Buy it... on the 1996 GNP Crescendo album if you are a casual fan of the film and score, and your interest in the music stems from the noble "First Contact" theme.

Avoid it... on the 1996 album and seek one of the numerous bootleg variants only if you already have that commercial album and are specifically unsatisfied with its missing cues.

Goldsmith

Star Trek: First Contact: (Jerry Goldsmith/Joel Goldsmith) After a somewhat awkward transitional film with Star Trek: Generations, the Next Generation's first officer, Jonathan Frakes, directed the highly successful solo debut for his ensemble. A decidedly darker film exhibiting all the traits of a horror tale, Star Trek: First Contact soared to critical and fiscal heights due to several factors, including the interpolation of the popular Borg villains into the story, the introduction of a sleek new Enterprise-E vessel, and a number of improvements to the production qualities of the franchise. In addition to a more vibrant presence of superior art direction and make-up effects, the return of composer Jerry Goldsmith to the franchise was a very welcome move, especially after a generally tepid response to television composer Dennis McCarthy's score for the previous film. For fans of the franchise and soundtrack collectors alike, Goldsmith's involvement would be a godsend, for his work on both the first and fifth scores in the series is considered top notch by both groups. Despite all the hype surrounding the project, however, the score's production process would suffer from Goldsmith's hectic 1996 schedule. With post-production on The Ghost and the Darkness proving to be a logistical nightmare, and an understanding that Goldsmith was investing significant attention to that impressive score, Star Trek: First Contact would receive back-burner treatment. Nevertheless, Goldsmith was not about to turn down the opportunity to reinstate his themes to the franchise, and he employed the help of his son Joel to meet haphazard recording deadlines for the project. Ultimately, a relatively small amount of unique music was written for Star Trek: First Contact, with only 72 minutes of this material actually appearing in the film. Of that music, Joel Goldsmith would be left to write music for entire sections of the film, eventually contributing 22 minutes of score that utilize the themes outlined by his father.

In it's entirety, the score for Star Trek: First Contact proved to be adequate, but only that. Despite many opinions to the contrary, Joel Goldsmith's involvement wasn't the primary reason for the problems; while some of his cues have a disconnected effect compared to Jerry Goldsmith's base material, it needs to be noted that Joel wrote some of the film's most interesting action and horror cues. Instead, Star Trek: First Contact didn't meet expectations because of its overall pastoral attitude despite the film's considerable horror-genre leanings. With Goldsmith focusing the score on the theme associated with only the finale, the prevailing effectiveness of the horror writing is diminished. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this criticism stems from the seemingly incongruent creativity with which Goldsmith crafts and reprises his multitude of themes. Some listeners have pointed to the over-abundance of these thematic ideas as the reason for the score's lack of overall focus, though even these fans would be hard pressed to find difficulty in the merits of each thematic idea apart from the whole. As expected, Goldsmith announces the return of this original theme for both the film franchise and "The Next Generation," utilizing both the opening and closing titles format that he had adopted in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The formula largely works, as it had in that surprisingly impressive earlier score for a terrible film, and this loyalty alone earns Goldsmith some kudo points. Quotations of both Alexander Courage's and his own themes litter the score; despite what the packaging may say about where the incorporations exist, the usage is engrained throughout the score in both bold and subtle ways. Goldsmith also reprises two other themes from his original scores. First, the Klingon theme from both previous efforts returns here as the permanent representation of Worf (in the absence of Klingons in the franchise's Next Generation films), and is heard three times in the score. More interesting is the return of the "friendship" theme from Star Trek V. While it's been referred to by many names through the years, this theme's first four notes would become an interestingly dominant (and nameless) factor in Star Trek: First Contact. Never does Goldsmith actually expand out the usage of that theme beyond it's first four notes, and the reason for these constantly abbreviated statements remains unknown.

In addition to these four previously existing themes, Goldsmith constructs two new ideas and a couple of underlying motifs. Most of these ideas represent the Borg themselves, which is why it's surprising that Goldsmith used the only non-Borg thematic idea and expanded it as the identity of the entire score. The "First Contact" theme is foreshadowed in several short sequences in the film (outside of the titles), including "Welcome Aboard," but only receives its full, nearly religious performance in the actual "First Contact" cue. The noble and uplifting theme isn't one of Goldsmith's most stunning efforts, but compared to the more bombastic nature of his other 1996 ideas, it's a dramatic powerhouse. Debate will continue about the merits of this theme, and whether it makes for a better listening experience on album than in the picture, but there are few complaints to be made about the ideas conjured to represent the Borg. The persistent super-villains are identified by an almost ingenious four-note theme that is well managed throughout the score. It moves in a mechanical, rising three-note progression through an octave before falling to a minor accent in the final note, allowing the theme to roll consecutively in a rhythmic format. The instrumentation employed for this theme hails back to the broad blaster-beam electronics of the first film, with the dominant bass synths harsh in their tones, but oddly elegant in their clarity. Since the Borg are acting in smaller numbers and relative desperation throughout the score (compared to their usual brute presence), this theme receives several suspenseful treatments in mysterious, subdued parts. The one exception, of course, is the battle with the usual Borg cube at the outset of the film, which is accompanied by a multilateral brass performance of the theme in appropriately simplistic unison. Several other rhythmic and thematic ideas for the Borg are explored. A high-range, almost whimsical synthetic subtheme for the Borg queen adds to her allure. The rest of the Borg, and their methodical movements, are scored with highly mechanical bass rhythms by Joel Goldsmith. Most of these ideas are rendered with an electronic tilt, though Star Trek: First Contact on the whole doesn't have as much blatant and trademark Goldsmith use of synthesized elements as the composer's other scores in the franchise.

Taken as a whole, Star Trek: First Contact is, like the beloved android, fully functional, but its action material isn't Goldsmith's best and the title theme seems out of place. Individual cues in the film are impressive, including the "Red Alert" sequence that accompanies the wholesale battle sequence at the start. Why Goldsmith decided to identify "Deep Space Nine"'s Defiant vessel with the Klingon theme, despite Worf's command of it, is a mystery. It makes for good listening on album, but doesn't match on screen. More effective is the use of that theme in "Retreat," during which Worf personally leads a portion of the crew in haste. Many confrontation cues provide the percussion section with plenty of action, forcing rhythms into the frenetic levels of Capricorn One and leading to some highly reminiscent Goldsmith pomp in "The Dish." Perhaps the best incorporation of Goldsmith's "Next Generation" theme is an exciting, propulsive adaptation in "Flight of the Phoenix" (also referred to as "The Starship Chase"). Individual moments of high drama, usually in reference to the desperation of the retreating Starfleet crew, provide several satisfying harmonic string crescendos. One such occurrence exists near the start of "39.1 Degrees Celsius" and another powerful sequence spans the conversational cues of "Bridge Argument" and "A Quest for Vengeance" (the latter has a brass version of the title theme early in the cue that leans heavily towards Executive Decision from earlier in the year). As mentioned before, Joel Goldsmith has often been accused of writing some of the less interesting filler cues for the score, and to an extent this is true. But he also provided the score with a few of its most effective sequences, and these should be noted. Most of the scenes during the Borg's spread through the ship (everything from "39.1 Degrees Celsius" to "Retreat," as well as "Assimilation") are Joel's, as are the three climactic cues ranging from "The Starship Chase" to "Victory Over the Borg." Most important in that bunch is "The Starship Chase," which is arguably a highlight of the score sadly missing from the commercial album. Most fans who make the complaint about its absence on that album fail to realize, however, that the cue was written by the son and not the father. Some of Joel's material, though, such as "Starfleet Engages the Borg" and "Greetings," does represent, however, the score's weakest points.

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Like the score, the commercial album from GNP Crescendo had its fair share of flaws. Early pressings of the album suffered from problems with digital pop sounds in several tracks, including three pops in "Temporal Wake" and two in "First Contact." The product was an enhanced CD that didn't function across a number of computer systems at the time (including Mac OS 7 and Windows 95). Most collectors believe that the most egregious problem with the album was its omission of several notable cues. Like Star Trek: Insurrection, GNP's album for Star Trek: First Contact would be missing a few fantastic tracks. The most notable of these would be "Flight of the Phoenix" (also known as "The Starship Chase"), the bold cue written by Joel Goldsmith for the Enterprise's chasing of the Phoenix. Also of dramatic importance to the score were the tense "Bridge Argument" and "A Quest for Vengeance" underscore cues, as well as the conciliatory "The Escape Pods" cue, though this last peace is overrated. It's likely that GNP Crescendo could have covered itself with only the inclusion of the "Flight of the Phoenix" cue, though the label and its representatives maintained to the end that doing so would be too expensive to make the album viable. Score collectors countered by claiming that the film's two songs, along with the "enhanced" content, could have been dropped in favor of more score. In the end, they did as anyone would expect: they got hold of session recordings and distributed them in bootleg form. It took many years for the Star Trek: First Contact bootlegs to make the full rounds, preceded by Star Trek: Insurrection bootlegs because of that score's higher demand in the late 1990's, but several versions of the Star Trek: First Contact bootlegs have now saturated the secondary market. First came a 73-minute single CD bootleg of the complete score, followed a few years later by a 2-CD bootleg set that also featured several alternative mixes and takes. Only true fans will be interested in these alternative, unused versions (they don't differ much from the finished cues), and few people will be amused by Jerry chewing out his son over the studio system and telling him to get back to work. At any rate, all of the leaked complete bootlegs feature strong sound quality, though still not as good as Star Trek: Insurrection. Comparing the two scores' bootlegs, the Star Trek: Insurrection one is still superior all around, though even casual fans will find some interesting material on the far less essential Star Trek: First Contact bootlegs.

Score as Written for Film: ***
GNP Crescendo Album: **
Complete Bootlegs: ****
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22 (in 111 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36 (in 120,039 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.