Jerry Goldsmith’s Full Orchestral Score For ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ Published As Book For First Time

Fans of composer Jerry Goldsmith and Star Trek music now have a new way to celebrate his Oscar-nominated score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Omni Music Publishes Star Trek: The Motion Picture Score Book

Now that dozens of Star Trek soundtrack albums have been released by the specialty CD labels as expanded collector’s editions, Omni Music is opening a new frontier by publishing Jerry Goldsmith’s legendary score to Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a bound book. This is the first full, complete orchestral score released for any Star Trek music from film or television.

This unique book features the written, full orchestrations to Goldsmith’s magnificent score for the first Star Trek feature film. The orchestrations are intended for large symphony orchestra (enhanced by specialty instruments) so this isn’t something you could easily use to play the music at home on your keyboard; in fact, the book is licensed for study only, and not performance. The full printed score corresponds to the 3-CD set of The Motion Picture soundtrack album released by La-La Land Records in 2012.

Sample page from Star Trek: The Motion Picture score book (Omni Publishing)

Omni Music Publishing is a specialty book company dedicated to publishing film scores in full, unabridged editions for fans, scholars, and music aficionados. While publishing classical music is pretty straightforward, doing the same for film scores is much more complicated due to dealing with the rights. There is also the archaeology work of locating the handwritten (and often, quite messy) original scores in studio vaults and engraving them (via computer) so that they are clear and legible. Omni has sorted through the red tape and undertaken the painstaking work to bring these treasures officially to the public.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Star Trek: The Motion Picture became the signature piece of Star Trek film music, with a main theme repurposed for Star Trek: The Next Generation (at Gene Roddenberry’s request) and also used by Goldsmith himself in his sequel scores for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis. It features a beautiful love theme (“Ilia’s Theme”) and magnificent, ominous passages for the alien V’Ger threat, enhanced by pipe organ and a unique instrument called the blaster beam. The score overflows with melody and orchestral invention.

Sample page from Star Trek: The Motion Picture score book (Omni Publishing)

Because of the film’s troubled postproduction, Goldsmith wrote and recorded a number of alternate cues which were never heard until being presented on La-La Land’s 3CD set. All of them are included in a supplemental section of this book—along with four additional selections which Goldsmith wrote and had orchestrated, but which were never recorded in 1979, for one reason or another.

And the score all comes together in a beautiful 473-page, 9” x 12” bound softcover book. If you can’t read music, this will admittedly be like browsing a book published in a foreign language—but could still a beautiful collectible, with new cover art by Scott Saslow. The Star Trek: The Motion Picture score book can be purchased directly from Omni for $85.00.

Visit Omni Music Publishing’s website to order and see other books in their catalog, such as The Matrix (Don Davis), Batman (Danny Elfman), Glory (James Horner) and Ghostbusters (Elmer Bernstein).

And if you are a musician looking for Star Trek sheet music to play at home with piano or other instruments, you can find a selection at musicnotes.com.

Bonus: TMP scene with unused “Body Meld” music

As a special treat for TrekMovie readers, composer Joe Kraemer (Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, Jack Reacher) has created a synthesized “mockup” of one of the unrecorded cues, Goldsmith’s original intended version of the climactic “Body Meld” (available in the new printed full score). Judge for yourself if Robert Wise was right to reject it for being “too romantic.”


Lukas Kendall is the founder of Film Score Monthly and has been involved as a producer or consultant on numerous soundtrack album releases of Star Trek music. He is credited as a proofreader in Omni’s book edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

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ooooohhhhh I really like this but, I the original is better suited.

That font! 🥰

Over a long period of time I’ve learnt to appreciate TMP a lot more. It still not one of my absolute favourites but the score most certainly is. I will go out on a limb here and say it’s still the finest Star Trek score of all time. It’s pretty magical. Jerry Goldsmith you still very much missed.

The blaster beam has such a distinctive sound- really sets TMP score apart from the other films.

I bought one, and purchased the big CD release back when it was new. Great companion/set.

The score is all at concert pitch, so if you want to plunk out the parts at your piano, you don’t have to transpose. This also makes it easier to see doublings, etc. As usual, viola parts are in alto clef.

I’ve not seen a film score before, so maybe rendering everything at concert pitch is standard in that industry? (Not so with other music… I’m mostly a choral conductor and composer but have conducted instrumental ensembles a bit, too.)

Thanks for the info. Neat to be on this topic with Trek fans… my worlds of interest converge!

Thanks Lukas.

Well this is a super painful story. This is like showing us the ingredients of a cake and we have no access to getting the ingredients or putting it together.

I’m assuming most fans won’t even be able to read the recipes (to stay with your analogy), let alone recreate them. This kind of book probably has a very small target audience.

This reminds me that Star Trek is famous for introducing god-like or very very powerful beings, and then having absolutely zero follow-up. The Organians, Metrons… and THIS–a follow-up somewhere along the way would have been welcome. In fact, the only follow-through we’ve ever had with a god-like being has been Q. And even then, he’s still quite a mystery.

Beautiful music.
Amazing how those themes imprint on your memory.