Our musical friends at La-La Land Records today have announced a new Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack collection, in anticipation of the forthcoming 4K remastering of the film’s Director’s Edition later this year!

The new 2-CD Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Remastered and Expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was unveiled today with a 44-track, 2.5-hour running time, fully restored, remixed and mastered from the first generation multi-track masters.

Original album co-producer and composer Jerry Goldsmith’s long time scoring engineer Bruce Botnick oversaw this new edition, along with Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition post-production supervisor / associate producer Mike Matessino, making this new release the official tie-in soundtrack to The Director’s Edition.

Many of us have purchased the previous Motion Picture soundtracks in the past, including La-La Land’s lavish 3-CD collection from 2012 (now out of print) — so what makes this new 2-CD edition any different from what might already be in your collection?

Fans have already created an impressively-detailed comparison of the many TMP score collections here, but Matessino addressed the question — and more — by way of the Film Score Monthly forums over the last week.

“[We] actually tried to stop the [1999 “20th Anniversary” Sony soundtrack] release because we already knew “The Director’s Edition” was happening, but the actions of certain parties caused Paramount to cave — not only to let the release come out, but also led to us being prevented from including an isolated score track as well the alternate score synced to picture on the DVD that finally came out in 2001.

[La-La Land’s 2012 3-CD set] was from the original masters, as you know, and was done as an ultimate collection of music for this title. Subsequently there was a vinyl release of the main score. Both projects were a great success. But something you may not have noticed is that ALL references to Sony Music were GONE from the vinyl release.

Why?? Because it turned out that the original 1979 Columbia Records soundtrack agreement was only for a 15-year term….which means the rights expired in 1994. Therefore… Sony Music had NO RIGHTS TO PUT OUT THE 1999 VERSION, which, by the way, used the incorrect performance for every single track that was added to it, with one small exception.

Paramount Music now controls the soundtrack rights to ‘Star Trek — The Motion Picture’ and they have since 1994. (They simply didn’t know it and they’ve had to work with Sony Music to settle things up from the past 22 years.)

This is now THEIR “Expanded and Remastered Edition,” and as far as I’m concerned it is the album that we had wanted to do in 2000, but of course with far superior audio quality that benefited from the involvement of Bruce Botnick and the first generation multi-track transfers, which were run in anticipation of the updated “Director’s Edition” that’s currently in the works.

The 3-CD set is a glorious collectors item to be treasured, but this 2-CD version will now be THE soundtrack album, from Paramount, for ‘Star Trek — The Motion Picture.'”

He also added some additional details about the difference between the sound quality on the 2012 and this new 2022 edition, along with some other information throughout that same discussion thread.

“The multi-track transfers in 2011 for 2012 LLL release were done in expectation of [a remastered] Director’s Edition happening shortly after. We didn’t think it would be a 10 year wait, but the material sat around ready to go and Atmos fortuitously came on the scene in the interim.

For the soundtrack, the mixes are the same as last time, but it was an opportunity to fix anything remaining that was at all bothersome to my ear. Upgrades are esoteric in character and likely wouldn’t be noticeable on an average listen.”

“All of [the] alternate incorrect takes that we included [in the 2012 release] for no reason other than because they were on the 1999 release…. wrong takes expanded by a company that didn’t have the rights to the album at the time and who basically told off the director of the movie.

But at least it padded out a third CD and allowed us to include the beam and synth material, false starts with chit-chat and the two cover recordings. We made lemonade and the set certainly remains collectable for those tracks.”

“The original album track, “Ilia’s Theme,” which features Ian Fraser on piano, is not the same as the Overture. The 1999 release moved it to the start of the CD because they didn’t know the difference. It’s 100% a track recorded for album.

The long version of the “Overture” features a French horn rather than piano. The second half of it is identical to the short version, which they used in 1979 to keep the reel running time down, yes. The 2012 LLL set had both but started with the short version; now we start with the long one.

As for “Ilia’s Theme” — it has ONLY been heard sourced from the live stereo mix off the 1630 digital master. Until now.”

“It was a collaboration [between Botnick and myself]. I did all the editing and cleanup, Bruce did the mix and mastering.

We then had to revisit it a few times, first for the modified “Inner Workings” track, then for the vinyl, with high resolution outputs and appropriate adjustments made for that, then for the new 2-CD version this year so that I could recreate the original album tracks (“The Enterprise” is the only track that is exactly the same in the film), and then again for the new film mix, for which I conformed the multi-track to the picture and then Bruce mixed. We’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that transferred data from 2011.”

“For the main score and the early alternates, the audio is the same as the 2012 edition, except for going back to 192k 24bit outputs and applying some very minor esoteric fixes here and there. I had Bruce Botnick mix out the other takes that were needed to recreate the album performances and then that was put together. For the 2012 release the OST came from the 1979 44k 16bit digital stereo 1630 tape.

This was a completely separate operation from my conforming the multi-track music to the Director’s Edition, which Bruce then remixed.”

Finally, Matessino made his personal case for why this new edition of the Motion Picture score is important to him:

“Sometimes showing love for a score and support for the labels are factors in purchasing a new version.

In this case, yes, from a sonic standpoint there may not be a reason to upgrade — although there are some fixes, a few title and track break changes, and the original album program recreated from the newer mixes — but for the most part the intent is to now have the definitive soundtrack that will exist physically so that it can reach new listeners as they hopefully revisit the movie or discover it for the first time.

Add to that the administrative aspect that it’s now fully a Paramount Music title, so there were multiple great reasons to have this come out. This is the one that will be around from now on. I personally feel that if you love this score and there’s no financial hardship in buying it, it’s something you will enjoy having.”

The new Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Remastered and Expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack collection is available for purchase now at La-La Land Records for $29.98; you can find more details about this new collection and a full track listing at their site as well.