Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you appreciated the stylistic change that you saw in the new series and want to hear the matching, more experimental score that accompanies it. Avoid it... if you are a Stu Phillips or original series fan and don't want any part of this stark, documentary style of music. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Battlestar Galactica: (Richard Gibbs) When the original Battlestar Galactica was shown for one doomed season in 1978-1979, it was a clear reaction to biblical space opera that had so overwhelmingly impressed audiences in Star Wars the year before. The show was cancelled partly because of its own cheesiness, partly because of high production costs per episode, and partly for half a dozen other various reasons, and die-hard fans of that series have hoped for years of a reintroduction of Battlestar Galactica in the same way that Star Trek was similarly resurrected on television. Even original production and cast members lobbied for years to give the show a second chance. Finally, in 2003, the Sci-Fi Channel, with a few impressive films under its belt (including resounding successes for their Dune adaptations) took on the challenge of bringing Battlestar Galactica back to life in a three-hour miniseries and subsequent series. This new series comes at the 25th anniversary of the original show and its celebratory, complete release on DVD. When you're dealing with something as cultish as this, however, it's hard to satisfy everybody, and through the tinkering of the show's basic plot, characters, and style by director Michael Rymer and writer Ronald Moore, the show has managed to become a major annoyance for those die-hard Battlestar Galactica fans. The primary characters have been completely switched around in gender, ethnicity, and personality, with the male Starbuck character now, for instance, a rebellious female character. The direction of the show has completely lost the swashbuckling space opera attitude and opted for more of a realistic, documentary approach. Included in this change is the use of hand-held cameras that swoosh around and around characters from all sides and always wiggling around in the fashion that E.R. made so famous in the 1990's. The score would be a 180-degree turn from Stu Phillips' original brassy fanfares, with former Oingo Boingo member Richard Gibbs continuing a collaboration with the director that includes Queen of the Damned. As with many such productions, Gibbs and his assistants had an insanely short period of time in which to complete the score for over two hours of spotted material in the film. Naturally, Gibbs does express his disappointment in not being able to write a huge, swashbuckling score. His attempts to adapt Phillips' original theme were unfruitful and eventually abandoned. He did, however, capture the essence of the documentary in many of the ways that the director had requested. The score is foreign and distant in sound and style, paying no attention to brass instruments whatsoever, and in the same sort of meandering fashion, Gibb's score will bring back memories of Grame Revell's Dune score for the Sci-Fi channel's first entry in that series. Like the Revell, score, however, Gibbs' Battlestar Galactica is so vastly different from the original show that whether you like it or not will depend solely on how attached you are to the premise of the original show (and perhaps the genre of fantasy overall). The Sci-fi Channel did a 180 degree turn with Children of Dune and rectified that series' musical approach with a wildly popular, hugely orchestral score, and the concept of the Middle-Eastern female vocal in a fantasy film (a highlight of that film) certainly got attached to Battlestar Galactica as well. It is the prominence of these vocals that makes Gibbs' score schizophrenic and difficult to understand. On one hand, the noble themes are gone and the action sequences are scored with tapping and beating percussion. Much of the larger, active shots are scored in the self-described "minimalist" style (in the words of the composer and director), and yet whenever the elements of humanity come into play, Gibbs falls right back into that conventional style of flowing strings, other-worldly electronics, and female vocals (complete with a duduk sound) that are absolute stereotypes of modern science fiction music. Thus, the two kinds of music you hear in this score (and really, you get either the soft and lyrical vocals and strings or the harsh, lonely percussion --there's little middle ground) have nothing in common. One plays to the director's documentary style while the other tries to appease the expectations of audiences who may watch this show and say "what the heck?"... In the end, the hour-long album includes a few very enjoyable cues of these vocals and strings ("To Kiss or Not to Kiss," "The Lottery Ticket"), but the extended battle sequences are painful to tolerate because of their stark construction. No matter where you fall on the argument of whether this new Battlestar Galactica is a travesty or not, the score on album is stuck halfway between the originality of the new, and stereotypes that mirror the old, and it can make for a very disjointed listen. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 68:24
All artwork and sound clips from Battlestar Galactica are Copyright © 2004, La-La Land Records. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 4/2/04, updated 4/3/04. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2004-2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
