Battlestar Galactica: Season One
by Jonathan Shearon
June 08, 2005
The Sci-Fi Channel series Battlestar Galactica, starting with a phenomenal mini-series and continuing on with a full season this year, has quietly become one of the best dramas on television. Light years ahead of the original series in terms of maturity and depth, and just plain better than contemporary sci-fi snooze-fests like the petrified Star Trek: Enterprise, this new version of Galactica has transcended its roots to become must-see-TV. While many die-hard fans of the original series were disappointed with the abandonment of Stu Philips' horn fanfares and space operatics, the minimalist avant-garde music Richard Gibbs (mini-series composer) and Bear McCreary have created is really more appropriate for the realism and quasi-documentary approach of the show.
That last statement shouldn't imply that this music isn't interesting listening - far from it. While the various Star Trek series of the last 20 years often demanded what Dennis McCarthy famously called "mumble music" - i.e. "aural wallpaper" - Bear McCreary's music takes a much more active, out front role in Galactica. Throughout the show's run McCreary has maintained a consistent otherworldliness to the music, much of which uses a mix of different cultural ideas. Such disparate instruments and styles as the bagpipe ("Battle on the Asteroid"), Italian operetta ("Battlestar Operatica"), Gaelic hymns ("Wander My Friends") and the ubiquitous Middle-Eastern wailing female vocalist all find their way onto the soundtrack. Somehow, McCreary manages to hold all these ideas together, and even more impressively, make them sound at home in a space drama.
Following Richard Gibbs example in the mini-series, McCreary relies heavily on percussion for the action scenes. This approach works well in the show, but doesn't always make for interesting listening on disc. This is only a minor qualm however - the show isn't loaded with a lot of pointless action scenes anyway - so this complaint is far outweighed by the wealth of interesting music elsewhere on the disc. "Passacaglia" and "The Shape of Things to Come" are sublime. Performed primarily by string orchestra and sounding a little like something Michael Nyman might write, these two tracks are some of the best music I've ever heard composed for recent television. "Prologue", with its shifting meter and mystical synth pads, and the US main title, with its vague Middle East flavor and militaristic snare drum, are good touchstones for what you're likely to hear on an average episode of Galactica. The music is melodic and memorable, but not necessarily driven by broad hummable themes.
What I love about this show, and McCreary's music, is that they so deftly avoid clichés in a genre so dogged by them. I can't remember the last time I've been interested in the music coming out of my television speakers, but with composers like McCreary and Michael Giacchino re-introducing thoughtful instrumental music into episodic television, I suddenly find I'm not thinking of TV music as the poorer relative of its cinematic cousins. And anyway, how can you dislike a young composer who dedicates a composition with a title like "The Shape of Things to Come" to the loving memory of Elmer Bernstein?
