A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

I've always enjoyed the original Battlestar Galactica, with all its unintentional humour and sheer naffness.  That said, it did have a reasonable enough concept and was quite ambitious, and one of its biggest assets was the music of Stu Philips.  So now, over two decades on, it's been reinvented and remade for the Y2K generation - and you can tell this quite easily, because it stars a wafer-thin blonde nymphet - and has a low-key electronic score.  For my tastes, the former certainly represents more progress than the latter.  You can just picture it: Richard Gibbs gets the call to score a remake of Battlestar Galactica, starts imagining all this grand orchestral music, goes to meet the producer - to be told to write some bland electronica with only the merest hint of an orchestra through most of it, and certainly avoiding anything in the way of melody.  I can't imagine he was too pleased.  The producers were aiming for an entirely different musical approach this time, a more "naturalistic" sound in keeping with their desire for a documentary-like look for the whole project.

Needless to say, I'm exaggerating, there is melody, indeed the main theme is a very nice one, but it sounds like Gladiator, and seems just as inappropriate for Battlestar Galactica as it was, in fact, for Gladiator.  (I will freely admit that I have not seen the new miniseries yet - it still hasn't been shown over here - it's just that this music seems wrong!  Perhaps after watching, I will have an entirely different opinion.)  The breathy female vocal makes for a nice listen on the album, though, and the score is certainly at its strongest when the main theme appears a few times.  Sadly, the rest is largely a bore.  While Gibbs speaks proudly in the liner notes of avoiding "the tried and true ways of scoring a space opera", one can't help but think that the reason they're the tried and true ways is because they're the right ways.  OK, be inventive and try something different, but make sure it works; this just doesn't catch.

The album works reasonably well as a kind of ambient musical accompaniment if you're not doing much.  The almost constant percussion certainly has a drive and determination about it (and if played for long enough would no doubt entice a confession from even the stubbornest of suspects at the local police station), but the downside is that after a while you just begin to long for something else to happen, a change of pace or direction, something new (a nice orchestral theme, perhaps).  Preconceptions can be a horrible thing, and they force me to think that as accompaniment to Battlestar Galactica - whatever form it takes - this is a bizarre failure (I know Gibbs was only doing what he was told - I'm sure that left to his own devices we wouldn't have heard anything much like this); as an album, it's rather better; but even then, it needs more variety to be truly satisfying.

Tracks

1. Are You Alive? / Main Title (5:28)
2. Goodbye, Baby (2:24)
3. Starbuck Buck Buck (1:49)
4. To Kiss or Not to Kiss (2:42)
5. Six Sex (1:48)
6. Deep Sixed (1:59)
7. The Day Comes (1:08)
8. Counterattack (2:40)
9. Cylons Fire (1:34)
10. A Call to Arms (1:03)
11. Apollo to the Rescue (1:56)
12. Launch Vipers (4:26)
13. Seal the Bulkheads (2:10)
14. The Lottery Ticket (3:06)
15. Eighty-Five Dead (1:23)
16. Inbound (1:23)
17. Apollo is Gone / Starbuck Returns (2:19)
18. The Storm and the Dead (2:40)
19. Thousands Left Behind (2:09)
20. Silica Pathways (3:32)
21. Reunited (1:56)
22. The Sense of Six (3:01)
23. Starbuck's Recon (1:11)
24. Battle (7:40)
25. Good Night (2:38)
26. By Your Command (1:56)