ST IV: Allegretto scherzando (Star Trek IV - Soundtrack)

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Star Trek IV - Soundtrack
Date:	15/11/07 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Catchy main title

Disadvantages: But otherwise nothing to really get excited about

Beginning where the last film ended, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the last in the self contained trilogy that began with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, where Kirk finds himself first going through a bit of a mid-life crisis and losing his close friend Spock, then continuing with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock after Paramount figured there’s money involved, Spock being resurrected at the price of Kirk and company to fall foul with Star Fleet and ending up offending the Klingons as well, resulting in a lengthy stay on Vulcan. Now they have all decided to get up and own up to their indiscretions by going back to Earth to face the Star Fleet’s charges, only to find that a mysterious probe is apparently causing great chaos on the planet. The probe in fact is searching Earth’s oceans for humpback whales, a species that had gone extict centuries ago and trying to figure out why communications with the creatures had suddenly ceased. With Earth in dire straits, it’s now the job of Kirk and crew to journey back in time on their stolen Klingon Bird-of-Pray and acquire a couple of new whales to transport with them to the future. What results is perhaps the most humorous Star Trek film ever and, despite playing the usual fish-out-of-water scenarios, manages to pull out an infectiously fun and enjoyable romp with some deeper enviromental criticisms thrown in about hunting species to extinction and having it come back to haunt us in the unforeseeable future. Again directed by Leonard Nimoy, the film this time escapes the sense of campy cheesiness that the third film sometimes had a tendency to bring to the fore, which may also be partially thanks to the involvement of Nicholas Meyer (director of Star Trek II) as one of the writers.

The production values in the film remained quite unaltered in the face of Trek III and there is a distinct sense of continuity between the different entries in both style and execution. One aspect that, however, did not remain the same was the involvement of composer James Horner as the series composer. After having scored both the previous two Trek films, Horner was feeling that he did not want to get stuck in the rut of becoming solely identified by his sci-fi/fantasy scoring that the Star Treks certainly were making him seem like (particularly as in 1986 he was also involved with writing the music for Aliens, ironically another sequel in a film series for which Jerry Goldsmith had written the original music to). Therefore he graciously said adios to the franchise and left Nimoy in search of a new composer. This he found with veteran composer Leonard Rosenman, a historical figure who had been writing music for films since the mid-1950s and had written the first serial film score for the 1955 film The Cobweb. Rosenman had never really enjoyed much audience favor due to his highly modernist music and despite even winning a couple of Oscars, he has largely been an acquired taste to many and much of his work polarizes opinions as regards his music, his sole score to have won lasting popularity being the 1978 animated Lord of the Rings of Ralph Bakshi, and even that is not much different from his general output. Therefore having somebody like Rosenman write music for a Star Trek film, the prospects for something interesting was indeed there. But did Rosenman succeed in his task? Well, yes and no.

The score for Trek IV stands in a fairly strange position in Rosenman’s oeuvre. It is by far his most accessible score in not really featuring much of those modernist trademarks he had come known for, but maybe this in part is a reason why Star Trek IV is so disappointing. Of course as the film has a larger emphasis on humour and taking place in 1986’s San Francisco, the music has a distinctly fluffy comedy sound to it, which is appropriate, but at the same time doesn’t seem to exists within the same dramatic environment as the previous three scores in the series. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate all that well in the series of Star Trek scores where the dynamic writing of both Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner really helped define the previous films they had written music for, making Rosenman’s sole effort pale in comparison in both memorability and engaging musical material. Unlike the previous scores, Trek IV is not that reliant on recurring thematic material with the only real recurring piece being the main theme presented in the opening “Main Title” cue that to all intents and purposes is actually quite enjoyable. The theme is pretty memorable, though nowhere does it really reach the quality of either Goldsmith’s or Horner’s respective themes, the sound being quite adventurous but also distinctly more lightweight, the many bells bringing a certain Christmassy feeling to the music and a particular point of distinction is Rosenman’s quite blatant repetition of a passage from his previous Lord of the Rings march that has led to accusations of unoriginality (regardless that this passage is on the whole quite brief).

However, once past the main theme, the rest of the score truly fails to rise to even that level of adventure that could have really livened up the score. Apologists will mention that for a largely comic Star Trek film, Rosenman’s score serves the film well, and indeed it does that, but rarely goes anywhere beyond that. The actual dramatic underscore is by and large very uninteresting und forgettable, relying more on quietly droning passages that don’t particularly accomplish anything, Cues such as “The Probe”, “Time Travel” and in particular “Crash-Whale Fugue” don’t really have much to offer for the entirety of their running times. The end of “Crash-Whale Fugue” does feature a nice blast of the secondary theme for the whales, a kind of a jolly baroque bourrée, but when the preceding seven or so minutes have been low-end droning (regardless of being fashioned out as a classic fugue), that dispersing of clouds and general celebratory mode is very unsatisfying since there is no graspable structure to hang your emotions to and feel something has been accomplished (compare to say “The Meld” from the original feature, or “Genesis Countdown” from Wrath of Khan). The cue “The Whaler” is probably the best dramatic cue in the film, but cannot escape from feeling cheesy and slightly too lightweight for a scene not involving comedy. The couple of stand-out cues are both more of comic substance than dramatic, with “Chekov’s Run” being a mock-Russian dance in the fashion of Gliére which is nice, but brief and “Hospital Chase,” a cue that sounds as if it has just escaped from a circus act (though it works well for the scene it accompanies). Finally the “Home Again: End Credits” cue returns to the world of the opening titles, with a brief quotation of Rosenman’s Vulcan theme (sadly almost totally unused in the film) at the beginning, seguing into the unveiling of the new Enterprise-A to Alexander Courage’s classic fanfare, which is then followed by the end credits suite, a thankfully very enjoyable distillation of the score’s best features.

The album contains a standard 40 minutes of music and frankly to me that’s about enough. As was the case with the previous two scores as well, the sound quality of the recording has not improved and still sounds cheap and tinny, making the orchestra really sound small than what the 80 or so players would have in ideal condition been made to sound. Included on the album are two very 1980’s type incidental cues performed by the, at the time apparently, popular band The Yellowjackets. The “Market Street” is indeed very identifying as originating from the golden 1980s with its hip jazzy sound mixed with pop, while the “Ballad of the Whale” (not in the film) is based on the Whale theme and is perfect for zoning out to a different era when such things were enjoyed, but that simply sound dated in the ears of today’s listeners. Ironically, Star Trek IV was the only other Star Trek score (apart from Goldsmith’s original) to be nominated for an Academy Award, though it lost to Herbie Hancock’s ‘Round Midnight. But taken as a whole, Rosenman’s effort served the film well enough, though it fails to reach the level of either Goldsmith’s or Horner’s efforts in a franchise that really does require a more robust personality to make it something greater than just simple underscore. While not an unmitigated disaster, Trek IV just does not live up to making for an interesting listen when removed from film, and not really featuring any stand-out cues like all the previous scores had offered in abundance. This, coupled with a bad recording and a few half-hearted references to Courage’s original signature fanfare (due to the fact that both Rosenman and Nimoy didn’t like the theme), makes Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home only recommendable to completists of the Star Trek scores or general Star Trek nutters. Otherwise this is a largely skippable entry in an otherwise quite strong set of scores written for this one franchise.


1. Main Title (2:39)
2. The Whaler (2:00)
3. Market Street (performed by The Yellowjackets) (4:39)
4. Crash-Whale Fugue (8:15)
5. Ballad of the Whale (performed by The Yellowjackets) (5:03)
6. Gillian Seeks Kirk (2:42)
7. Chekov’s Run (1:19)
8. Time Travel (1:29)
9. Hospital Chase (1:13)
10. The Probe (1:17)
11. Home Again: End Credits (5:40)


Music composed and Conducted by Leonard Rosenman
Orchestrated by Ralph Ferraro
Music Scoring Mixer: Dan Wallin
Recorded at Record Plant Scoring
Supervising Music Editor: Else Blangsted
Music Editor: David Marshall
MCA Records, 1986 (MCAD 6195)

© berlioz, 2007

Summary: Warp Factor 4, did we just hit a granny?