Making Movie Music: The Original 'Star Trek' Films

In 1979, the once-cancelled 1960s Star Trek series was about to make its triumphant return with a blockbuster motion picture. The music would be handled by Jerry Goldsmith, a composer who had gotten his start writing for television before making his way to feature films in the latter half of the 1960s. Goldsmith began an association with Star Trek that would last roughly 25 years, and Star Trek music itself would begin its long connection with some of the best composers in the world.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979):
Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, had wanted Goldsmith to score the original pilot episode of Star Trek, "The Cage", but the composer had been unavailable. Director Robert Wise had worked with Goldsmith before on The Sand Pebbles, and was eager for the chance to work with him again. Goldsmith was heavily influenced by the release of the space opera Star Wars a few years earlier. "When you stop and think about it, space is a very romantic thought," he recalled. "It is, to me, like the Old West, we're up in the universe. It's about discovery and new life [...] it's really the basic premise of Star Trek." Unfortunately, Wise and Roddenberry just didn't like the first bombastic theme he wrote; to them, it sounded too much "like sailing ships". Goldsmith was irked, to be sure, but he revised his ideas and the result was the Star Trek theme that comes to most people's minds when they hear the word (Jerry Goldsmith, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture Directors Edition Special features.)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture suffered from many shortcomings, but the music would not be one of them. Among the themes that Goldsmith created (and would be reused or echoed many times in later Star Trek films and television episodes) was a theme for the completely redesigned Klingons, and the theme for the new USS Enterprise itself. A sped-up version (that managed to strip out a bit of the original majesty of the piece) was used as the title theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

At the time, The Motion Picture's music and sound effects were cutting edge, employing a variety of synthesizers and new digital equipment. To represent the nearly omnipotent alien ship V'ger, Goldsmith employed a bizarre instrument known as the Blaster Beam, an aluminum frame 12 to 15 feet long that is played by an artillery shell.

Sound sample: You can hear both the Blaster Beam and the Klingon theme on Youtube here.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982):
Star Trek: The Motion Picture made $139 million, a good hunk of change, but its gross was disappointing to Paramount considering the amount of money pumped into the production and its marketing. In part, they blamed Roddenberry, and forced him out of the production of the greenlit (and cheaper) sequel. Star Trek II's script was in danger until a young writer named Nicholas Meyer took the reins, becoming the director, and with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "saved Star Trek as we know it", according to Entertainment Weekly (Mark Bernardin: Star Trek II: Directors Edition Review.)

Meyer's view of Star Trek was subtly different from Roddenberry's, more a naval epic in space. He did everything in his power to change the look of Star Trek with the limited money available. That drive extended to the score: eager for something more modern than Goldsmith's bombastic score to The Motion Picture, Meyer and the producers turned to a young and relative unknown: James Horner.

Horner began working on the score to the film in January 1982. Meyer wanted music that was evocative of seafaring and swashbuckling, in keeping with the other naval touches he had introduced in the film. The result, written in just four weeks, became one of the most enduring Star Trek music works. Horner entirely discarded Goldsmith's work in favor of a new, sweeping fanfare. Two major leitmotifs were introduced to represent the main characters. For the villain, Khan, Horner created a percussive texture that could be overlaid over other sections to reinforce the character's madness. For the logical alien Spock, Horner created a contemplative theme which he hoped would make the character more three-dimensional and rounded. One minor element remains from Goldsmith's previous work: the Blaster Beam is still used to underscore elements. (Randall Larson, in "A Conversation with James Horner": CinemaScore.)

Sound sample: Hear Horner's "Genesis Countdown" on Youtube here.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984):
The highly positive reviews for The Wrath of Khan cemented it as arguably the best film the series, but its immediate effect was the resurrect the franchise. While The Wrath of Khan had been expected to be the final entry in the series (which is why Meyer was allowed to kill off the beloved Spock), a third film meant that the Vulcan had to be brought back. Meyer wouldn't return, and so the directing tasks fell to Spock's actor, Leonard Nimoy. Making a repeat performance, however, was James Horner.

The result of this continuity in composers is a welcome continuity in the Star Trek soundscape. The Search for Spock takes place only weeks after The Wrath of Khan, and it's a welcome and excellent bridge that the enduring theme for the Enterprise hasn't changed in that time. Rather than having a new composer try and feel his or her way into what Star Trek should sound like, Horner had already decided, and brought back his old themes with new variants, as well as adding some completely new music.

"Spock's Theme", heard at minor points in the previous film, gets a refit as it becomes much more important to the storyline. Horner's themes for the somewhat mystical, always cerebral Vulcans is fitting, and has in many ways come to define the race. While Spock's Theme was important in the last film, the heavy emphasis on, you know, finding Spock means that the theme comes to symbolize not only Spock but the accumulated culture of an entire alien race (The theme for the Genesis planet, heard at the end of the last film, also is expanded as much of the plot revolves around its decay and destruction (Steve Simak, in "James Horner on Star Trek III": CinemaScore.)

The only other major new theme is a bang-and-clank Klingon theme, which Horner described as "percussive and atonal" (Simak). It's interesting to note the differences between Goldsmith and Horner's take on the Klingons. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the Klingons were craggly-ridged, sharp-toothed barbarians in space, but their theme has a level of sophistication. The Search for Spock's Klingons are more refined, but Horner uses a percussive, almost oriental theme that is much more brutal than Goldsmith. Overall, it has been Goldsmith's theme that has endured, in part because of its greater utility soundwise, but Horner's offering is interesting too.

Sound sample: Hear Horner's "Stealing the Enterprise" on Youtube here.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986):
It is ironic that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (also known as "the one with the whales" due to its environmental go-whales content) is one of the very few Trek films to bridge into casual viewers and appeal to a general audience, not just the Trekkies. It also won an Academy Award for best score for composer Leonard Rosenman. What's ironic about this, you might ask? The simple answer: Rosenman's score, in the Olde English, "doth sucketh". It remains well-known today as the worst Star Trek score in existence, above even the occasionally uninspired offerings by Goldsmith over the years. Rosenman just is nowhere in the same league.

Rosenman was a longtime, established composer when he got the assignment, unlike Horner. He had little in the way of experience with science fiction, with the cartoon Lord of the Rings and Fantastic Voyage to his credit (both films that are not known for excellence in any aspect, let alone music.) The blame for picking Rosenman lies with Nimoy, who was friends with the composer and who decided that due to the radically different nature of Star Trek IV, Rosenman might be the ideal candidate. (Randall Larson, in "Leonard Rosenman on Star Trek IV": CinemaScore.)

And, to be fair, Nimoy had a point. The Voyage Home is a whimsical story, even framed as it is with the near-annihilation of the planet Earth. It's certainly a far cry from the heavy philosophical turn represented in The Search for Spock. Rosenman also had a very different view from Goldsmith and Horner, in that he didn't set out to replace Alexander Courage's television series theme. The result was that it draws on the original theme much more than any other film score (Larson). And though the main theme maintains a level of decorum, by the time the film has wrapped, all sense of propriety has been lost and it has dissolved into mere silliness. Reviewer John Blough commented that the score loses dramatic weight and lacks malleability, and I'm inclined to agree (Blough, in "Soundtrack Review: Star Trek IV".) Of all the soundtracks, only this one is the one reviewers suggest skipping.

Sound sample: Listen to Rosenbaum's adaptation of the classic Courage Star Trek theme and his own additions, in "Main Title" on Youtube here.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989):
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is the definition of a film where just about everything went wrong. A Writers Guild Strike resulted in a subpar script; special effects house Industrial Light and Magic's busy schedule meant laughably bad effects; director William Shatner's inexperience with the craft, and a possible overfocus on his own character (Captain Kirk); all these forces conspired with an unusually crowded 1989 release schedule to doom the film. It would be more than a decade before Star Trek would see such a poor film, and it firmly entrenched the popular rule of Star Trek films that the odd-numbered ones are the worst. (Ree Hines, in "Will the 'Star Trek' curse strike again?": MSNBC.)

One thing, however, that didn't suffer was the score. Perhaps learning from the mistakes made in The Voyage Home, or recognizing that the movie's search for God in the cosmos required a more serious compositional approach, Goldsmith was brought back to mold the soundscape once again. The result is what reviewer Filmtracks.com called his greatest score aside from the 1979 original (Filmtracks, in "Star Trek V".)

Aside from dealing with prophets as nutty as fruitcakes trying to find God at the center of the universe, a major threat throughout the film is--you guessed it--Klingons. Goldsmith accordingly goes all out with various renditions of his classic Klingon theme, including adding the cry of a bird-of-prey to accentuate the Klingon ship's travel through space. This is the only score where the theme is found in the end credits, as well, and it's here that Goldsmith hones his rendition of the Star Trek theme that would be used for the Next Generation films (Filmtracks).

Sound sample: A medley put together of the rousing Klingon and main themes, from the track "Without Help", on Youtube here.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991):
After the critical and commercial disaster of The Final Frontier, it was decided to go back to what worked: Nicholas Meyer, helming the film as director and co-writing the script. Meyer's film was undeniably darker than many that had come before, with the destruction of the planet, the assassination of an Abraham Lincoln-esque political figure, exile to gulags, show trials, and the specter of cross-species racism.

In keeping with the spirit of what he was trying to craft, Meyer's original idea for the score was decidely dramatic, to be sure: adapt Gustav Holst's legendary orchestral suite, The Planets. Unfortunately for him, such a plan proved economically infeasible, and he listened to demo tapes sent in by hopeful composers. One stuck out for him, that of a young composer named Cliff Eidelman (Nicholas Meyer, in "Director's notes"

Eidelman, in a similar vein to Rosenbaum's thinking, decided not to compete with Goldsmith and Horner's bombast and marchlike fanfares for the opening credits. Rather, the composer took cues from Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird", replicating a foreboding sound that impressed Meyer and the film's producers. The 26-year old had the job (Meyer).

While Eidelman created a minor-key theme that is unique among the franchise, he also borrowed from past installments; "Spock's Theme" has a minor reappearance, turning into an otherwordly sound that represents "the undiscovered country" of the title--an uncertain future of peace.

Eidelman wanted the music to complement the visuals; for the gulag Rura Penthe, he wrote music that he felt represented the danger of the alien world, with exotic instruments and Klingon chanting in the background. Kirk's internal dilemma about what the future holds was emphasized in the main theme: "It's Kirk taking control one last time and as he looks out into the stars he has the spark again," Eidelman said. "But there's an unresolved note, because it's very important that he doesn't trust the Klingons. He doesn't want to go on this trip even though the spark is there that overtook him" (Daniel Schweiger, in "Cliff Eidelman performs the Enterprise's swan song for Star Trek": Soundtrack!) Ultimately, though Eidelman has not reached the level of fame of Horner or Goldsmith, his score stands among the best of the entire series.

Sound sample: "The Battle for Peace" suite on Youtube here.