Buy it... only if you seek to completely round out your collection of all five of Jerry Goldsmith's feature Star Trek scores, for this entry is by far the least dynamic and engaging.

Avoid it... on the bootlegs if you expect more than just a couple of minutes of memorable material; the rest of the additional music is largely redundant and compounds the stylistic weaknesses of the work.

Goldsmith

Star Trek: Nemesis: (Jerry Goldsmith) This tenth installment of the famed Star Trek film franchise was met with all the grand anticipation of a finale feature, with a tagline that suggested that this movie would depict the final voyage of the starship Enterprise with an established crew that fans knew and loved. Those fans had to endure an abnormally long wait for this film, with a Star Trek record four years in between motion pictures, raising hopes and expectations beyond franchise norms. Producers for the film promised the pinnacle of quality for several elements of the plot, including a fantastic villain and superior battle sequence, for Star Trek: Nemesis. The promises of greatness also came from those involved with the production of the music for this tenth film. Hailed in post-production as one of composer Jerry Goldsmith's most memorable achievements in recent times, the score was said to have inspired a Rudy-like standing ovation from the studio orchestra players when recording was complete. Little could anyone have known that Star Trek: Nemesis was not only a send-off for the "Next Generation" crew, but also for Goldsmith, who would not have an accepted, solo effort for the big screen in the remaining two years of his life. Musically speaking, Goldsmith had defined the "Next Generation" films with the same popularity that James Horner utilized to define the height of the original crew's journeys in the early to mid-1980's. This being his fifth Star Trek feature, Goldsmith had solidified his grip on the "Next Generation" sound, acting as almost the most expected piece of the franchise's production team of that time. His previous score for the series, Star Trek: Insurrection, had been commonly considered by film music critics to be the strongest Goldsmith "Trek" score since his original, Oscar-nominated entry in 1979, sending collectors on a mad scramble for lengthier bootleg albums of that music. With Star Trek: Nemesis, however, the situation became a cloudier mystery.

The dark and more complicated nature of Nemesis opened new doors to Goldsmith. This time around, he'd have the ability to score a larger epic that depicts the struggles of the Remus slaves against their Romulan cousins. He would also be able to dig deeper into the well of musical emotions, offering a psychological twist to a series of otherwise straight forward "Trek" films in the recent past. The introduction of a super villain, Shinzon (a younger, evil mirror of Captain Picard), his massive warbird, the Scimitar, as well as the unveiling of a beautiful new Romulan warbird design all led to opportunities for Goldsmith to whip up a frenzy of creativity and theme. Likewise, the promotion at last of Commander Riker to his own ship, his long awaited wedding, the loss of a friend, and fate of the Enterprise called, to an extent, for Goldsmith to compose both a triumphant and bittersweet farewell to the beloved crew with a culmination of harmonic force consistent with what Cliff Eidelman had done with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Everything pointing to this project indicated it as a winning proposition for Goldsmith. But the end result of his efforts, unfortunately, missed nearly every one of these opportunities. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why the music for Nemesis underachieves so thoroughly; it is loud, suspenseful, pounding, and electronically diverse, but it is also, ultimately, tired and unoriginal. Given the amount of stimulating action music presented (as promised) in this effort, the reason for some people's major disappointment with it needs to be delicately considered and analyzed from a neutral standpoint. There is an intangible sense of enthusiasm and adventure that always balanced the gravity of drama in Goldsmith's (and Horner's) music for this franchise. In Nemesis, you hear the gravity in weighty doses, but the sense of adventure has been compromised. It is a score that could be subscribed as being among the awkward few that offer all substance and no style.

Silly comedies often flourish with scores that have all style and no substance (like The 'Burbs) and straight action films often flourish with scores that feature all substance and no style (like the Rambo works). But the Star Trek films are a different breed. They have required both style and substance ever since Goldsmith introduced the elegant themes of the first film alongside the substantively creative blaster beam effects and the memorable fanfare. For Nemesis, Goldsmith created an abundance of substance: hard, relentless, driving action cues that will knock around the walls a few times. The amount of pounding timpani alone in this score is overwhelming. But Goldsmith's keen sense of style is minimal, if non-existent, and most of it is tied to electronic effects that had matured enough by this point to keep them particularly interesting. The first half of the score is built around the zipping, panging, and swooshing electronics in an effort to address the suspense of an approaching adversary of great horror and power. This meandering underscore is largely uninteresting in its lack of base, lack of strong theme, and lack of creative instrumentation. The latter half of the score is led by the kind of stale, non-engaging action material heard in films like U.S. Marshals and The Last Castle, not the rousing partnership of rhythm and theme that fans heard in The 13th Warrior and even, to a lesser extent, in Star Trek: Insurrection. The thematic development for Shinzon, his warbird, and the greater Romulan Empire is restrained to a basic, cascading five-note theme that occasionally develops into a 10-note extension of surprisingly dull simplicity. As opposed to the uniquely devised and performed four-note Borg theme in Star Trek: First Contact, this Shinzon theme doesn't have the same gripping power or fear-instilling quality. At least the composer does attempt to manipulate the theme greatly throughout the score to mirror the villain's appeal, often transferring the idea to solo woodwinds for early conversational scenes.

Likewise, Goldsmith doesn't expand upon or even pay great tribute to the established Trek themes of the past. The title theme for the series (which he created in 1979) is sparsely used, with two fleeting performances with a hint of that original film's elegance accompanying the opening and closing shots of the Enterprise. Otherwise, despite the eruption of the theme late in "The Scorpion," it doesn't receive the many subtle variations that the score could have used with great effectiveness. The end credit sequence is poorly conceived and performed, with a strikingly melodramatic and lush variation on the Shinzon theme that doesn't fit with any of the material heard prior (hardly an appropriate farewell to these characters). Goldsmith had been using the same end credit suite format since Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and while some superb sound quality for its performances in the previous two films revived its appeal, the same equation sounds stale, forced, and awkward in Nemesis. Granted, the three final Goldsmith scores' credits suites had an awkward and sudden drop-off from the fanfare to the secondary theme, but none is so bizarre as this one. Its failure may be due to the fact that its performance is uninspired and distinctly too slow in tempo, nearly crawling compared to the previous few films. It is also overshadowed by the incorporation of the popular 1929 song "Blue Skies" to commemorate an emotional turn at the end of the film, in addition to the seemingly out of place performance of beauty for the Shinzon theme. Here or elsewhere, there is no thematic tribute to the Romulan race or even to the composer's favorite old Klingon theme, which isn't even applied to Worf in this picture. Goldsmith does resurrect the four-note theme representing both adversity and friendship that was the centerpiece of his work for The Final Frontier. Heard extensively in First Contact and only once in Insurrection, this optimistic idea is used for Picard's friendship with Data in Nemesis at the start and end of the film, though usually restrained to soft woodwind performances.

Several smaller motifs and recognizable singular structures from The Final Frontier and First Contact exist in the late battle sequences of Nemesis, and the combination of timpani, pulsating basses, and noble brass will be friendly tones to the ears. It becomes evident rather quickly that Goldsmith decided to take no chances with this project. Other than his attempt to underline the dramatic weight of the story, he injected no new life into the series and ended up with a functionally action-packed but stylistically void result. The frustrating aspect of Nemesis is, of course, that it was a perfect opportunity for Goldsmith to take a chance. Imagine the power that he could have harnessed had the money been budgeted to use a full chorus for the score, or even a single operatic male voice for the Shinzon character (we all know that Picard appreciated his musicals and operas). Perhaps a seductive element of lyricism, or even the introduction of something different from the same old zipping electronics, could have played better to the emotions in this installment. It is also possible that producer Rick Berman, who had been known to prefer understated and conservative scores for the series (hence, the involvement of Dennis McCarthy in so much of the "Trek" franchise), refused to allow for more creative liberties to be taken with this score. It's difficult not to get the impression, however, that Goldsmith was simply going through the motions in Nemesis. The synthetic effects are alone good proof of this theory; the electronic sounds normally applied to the franchise are accentuated with a prominent role in this score that they cannot adequately fill because the composer did not develop them into any memorable new form. What happened to the creativity of the Blaster Beam? When these generic effects were a rhythmic accompaniment, as they were in Insurrection, they functioned well. Here, they collapse when put under pressure, offering nothing more than the notion that the villains in this particular film have more technological savvy than the heroes. These sounds, like the other elements in the score, are sadly two-dimensional.

	2002 Varèse Album: Only $9.99

Compounding the problem with Nemesis is its considerably dampened sound quality. For a performing group of over 80 members, the score doesn't vibrate with the same life as the previous two scores in the franchise. The sound quality on the final track in particular is considerably muted. The dynamic mix and extra reverberation in Insurrection is especially missed, though this sense of vivaciousness alone would not have saved this score on album. As had been the case with Insurrection, however, a substantial portion of the music that provided a more rounded experience in the film was simply left off of the commercial product (by Goldsmith's choice). The Varèse Sarabande album release is not as attractive as the previous entries by GNP Crescendo, which had gone defunct by 2002. No extra artwork, enhanced features, third-party essays, or production photos for this album are offered, and producer Robert Townson's overblown claims of this score's greatness in the liner notes are very dubious in opinion and offer little of interest about the creation process of the score. Not surprisingly, almost immediate bootlegs of Goldsmith's score squeezed in at about 80 minutes of material, featuring identical sound quality. The bootlegs do have some attractions that Goldsmith chose not to include on the 48-minute retail product, including the gentle and elegant performances of the title theme for the ship. Most curious is the fact that the very strong tandem of "Preparing for Battle" (or "Battle Stations") and "Team Work" weren't chosen for Varèse's album, because the prior establishes an attractive singular theme of determination that was memorable in the film; it was this major omission from the album that caused so much initial interest in the bootlegs. On the whole, however, the bootlegs mostly expose redundant material that suffers from the same problems as the rest of the score. It's easy to be sentimental about Nemesis because it largely marks the end of Goldsmith's career, but that can't excuse the score's many faults. A tired, procedural attitude gives the work a mechanical personality that stifles its minimal attempts at creativity in tone. This music boldly goes nowhere, and it remains a major disappointment. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 113 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.32 (in 133,461 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.