Another post on a Monday about some music. Maybe it won’t be every Monday, but on some Mondays I might decide to post something here about music.
I have been hooked on Star Trek since I first saw an episode of The Next Generation on BBC2 when I was wee. My admiration for Star Trek was taken to the next level one Bank Holiday Monday when I saw that the the second Star Trek movie, the Wrath of Khan, was being shown on TV. My parents very kindly set the timer on our VCR to record the film while I was at school, and as an added bonus the first episode of Battlestar Galactica was also recorded at the end of the movie. I watched that video over and over again for years.
As great as the movie is, and it is great, the music stood out to me right from that first viewing. There were some familiar motifs from Jerry Goldsmith’s TNG theme, but this music went in very different direction. It suggested a militaristic or seafaring take on familiar themes and had a very different tone. I have read that the reason James Horner scored Wrath of Khan was that the studio could not afford to bring Jerry Goldsmith back. Goldsmith’s themes are amazing, but if there is one good thing that came from the budget cuts the Wrath of Khan faced the Horner score is it.
James Horner’s Wrath of Khan score is on regular rotation for me. The entire Mutara Nebula/Genesis section is the perfect match of score, story and visuals.