ENTERPRISE

By JEFF BOND     May 16, 2002

Have I told all of you how much I LOVE the theme song to the new STAR TREK series, ENTERPRISE? I haven't? Well, that's probably because I'm not all that crazy about it, but I'd like to think I'm beyond whining about it now. The song (something originally warbled by Rod Stewart in PATCH ADAMS, if that gives you any indication of the treacle factor at play here) plays over the best opening title footage assembled since STAR TREK: VOYAGER, and it's too bad some original music couldn't have been written to accompany the imagesbut I understand the desire on the part of the producers of ENTERPRISE to differentiate it from the pack of earlier STAR TREK shows. The opening bars of the song really aren't that bad, but once it opens up into Rod Stewart power ballad territory it just raises my hackles.

Dennis McCarthy has been composing music for STAR TREK since the debut of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION in 1987, and it continually amazes me that he is able to get up every morning and write new music for the franchise when he has to have seen every conceivable plot development and character twist by now. It doesn't help that early on the show's producers hamstrung McCarthy and other composers on the show by ordering them not to write any recognizable melodies so the new STAR TREK shows would not sound "tracked." Sue me, but the tracked, repeating music stings were some of my favorite things about the original STAR TREK.

ENTERPRISE was supposed to chart a new musical direction for the franchise but I don't think anyone ever decided what that was apart from the idea of having a pop-styled song at the beginning of every episode. There has been some freedom to apply synthesized percussion to the mix, as if that innovation (a staple of scoring in the 1980s which really isn't all that prevalent now) would single-handedly draw in millions of new viewers... but other than that, all the same old elements like melody, heavy dissonance and rhythm are still taboo on the show, which makes all current STAR TREK music sound distressingly similar.

That said, McCarthy has become adept at stealthily sneaking moments of musical interest into the series, and his score for the ENTERPRISE pilot episode "Broken Bow" is on a level with his better work for the series (including the feature film score for STAR TREK: GENERATIONS). There's a mellow, Americana theme for Archer and the Enterprise which unfortunately hasn't been pursued much in later episodic scores (it's adapted with a mild rock beat and guitar at the end of the album, although it's unclear whether this is the music McCarthy wanted to use for the opening titles or not), and McCarthy gets to pound home some orchestral rhythms instead of just layering in techno beats over everything"Phaser Fight," "The Rescue" and "Temporal Battle" are action standouts.

The bottom line is: McCarthy and the other composers on the show do everything possible under some enormous restrictions. And to some listeners who found the original series music (and some of the early NEXT GENERATION scores) overly bombastic, this is the way STAR TREK music should be. For my personal taste, I'd like to see the individual stamp that composers used to be able to put on STAR TREK come back. There's nothing wrong with viewers noticing the music, as long as it's good.

This album features the beloved theme song sung by Russell Watson and "enhanced" features which means you can play a video version of the song on your computer and get profiles of the Enterprise crew characters as well as links to a couple of related web sites. GNP/Crescendo has produced all the licensed original recordings of STAR TREK music to date, but this album has been produced by the unholy trinity of Paramount, Universal Music and Decca Recordsalthough it appears to have been assembled by the same gang that did all the GNP records, so I don't know whether to be afraid or relieved. I guess relieved, since we get around an hour of music on this CD.