In late 1976 I bought the RCA LP record Space:1999. While I was a little disappointed in the incompleteness of the album, and the seemingly interminable space-outs between the cuts, it contained music from the series ― its first season, as that was "1999" at that point.
In early 2022, with a degree of nostalgia, I welcomed a splendid Silva Screen Records CD set:
"Space:1999 - Years 1 & 2"
Barry Gray wrote material, very much in the Gray style, for Year One:
Very much in the Gray style, so much so that Gray pieces from earlier Gerry & Sylvia Anderson shows could be mixed in seamlessly with new cues. Nobody would ever know that these "library" cues hadn't been written by the composer for Space. (Like John Williams and John Barry, Barry Gray had a definite "sound".) As a matter of fact, bits of Gray's music from the 1968 feature film Thunderbird 6 were seamlessly integrated into a few episodes, including "The Last Sunset", "Voyager's Return", and "Collision Course". While I've never been crazy about the show's Year 1 title theme music, with its twanging and wince-inducing guitar riff, which winced me even in 1975, I do like a few cues, especially those that made Space:1999 seem better than it was. Listen to the show from the kitchen while you're doing dishes and you might think: "What am I missing?"
The score for the opening episode "Breakaway" sets the tone for the rest of the series, which is to be expected. For the first couple of acts, the musical strains are generally, and surprisingly, low-key, but when the big blast-away happens, we get those blasts of brass. "Black Sun" tries for the epic, with composer Gray recycling a four-note theme for horn which he originally wrote a few years earlier for the Anderson-produced feature film Doppelganger (known on this side of the pond as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun). Gray sure liked his strings, which tended to make up the bulk of his orchestra on Space:1999 since he felt they gave the stories told some sweep and grandeur — certainly that's what "Black Sun" was aiming for, even if perhaps it wasn't entirely successful in doing so. "A Matter of Life and Death" features musical accompaniment — which also stars abundant strings — that ranges from grand mysteriousness to intimate loveliness.
Any problems I had with the background music for that year were not any fault of the composer. The music editor, Alan Willis, too often retracked the same dreary bits of music: pieces not dreary on their own, but through repetition they cast the series in... dreariness. As I've joked for years: "For the opening of a typical episode, or the start of a new act, we get the same dreary music backing the same dreary shot of Moonbase Alpha."
Another depressing factor would be the lack of scoring variety: Gray was asked — the scripts asked — for music of a fairly unified tone and timbre. The series producers and scripters had such a fixation on the darkness of outer space that an inflexibility too often dictated dark and brooding tonalities, episode to episode. There certainly was no equivalent to a "Jerry Fielding and 'The Trouble With Tribbles'", and that was a shame. As Year 2 incoming producer Fred Freiberger said after screening Year 1 episodes before really digging into his job as part of his mission to improve matters: "Doesn't anyone know how to smile in Space:1999."
Derek Wadsworth jazzed Year Two to great effect:
As I noted in my piece exploring Space's Year 2 opening titles, "Wadsworth grooved with the gardens of playful levity in the Grove of Psyche". While my reference is episode and scene specific in that case, specifically from the second season's opener, "The Metamorph", the idea that happy and warm music made their way onto Space:1999's variable-area optical audio tracks gave one hope that not everything in the series was dark and brooding, wallowing, and suffocating, in its own self importance. Wadsworth could also write pieces of some intensity when called for. His cues for the episode "Space Warp" did not exactly hang about, floating blissfully in pools of pleasure. After all, there was that titular space warp to deal with, and the composer did just that with staff-lines running a frenetic trombone chorus. At times it's almost out of control — as out of control as the David Prowse-manned monster from "The Beta Cloud" — and it can't be mistaken for any other Wadsworth Space score. Neither can his playful and charming music for "The Taybor". I just love those fun and oozy Alto saxophone parts. When I listen to them on this album I can't help but smile.
A standout composition, a cue written for "The Metamorph", is a pretty and enchanting piece titled "We're All Aliens", and it's a keeper. As is "Seduction" from the superior episode "One Moment of Humanity". For the dance section of the track, Wadsworth scored with a stripped-down version of Canadian jazz singer-songwriter Gino Vannelli's "Storm at Sunup". It was that song that choreographer Lionel Blair used to put actors Barbara Bain and Leigh Lawson through their paces on set during filming, so it made sense to keep the final as a close cover. In the episode it works wonderfully well. And on its own it's exhilarating stuff.
These Year 2 music tracks are eminently listenable; taken together in this particular presentation, the disc could almost act as a new-space-age album. After I finish editing and scheduling this piece, I may give 'er another spin. It has been a while since my last listen. Generally I make no bones about the fact that I think most film and television scores are best run with "picture". But some do work on their own, as music. Derek Wadsworth's own "Space:1999" theme tune is fantastic, and sets the tone for everything after.
Spotting:
Due to Space:1999's limited budget, and the terms of the then musicians' union agreement, just five episodes from each of the series' two seasons had full original music scores commissioned for them. More accurately, a total of seven shows in Year 1 had original scores: Barry Gray recorded a short percussion score at his home studio in Guernsey for the episode "The Full Circle", and a small ensemble performed pieces by Alan Willis and Vic Elms for "Ring Around the Moon".
The Off-the-Shelf Scores:
Mention should be made of Space:1999's excellent use of "library music". In Year 1, especially, this method of scoring, an initiative of limits funds, greatly enhanced what we were seeing onscreen. By way of example, Mike Hankinson's Stravinsky-like composition "The Astronauts" was tracked in part into the episode "War Games", driving and complementing the onscreen zaps and bangs, seemingly with a unseemly sardonic laugh. Beautiful. (Those Eagles sure blowed up real good... even the flat cardboard-cutout ones.)
In Year 2, few library cues were used, but a prime example of a music editor buying the right piece is exemplified in the episode "New Adam, New Eve", where Canadian composer Robert Farnon's exquisite composition "How Beautiful Is Night" accompanies a reflective campfire scene. (When I reviewed the library music cues for this article, it was obvious to me that Farnon was a favourite composer of Space's music editors, with his works being licensed a few times.)
A few library tracks are represented on this album. A sampling would include those used for the episodes: "Dragon's Domain", "Mission of the Darians", "The Infernal Machine", and "The Testament of Arkadia"... all Year 1 shows.
The Recordings:
All tracks are in stereo, with the recording quality being of an expected high standard.
In Essence:
Both series scores work in that they match, respectively, Space:1999's seasonal timbres....
Year One: winter
Year Two: summer
Space: 1999
- Years 1 & 2 -
Music
by
Barry Gray
and
Derek Wadsworth
Silva Screen Records
2021
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