The music is quite captivating, and very exciting. One odd thing you may notice about the main theme itself is that the melody would actually be quite forgettable (at least when compared to Goldsmith's more poplular one) if Horner had not had the genious to make the incredible arrangements that he did. Unlike more recent Horner scores, this soundtrack contains quite a bit of dissonance and noise. There are two other themes, Spock's simplistic logical-sounding theme and Khan's loud theme, which contains a 4-note trumpet motif that was unfortunately rehashed in Horner's later scores for "Willow" and "The Mask of Zorro."

The last four tracks all tie as being my favorite on the disc.

There are a few problems with this CD release of the soundtrack, however. The sound quality is very poor (you can hear mounds of tape hiss from the original recordings) and to top it off, the cd is missing some very important cues. I hope that this soundtrack recieves an expanded addition sometime soon like the recent re-release of Horner's own fantasy-adventure "Krull."