What do you think?
Rate this book
The Music of Star Trek
A critical and historical overview of music scored for Paramount's Star Trek franchise, from the original '60s series to the highly successful Star Trek movies and the new television shows The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The book comprises some of the finest and most memorable music ever written for television or film. Individual chapters address each of the Star Trek motion picture scores, with cue breakdowns and interviews with film composers Dennis McCarthy, Cliff Eidelman and award-winning composers Jerry Goldsmith and Leonard Rosenman.
219 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1999
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 7, 2015
I picked up this book from the library on impulse. Lately I've been thinking about lot about how much Gene Roddenberry "borrowed" from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation show Fireball XL5, conceptually, visually, and sound design and I wanted to see if this book made any mention of that. Predictably, it didn't. Now when I first heard the idea that Roddenberry drew elements of his space opera from this puppet show (a childhood favorite of mine) I laughed, the idea seemed absurd. But I've watched the Fireball series on DVD many times now, and I think the case for this only grows stronger. In this particular case, I was looking for mention of the influence of the wonderful composer Barry Gray on Star Trek's sounds. There wasn't any; furthermore I had to endure all the usual horseradish about how Trek sprung sui generis from the brow (or was it the thigh?) of the Zeus-like Great Bird of the Galaxy... the laughable conceit of how Roddenberry was using space opera as a Trojan Horse to smuggle "big ideas" into pop culture, how the 3rd season of the original series was of low quality, but the first 2 were great (objectively, all these shows are badly-dated, and unintentionally funny in their awfulness). But I realized that Bond had to observe the proper forms of the ritual to get Paramount's cooperation, and to get fans to buy it - for it would seem to be a book of almost no interest to anybody other than fanatics. Which is a shame, because Bond's contributions aside, the composers of music for he various Star Trek franchises provide some very interesting information about the larger topic of composing for Hollywood, how they broke into it, how they work, technical and aesthetic issues, and so on. I recommend it for that.
April 17, 2011
A bit of an amateurish publishing job...but the content and analysis of the movie and original series music is first rate. That said, the highs and lows of the TNG/DS9/Voyager era of music, its composers, and its behind-the-scenes information (such as the entire debacle surrounding Ron Jones' departure), remains to be addressed with far more depth. I hope someone picks up this gauntlet one day...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews