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A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Despite nobody seeming to like it very much and it costing a fortune, Star Trek: The Motion Picture made a lot of money so a sequel was inevitable; Paramount wisely decided, however, to make it in a very different way, on a fraction of the previous film's budget.  They turned to the young director Nicholas Meyer, to whom they owe an enormous debt of gratitude, for the changes he made are probably the only reason the multi-billion dollar franchise has survived to this day (though it does seem to be rather petering out at the moment).  He made things dirtier, not so squeaky-clean; he reintroduced the humour of the original series that was so lacking in the first film; and he focused on a great personal battle between Captain (or, actually, Admiral) Kirk and a great foe.

The budget wasn't there to entice Jerry Goldsmith back, so Meyer turned to a virtually-unknown, very young composer called James Horner, whose debt of gratitude to Meyer is just as great.  He wrote what remains, over twenty years later, his best score, and set himself down the road to being at the very top of the A-list of composers in Hollywood.

Meyer wanted Horner to treat the film like an old-fashioned seafaring adventure, and so he did: from the sprawling, nautical main theme onwards.  His main title theme is nowhere near so memorable as Goldsmith's, but in its way it is as good, setting the tone for the film perfectly.  On the album, it is immediately followed by "Surprise Attack", the first of many wonderful pieces of action music.  Ironically - given that most of Horner's early scores owed such a huge debt to the music of Goldsmith (despite Horner's mysterious claim never to have even heard of him) - there is virtually nothing of Goldsmith in this score, with Horner instead loosely drawing inspiration from Prokofiev, though the music is always his own.  The action material is particularly well-structured; despite being very fluid and free-flowing, it maintains an admirable level of musical form.  

The album's final four tracks - which make up over 25 minutes of music between them - are what really makes this score a masterpiece.  "Enterprise Clears Moorings" is a triumphant, bold statement of the main theme that works nearly as well as Goldsmith's treatment of the equivalent scene in the first film.  "Battle in the Mutara Nebula" is a brilliant achievement, probably the best individual cue Horner's ever written, as he vividly details through his music the epic battle unfolding on screen.  "Genesis Countdown" continues along the same lines, with the same rich and colourful action music this time being mixed in with (unusually interesting) suspense material as the film nears its climax, which is the "death" of Spock, which receives some genuinely touching music that is incredibly moving in the film.  Finally, the "Epilogue" wraps things up nicely with more touching material (some of it unfortunately accompanied by narration from Leonard Nimoy) before a lengthy reprise of the main theme over the end credits.  

What makes the finale music so good, for me, is that it never attempts to manipulate, only to reflect; this sets it apart from Horner's more recent approach of trying to manipulate the audience to kingdom come, which has worked variably well in different scores.  It is also interesting to compare the action music with what Horner has been writing in the last decade or so; there seems to be so much more life in it, so much more imagination.  I doubt that it will ever happen, but if only Horner could score another film like this instead of yet another incredibly-earnest drama, it would breathe so much fresh life into his career.  Anyway, that's beside the point; this score is a masterpiece, Horner's best, and belongs in any film music collection.  It possibly doesn't quite reach the same heights as Goldsmith's original - but then, what does?

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Tracks

1. Main Title (3:03)
2. Surprise Attack (5:06)
3. Spock (1:10)
4. Kirk's Explosive Reply (4:02)
5. Khan's Pets (4:18)
6. Enterprise Clears Moorings (3:32)
7. Battle in the Mutara Nebula (8:08)
8. Genesis Countdown (6:36)
9. Epilogue (8:40)