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Posted: |
Feb 1, 2023 - 9:22 PM
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By: |
Tom Servo
(Member)
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Well, as the Berman era of Star Trek represents my favorite era of scoring for the franchise, I would be hard-pressed to narrow down favorites to 1-2 disc per series. Sorry if that is a "hot take" or doesn't make sense to anyone else here, but I don't need to justify or explain why it resonates with me more than TOS or Paramount+ era scores. But admittedly, it's a lot of albums, so what I did was initially create highlights of 1 CD=1 season, with the CD length being around 75 minutes. For the years of TNG when Ron Jones was scoring episodes, I often extended these highlights collections to 2 CDs per season. Last year, I decided to whittle things down further, focusing on composer for TNG and then multiple seasons per CD for DS9, VOY and ENT. I can post my track lists for each soon, if you like.
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Jumped right to mind: Q Who: “Get Out of Here” and “They Will Be Coming.”
That particular Enterprise theme was the perfect cap to that pretty great episode. The producers were idiots for telling the composers to avoid themes and never repeat them. That should have been TNG's Enterprise theme from that spot on. Stylistically, it works well with what Goldsmith used to open his three TNG movies.
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Posted: |
Feb 2, 2023 - 1:42 PM
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By: |
Tom Servo
(Member)
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The reality of this topic is that most casual fans purchased volumes 1-4 of TNG music from GNP Crescendo Records and stopped there. This is totally fine, those 4 volumes are filled with excellent examples of great music from the three primary composers McCarthy, Jones and Chattaway. In addition, there are two "Best of Trek" albums from GNP, each which feature worthwhile score from TNG (the series finale), DS9 ("The Way of the Warrior" and "The Visitor") and VOY.
However, if you are interested in exploring more music beyond the GNP album releases from the 1987-2005 years of Star Trek on TV, then I have some suggestions.
First, and most important - find and acquire that Ron Jones TNG box set from FSM. Yes, it's 15 discs featuring music from all 40 episodes that Jones scored, but as fantastic as his "Best of Both Worlds" score is, it doesn't provide the full spectrum of what he brought musically to TNG. For me, the other highlights from his output would be:
Season 1:
Where No One Has Gone Before
11001001
Datalore
Heart of Glory
Skin of Evil
Season 2:
Where Silence Has Lease (mainly the "Auto-Destruct" cues)
The Royale
Q Who
The Emissary
Season 3:
Evolution
Who Watches The Watchers
The High Ground
The Offspring
Season 4:
Brothers
Data's Day
Final Mission
Devil's Due
Night Terrors
Regarding Dennis McCarthy's TNG scores, outside of volumes 1 and 3 from GNP, my favorites are as follows. Some are represented by single tracks or single cues on the multi-disc sets from LLL:
Season 1:
The Last Outpost
The Big Goodbye
Coming of Age
Season 2:
Elementary Dear Data
Contagion
Manhunt (1 jazz cue)
Peak Performance
Season 3:
The Survivors
The Enemy (1 cue on the 50th anniversary set, love the synth pulse vibe)
Transfigurations (on the 50th anniversary set)
Season 4:
Family (1 cue)
Q-Pid (on the 50th anniversary set)
Half a Life (1 cue)
Redemption (1 cue)
Season 5:
Conundrum (1 cue)
Season 6:
Lessons (1 cue)
Season 7:
Force of Nature (1 cue)
Genesis (1 cue)
Parallels (on the 50th anniversary set)
Regarding Jay Chattaway's TNG scores, outside of volume 4 from GNP, my favorites are as follows. Again, some are represented by single tracks or single cues on the multi-disc sets from LLL:
Season 4:
Remember Me
Season 5:
Darmok
Silicon Avatar
Power Play
The Perfect Mate
Season 6:
Relics
Frame of Mind
Season 7:
Emrrgence
Preemptive Strike
I can follow up later with cues or episode examples from DS9, VOY, ENT...
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Individual cues would take a while to figure out.
For TNG, my favorite Chattaway score is "Tin Man", my favorite McCarthy score is "Arsenal of Freedom" (which GNP added complete to their expanded/remastered "Encounter at Farpoint), and my favorite Jones score is "Q Who?" (yes, it's even better than "Best of Both Worlds", IMO, with the largest orchestra he ever got for the series).
But there are TONS of great Ron Jones scores for the series.
Yavar
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I can't think of any stand out tracks off hand but David Bell's work on VOYAGER always grabbed my attention, particularly his action music and Paul Baillargeon did some great work on that show as well. Chattaway and McCarthy get a lot of credit because they did the bulk of music from the Berman years but their styles always seemed too hard for me to pick apart. My memory of watching VOYAGER in particular is that any time I heard a score that really stood out to me and I watched til the end credits to see who it was, a good amount of the time it was either Bell or Baillargeon.
Also gotta give love to Ron Jones and Best of Both Worlds, particularly part 1. I remember thinking how creepy and foreboding the music was--it really added a cinematic flourish to the production.
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Too many to count for me I love the Berman era music especially DS9/Voyager and Enterprise
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