GNP Crescendo’s final remastered score from one of the TNG-era Star Trek movies, Star Trek: Insurrection is a boisterous score to a movie that was trying so hard not to be a traditional action movie. Despite that (or perhaps because of it), Jerry Goldsmith was now the default option when it came to Star Trek movie music, having scored the previous feature film (1996’s Star Trek: Final Conflict to much acclaim. Goldsmith, this time operating on his own (First Contact had included significant input from his son, Joel Goldsmith), turned out a score with pastoral elements not unlike the main theme of First Contact, as well as the brand of pulsating action music which had been one of his hallmarks throughout his career.
The expanded release covers all the ground of Crescendo’s roughly-45-minute release from 1998, and fills in the blanks by completing the score and offering a few alternates and early takes on cues that were revised at the studio’s request. The difference between early drafts and final versions isn’t huge, as it turns out, but they offer some insight into the process of creating the movie’s music. Among the unreleased material, there’s quite a bit of repetition of the movie’s main action motif as well as its more serene themes for the peaceful Ba’ku, but at this point in the saga, the previously unreleased material isn’t as revelatory as it was with, say, Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Star Trek II. Goldsmith completists and Trek completists will be happy to have the unreleased segments of the score, but other than the upgrade in sound quality, there’s not much here to compel owners of the original 1998 release to upgrade.
One thing I noticed in listening to the full score: from an audio engineering standpoint, the entire score seems to be drenched with what can be most charitably described as an obnoxious amount of reverb. The orchestra is simply too echo-ey – it’s almost as if the microphones placed over specific instrument groups 
didn’t record a signal, leaving the recording engineers with nothing but the wide-area room mic. At about 20 minutes in, I was growing very tired of that element of this soundtrack. I don’t recall if Insurrection always sounded this way, or if the shorter length of the 1998 release didn’t give the effect time to sink in. Insurrection is music that any action film would be happy to have, but by the high standards set by his other work in the franchise, it’s probably the dimmest corner of Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek constellation.
- Ba’ku Village (6:56)
- Out of Orbit / Take Us In (1:45)
- Come Out (2:36)
- In Custody (1:16)
- Warp Capability / The Planet / Children’s Story (2:27)
- The Holodeck (4:36)
- How Old Are You / New Sight (6:11)
- Lost Ship / Prepare the Ship (2:40)
- As Long As We Can (1:35)
- Not Functioning / Send Your Ships (2:48)
- Growing Up / Wild Flowers / Photon Torpedo (2:43)
- The Drones Attack (4:12)
- The Riker Maneuver (3:10)
- Stay With Me (1:44)
- The Same Race (2:52)
- The Collector (1:10)
- No Threat (4:11)
- Tractor Beam (0:40)
- The Healing Process (revised) (5:04)
- The Healing Process (original version) (7:15)
- End Credits (5:29)
- Ba’ku Village (alternate ending) (3:52)
- The Holodeck (alternate ending) (1:33)
- Growing Up (alternate) (1:18)
- Tractor Beam (alternate) (0:41)
Released by: GNP Crescendo Records
Release date: August 6, 2013
Total running time: 1:18:44
