Enterprise
Music from the Original Television Soundtrack

Composed & Conducted by Dennis McCarthy
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Quick Take: Enterprise Released: May 14, 2002 Official Website: www.startrek.com See our special section here for more.

Soundtracks are one of those weird things to try to review since the music is normally so closely integrated with a series or movie, separating it onto a CD can be a hard thing to try to review. The purpose of the music is to help set the mood for the visual images you are seeing...without the visuals though, is the music interesting enough to stand on it’s own?

With Enterprise, the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. This first CD from the fifth Star Trek series, Enterprise, features music from the series premiere, the 2-part Broken Bow.

Most of the tracks are somewhat moody and tense (Phaser Battle, Temporal Fight) while the opening theme and others such as Archer’s Theme is uplifting making the soundtrack a sort of emotional journey.  It’s well organized and features 2 versions of the controversial theme, “Where My Heart Will Take Me” - the normal 1 1/2 minute TV version and an extended album version of the full song at a little over 4 minutes. New Horizons is very evocative of earlier Trek themes (it especially reminds me of Deep Space Nine’s opening theme).

While this is an enhanced CD (with additional material available if you play it on a computer CD-Rom drive), I am underwhelmed by the material chosen. After a rather nice graphic intro and menu presentation, all you have is a music video of a live performance of the theme by Russell Watson and a short cast & crew bio that is almost identical to that on Paramount’s website. There are also links to Paramount’s site and Watson’s, though strangely no link to the official www.startrek.com site. I would have personally loved to have seen something like info on the ship, bloopers or other behinds-the-scenes info or clips.

The packaging includes a small fold out with a few pictures of Archer and the crew and a note from the composer, but nothing really overly interesting. Would have been nice if they had done something special since this is the first release from the new series, but oh well.

Out of a possible 5 stars, I give it:

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Reader Opinions:

“I absolutly love the 1 1/2 minute version of "Where my heart will take me" I will do anything to get on CD. The other songs are allright as well but that ones the best its much better than the original "The theme tune to the movie Patch Adams" -- Kiri