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Star Trek: The Original Series Soundtrack Collection. La-La Land Records, LLLCD-1701, 2012, 15 CDs.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2013

Jessica L. Getman
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Type
Recording Reviews
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 470 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2013 

Preserving some of the most iconic music in science fiction television, Star Trek: The Original Series Soundtrack Collection includes more than six hundred music cues and sound effects, painstakingly remastered from the original 1/4-inch monaural reels and presented in a sumptuous fifteen-CD box set with full-color illustrated liner notes. Producers Lukas Kendall, Neil S. Bulk, and Jeff Bond have made available a cache of recordings long hidden from the public, providing the original versions of the music cues as composed, conducted, and recorded by the series’ composers, without the post-production changes as the cues were cut and placed into the final televised product.Footnote 1 The collection is therefore useful for analyzing post-production soundtrack decisions, and for providing an aural image of music not otherwise preserved in score form.Footnote 2

This release is not the first attempt to make the series’ music library available to the public. GNP Crescendo Records released one volume of Star Trek cues in 1985 and two volumes in 1992, from a total of six episodes, and composer Fred Steiner re-recorded cues from eight episodes in 1990, released in two volumes by Varèse Sarabande Records.Footnote 3 The 2012 collection makes the CBS Star Trek music library available in original form, providing not only the cues scored for specific episodes, but also cues composed primarily as library music, a number of alternate takes, source cues, and a few sound effects.

Several composers were involved in the creation of Star Trek's soundtrack, including Alexander Courage, the composer of several of the series’ episodes as well as its main theme, and Fred Steiner, who was responsible for scoring eleven episodes. Sol Kaplan, Joseph Mullendore, Gerald Fried, George Duning, Samuel Matlovsky, and Jerry Fielding contributed to the series’ score as well, as did others credited and uncredited. Thirty-five of the series’ seventy-nine episodes have original music, whereas the remaining episodes were “tracked”—their soundtracks pieced together from the series’ library of previously recorded music cues.Footnote 4

Most of Star Trek's instrumentation, for budgetary reasons, was heavily oriented toward winds and percussion rather than strings; Steiner and Fried often left the violins out of their scores altogether, relying on the darker timbre of violas.Footnote 5 With the exception of the occasional electric guitar, violin, bass, and organ, electronic instruments were rarely employed.Footnote 6 Source music, both vocal and instrumental, was not uncommon, and the series’ producers often took advantage of actress Nichelle Nichols's background in musical theater (for example, she sang, as Lieutenant Uhura, “Beyond Antares” from “The Conscience of the King,” s. 1, ep. 13) and making use of guest star Charles Napier's musical talent (“The Way to Eden,” s. 3, ep. 75). Cue lengths in this collection range from only a few seconds to several minutes, with cues occasionally combined in one longer take that sometimes exceeds six minutes.

Significantly, the collection includes several variations on Star Trek's title theme. Series creator Gene Roddenberry and his music editors were never quite satisfied with the instrumentation and mixing of the second half of the theme's melody (which Steiner dubbed the “beguine” theme), struggling to find the correct mix of coloratura soprano, organ, oboe, flute, and vibraphone.Footnote 7 Two other arrangements by Mullendore and Steiner are included in this collection, the first using an electric violin and the second employing cellos.Footnote 8Star Trek: The Original Series Soundtrack Collection includes other items of interest as well, such as thirty alternate takes and out-takes, and library re-recordings of seventy-one cues, in which music from seasons one and two was re-taped for use in seasons two and three.Footnote 9

Jeff Bond, film music journalist and author of The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style, provides the liner notes in four full-color booklets, in a total of 116 pages illustrated with screen shots.Footnote 10 The first presents commentary for the entire series, addressing Roddenberry's approach to scoring, the creation of the series’ musical sound by Courage, the use of library material, and the music editors’ roles, as well as providing short biographies of the composers. A separate booklet is included for each of the original series’ three seasons, providing track information; composers, orchestrators, and copyists; recording dates; performer lists for each episode; and a short commentary on the music of each episode. Much of Bond's information is taken from interviews and research for his book, but he also includes recently acquired information from transcripts of interviews conducted by Fred Steiner in 1982.Footnote 11

Although the liner notes document unique insider's information, even 116 pages are not substantial enough to provide a complete account of the production of Star Trek's music. Nevertheless, this box set, a labor of love, manifests a level of detail and professionalism that makes it not only enjoyable, but also invaluable to scholars of music for the small screen.

References

1 Lukas Kendall indicated that they “used 1/4-inch mono tapes of the scores as they were recorded on the scoring stage [Stage F of Glen Glenn Sound, Hollywood], with the bad takes and false starts, before they were cut up and dubbed into the shows themselves. The aforementioned mono tapes were transferred to digital and then they were mastered to notch out 60hz hum, take out undue amounts of hiss, etc.” The tapes were also pitch-corrected and mastered for optimum performance on home audio systems. Lukas Kendall, e-mail correspondence, 24 March 2013. I would like to thank Lukas Kendall and Jeff Bond for sharing their research materials with me.

2 Composer copies of Star Trek draft and conducting scores can be found at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library at Brigham Young University; the Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School of Music; the Cinematic Arts Library at the University of Southern California; and the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

3 The Crescendo collection includes a total of 108 cues, whereas the Varèse collection includes sixty-eight cues. Star Trek: Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 1, GNP Crescendo Records GNPD 8006, 1985; Star Trek: Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2, GNP Crescendo Records GNPD 8025, 1992; Alexander Courage and Gerald Fried, Star Trek: Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 3, GNP Crescendo Records GNPD 8030, 1992; Star Trek: Newly Recorded Music from Selected Episodes of the Paramount TV Series, Vol. 1, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Fred Steiner, Varèse Sarabande Records VSD 47235, 1990; Star Trek: Newly Recorded Music from Selected Episodes of the Paramount TV Series, Vol. 2, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Fred Steiner, Varèse Sarabande Records VSD 47240, 1990.

4 Several of these episodes were partially scored, using both original music and tracked cues.

5 Gerald Fried, interview by Fred Steiner, 16 April 1982, transcript, Fred Steiner Papers, 1975–1981, MSS 2193, “Star Trek Interviews,” L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Orem, UT.

6 Roddenberry indicated to his assistant producer, Robert Justman, that he did not want a traditional electronic science fiction score for Star Trek. Although the series did occasionally employ a synthesizer, an electric violin, an electric guitar, etc., it did so sparingly. Robert Justman, interview by Fred Steiner, 28 April 1982, transcript, Fred Steiner Papers.

7 Jack Hunsaker, interview by Fred Steiner, 27 April 1982, cassette recording, Fred Steiner Papers, Box 55, Case 1, “Jack Hunsaker”; Alexander Courage Collection, “Original Main Title (Revised),” SC 1995.10, Box 39, Folder 8, Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections, Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY.

8 This collection also includes arrangements of the end-title music using this alternate instrumentation.

9 Union rules did not allow for the re-use of music past the show's current season unless it was re-recorded. Jack Hunsaker, interview by Fred Steiner, 27 April 1982, transcription, Fred Steiner Papers, “Star Trek Interviews.”

10 Bond, Jeff, The Music of Star Trek: Profiles in Style (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle Publishing Company, 1999)Google Scholar. Bond's book covers not only the original series of Star Trek, but also the music of the franchise's films and television series through 1999, including all films from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) to Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and all series from Star Trek (1966–69) to Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2002), excluding the animated series (1973–74).

11 I provided Kendall and Bond with research I collected in 2011 from the Fred Steiner Collection at Brigham Young University. Most of what the liner notes include from this material draws from interviews Fred Steiner conducted as he prepared a scholarly essay on the music of Star Trek in 1982: Steiner, Fred, “Keeping Score of the Scores: Music for Star Trek,” in Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 40/1 (Winter 1983): 4–15Google Scholar. An expanded version of this article was printed as “Music for Star Trek: Scoring a Television Show in the Sixties,” in Wonderful Inventions: Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound at the Library of Congress, ed. Iris Newsome (Washington, D.C.: The Library, 1985), 286–309.