Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict: (Micky
Erbe/Maribeth Solomon) The last of Gene Roddenberry's original science
fiction concepts was adapted to the small screen in 1997, when
Earth:
Final Conflict proposed how humans would react to a permanent and
supposedly friendly visit by an alien civilization. While initially
seeming benevolent, the highly advanced people of the planet Taleon
arouse suspicions with some on Earth, and the bulk of the series
portrays how humanity (and a few truly in the know) deals with the
arrival. The series ran for 110 episodes from 1997 to 2002, spiraling
downward in popularity by its fifth season and eventually being
cancelled without any satisfying conclusion to its storyline. During
that run,
Earth: Final Conflict never received much praise
outside of its loyal fanbase, though much of the awards-related
attention earned by the series came because of its music by the
Toronto-based husband and wife composing team of Micky Erbe and Maribeth
Solomon. While they had written music together for numerous lesser film
and television projects through the years,
Earth: Final Conflict
was their consistent responsibility for five years and theirs alone.
Their work garnered them an Emmy nomination in 1998 for their title
theme, and they won a deserved Gemini award the same year for the score
for the episode "The Secret of Strandhill." Their approach to each
episode of
Earth: Final Conflict often differed due to the wide
variety of needs of each storyline. Because the location of show
traveled all over the world (and into space), different or unique ethnic
material was required much of the time. The stylistic base of the music
stayed the same, however. Erbe and Solomon used their synthesizers to
produce the majority of sound heard in each cue of every episode, but
they would add solo accents performed organically to episodes that
needed additional stylistic character. The overall effect of their
efforts is a general soundtrack that often sounded very little like
other contemporary science fiction scores, on television or
otherwise.
The title theme for
Earth: Final Conflict made
use of several of the best accents that Erbe and Solomon would provide
the show. First, the Chinese erhu is an essential element in producing
the inter-cultural flavor. The pleasant voice of Leah Erbe offers vocals
in the theme and elsewhere throughout the run of the show. A traditional
flute is also employed in several instances. At times, the solo voice
over a deep, synthetic vocal mass, when combined with string effects,
reminds of a Loreena McKennitt song. Many of the cues rely solely,
however, on the meandering tones of the keyboards and sampled
percussion. Most of these performances are harmonic and generally
soothing, though their frequent editing points indicate that it was the
intent of the album's producers to artificially merge all of these
moments together for the purposes of an enjoyable album. Two episodic
cues stand well above the remainder; "The Secret of Strandhill" uses
Irish instrumentation (pipes, fiddles, and pennywhistles) to offer a
stunningly attractive five minutes, while "Defector" uses the blend of
real and synthetic voices and a variety of wooshing and tingling sound
effects for a relaxing four minutes of new age style. Hints of the title
theme are incorporated at times, though without it clearly evident more
often in the episodic scores, the overall package suffers from something
of an identity crisis. In fact, the erhu is sadly underemployed in the
score, and its carrying of the title theme in more of the episodic
material could have greatly improved continuity. Also at issue is the
aforementioned technique of significantly editing together pieces of
each episodic score together into suites. At times, the cuts and fades
are quite jarring. The most curious technical failure of the album is
the presentation of the opening and closing credits, which are mixed at
a far lower volume and feature an obscured, opaque quality. The
difference, for instance, between the first two tracks on the album is
quite irritating. Overall, however, this Sonic Images album is a
well-meaning survey of the music from the first three seasons of the
show, a relaxing, uninterrupted tribute to the concept's plethora of
locations.
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