundtrack Review: Robin Hood (2010)

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