by Jeff Russo

Paramount, out now

 

The franchise’s musical chief returns to score the second season of Picard, and, as you might expect, it’s a pretty good one.

Russo is by now well used to and experienced in scoring Trek, and knowing how to blend the new with  aural Easter Eggs and echoes – in this case, mainly evoking Jerry and Joel Goldsmith’s Borg themes from First Contact, which are very effectively used throughout the score, both blatantly and more subtly.

Flourishes of the Goldsmith movies/TNG theme play a part here too.

Much of the score is of course orchestral, and carried by long tense packages reflecting Picard’s character secrets and stresses, and there’s rather less of the more wondrous cues that Russo gave us for the first season. This season has less of a mix of those engaging touches, preferring melancholy and placekeeping tones.

While the breadth of range of different moods and emotional beats conveyed is lesser here than in the first season’s score, Russo does make some memorable use of Goldsmith’s Borg themes from First Contact here, and, on a related front, there’s an element here and there of the Borg Cube electronic music from season 1, most notable in “Disappointment In Leadership”. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of a proper theme for Q or Guinan, which is odd too.

There is more action-oriented music this time around, as it was a more action-themed season, but this mostly and overly relies upon the modern versions of keyboard drum machines, which is doubtless appropriate for a series that consciously is supported on the background of a 1980s/90s TV show, but is a little dull and disappointing today.

That said, there is still plenty of good stuff here, be it the aforementioned Borg-related cues, or the jaunty heist music of “Maximum Security Function.” It’s also really good to hear Alison Pill’s rendition of Shadows Of The Night included, and a couple of variants closing credit tracks.

It’s perhaps sadly inevitable that, having produced such a stunning first season score with such breadth and range, the follow-up can’t quite live up to it. It’s not that it’s a bad score, it’s just that its immediate predecessor set such a high bar.

Verdict: Definitely worth listening to – and the soundtrack is nicely assembled in such a way that it all flows together as one big concert piece so well edited that you don’t actually notice the track changes. 8/10.

David A McIntee