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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: (Leonard Rosenman) When you
examine the first ten "Star Trek" films, it's fascinating to recall that
Star
Trek IV: The Voyage Home was the franchise's most prolific, fiscal
blockbuster of its era. Despite anyone's opinion of the film's merits, it came at
a time when the series was heading down a dark, melodramatic path that was
partially corrected by the resurrection of Spock in the previous installment.
With Leonard Nimoy at the controls for a second time,
Star Trek IV yielded
to elements of pop culture comedy and provided a circus-like atmosphere for the
otherwise heroic science fiction crew. Part of the film's popularity also stemmed
from its nonstop insults of primitive 20th Century human behavior, as well as the
fact that politically correct messages about humpback whales were appealing at
the time. The previous scores in the franchise, written by Jerry Goldsmith and
James Horner, were highly respected and remain popular. But with Goldsmith not
yet ready to return to the franchise and Horner reportedly turning down the
opportunity to continue with the series, Nimoy would hire the classically
inclined composer Leonard Rosenman to provide a more stately approach to the
project. The resulting, lighthearted orchestral score would achieve the series'
second and final Academy Award nomination, seemingly proving that audiences
prefer their science fiction to border on the mainstream by utilizing friendlier
scripting and scoring approaches. Few devoted fans of the franchise do not
consider Rosenman's music to be compatible at all with the tone of the other
entries, often receiving ridicule from many while being defended as marginally
appropriate for its context by a minority. Amongst the other nine scores of the
franchise's first continuous run on the big screen, Rosenman's composition is
clearly the weak link, often residing near the bottom of film music collectors'
rankings of "Star Trek" scores.
And rightfully so. The score may have been carried by the
enthusiasm for
Star Trek IV as a whole in 1986, but it is badly dated and
disrespectful of the established musical norms of the franchise that were
followed before and after this regrettable sideshow. The blame for this lack of
historical legs isn't due solely to the strict, 1986 setting of the film, but
rather Rosenman's disregard for the attitude of the entire franchise. Instead of
offering dramatic music consistent with the genre during the scenes involving
space and technology, Rosenman scores the film as though it had no connection to
the "Star Trek" universe whatsoever, outside of the several statements of
Alexander Courage's television theme. The irritatingly upbeat composition may not
be poor in and of itself, but rather it is a poor fit for any "Star Trek" film,
regardless of the comedy elements. The scenes involving the future "Star Trek"
universe are mundane and underdeveloped, and scenes of chases in 1986 San
Francisco are saturated with cheesy rhythms and motifs that lose their integrity
when reminded of the genre. The title theme, an adaptation of Rosenman's work for
the animated
The Lord of the Rings film from the prior decade, is too
strikingly jovial and comedic for the genre, and it is embarrassing when heard as
the Klingon Bird of Prey sinks in San Francisco Bay. This is, after all, a film
that implies the destruction of the planet, and Rosenman's few attempts to stir
tension in his music (as in "Time Travel") are obnoxiously simplistic attempts to
employ dissonance without any sense of style (in essence, allowing the music to
dissolve into atonal sound effects). The music for the Probe, the early Vulcan
sequence, and the time travel scenes are lacking in basic excitement or thematic
continuity. The series had been carried with instrumental creativity at the
forefront of its musical approach, and Rosenman's score is often a strictly
orchestral piece straight out of a B-grade, television flick of the 1970's,
overshadowed by the sound effects of the whales' calls in many places in the
final cut.
The score's tone, even when not attempting to be silly (as in
the faux-Russian style of "Chekov's Run"), is, for lack of a better word,
lame. The dainty solo trumpets in the last minute of "Cras: Whale Fugue"
actually sound like a close cousin to Alan Menken's
The Little Mermaid,
for Christ's sake! Was Rosenman smoking the happy plant when writing this
material? As a final insult, the introduction of the new Enterprise at the end of
the film is scored without any of the majestic fanfare necessary for the event
(if you want a much better fanfare from another relatively underachieving score,
seek Dennis McCarthy's grand opening to
Star Trek: Generations). The
memorable use of two pop tracks, performed by "The Yellowjackets" with the cheesy
sounds of drum machines in front, is understandable (and even excusable), but it
further dates this score and places it in a separate, lower realm when compared
to its peers in the franchise. This music is better suited to share an album with
Alan Silvestri's
Romancing the Stone. The album, which is completely out
of print and has sold for over $75, suffers from several bad edits of multiple
cues into single, lengthier tracks, including the sudden introduction of the
actual title theme fanfare in the opening and closing tracks. The amount of
Rosenman material is restricted to roughly 27 minutes, and some of that material
is redundant. Overall, his effort is too upbeat without rooting itself first in
the genre, existing in the treble region with the sad anonymity of a low budget
nature documentary score of the era. An excellent example of a lighter score that
functions well in the genre is David Newman's
Galaxy Quest, which balanced
the science fiction and comedy elements to a much better degree than Rosenman's
disrespectful work here. Nimoy's choice for the score failed to live up to "Star
Trek" standards, and the series would react (or correct itself) by going back to
the only logical choice for the next score: Jerry Goldsmith. For fans of the
"Star Trek" franchise, the fourth score is easily the last one to consider
purchasing.
**
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
