Star Trek: Ranking All 13 Movie Soundtracks

More than even Alexander Courage or Fred Stein's work on Star Trek: The Original Series, Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar nominated score for 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture set the template for Star Trek music. Owing to its adoption as the main theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation and its use in five films across two and a half decades, Goldsmith's The Motion Picture march is the signature sound of the franchise, as memorable as Courage's classic TOS fanfare.

The soundtrack for Star Trek: The Motion Picture introduced the aforementioned march as well as a dominant theme for the Klingons, both of which carried forward to Goldsmith's contributions for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis. Goldsmith also composed an emotional love theme for Decker and Ilia, and ominous orchestral and electronic material for the mysterious V'Ger. Collectively, these themes create a rich, propulsive, sweeping score, adding gravity to the film when it was often otherwise lacking. The grand, almost religious music for V'Ger (utilizing a variety of electronic "blaster beam" sounds and cathedral organ) did much of the heavy lifting to give the amorphous adversary some much needed character.

Highlights of the score include the majestic, slower version of Goldsmith's march in "The Enterprise" and "Leaving Drydock", an encapsulation of the religious tones for V'Ger in "The Cloud" and "The Meld" (which also contains a unique, solemn reprise of the title march), and an energetic summation of the Ilia theme and the famous march in "End Title".