Do me a favor will you? Watch this clip twice (you can start at 1:45 to get to the real point of the matter). Once right now. Go. I'll wait.
Did you watch it? Pretty great, right?
Now I'm going to talk to you and you're going to watch it again.
Firstly, lets get something straight. I think Star Trek: The Motion Picture possesses one of the finest film scores of all time, and I'll fight anyone who disagrees (and bet against myself so I can take advantage of what I'm pretty sure is negative muscle mass at this point).
Although most people know you can beat this guy with a swift kick to the balls, Johnny Cage style!
For you kids who were born after 1995 that was a Mortal Kombat joke. Killed it.
Anyway, I think this movie and its score get a bad rap in some circumstances. The Motion Picture (TMP from this point forward) was a direct response to Star Wars by Paramount, but what most people fail to realize is that it has a lot more in common with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey than it does with Star Wars at all. This comparison can go right down to the score.
Goldsmith's score, which is a masterpiece, if you disagree you're wrong (no time for opinions when it comes to truly great music), draws not from the bombast of Korngold like Williams does, but rather from the contemporary music scene. We've got improvised synthetic sounds, which Goldsmith dubbed the "Blaster Beam," extended techniques like horns blowing through their mouthpieces backwards, and very atmospheric writing, something Williams would tackle in The Empire Strikes Back but really doesn't do in Star Wars (aside from a blatant Rite of Spring quotation).
All of those things are great, and they make Goldsmith's score stand out as the clear masterwork between the two entries into Sci-Fi music, but what about this tune?
Clearly Goldsmith is influenced by Korngold here, for he produces a tune of stunning magnitude: heroic, brassy, 6/8 - everything required to make us feel like we're soaring through space at Warp 8, baby!
So who's, or what's theme is it? Is it a theme for The Enterprise herself? It's possible, by 1979 Star Trek fans had made the Enterprise a legend. Is it a theme for Kirk? Again, certainly possible, Kirk is the ultimate hero, cocky, smart, talented. But I think it's neither. It's a love theme.
At this point in his life the only thing Kirk truly loves is his ship. It's been several years since The Enterprise completed her historic five year mission under Kirk and his crew has moved on. He's an admiral, a new kid is in command, Spock is on Vulcan, and Bones is retired from Starfleet.
And has a totally bitchin' '70s getup complete with beard.
Look at how Kirk looks at the ship. Isn't that how every man has felt about his car at some point? But this goes deeper. Kirk owes his life to that ship, not just the fact that he's alive, but everything of worth he has ever done is connected to it. This is a romantic relationship, shit, in IMudd Kirk even calls the Enterprise a "beautiful woman." He's got the hots for that piece of tritanium alloy, and Goldsmith knew it. So when Kirk first sees the ship, it's not a brassy fanfare statement (although we get there), it's a beautiful, subdued, love theme for Kirk seeing the love of his life for the first time in years. She's different, she's gotten a makeover (thank God someone took a look at that original model and said "We can make this waaaayyyyy cooler), but underneath she's the same ship that helped Kirk trick bad guys, kill Romulans, and bang green alien chicks. Understandably, he's smitten.
Watch the clip again. Total love song, amirite?
But an era of films for the franchise meant there was no worry of cancellation, and with the outrageous earnings of this film, a sequel was all but obvious. So we get The Wrath of Khan with a new composer, and a much darker theme. From there we have The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home. Everyone talks about the II, III, and IV as the Star Trek trilogy, but really it's the first four films making a quadrilogy. So in an era of films, finally some character development!
The first four films have a pretty solid emotional arc for Kirk: Love - Loss - Sacrifice - and Acceptance (with a little fear of old age and revenge thrown in for good measure).
Kirk loves the Enterprise more than anything, that clip shows us that. Whatever affection we know Kirk has for Spock and Bones is eclipsed by that ship, healthy or not (hint: it's not). But a funny thing happens in The Wrath of Khan: Kirk loses his closest friend and starts to realize that maybe it's not all about that ship. He starts to see a life beyond the Enterprise in that moment, a life where his duty to Starfleet can be parallel or even secondary to his love for his friends. In The Search for Spock Kirk gets another nasty wake-up call with the death of his only son, whom he had just met, at the hands of the villainous Klingons. And in that same movie Kirk makes a choice. He can die along with his crew and he can forget about saving Spock, or he can sacrifice the ship, his one true love.
He destroys his ship.
In those moments while the Enterprise crashes to the surface of the Genesis Planet Kirk becomes more than he had ever been before, a caring, compassionate, well adjusted human being. In later films we don't see the brazen cocksure Kirk of the original series, no he's gotten old, he's seen too many things, and he finally knows what matters. In Star Trek V, it is with reluctance that he allows his ship to venture into the unknown, he's not wild about losing his friends to a madman's search for God. In Star Trek VI, he surrenders to save his crew even though he knows he did nothing wrong, and faces death in the Alien's Graveyard.
What if Goldsmith had scored all of these films instead of just two of them?
I love Horner's score for The Wrath of Khan but at times I wonder how it would be with Goldsmith's sweeping love theme transforming before our eyes as Kirk finally views his love for the Enterprise as it really is.
I think if Goldsmith had done all of the films his tune would have found less and less place in the films, replaced by new themes, and developed to represent a full grown Kirk. No longer the pompous big deal it is when it reappears in Star Trek V but rather a beautiful reminder of a love that was, and the man it helped create.
This is just what I think would have happened, but I think I'm right.
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