It's interesting to compare Jerry Goldsmith's approach to scoring series of films with that of his peers. Whereas John Williams will create a musical world for the first film in a series (I need not name them!) and then stick rigidly within that world when scoring subsequent films in the series, and John Barry wrote broadly the same way (evolving over the years, but never tremendously so from one score to the next) for the Bond movies, Goldsmith rarely maintains a musical identity for a film series. Take The Omen trilogy - the first film's so-small-it's-big score is one of his best, and for the first sequel he took it, expanded it, came up with a new sound; for the second sequel he virtually abandoned his approach in the previous films and wrote a score of almost operatic proportions littered with brand new music and a brand new style. For the Star Trek movies, he has changed things around each time. The first score (clearly the best in the series, by him or anyone else) is a masterpiece, a coming together of some of his best ideas for film, bolstered by his finest theme. For The Final Frontier (he skipped three films in the mean time) he wrote a tighter, but more romantic, score; for First Contact he was in awe-inspiring territory, admittedly staying within the same boundaries of his previous Trek score; and for Insurrection, he just about abandoned the past and wrote a score very much in keeping with other scores he was writing for action/thrillers at the time, like US Marshals. So, what would he do for Nemesis, the series' latest (and allegedly final) installment? That answer preoccupied his fans for many months.

We were apparently given a clue in Varèse Sarabande's advance publicity on the score, which described it as "Goldsmith's greatest Star Trek score since ... Star Trek: The Motion Picture"; "the most aggressive Star Trek score ever"; and above all "as epic as anything the legendary composer has ever written." Is any of those bold statements really true? Well, I wouldn't say so.

Nemesis is the longest original release of any of the Star Trek scores at a shade under fifty minutes; and for much of its first half or so, the album is dominated by suspense music which does little to engage (if you pardon the pun) the listener. Sure, there's a smattering of interesting material thrown in - "Remus" offers an intriguing glimpse of the action material to come; "Repairs" features a gorgeous romantic theme based around "The Barrier" motif from the fifth and eighth films, and a nostalgic hint at "The Enterprise" cue from the first film, arguably Goldsmith's finest single piece of film music. What could probably be described as the score's main theme is given a fairly full airing in "Ideals", a very attractive melody for oboe later taken up by strings, which is less immediately striking than any of the other Trek films' themes but will I suspect last longer in the memory than many. It's by far the warmest and most lilting theme from the series. For the most part though, the album's opening 20 minutes is familiar suspense material, similar I suppose to the composer's work on two other films by the same director, Executive Decision and US Marshals (along with the trombone glissando from The Edge and others), though probably not as effective as either.

Just as you begin to suspect this one is going to be a bomb, the bomb explodes into life in the album's second half, and Varèse's claim that this is the most aggressive of all the series' scores begins to seem far less hyperbolic. "The Mirror" starts things off nicely: more creepy-crawly suspense material for low brass and electronics opens the cue; then another airing for "The Barrier" theme in its First Contact form; but this time it gradually mutates into a wonderful bit of action scoring by the composer who pretty much invented it. Hearing the racing strings, pounding percussion and brass (even a prominent part for xylophone) brings back enormously pleasant memories of Capricorn One and scores of that era. In a way, Goldsmith has devolved back to his late 1970s style with his last couple of scores - the fluid, romantic approach he has taken to virtually all of his music of late is replaced by a much starker, abrasive style and it's great to hear. "The Scorpion" is the score's highlight track, perhaps the most exciting piece ever written for a Star Trek film. It's Goldsmith doing what he does best, thunderous action music, never pausing for breath; and while of course his style is so familiar as to rarely generate surprises these days, he still manages to inject enough fresh material into it that one can't help but be overjoyed. When his Star Trek march makes a brief appearance at the end of the cue (the first time it's been used as an action motif if memory serves) it'll probably be enough to have fans jumping from their seats cheering. "Lateral Run" offers (to use the word in Robert Townson's liner notes) some apocalyptic action material, gleefully dark and aggressive. "Engage" is another wonderfully exciting cue, vintage Goldsmith. "Final Flight" opens with a lovely fanfare just about recalling The Blue Max (appropriately enough); and this time the action is slightly broader, less angular.

"A New Friend" brings a nice return to the slightly more romantic style from earlier in the score, shimmering electronics mixing with piano and high violins. It's a really pleasant piece, a beautiful antidote to the blistering material that has preceded it. The score ends with Goldsmith's classic theme as ever, surprisingly prefaced with Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies". The performance of the classic march is a little stilted, and the new theme sounds rather uncomfortably sandwiched in-between the familiar opening and closing parts of the end title piece. It seems to literally just stop and then restart - Goldsmith has made no attempt to musically "blend in" his new material.