Stargate SG-1: Music From Selected Episodes
If there’s a property I didn’t expect to resurface in the soundtrack world in the summer of 2017, it’s the Stargate TV franchise. In hindsight, though, I wasn’t paying attention to the clues – Intrada has long championed the musical output of Richard Band, brother of Full Moon Pictures producer Charles Band, and composer-in-residence on Full Moon’s extensive slate of low-to-mid-budget horror movies. And, patterned somewhat after the arrangement that governed music during the entirety of spinoff-era Star Trek, Band alternated on episodes of Stargate SG-1 with Joel Goldsmith for the show’s first two years on the Showtime pay cable channel, with other composers occasionally filling in (including, ironically, Star Trek’s Dennis McCarthy). This 2-CD set from Intrada gather’s Band’s carefully selected highlights from his time with the Stargate franchise.
The episodes for which Band felt he’d done his best work were Cold Lazarus, In The Line Of Duty, In The Serpent’s Lair, and Singularity – oddly enough, all early favorites of mine. Listening to the scores Band composed for these episodes, which feature small orchestral ensembles attempting to fill out and deepen the sound of synthesizers and samples, it’s easy to tell the real musicians from the electronic sounds. With the show opening every week with an adapted version of David Arnold’s theme from the original Stargate movie (for which Arnold had to be paid for every usage), the rest of the music budget – especially before Stargate SG-1 found its legs and popularity with its audience – was tightly constrained. But even when roughly half of what you hear is synthesized, it’s still a fun listen. Military drums, low, urgent brass ostinatos, and actual recurring themes (including quotes of Arnold’s theme) – the music of SG-1 was everything that the music of the show’s Star Trek contemporaries usually wasn’t: propulsive and threatening and dangerous. Stuff was happening in the music rather than it being relegated to background wallpaper. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the nearly-nine-minute solid cue covering the entire final act of In The Serpent’s Lair: literally wall-to-wall music for the show’s climax.
Cold Lazarus, which uncovers a painful incident from Jack O’Neill’s past, is the outlier here, with gentle piano accompanying the unfolding revelation that Jack had lost a child. In The Line Of Duty and Singularity are far more representative of the musical sound of Stargate SG-1 as a whole, with both quiet passages, mysterious music for the team’s discoveries of ancient (or is that Ancient?) mysteries, and gung-ho action music where needed.
I remember, when first seeing that Intrada was releasing a new round of Stargate TV scores, being a bit let down that Joel Goldsmith’s work wasn’t represented. Now I realize this wasn’t a downside: Richard Band was as much a part of SG-1’s sound in those heady formative years of the show – where anything was possible and the Stargate franchise had yet to fall into the trap that befalls many a long-running series, namely slipping its neck into the noose of ever-thickening continuity – as Joel Goldsmith’s sound was. Much like the Star Trek: The Next Generation box sets that finally gave Dennis McCarthy’s work exposure in the wake of a massive all-Ron-Jones soundtrack box set, this SG-1 soundtrack set redresses an imbalance and is worth a listen.
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Disc One
Cold Lazarus- Teaser (3:42)
- Is It Really Jack? (3:53)
- Jack At Ex-Wife’s House (3:25)
- Jack Visits Charlie’s Room (3:24)
- The Crystals (2:14)
- The Crystal Monitor (2:18)
- Jack And Wife On Park Bench (3:08)
- They Re-Activate The Crystal Monitor (2:03)
- Pushing Back Through Gate To Hospital (3:53)
- Jack Meets Alien Self And Finale (9:10)
In The Line Of Duty
- Teaser (2:50)
- Medical Time (3:12)
- O’Neill Comforts Cassie (3:05)
- O’Neill To Burn Victim (0:38)
- Teal’c Gives O’Neill Advice (2:28)
- Daniel Talks To Girl Survivor (2:07)
- Bad Guy Bandages Doc (2:20)
- Daniel Talks To Alien Carter (2:26)
- Finale – Daniel And Then Others Visit (10:11)
Disc Two
In The Serpent’s Lair- Finale (8:50)
Singularity
- Teaser (3:34)
- From Stargate To New World (2:36)
- Sam With Girl And Back Through Gate (2:49)
- Sam And Little Girl Get Closer (2:58)
- Heart Attack And Operation (3:36)
- Jack And Teal’c Escaping Battle (4:22)
- To The Underground Site (2:35)
- Time Is Up And Finale (8:26)
Released by: Intrada
Release date: June 27, 2017
Disc one total running time: 67:01
Disc two total running time: 40:01
Released hot on the heels of the direct-to-DVD movie, Joel Goldsmith’s epic score from Stargate: Continuum is, not unlike the movie it accompanies, even bigger and better than Ark Of Truth. Continuum is a story painted on a broader canvas, and the music follows suit – in places, it’s positively epic stuff, in the tradition of John Williams and, yes, a certain other film composer named Goldsmith.
With the recent announcement that the faltering spinoff series Stargate Atlantis is moving out of weekly production and into movies like the SG-1 direct-to-DVD adventures, I’m actually somewhat pleased…because maybe Joel Goldsmith will get to make more music like this, and more CDs to go along with it. As a fan of his music for this particular franchise, that suits me just fine.
The Stargate television franchise has used a full orchestra on precisely two occasion: the 1997 pilot episode of SG-1. and the 2004 pilot movie of Stargate Atlantis. Everything that has come since has been the product of synthesizers, and in the early years of Stargate SG-1 there was even quite a diverse mix of composers whose work – dating back to the first season – was mixed-and-matched as needed, like the original Star Trek’s library approach to its music. So it’s quite a shock to the system to suddenly return to a real orchestra and a real choir with Ark Of Truth, the first of two post-cancellation direct-to-DVD movie projects for the cast and crew of SG-1.
As a part of the movie, I’m very happy with David Arnold’s score for Stargate. It reflects the film’s blend of historical epic, contemporary military action, and futuristic SF adventure. It’s appropriately rousing during the battle scenes and it sets the mood for quieter moments. There is a fanfare here or a moment there that makes me think of John Williams, but that say more about how much I’ve internalized that work than anything else. The main themes are certainly distinct and memorable enough to stand the test of time, as their continued use in Stargate SG-1 would indicate.