Soundtrack of the Month: October 2014

Welcome to the third installment of this blog series. In honor of a certain film's 20th anniversary, I present to you David Arnold's incredible score to the 1994 film Stargate. The film would spawn what was to become one of the greatest science fiction franchises of all time. I will be specifically covering the deluxe edition of the soundtrack, which contains a few track title corrections and several additional tracks.

David Arnold composed the music to the film, but when the rights for the Stargate story were later transferred to television creators Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner to create the TV series Stargate SG-1, the job of composing was also handed off to Joel Goldsmith (son of legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith). Over time Goldsmith would create many incredible themes for the ever-growing franchise, but from the beginning a lot of the music was heavily based on Arnold's score from the original movie. The title theme of SG-1, remaining through all ten years of the series's run, was a rendition of one of the original film's themes.

The point being made is that while the television franchise differed greatly from the vision of the creators of the original film, much of the original music remained all throughout the series. It was that memorable, and it was that good.

If you know me, you know I'm a huge Stargate fan. In fact, I recently rewatched the entire franchise, from beginning to end (over 350 episodes and three movies). In addition to that, I own every Stargate soundtrack ever released, aside from the non-deluxe edition of this movie score. There were only a total of six releases (plus this deluxe edition), but it certainly cost me to collect them all. Only two of the releases are still in print. I'm a collector, though, so I just had to get them all.

Something that sets aside the original Stargate film from its television legacy is the sense of mystery surrounding the Stargate itself. What is it? Where does it lead? What will they find on the other side? All of this mystery and intrigue are incorporated into the score. Ancient Egyptian themes are throughout, providing a unique feel to run alongside and fit in with the movie. Overall, there are few movie scores as majestic and unique as this one. We can only hope that Arnold returns to score the upcoming Stargate reboot trilogy.

One more thing that sets apart the composer of the film and the composer of the television franchise is that, while they use many of the same themes, Arnold and his full orchestra give a feeling of grandeur to the score, whereas Goldsmith's score is often a lot more subtle. They're two very different styles, yet both sound incredible.

Featured Tracks
Yes, I know this section is supposed to be set aside for three of my favorite tracks, but sometimes soundtracks have so many tracks it's next to impossible to select only three. I created the rule, so I can break it as I see fit. In fact, next month I plan on breaking it even further (but for good reason).

Track 1: Stargate Overture – This amazing theme is how the movie begins. Many years later, after Stargate SG-1 would run its ten-year course, the series received a television movie to conclude the story. That movie's score began with the exact same composition, this time arranged by Joel Goldsmith. The difference was that where the original version deviates at a certain point to an incredible choir section representing the villain Ra, Goldsmith's version deviates to an incredible choir section representing the Ori (the then-antagonists of the television series). It's a great throwback to this film.

Track 3: Giza 1928 – As with "Stargate Overture", this track is filled with themes that would later be used throughout the television series. This is, however, one of the coolest renditions of these themes ever arranged by either composer.

Track 22: Ra - The Sun God – This is the theme of Ra, the villain of the movie. This incredible piece of score was later rearranged for the pilot of Stargate SG-1, no longer representing Ra himself, but instead simply representing his race, the Goa'uld. (Note: There are some... differences between the continuity of the original film and the continuity of the television franchise. Those will be addressed at a later time.)

Track 32: Battle at the Pyramid – This track scores five (rather awesome) minutes of the film's climax. Quite memorable, and flows through a number of the film's musical themes.



Stargate: The Deluxe Edition is out of print, but you can still purchase it digitally from iTunes.
You can listen to it for free on YouTube.

Series Review: Stargate Universe

The Stargate franchise has come a long way, and now it has finally come to an end, without even a concluding ending.

Stargate Universe is not a TV series to start with. Before watching it, I would recommend watching the movie Stargate, and then watching the entire ten-season series of Stargate SG-1. I say watching Stargate Atlantis or the other movies is optional, but still recommended.

The story of SGU starts with a group of fifty or so people being stranded on a ancient spaceship billions of light years away from Earth or any galaxy they had encountered before. The group desperately not only tries to find a way home, but tries to survive on a failing ship so they even can make it home.

The first episode is interesting, but soon after the series gets sour and disgusting. The first half season of SGU (the series was released in half seasons) doesn't even deserve to be included in the Stargate franchise, because it's just like . . . a soup opera in outer space! Thankfully, it gets better by the end, to the point that I am impossibly mad that the series was cancelled.

Review: Stargate Universe Season 1.0 - Rating: 5/100

The pilot was good, but pretty much after that the series was a disappointment and failure. The story progressed extremely slowly, but they had at least one thing relating to it in every single episode, so skipping episodes wouldn't be recommended. And that just plain sucks, because the entire half season is full of the characters hating each other, PG-13 sex scenes, and not that great of a story.

There were a few good episodes. One was "Air", as it was the pilot. It wasn't nearly as good as any episodes from past series such as SG-1 and Atlantis, but it was decent all the same. The second good episode in the half-season was, even though this was in SGU's worst era, one of the best episodes in the series. The name of the episode was "Time". It had an awesome story and it was done very well. The pretty much only other pretty good episode was "Justice", the half season finale. It was, in fact, a murder mystery, and that's right down my alley.

There are two episodes in season 1.0, "Earth" and "Life", that I would not recommend to anyone. Even if you planned to watch every episode in the series, skip these. Take my word for it.

Review: Stargate Universe Season 1.5 - Rating: 40/100

You can see from my rating that the series just got a lot better. Still not really good, but still a decent series. It went from being absolutely horrible to being an alright series over the course of . . . one episode. This episode was "Space", the half season premier, and it was one of the most interesting SGU episodes to date.

After that the series started going a bit more uphill. The characters still hated each other, but not quite as much. Well, after a while, that is. This half season also marks the discovery of some intelligent races in this strange galaxy far, far away.

Some really cool episodes were "Human" and "Lost", which had amazing plots and showed some character development. If you were to skip any of the episodes in this half season, though, I'd say skip "Pain".

Review: Stargate Universe Season 2.0 - Rating: 67/100

The story started progressing at a much quicker pace, thank God, and it actually becomes a pretty cool story. You think that from the rating I'm giving these half seasons that 67/100 must mean the series is by this point amazing, especially because I rated season 1.0 a 5/100. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as by this point the series still didn't come anywhere close to how awesome the past Stargate series have been (this is pretty much why it was cancelled). 67 still isn't that high a number.

I do have to say, the series did get even better here, and by the end of the half season it was pretty darn cool. It still wasn't what the fans really wanted, though they did enjoy it more.

One thing I love is that by the end of the half season the two main characters who hated each other for the entire series so far actually became friends, or as close to it as they could get at the time. The character development by this part of the series is incredibly cool, and I say the creators of Stargate are complete masters of character development, if nobody else is.

A couple really good episodes in this half season were "Trial and Error" and "Malice". By this point in the series, there aren't any episodes in the half season that I would recommend skipping, as they're all good. A few episodes though, such as "Awakening", are a little boring.

Review: Stargate Universe Season 2.5 - Rating: 95/100

How could a series that started being so terrible turn into one of my favorite science-fiction series of all time? Well, it was all because of the final five episodes, though the rest of the final half season are pretty awesome as well.

The half season starts with a cool conclusion to the previous episode, which ended with a cliffhanger. After that was an episode that, though you don't realize it at the time, starts a chain of events that eventually opens up an entirely new side story, which by the end of the series turns into something incredibly awesome.

By the end, almost every single character has had some life-changing character development. The story, directing, writing, everything was better in the last ten episodes. The last five were by far the best, and they may have even surpassed their fellow Stargate series in terms of being amazing.

The ending did not tie up all loose ends, or even end the story, as they had already filmed it by the time they found out that there would not be a season 3. They did change it, though, so it was more fitting to end a series, rather than a season, and the final result was one of the best series endings I have ever seen.

I sincerely wish people could enter the series in season 2, so that they did not need to tolerate season 1, but unfortunately that would be a stupid thing to do, as then they would miss so much of the story, and that is unacceptable.

And now that Stargate Universe has been cancelled, it's been announced that all four Stargate movies that were in development have been cancelled, and the franchise as we know it is gone now. Thankfully, the creators of this franchise are making another science-fiction series, Echoes, though it will never be what Stargate was.

So yes, that is my review. It's my first ever "series review", and it's about as long as I figured it might be (which is pretty long).

Long live Stargate's memory, and hopefully it'll be back someday.

~Reuben/Arkatox~

P.S. After writing such a long review and having to go back and revise the entire thing (not fun), I have gotten sick of writing for today. That basically means no novel or fanfic writing today. . . .

A Tribute to Stargate

One of my favorite science fiction franchises of all time, Stargate, has come to an end. There is a chance that it may come back someday, but not for a long time.

The franchise has come to an end after seventeen years, without even a proper ending. This has upset thousands and thousands of fans, and in truth it was all the fault of the network.

But anyway, what's done is done and (the random part of this sentence:) what's written is written (hey, it's my blog's motto and I can say it if I want).

Stargate, rest in peace . . . until brought back. All we can do is stay hopeful. . . .

~Reuben/Arkatox~