Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you were a fan of the show and seek a competent and surprisingly relaxing survey of music from its first three seasons. Avoid it... if you expect these new age-styled episodic scores to sound anything remotely like the standard, dramatic science fiction television music of the era. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 58:01
All artwork and sound clips from Earth: Final Conflict are Copyright © 2000, Sonic Images 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 2/20/00, updated 6/30/08. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2000-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
