Home | Reviews | Star Trek: The Motion Picture 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition / Inside Star Trek

by Steve Reed (SteveReed@earthling.net)
28 January 1999

The magnificent musical and recording quality of the new "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" soundtrack release doesn't need any more praise from this quarter ... if you bought it and have heard it, it plays for itself.

What I want to point out as a virtue is a facet that, as yet, has rarely been discussed: the soundtrack being, at long last, in the order that it was presented in the original film. And how this helps, in turn, to demonstrate a hidden point: how Jerry Goldsmith's music -cannot- be torn away, fully, from how the film tells its story.

Goldsmith may have been rushed in completing this score, but he was able to maintain thematic connections as the plot unfolded, especially in how he rang up changes on the two main themes--"Ilia's Theme" and the "Main Title." Part of the power of the score is inseparable from the constant struggle of reason and emotion within the main characters.

Take the transition between "Leaving Drydock" and "Spock's Arrival," the latter newly added. A passage underscoring determination (that of Kirk commandeering the starship for a hasty mission) is followed by a passage full of ambiguous cues, from the swirls backing a mysterious arrival of a one-man transport, to a conflicted Spock suddenly appearing, to an expression of the crew being flustered at a new-yet-familiar presence.

Yes, the transitions and mixed themes are dramatic in their own right. But it's too shortsighted to dismiss the film itself as not mattering against this music. Robert Wise was incapable, during his career, of creating a work that wasn't coherent or evocative. (Well, at least "The Sound of Music" was a bit more astringent than its theater original. Even that took some talent to do.)

This first "Trek" film relied on visual and acting responses to create an unknown world, that of "Vejur." It was a work of -visual/aural art,- more cerebral than the usual space opera or melodrama.

What made that visual art work, for the few of us who always did admire this film -as a film,- was its being complemented by Goldsmith's score. The effects of the Enterprise plunging into "The Cloud," its moments of discovery amid the "Vejur Flyover," the haunting and repetitive themes of personal wonder by Goldsmith, and what was better-than-usual reacting to it all (in blue-screen) by the principal cast ... these all became part of a -single- creation.

The more pro-active talents of the cast also played intricately against two of the newly released passages of music, "The Force Field" and "Games." These were moments of clashing psychology—humans and machines—and the music cannot be torn apart from the storytelling done by the actors. (I refer, by the way, to the "Special Longer Version" released on video, with restored footage that became essential to the character dynamics.)

All these elements interacted to create a cinematic passage in the middle third of the film that, after 20 long years, remains the most intricate and textured "Trek" creation yet—despite its being the most vilified part of the film. Scores rarely are this embedded in the rest of the overall passion of such a work. John Williams's "Star Wars" scores don't quite achieve this, as moving as they themselves are ... and, I hope, will be.

I know that debates rage about whether film music is an afterthought or prop to the larger story. Some uses of it assist in -creating- a larger story, a sense of wonder, a setting for confrontations. This active creation is part of what Goldsmith's score achieves, and it is not fully understandable -apart- from the visuals and the acting. His sonic brilliance and evocation of emotion is essential. But it also became part of a larger creation.

After all the waiting for this re-release, whatever one thinks of the score's context and of the film itself, the "Inside Star Trek" companion disc appears to be almost a marketing afterthought. (Or Trekker pandering, as some would have it.) Its presence as such deserves a word of defense, however, as well.

"ST:TMP" belongs to and is the conclusion of the first "Trek" era, that of The Original Series, albeit following that series by a decade. It brought the main conflict to a head that drove the original stories: relentless reason (Spock), passionate emotion (McCoy), and how one deals with both (Kirk). Both sides learned from each other. Spock finally learned how emotions were essential to add meaning. McCoy could grasp the way his friend saw existence. And Kirk found an involvement that gave his life meaning again.

If you want to know -about- these threads—and you should, to understand what "Trek" achieved over time—listen to the interviews on the companion disc. Gene Roddenberry is not the most probing interviewer, yet these weren't meant to analyze "Trek," but rather to evoke its themes and visions. It takes up how the "Trek" creators (and others, such as Asimov) saw this phenomenon from within the TOS era, when Roddenberry was still the prime shaper, much more than he would be at any time afterwards. It gives resonance to the acting, both from the '60s and in this film.

All three of these main dramatic threads were never resolved in the '60s series, and that is part of the premise of series television: if the driving elements ever are fully resolved, you won't come back to watch next week. Yet they needed a larger meeting place to be brought out fully. This first film provided such a place. Goldsmith gave its larger themes emotional resonance.

The subsequent "Trek" films created a different story line, with much more melodrama, more openly shared emotion, and less of Roddenberry's focus on man's place in a larger universe. They were far more plot-driven. This is what the market and critics demanded. This also relegated the film scores to a more supportive role, not an active or story-creating role. That's even been true with Goldsmith's later "Trek" scores, almost all of their themes being restatements of "ST:TMP."

This first film was both an ending and beginning for "Star Trek" as art and as a larger story, as was shown for Vejur itself within the film. Goldsmith knew this. Listen to the (long-missed) penultimate track on the new disc, "A Good Start." It played over the closing title—not "The End," but "The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning."

All of this music, however masterful, did not exist in a void. It was part of a creation that filled that interstellar void with art—perhaps high art, at moments merely workmanlike art, but always art. You can't rip any part of it away fully, not without distorting it.

Goldsmith's full score, sequenced as in the film -and- with some accompanying context by other shapers of this art, will show its strengths more fully to later generations. This -set- has notable virtues, not merely the soundtrack.

Steve Reed
Greybird@LSH.org
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