Reaction to the score is mixed at best. It suffers from benchmark comparison - Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner on top form are pretty hard to beat - as well as undoubtedly having to bow to pressure from Rick Berman not to make the music too interesting. Having said that, McCarthy's score is actually very tuneful and not without plenty of good moments. Opening with the Overture (the End Credits in the film), the main theme is introduced. Kind of a pumped up variation on the Deep Space Nine march and stirring enough, albeit a little on the simplistic side. The central section features the lovely music for The Nexus (which curiously sounds similar to Morricone's more recent, but rejected score to What Dreams May Come) which highlights McCarthy's great ability to do ethereal and new agey. The Main Title accompanies a bottle flying through space and is given an impressionistic, also slightly new age accompaniment that beautifully works up to an almighty flourish of Courage's fanfare.
The opening, with Kirk launching the Enterprise B is one of the best parts of the film and McCarthy makes good use of Courage's fanfare as the ship leaves space dock. The ensuing scenes encountering the Nexus are deftly scored with some good action music. The following few tracks are a little more supportive and while they feature a few interesting percussion effects, aren't always terribly interesting. The crash sequence is very well scored, with a great use (in the film) of having the music going completely out of control and then coming to a sudden, crushing halt as the rest of the scene plays out with just sound effects. The effect is fairly exhilerating on disc as well. The Nexus is of course a elongated version of the Nexus theme and while it's nice for a few minutes, does wear a bit thin before the end of the cue. The Final Fight is sub Goldsmith style action, but McCarthy occasionally seems to be just filling in underneath with little dramatic ebb and flow. Having said that, the sequence itself isn't particularly well directed.
Kirk's Death is wistful, but obviously tinged with sadness and while it isn't filled with the heart breaking angst of Spock's death from Star Trek II, makes for a fitting musical send off to William Shatner's career. To Live Forever makes a nice finale track as the crew pick up the pieces from the crash landed ship, but it's nice to program the Overture to play afterward to properly round out the score. A selection of original sound effects are included afterward and while it might be fun to hear that curious noise they've developed for when the doors open or to hear the bridge noises beeping away, I think that half of the disc is liable to appeal to hardened Trekkers only. McCarthy's score is technically proficient, but doesn't quite manage to excel itself like some of the previous Trek scores, but still a worthy addition to the series.
Rating ~ Total Time ~ 60:43
I think the excitement of Generations being the first big screen adventure for the Next Generation crew as well as the meeting of two captains rather overwhelmed the fact that Generations was a pretty mediocre effort, far too long and most disappointingly unimaginative way for Kirk to leave Trek forever. Even worse when one considers the excellent finale in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country which would have been a perfectly fitting end to the voyages of the original crew. As the film was pretty much a big screen episode, the crew were moved wholesale to the production and that included Next Generation musical overlord Dennis McCarthy.
