: (Joel Goldsmith/Richard
Band/Various) While visually entertaining, the 1994 science fiction film
by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin had its fair share of
negative attributes. The fact that several successful television
spin-offs have resulted from that source material is, frankly, somewhat
curious. The concept's core, an ancient Egyptian-inspired stargate that
can be used as a portal to visit far away worlds, allowed for a wealth
of scripting ease for the ten years of "Stargate SG-1" and the
made-for-television movies and other series that spun off from it. One
of the 1994 film's most redeeming elements, though, was its romantically
epic score by newcomer David Arnold, who seized upon the opportunity to
develop a mainstream career. It's easy to be skeptical whenever a
television series follows a popular film, and especially when that film
has a score that has risen to the status of "cult classic" in the years
since its composer has become famous. Typical television scores, due to
budgetary restrictions, usually offer a much poorer quality of
performance when compared to the original, especially in the age prior
to foolproof instrumental sampling. Such scores also, in many cases,
fail to use the popular themes from the original film and often neglect
to establish strong themes of their own. The producers of "Stargate
SG-1" mandated that its composers not only make use of Arnold's themes
for the film but do so liberally. Over the first two seasons of the
show, this meant a significant amount of adaptation work by Joel
Goldsmith and Richard Band, who frequently alternated duties. Over the
years, Kevin Kiner and Dennis McCarthy joined as regular contributors.
Several albums have been released with music from those first few years
of the show, with a particular emphasis on the Goldsmith and Band
compositions. When the first album of music from "Stargate SG-1" debuted
in 1997, it surprised a number of the film score's enthusiasts not
familiar with the television show. The integration of the original music
by Goldsmith (son of the legendary Jerry Goldsmith) and that of Arnold
was overwhelming in the pilot episode featured on that product. A second
album of episodic "Stargate SG-1" music was released four years after
the first, providing a comprehensive blanket of music from the show's
musically successful first season. Many years passed before the next
album for the series, released by Intrada Records in 2017 and featuring
music from four episodes scored by Band in the first two seasons.
The original 1997 album for "Stargate SG-1" from Milan
Entertainment was a curiosity. Some fans of the concept loved it while
others loathed it. Of the 50 minutes of music on that album, as many as
twenty minutes of Arnold's original cues for the feature film were
directly inserted into the episode's mix. What Goldsmith had done at
that early time in the show's history was take the most memorable 20
minutes or so from the film (at the very least) and place them in and
around his own orchestral material. So prolific was the incorporation of
Arnold's music into the show that Goldsmith became a sort of negotiator
and arranger of that transferred music, writing just enough material in
between edits of Arnold's work to make the whole item sound consistent.
Sometimes, the transfers from Goldsmith's music to Arnold's is plainly
evident for those of with tested ears of Arnold collectors, with some
awkwardly abrupt moments throughout the album where Goldsmith's
interludes could not smooth out the segue. Other transitions are very
adept, and in the heated action sequences, the mass of everyday fans is
certainly not going to notice many of the edits. Working in Goldsmith's
favor is the fact that Arnold's orchestral recording and his own were
comparably mixed so that the sound quality did not vastly change during
these transitions. Notable tracks from the original Arnold score for
Stargate that are mixed wholesale into Goldsmith's first
"Stargate SG-1" soundtrack include "Stargate Overture," "Giza, 1928,"
"The Stargate Opens," "Entering the Stargate," and "The Other Side." The
only exceedingly poor transition on the 1997 album comes at 2:15 into
the "Apophis" cue. Goldsmith's music in between these Arnold cues is
painfully loyal in theme and style. The opening titles are a great
compilation of the original
Stargate themes; though exceedingly
hasty, the composer managed to fit all three of
Stargate's
primary melodic ideas into a single one-minute cue. Most of the choral
cues on the 1997 "Stargate SG-1" album belong to Arnold's original
recording, but Goldsmith adds some very stirring action sequences
dominated by grandiose brass performances. His softer melodies are also
effective at their task. For what is essentially an imitation job by
Goldsmith, he adds many new attractive percussive styles to the
equation. Goldsmith's material works so well that it could serve as a
Stargate sequel CD, and fans of both Arnold and the show were
impressed enough by Goldsmith's music to make the 1997 product a strong
seller.
The problem with that 1997 Milan album for "Stargate
SG-1" in retrospect, however, is that its fragmented nature is not only
a nagging detriment but the presentation fails to exhibit the mass of
good music for the show that existed outside of the edits with Arnold's
recordings. Obviously, with several dozen minutes of music required for
each and every episode, there was a lot more of the original material
absent from that album. Some fans of the show went so far as to make a
mockery of the product and its over-reliance on Arnold's inserted
material. Generally, the average fan of the show didn't care about the
choppy edits on the album. But fans of the original film and collectors
of film music noticed the heavy edits immediately, and they reacted with
both disgust and ambivalence to that product. In the end, though, it's
hard to argue with its strong sales figures, and it was only a matter of
time before another "Stargate SG-1" album hit the shelves. The 2001
follow-up from GNP Crescendo corrects all of the errors from the 1997
Milan album, and it presents the music from "Stargate SG-1" as it was
meant to be heard as a standalone work. Along with the occasional
references to Arnold's themes (with no direct lifting of material from
the film this time), the 2001 album contains lengthy suites of music
from episodes scored by Goldsmith, Kevin Kiner, Richard Band, and Dennis
McCarthy. All of these men were accomplished in the television scoring
genre, and Kiner worked with the interpolation of Arnold's themes for
the trashy sci-fi film
Wing Commander a few years earlier. The
most interesting aspect of the 2001 album is the revelation that
Goldsmith actually wasn't responsible for much of the best episodic
music early in the show's run. The material by Kiner, Band, and McCarthy
is by far the most diverse, encompassing both the more exciting and
sensitive emotions on a broader spectrum. That said, Goldsmith's
material is extremely functional, and it is still impressive outside the
context of Arnold's mixes. But the highlights of the album are the first
two suites, "The Enemy Within" and "Cold Lazarus," with Kiner's two
other suites not far behind. The former, McCarthy/Kiner suite features
superior sound quality to all of the other suites, and Band's latter,
delicate piece provides interesting variations on Arnold's themes
despite clearly diminished sound quality in its sparsely synthetic
rendering. The opening and closing credits performed by the Seattle
Studio Symphony Orchestra are adequate once again, but one might wonder
why Goldsmith's original theme for the show's end credits isn't used
more often within the episodic scores themselves.
In 2017, Intrada Records unexpectedly released a 2-CD
set of music from four Band-composed episodic scores from the first two
seasons of "Stargate SG-1," and this product didn't take off like the
others, eventually suffering a slow death as it slid towards going out
of print in 2020. Band's music on this product betrays the budget of the
production more than the rest, sounding frightfully synthetic
throughout, especially in the action sequences. Sampled orchestral
instruments being what they were at the time, the music here sounds like
a demo recording in every cue when heard so many years separated from
its creation. Band continues to reference Arnold's themes, but only
occasionally, the composer seemingly more content to write recurring
motifs for individual episodes as he went. This approach is especially
evident in the character material in the expanded "Cold Lazarus"
episodic presentation. Of the Arnold themes he does reference, the
military theme is the most frequent, and here the fake snare and brass
really do expose the cheap price tag on the recording. The main theme is
an infrequent application, unfortunately, though he strives for some of
the glamour of the source material at the end of the "Singularity"
episode. At times, Band strays a bit too close to the temp track,
including Alan Silvestri's
Predator in "Pushing Back Through Gate
to Hospital" (from "Cold Lazarus") and Jerry Goldsmith's
Star Trek V:
The Final Frontier in "Finale - Daniel And Then Others Visit" (from
"In the Line of Duty"). Understanding the budgetary constraints that
Band was facing, the rather unrefined rendering of the music is
excusable, but the concept does suffer as a result. The entire point of
Arnold's original score and Goldsmith's aping of it in the series
premiere was to capture the lush and romantic scale of the fantasy
involved, and these later episodic scores do nothing to recapture that
scope. As such, the 2017 Intrada album will only appeal to the most
ardent enthusiasts of the show and should be skipped by those looking
for further extension of the Arnold soundscape. Overall, the suites on
the 2001 album are comparatively very impressive, and they offer an even
better companion piece to Arnold's original film score than the largely
redundant Goldsmith pilot score featured on the 1997 album. If you
already own the film's score and wish to purchase an album of "Stargate
SG-1" music simply as an addendum, then the 1997 product was made
completely obsolete by the lengthier, more creative 2001 alternative.
Goldsmith also released two albums of music for related spin-offs that
may be worth exploring. In the end, it's hard not to simply return to
Arnold's original feature work for that dose of epic scope that these
televisions scores strive to equal.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Heard on the 1997 Milan Album: ***
- Music as Heard on the 2001 GNP Crescendo Album: ****
- Music as Heard on the 2017 Intrada Album: **
- Overall: ***
