The Best of ALL Worlds

If you're a fan of television and movie scores, then there's a good chance that a bit of news I just came across will excite you as much as it did me.

You may not know composer Ron Jones by name, but if you're a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you certainly know his music. He's the man who composed the phenomenal soundtrack of the famous two-parter, The Best of Both Worlds. I bought the soundtrack on cassette back when it was first released, later picked it up on CD, and it still gets regular play on my iPod.

If you're a real soundtrack geek (and I don't expect you to be), then you'll know that he basically got fired from the show just a few months after he wrote this landmark score.

There were two composers working on the series at the time, he and Dennis McCarthy, both hired at the start of the series by someone other than Rick Berman, the producer who soon took charge of not only The Next Generation, but all subsequent Star Trek series. The man who hired Ron Jones wanted fairly bombastic music in the vein of the original series... but then left the show himself after a season. Meanwhile, Rick Berman actually used the word "wallpaper" to refer to the way he wanted the music on the show to sound -- mere background for everything else. No melodies, no recurring themes, no unusual orchestrations.

As Dennis McCarthy and Ron Jones alternated episodes, the former played ball. Dennis McCarthy created forgettable, bland scores, the likes of which you'll find on the Encounter at Farpoint, Deep Space Nine: Emissary, and Star Trek: Generations soundtrack albums. I suppose you can't hold it against him; he was following orders, giving the man in charge what he wanted.

Ron Jones, however, did no such thing. Aside from the awesome Best of Both Worlds score (the best music ever composed for Star Trek with the possible exception of the master Jerry Goldsmith himself), Ron Jones would experiment with expensive, MIDI-synced synthesizers, orchestras with no brass section, orchestras with no violin section... even (gasp!) a chorus of singers!

Basically, every other episode of the show was awesome, musically speaking.

One wonders how Ron Jones managed to stay on the show as long as he did, defying Rick Berman as a matter of course. None of the Trek TV composers were ever under an actual contract, but were technically hired on a one episode at a time basis. One day, they called Ron Jones in and told him, "this is your last episode for us." And that was that.

But by then, he'd scored 42 episodes of the series. And now, later this month, Film Score Monthly is releasing a limited run box set that contains the complete scores (including music cues cut by Rick Berman) to all 40 of the other episodes. (Excluding the two parts of The Best of Both Worlds, already available.) And they're tossing in his score for two later Star Trek video games, just for good measure.

Of course, 14 discs (!) of awesome music isn't going to come cheap. So I'm going to have to do some justifying before I can spend $150 on this collection. But I really don't see how I can say no to it. Even if parts of it aren't even half as good as The Best of Both Worlds score, it would be better than most random samplings of $150 worth of soundtrack music on my iPod.

Engage!