We’re back! It’s time for another of our patented film score rankings. If you missed them, please check out our previous rankings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, films of 1984, and DreamWorks Animation.

And before we dive into another monster undertaking (which is coming up next), we wanted to tackle a relatively accessible list: Star Trek feature films.

To date, there have been 13 feature films in the Trek franchise starring the original crew, The Next Generation crew, and the rebooted Kelvin-timeline crew. The films themselves vary in quality, but we’re here today to examine the scores that support those films. They also vary in quality but in sometimes divergent ways from the films.

Unless you’re a Trekkie/Trekker, you might be surprised to learn that the film scores aren’t just rehashes of the same theme with variations. They’re not carbon copies of one another. Far from it, actually. Each score (with a couple exceptions) is wholly unique, and the various composers intentionally produced music that avoided sounding like what had come before.

Even the classic Star Trek fanfare, from the original series and composed by Alexander Courage, only makes a few hinted-at appearances.

This resulted in the series feeling disjointed at times. Whatever your feelings are re: JJ Abrams’s trilogy, they’re all scored by a single composer – Michael Giacchino – which ties them together and helps package the films as a cohesive story. (A single director also helped.)

The Original Series films (1-6) and The Next Generation films (7-10) each have very distinct feels (with one exception), and that’s partly because the music is so wildly different.

Logistics: Some of these scores are available on Amazon Music or Spotify, but most of the best ones aren’t. I own all of these on good ol’ fashioned physical media, so I used my own collection in the research. Also, almost all of these scores also had an extended collector’s or limited edition release with more music. But they’re even harder to track down. We therefore used the original releases here, which theoretically have the best pieces included and give the best overview of what the music is like.

If you’re interested in more coverage of Trek music, check out my “oral history” of televised Trek music with the franchise’s four primary composers. That piece grew out of my interviews with Dennis McCarthy, Jay Chattaway, Ron Jones, and Jeff Russo. You might also want to check out my conversations with Nicholas Meyer and Jonathan Frakes.

OK, self-promotion over. On to the music!

#13: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

• composed by Leonard Rosenman (1986)
• listen to: “Hospital Chase,” “Home Again – End Credits”

Remember, this isn’t a ranking of the films themselves. I know a lot of people love The Voyage Home, and I admit I do have a soft spot for it even though it’s not my favorite Trek. However, the music is totally unlike any other Trek score. When James Horner didn’t return for the fourth film, director Leonard Nimoy tapped his friend Leonard Rosenman for the music. Oof. Like the movie, it’s VERY embedded in the 80s, especially “Market Street,” which feels like it’d be at home on a Miami Vice soundtrack. And come on, “Ballad of the Whale” is straight-up JC Penney elevator muzak from 1986. It just doesn’t hold up, is what I’m saying.

#12: Star Trek: Nemesis

• composed by Jerry Goldsmith (2002)
• listen to: “Final Flight”

Nemesis was legendary film composer Jerry Goldsmith’s penultimate score before his death in 2004. (His final film was, sadly, Looney Tunes: Back in Action.) It was also his fifth Star Trek feature film score. Unfortunately, by this time, it feels like he was just phoning it in (as was the franchise). This is not the Goldsmith of yore, and his score for Nemesis is fairly generic and forgettable.

#11: Star Trek: Insurrection

• composed by Jerry Goldsmith (1998)
• listen to: “Ba’Ku Village,” “End Credits”

Like Nemesis, Goldsmith’s score for Insurrection is bland and forgettable. Aside from a few familiar cues, you’d be hard pressed to even identify this as Star Trek. It sounds like a fairly standard action movie score.

#10: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

• composed by Jerry Goldsmith (1989)
• listen to: “The Mountain”

I swear, we have nothing against Jerry Goldsmith. In fact, his score is probably the best part of this movie, and director William Shatner was wise to bring him back to the franchise after a decade away (even if it couldn’t save this trainwreck of a film). His bombastic theme from The Motion Picture returns, which in 1989 was incredibly familiar to Trek fans as the theme to The Next Generation. But aside from that theme and a few cues, the overall score isn’t very memorable. (Though I swear he quotes John Williams’s “Imperial March” in “An Angry God.”)

#9: Star Trek Beyond

• composed by Michael Giacchino (2016)
• listen to: “Night on the Yorktown,” “Franklin, My Dear”

The best parts of this score are recycled themes from Giacchino’s scores for the previous two films, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Giacchino’s revamped theme and score for the rebooted Kelvin-timeline Trek is still better than about half of these scores.

#8: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

• composed by Cliff Eidelman (1991)
• listen to: “Overture,” “Sign Off”

If you look at the first six films that feature the original crew, each film (except for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, which form a unit) takes the music in a striking new direction. Eidelman’s theme and score for The Undiscovered Country continues that trend, takes Trek in a darker direction, and feels like a mashup of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Holst’s The Planets.

#7: Star Trek Into Darkness

• composed by Michael Giacchino (2013)
• listen to: “London Calling,” “Warp Core Values,” “Kirk Enterprises”

Like James Horner before him, Giacchino attempts – and succeeds – at making his back-to-back scores feel like two pieces of a whole. The music is a direct continuation from Star Trek (2009), and in true Giacchino fashion, the track titles are rife with groan-worthy puns.

#6: Star Trek: First Contact

• composed by Jerry Goldsmith (1996)
• listen to: “Locutus,” “First Contact,” “End Credits”

When William Shatner assumed directorial duties on The Final Frontier, he turned to Jerry Goldsmith for the music. Likewise, when Jonathan Frakes was tapped for First Contact, he made the same decision. Except Frakes’s film is vastly better, as is Goldsmith’s music. The soundtrack even features Steppenwolf and Roy Orbison! (But of course, we didn’t consider them when ranking the score.)

#5: Star Trek

• composed by Michael Giacchino (2009)
• listen to: “Labor of Love,” “Enterprising Young Men,” “That New Cat Smell”

In 2009, Michael Giacchino was hip deep in scoring every episode across six seasons of LOST, which finally wrapped in 2010. His score for the rebooted Star Trek has strong echoes of his music for that show, and I tend to think of it as “LOST in space.” (See what I did there?) It carries the signature Giacchino sound, and it also brings the franchise back in line with some of its best music: James Horner’s lush orchestrations and intimate themes.

#4: Star Trek Generations

• composed by Dennis McCarthy (1994)
• listen to: “Star Trek Generations Overture,” “The Nexus – A Christmas Hug,” “To Live Forever”

Dennis McCarthy might just be the only person to be involved in all 25 seasons of Trek television from The Next Generation through Enterprise. He scored 88 episodes of TNG, 77 episodes of Deep Space Nine, 65 episodes of Voyager, and 30 episodes of Enterprise. He also wrote the theme for Deep Space Nine (for which he won an Emmy). No one else wrote as much music for Star Trek as McCarthy. He’s also the only Trek composer to have made the jump from TV to the big screen. He just goes for it in Generations, and he knocks it out of the park. “I was given permission, in essence, to go apeshit, which I did.”

#3: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

• composed by James Horner (1984)
• listen to: “Prologue and Main Title,” “Returning to Vulcan”

If you’ve seen our ranking of the film scores of 1984, you know that The Search for Spock came in at #6. So it’s no surprise it also ranks high on this list. Horner’s music here, like the film itself, is a direct continuation of The Wrath of Khan. The two films and the two scores feel like a pair. Sure, it might not bring a ton of new ideas or a bold new direction to the franchise, but it doesn’t need to. When you’ve got music this good, why mess with it?

#2: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

• composed by James Horner (1982)
• listen to: “Enterprise Clears Moorings,” “Battle in the Mutara Nebula,” “Genesis Countdown,” “Epilogue – End Titles”

This was tough. The top 2 scores each have so much in their favor that it was hard to rank one higher than the other. When Jerry Goldsmith proved to be too expensive for the modest budget this sequel had, Nicholas Meyer cast a wide net for a composer who could deliver a score that was nautical in tone and would evoke seafaring and swashbuckling. Horner was only 28 years old when he got the gig, and it was his first major film score. His music departs from the familiar and doesn’t really use any themes that would’ve been familiar to Trek fans in 1982. The score begins and ends with notes of Alexander Courage’s fanfare from the original series, but it doesn’t appear at all in the movie itself. In addition, he was explicitly told not to use any of Goldsmith’s score for The Motion Picture. Indeed, this set a precedent that lasted for a majority of the next four decades.

#1: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

• composed by Jerry Goldsmith (1979)
• listen to: “Main Title – Klingon Battle,” “Leaving Drydock,” “The Enterprise,” “Ilia’s Theme”

Aside from Alexander Courage’s fanfare from the original series, the music from The Motion Picture is perhaps most synonymous with Star Trek. Goldsmith’s main theme would go on to be the main theme of seven seasons of The Next Generation, to which most people associate it even today. Although Goldsmith scored five Star Trek films, and his cues (notably the main theme and his Klingon theme) appear in multiple sequels, they’d never shine like they do here. In so many ways, this score IS Star Trek. It laid the groundwork and set the bar for everything to come. It’s therefore hard not to rank it at the top. If only the movie were as compelling as its music.