Late last year, I wrote about the perfect intersection for Star Trek fan and score enthusiast, The Ron Jones Project -- a 14-disc box set compiling all of that composer's fantastic work for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, La-La Land records has decided they too will help expand the library of music from that series by releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection -- Volume One. It's a set of music from five other composers who worked on the show. Though its "mere" 3 discs pales in comparison to the epic Ron Jones collection, it's still a great sample of work from throughout the seven-year run of the show.
And frankly, a sample is the better way to go, in this case. As a musical score fan, I can tell you that the thing that made Ron Jones' work on Star Trek so phenomenal is that he really wouldn't "play ball" with what the producers wanted. Rick Berman, the producer at the top, literally (and famously, in music fan circles) said that the music of the show should be like "wallpaper," never calling attention to itself and shapelessly filling in the silence. It's a wonder Ron Jones survived for nearly half the series' run, flying in the face of that philosophy with almost every episode he worked on.
As I said, this collection features some work from other composers. The first disc is devoted to Dennis McCarthy, who wrote more music for Star Trek (across TNG and all the later spin-offs) than anyone else. Disc two is the work of Jay Chattaway, the man who would ultimately replace Ron Jones after he was let go. Disc three covers three other composers who each worked on a single episode, filling in for various reasons for the two regular composers.
I picked up this 3-disc set because I'm a huge Star Trek and music fan, even knowing not to expect as much from it as I did the Ron Jones set. But I had reason for hope due to the nature of the compilation. Unlike the Ron Jones set, which featured complete episode scores (all of them), this set included both a few complete scores and some single tracks from other episodes. I figured that somewhere in seven years of the show, there had to be a few tracks that violated the "wallpaper edict," and I assumed those would be curated for this release.
Indeed, that's what happened. But the results were still mixed overall. I'm going to jump to the end here and tell you that unless you are a Star Trek fan, and a real music nut, you probably won't want to buy this set. I'd grade it a C+ overall, which might -- might -- be good enough to recommend a single-disc CD, but the $35 price tag for the three discs is probably steep enough that only the real soundtrack fans should spring for it.
That said, I'd like to explain what you do get in this collection in more detail, and I feel the best way to do that is to break my review into three parts, one per disc. So if you love film and television music, I suppose you're in for a treat! If you don't, brace yourself for two more days in the near future where my blog probably won't interest you much.
First up, Dennis McCarthy. As I said, he wrote more Star Trek music than anybody, and he didn't achieve that by breaking the rules. He's by far the composer I like the least on Star Trek. I can't blame him for putting his head down and doing a job, but his music is rarely anything you'd want to listen to outside of the show itself. Fortunately, this album does highlight the rare exceptions.
The complete score to his first episode, "Haven," leads off the album. Not a very great hour for the show, but a pretty solid suite of music. Listening to it, I realize that Dennis McCarthy probably has it in him to be a composer I would enjoy; this music clearly comes from an early exploratory period before he started toeing the line. His work here has richer orchestration, more dramatic spikes, and several playful embellishments suiting the comedic aspects of the episode. (Well, the parts that were supposed to be funny, anyway.) He even makes use of a recurring theme that I've read was intended for the character of Jean-Luc Picard. It pops up one or two other times on the disc, appearing in early episodes before it was dropped at the producer's request.
There's a single track from the climax of "Hide & Q" that's really solid. It's the sequence where Riker, bestowed with the powers of a Q, tries to give gifts to please his crewmates. The track starts with religious liturgical parody (with Q's entrance), has some tender emotion for the gift of Geordi's sight, and even some fun and primal material for Worf's potential mate. Again, this was early in the show, before McCarthy "learned" not to include such flourishes.
The highlight of the Dennis McCarthy disc is a 7-minute suite from the late first season episode "Conspiracy," in which body-snatcher-esque crayfish possess members of Starfleet Command and try to take over the galaxy. It was a truly out-of-character episode for the show, marked by rather unbelievable gore for 80s television, and an atmosphere of darkness and mistrust you'd never see again on Star Trek until Deep Space Nine found its legs. Whatever rules McCarthy had been following, he rightly dumped them to deliver an unusual score fitting the unusual episode. It's dark and sinister, fun to listen to, and I wish the composer had done more work like this.
The rest of the McCarthy disc is pretty dry. Even hand-selecting tracks from dozens of episodes, the CD producers couldn't really find enough truly interesting McCarthy material to fill a disc. There's a nice bump in the road for the episode "Elementary, Dear Data," a jaunty little theme he composed for the Sherlock Holmes adventure on the holodeck. Other than that, it's just a real snooze. I remain amazed (not in a good way) at how McCarthy is able to write action music cues that don't have a sense of action at all. There's a suite from the episode "Time Squared" that sounds like his work on the film Star Trek: Generations -- exactly the sort of uninteresting "wallpaper" Rick Berman asked for.
I'd call this disc a C+. There are a couple of B+, as-good-as-Dennis-McCarthy-gets tracks you can cherry pick for your shuffle play, but mostly it's music to fall asleep to. Not the reason why I sprang for the collection -- that'll come soon when I continue my review of this collection.
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