Star Trek: Enterprise - music by Dennis McCarthy
My sincere apologies to Dennis McCarthy. I initially shrugged off the music from Enterprise when I watched the pilot movie - I liked the theme song and opening credits (and, by the sound of things, I’m one of approximately five people who openly admit to liking the song, and one of the others is Rick Berman, if that tells you anything). Now I realize that my beef is with Berman, not McCarthy. The newly released soundtrack from the pilot movie is actually a fine addition to the musical canon of Star Trek.
Topped and tailed with two different versions of Russell Watson’s rendition of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” (originally written by Diane Warren), the Enterprise soundtrack CD features most of the hour-long score, excluding a few source music cues, recorded for the two-hour episode. One of the nicer things about the score from Broken Bow, the two-hour pilot movie, is the all-American-flavored theme used for both Captain Archer and the Enterprise herself (which you do actually get to hear in the show each week - as the end credit music, on the rare occasion that UPN doesn’t do the annoying but almost ubiquitous credit squeeze). Like the theme McCarthy coined for Captain Picard some 15 years ago, Archer’s theme fits perfectly and has its own grand sweep (though sadly, like Picard’s theme, it seems to have disappeared from regular use over the course of the show’s first season, probably due to Berman’s aversion to any of the composers creating specific themes associated with any character). Many of the tracks are infused with an edgy energy that may come from the musicians’ and conductor’s reactions to other events that occurred on the second day of the scoring sessions for the pilot: September 11th, 2001. (In his liner notes, McCarthy dedicates the music on this CD to victims of that tragedy.)
Some of the music will sound familiar - “Klingon Chase / Shotgunned” in particular, though it’s among my favorite tracks, sounds like it could easily be slotted into the soundtrack from Star Trek: Generations. (I do like that menacing downbeat chord combination, though.) McCarthy even steps right up to the edge of quoting his own theme music from Deep Space Nine in the next-to-last track, “New Horizons”. The music also gets slimy, low-key and discordant for scenes involving the shape-shifting Suliban, and downright weird (but in a good way) for the climactic, time-warped fight in the track “Temporal Battle”.
Some fans - those other four people out there who like the song (and I’m sure Berman’s already gotten his copy of the CD) - will also be pleased to hear both the long album version and the shortened TV version of “Where My Heart Will Take Me”. I still find it to be an inspiring little number, especially when combined with the show’s opening title montage. Quite why fandom has bared its teeth at this song and the opening credits, I just haven’t managed to comprehend yet. I actually thought it was a nice switch from the usual Goldsmithian-sounding opening credits that have become de rigeur for Star Trek spinoffs.
I was surprised to see this album appear on Decca, rather than GNP/Crescendo, which has done an excellent job of giving us one to two Star Trek (or related) CDs a year since 1991 or so. From what I understand, this is more to do with the behind-the-scenes negotiating needed to include Russell Watson’s theme song on the CD, not a reflection of any kind of dissatisfaction on Paramount’s part with Crescendo Records. GNP/Crescendo certainly could have done better with the packaging, which is kind of bland here - though there’s only so much you can do with those pre-launch publicity photos where the crew looks like they’re standing inside the round-patterned walls of Doctor Who’s TARDIS.
Hopefully more Enterprise music will be forthcoming, whether Decca or Crescendo issues it. Some of the first season’s episodes have had very interesting music, with the most notable being the surprisingly melodic Vox Sola, with its sly, sinewy theme for the parasitic life form. Crescendo has already turned out a “Best Of Season One” CD for Stargate SG-1, and hopefully they may follow suit with Enterprise - even if it means ditching “Where My Heart Will Take Me” from future releases; after all, we have it on this CD. (Sadly missing, however, is the 
acoustic guitar rendition of that song which was heard only on the un-squished end credits of the pilot episode; the track “Archer’s Theme” is now used as the end credit music.)
Love it or hate it, Enterprise is worth a listen. Kudos to Dennis McCarthy for introducing some new energy and material into his Trek repertoire - don’t stop now, Dennis! The show desperately needs it.
- Where My Heart Will Take Me - Album Version (4:09)
- New Enterprise (1:40)
- Klingon Chase / Shotgunned (2:05)
- Enterprise First Flight (2:50)
- Klang-Napped (2:10)
- Morph-o-Mama / Suli-Nabbed (2:45)
- Phaser Fight (5:53)
- Breakthrough (2:01)
- Grappled (4:09)
- The Rescue (6:40)
- Temporal Battle (8:05)
- Blood Work (2:11)
- New Horizons (1:26)
- Archer’s Theme (1:24)
- Where My Heart Will Take Me - TV Version (1:28)
Released by: Decca / Universal
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 49:22
As the BBC’s excellent range of remastered Doctor Who music CDs reaches into the early 80s era of the show, sonic gems are being unearthed for the first time in years. If any proof be needed, check out the music from Full Circle, a 1980 story infamous in some fans’ eyes for introducing awkward youth Adric to the TARDIS crew. Paddy Kingsland’s memorable melodic score for Full Circle features a number of themes that beg - no, demand - to be hummed long after you’ve hit the stop button. Kingsland went on to score many other Doctor Who episodes, including the pivotal regeneration story Logopolis, but even though he has an instantly recognizable style, he seldom repeats actual material from story to story. (Kingsland’s trademark style was also a big part of the musical sound of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.) Unusually, the other score featured on this disc was divided up between Kingsland and Peter Howell (who arranged the most enduring of the 1980s’ versions of the Doctor Who theme). Meglos was a bit of a muddled exercise as far as storytelling goes, but musically it takes an interesting approach, including the use of a vocoder to weave random syllables and occasionally even story-relevant “lyrics” into the music.
I’ve waxed rhapsodic about this outstanding, pioneering score which combines synthesizers, orchestra and chorus; long a favorite, Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack from Tron has never been officially available on CD. Bootlegs have been circulating for years, as have MP3s, both of them usually sourced from the vinyl LP. In the intervening years, Carlos restored and remastered the original tapes on her own time, patiently waiting to release it on her own label, or perhaps on Disney’s label. Fans eagerly awaited a release date for years, but considering that Tron, like The Black Hole, seemed to be a film that Disney was all but ashamed of, it didn’t seem like a good idea to hold one’s breath.
In 1979, John Nathan-Turner took over the producer’s seat of Doctor Who and set about making sweeping changes to the show’s visual look, storytelling style, and even the signature sound effects and music. Dudley Simpson had been composing almost all of the music for every episode since 1970, but Nathan-Turner was concerned that, as Simpson was also doing the music for the BBC’s other SF series, Blake’s 7, the two shows now sounded too similar. The producer approached the BBC’s own Radiophonic Workshop, which had provided the series’ sound effects and main theme since 1963, to provided incidental music as well - and the change in sound was drastic. Dudley Simpson’s simple but elegant acoustic ensemble gave way to the Radiophonic Workshop’s expansive, all-electronic synth-orchestra, and nowhere was this contrast as evident as with the first story of Nathan-Turner’s reign, The Leisure Hive. Peter Howell, who also arranged the new version of the show’s famous theme music, let loose with a barrage of music that fits the definition of a “wall of sound,” with thick, Vangelis-style texture drenching much of the action. In his small portion of the liner notes, Howell confesses that The Leisure Hive’s music was, perhaps, “too omnipresent” - and he does have a point, as Leisure Hive may have been the most music-heavy Doctor Who until The Curse Of Fenric or, perhaps, The Five Doctors. But it’s a ton of good, solid analog-synth fun, and in the context of what had come before it was certainly a great shock.