The year was 1996. Bill Clinton was reelected. The Dallas Cowboys won their third consecutive Super Bowl. Tupac Shakur was shot. And, in November, Star Trek: First Contact<\/i> was released. <\/p>\n
As I sat down to write this review something dawned on me; this movie\/soundtrack was released 11 years ago. 11\u2026.years\u2026..ago. I can remember going to see this movie on opening night; I was so incredibly excited that the Borg were the main villains, and there was going to be more action, Captain Kirk wasn\u2019t going to die again\u2026but I digress. Suffice it to say, I feel really old right now. <\/p>\n
As such, this was around the age when I began to first start buying CDs, and being the Trekker (there is s a big difference between a Trekkie and a Trekker) that I was, First Contact<\/i> had the honor of being the first CD I had ever purchased. <\/p>\n
One of the more memorable aspects of the Trek canon are the scores, and while no one would rank First Contact<\/i> as one of the top ones, it certainly is no Nemesis<\/i> either. Jerry Goldsmith took over the scoring duties for the film and his career has certainly been solid to say the least. <\/p>\n
Goldsmith would introduce a new theme on the First Contact<\/i> soundtrack; it plays out during the \u201cMain Title\u201d and the credits as well. It\u2019s nice enough, and actually contains portions lifted from Star Trek V<\/i>. Normally that would the kiss of death for any creative entity, but Goldsmith must have found the sole nugget from that horrendous film. <\/p>\n
The big deal with First Contact<\/i> was the use of the Borg as the main villains. The Borg, for those who don\u2019t know, were cyborgs bent on taking over the galaxy. Thus, there was a need for some unique music to represent them on the disc. Goldsmith captured their essence well; when the Borg are introduced the listener is presented with a hugely bombastic, monolithic theme. Later on, that gets twisted into a more sinister, mechanical presentation. Again, no one would confuse this with the \u201cKlingon Theme,\u201d but it works in the context of the movie and its own merit. <\/p>\n
Some of the more familiar Trek pieces of music make their way into the score; the infamous \u201cAlexander Courage,\u201d the aforementioned \u201cKlingon Theme,\u201d but generally speaking this was completely new music, and not recycled from the original cast films or Generations.<\/i> That music has been done to death admittedly, but I equate Trek soundtracks to Bond soundtracks; give me what I know, and what I love. It\u2019s nice to hear something new, but it takes away from what makes this a decidedly Star Trek piece. <\/p>\n
First Contact<\/i> is a good example of a professional composer churning out a professional work. Soundtracks are much like the films they provide the music to; once in a while a great film comes along with a great soundtrack, it\u2019s rare that one or the other is terrible. First Contact<\/i> is not a great soundtrack, but it\u2019s representative of what the average work is like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":29125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5993],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-40645","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-original-motion-picture-soundtrack","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40645"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}