Star Trek: Nemesis

by Jonathan Shearon   ·    September 7, 2008

Jerry Goldsmith’s final installment into the Star Trek series is an extension of some of his more bland 1990s action output. Where many people chide the end of his career as being simplistic, many forget the strength of The Thirteenth Warrior or The Ghost And The Darkness – but that strength is sadly lacking in this case.

Understated orchestra with a heavy emphasis on electronic writing, the first half of Nemesis comes off as a bad copy of Jerry’s own suspense music from the early 1980s. The disc starts off with the Alexander Courage fanfare, followed by the oppressive Romulan sound; its not quite a motif as its a very basic major-minor descending series. While far from boring, its a musical idea that Goldsmith normally would not have based an entire score around. Its thin and “small” in construction, amounting to little more than utilitarian.

Another major issue is that by the second half of the disc – starting with “The Scorpion” – the gears shift from subtle underscore to some of the composer’s most generic action music he’s ever written. Sounding eerily similar to the other movies Goldsmith scored for director Stuart Baird, Nemesis goes as far as actually being little more than a glaring rehash of U.S. Marshals. This is particularly true from that score’s climactic “The Front Gate” cue when compared to bits from Nemesis like “Lateral Run” and “Final Flight”. The scores that Goldsmith wrote for Baird movies are so similar not only in style but in material that they’re completely interchangeable.

The final insult is perhaps the album assembly. While its common that some of the best music from a movie is missing from the album, this is a rarefied case where practically all that good music from the movie is left by the wayside. No doubt the album was sequenced as the composer wanted it, but the most inspirational moments (a battle preparations montage and the finale ship-to-ship space battle in particular) are missing. The album’s single saving grace creatively is a beautiful rendition of the evil Shinzon theme, used as a bridge during “A New Ending”. Beyond that, this is by far the most tepid of the Star Trek scores.

The whole boils down to being too safe. Much like The Last Castle, Goldsmith’s hands seem bound by a temp track of his own music and a director who doesn’t know enough to leave elbow room. Everything heard in this album has been done before and done better and its a shame Jerry had to exit the series on such a seemingly sour note.

TRACKS

1. Remus (01:57)
2. The Box (02:21)
3. My Right Arm (01:04)
4. Odds and Ends (04:39)
5. Repairs (06:27)
6. The Knife (03:10)
7. Ideals (02:16)
8. The Mirror (05:23)
9. The Scorpion (02:24)
10. Lateral Run (03:55)
11. Engage (02:13)
12. Final Flight (03:49)
13. A New Friend (02:38)
14. A New Ending (06:08)