Star Trek: The Motion Picture [Music from the Original Soundtrack]

by Jerry Goldsmith

Overview

Issued in 1999 after some considerable delay (and heavily available as a promo before that), this double-CD set corrects a lot of the mistakes that were made on the original LP and CD releases. For starters, there are about 20 more minutes of music from the film here -- Columbia Records obviously wanted to hold the original LP release to one disc, but they still could have gotten most, if not all, of the extra material on. The additional music isn't anything profound, because all of the major thematic material was represented on the original LP and its CD equivalent -- it's mostly just more of the Vejur oscillations over dark orchestral chords, but anything that gets more Jerry Goldsmith music into print is intrinsically OK. Indeed, listening to the full score here, it is more apparent than ever just how important Goldsmith's score was to the lethargically paced, deeply troubled film -- almost all of the majesty, excitement, and mystery that the screen was supposed to present actually resides in the music, and Goldsmith probably deserved an Academy Award, not just a nomination, for his contribution to this movie. Additionally, one of the new tracks, "Spock's Arrival," may be the closest that Goldsmith has ever come to writing serious music in a pure Romantic idiom; this could have been the work of Rimsky-Korsakov or Stravinsky -- it's that good. And all of the music has been remastered in state-of-the-art 20-bit sound, so the previously available parts of the score sound deeper and brighter -- one also gets echoes of his score for Alien amid the sweeping orchestral passages. The second disc is given over to the reissue of the mid-'70s Inside Star Trek LP, which was a Columbia release -- it's mostly talk by creator/producer Gene Roddenberry with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Nichelle Nichols, with some comments by Isaac Asimov, some theme music, and some sound effects. It won't tell you much that the interviews accompanying the Sci-Fi Channel's rebroadcast of the uncut original series didn't, but it's handy to have as an improbable CD re-release. ~ Bruce Eder

Product Details

Release Date:	01/26/1999
Label:	Legacy / Sony Music Distribution
UPC:	0074646613429
Rank:	46005

Tracks

Disc 1

1. Ilia's Theme
2. Main Title
3. Klingon Battle
4. Total Logic
5. Floating Office
6. The Enterprise
7. Leaving Drydock
8. Spock's Arrival
9. The Cloud
10. Vejur Flyover
11. The Force Field
12. Games
13. Spock Walk
14. Inner Workings
15. Vejur Speaks
16. The Meld
17. A Good Start
18. End Title

Disc 2

19. Start Trek Theme
20. Introduction: Nichelle Nichols
21. Inside Star Trek
22. William Shatner Meets Captain Kirk
23. Introduction to Live Show
24. About Science Fiction
25. The Origin of Spock
26. Sarek's Son Spock
27. The Questor Affair
28. The Genesis II Pilot
29. Cyborg Tools and E.T. Life Forms
30. McCoy's Rx for Life
31. The Star Trek Philosopy
32. Asimov's World of Science Fiction
33. The Enterprise Runs Around
34. A Letter from a Network Censor
35. The Star Trek Dream (Ballad 1/Ballad 2)
36. Sign off: Nichelle Nichols

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Jerry Goldsmith   Primary Artist
Gene Rodenberry   Primary Artist
William Shatner   Vocals

Technical Credits

Jerry Goldsmith   Composer,Producer
Gene Rodenberry   Performer,Composer
Alan Silvestri   Composer
Gene DePaul   Composer
Alexander Courage   Composer
Don DeVito   Producer
Darcy Proper   Reissue Producer
Johnny Mandel   Composer
John Williams   Composer
Nichelle Nichols   Composer,Narrator