Jerry Goldsmith’s musical contribution to Star Trek cannot be underestimated. Paul F Cockburn composes an appreciation of the man who, musically at least, defined the Final Frontier…
“Doing a Star Trek film is like returning to an old friend,” Jerry Goldsmith told fans while working on Star Trek: Nemesis. As well he might; that film confirmed his pre-eminence within the film series (five out of the 10 scores are his), while his themes for both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager continue to play in reruns around the world. His friend and long-term orchestrator Alexander Courage may have given us the definitive Star Trek anthem, but—without doubt—Goldsmith’s monumental score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture effectively set the standard against which every other composer working on Star Trek has been measured.
If that seems unfair to Courage, the irony is that Goldsmith could have dominated Star Trek musically right from the beginning. Just like many of his peers—such as John Williams and Lalo Schifrin—Goldsmith had established his early reputation during the late 1950s and early 1960s on weekly television shows ranging from Bonanza and The Twilight Zone to Boris Karloff Presents. As a result, Goldsmith was an obvious choice to bring onto the fledgling Star Trek series but, as he later admitted: “I was unable to do it because I was doing something else at the time. So it’s rather serendipitous that, years later, I came back to Star Trek.”
Some, of course, would say it was inevitable…
First published in Star Trek: The Official Monthly Magazine, December 2004/January 2005.
