Battlestar Galactica: Volume 3 – music by Stu Phillips

The third volume of music from the 1970s iteration of Battlestar Galactica proves that, even well into its run, despite budget overruns, the series’ music was still a big priority, even if it occasionally took on forms that were stripped-down compared to the full-blooded orchestral score of the pilot miniseries.

This volume deals exclusively with one-off, self-contained episodes (with one great big surprise as the final selection). The Long Patrol, one of the earliest single-part stories in the series, starts out with what modern ears would probably hear as novelty synthesizer effects, but the bulk of this episode’s score is still orchestral, though leaning on a smaller ensemble than the pilot (heard in full in the first volume of the series) and the early two-part extravaganzas (covered in the second volume). The most distinctive feature of The Long Patrol is a recurring, insistent cello riff, heightening the jeopardy of the storyline.

The Lost Warrior was an episode that riffed on just about every western/cowboy movie trope in the space of a single hour; the soundtrack takes that to heart too, giving us a Battlestar Galactica episode scored with prominent guitar work. Even though it reuses some of the action music established as far back as the pilot, those themes are now played on guitar, and aside from the occasional orchestral flourishes (and some interesting experiments in blending woodwinds with similarly-timbred synths), it would almost fit an episode of Gunsmoke.

The Magnificent Warriors, loaded with low brass and busy, clockwork-like percussion, almost anticipates Michael Giacchino’s Lost soundtracks, and features the longest track of the entire two-disc set, “The Boray Camp / Into The Cave,” weighing in at over four minutes. The Young Lords is the most reminiscent of the music on the previous Galactica releases, again reusing themes from the pilot, but in a similar (if scaled back) orchestral vein. The first disc is rounded out with source music selections from The Lost Warrior (an amusingly corny synth version of Scott Joplin’s “The Easy Winners” that jars completely against the episode’s more authentic western guitars) and The Magnificent Warriors.

The second disc opens with Murder On The Rising Star, essentially a single-episode homage to The Fugitive with Starbuck as the wrongly-accused subject of a Kafka-esque manhunt. This might just be the most interesting score of the entire set, with a more subdued musical style than most Galactica episodes. It also has, in terms of sheer running time, more music than most episodes, so its themes get a chance to develop nicely. A single track from the hostage-drama episode Take The Celestra!, a march-like take on the Galactica theme, offers an interesting contrast to a similar treatment of Phillips’ theme music that appeared in the pilot miniseries of the revived Galactica in 2003.

The Hand Of God, the classic series’ first series finale, had a real sense of “building up to something” (clearly, the makers of Galactica weren’t expecting to be told to scale the series back to something that could be shot inexpensively at unaltered modern-day locations), and the music comes very close to upping its game almost to the level of the pilot. Like Murder On The Rising Star, The Hand Of God has a lot of music, giving themes time to develop. Many themes are reused from the pilot, but turn up in interesting variations. Phillips clearly doesn’t have the same size orchestra that he had for the pilot, but his arrangements make the best use of the players on hand; the most memorable cue is the mysterious ending scene in which a stray television signal from Earth plays out to an empty observation room, completely unknown to our heroes: a replay of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Naturally, despite the build-up to that fascinating conclusion, the show’s second season was lumbered with major creative interference from ABC, threatening not to renew unless its wishes to curb Galactica’s enormous budget were met. The result, retitled Galactica 1980, tends to be ignored by most of fandom, with the possible exception of its final episode, the Glen A. Larson-written farewell The Return Of Starbuck, which throws the ABC-mandated recasting of the show out the door by bringing Dirk Benedict back as Starbuck (and yet explaining it within the context of the show’s largely new cast). The score from that episode is heard here for the first time, a real surprise that almost sounds more like Phillips’ work for Glen Larson’s other TV sci-fi epic of the time, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. In retrospect, with its unusual use of female vocals, The Return Of Starbuck – by putting Starbuck in an Adam-and-Eve scenario with much hardship ahead of him – can also be seen as a precursor to the finale of the 21st century Galactica. Who knew?

Stu Phillips, whether he was conducting a full orchestra or having to make do with a smaller ensemble or just a synthesizer, provided much of Galactica’s epic heart and soul, even at points in the show’s brief life where it was struggling to not overspend anymore. Hopefully more of his music is forthcoming (two-parters The Living Legend and War Of The Gods, both already published with lower audio fidelity on the impossibly rare late ’90s Battlestar Galactica Anthology 4-CD set by the defunct Supertracks label, are conspicuous by their absence thus far). Each of the soundtrack releases from the classic series have proven to be surprisingly good music.

Disc One
1. Exploration / Main Title (1:45)
2. Episode Titles (0:45)

   The Long Patrol

3. Double Parked (2:03)
4. Stolen Viper (1:22)
5. Viper Stolen (1:51)
6. Starbuck In Prison (0:44)
7. Cassiopeia And Athena (1:05)
8. Deserted Town (0:52)
9. The Limping Man (1:21)
10. Grandpa Adama (1:39)
11. The Map (1:00)

    The Lost Warrior

12. Apollo “A” OK (0:55)
13. The Boxey Con (1:05)
14. Same Old Story (1:28)
15. The Hunt (1:23)
16. Time Running Out (2:16)
17. Bootes To Boot Hill (1:42)
18. Doubt (0:45)
19. Shoot Out (2:31)
20. No More Killing (1:16)

    The Magnificent Warriors

21. The Courting (1:35)
22. Here Come The Borays (2:13)
23. Trapped Again (0:59)
24. Time To Eat / Belloby Kidnapped (2:32)
25. The Boray Camp / Into The Cave (4:38)
26. Starbuck’s Plan (1:11)

    The Young Lords

27. Into The Swamp (2:43)
28. Attack By The Children (0:56)
29. Fanfare And Theme (0:49)
30. Launch The Raft (1:59)
31. The Attack Rhyme (2:01)
32. Starbuck And Miri / Well Done (2:13)
33. Warriors (0:45)
34. End Titles (0:30)

    Source Music

35. Source: Saloon (3:15)
36. Source: A Smoking Band (0:42)
37. Source: Three Sided Pyramid (1:25)
38. Source: Starbuck’s Luck (2:01)
39. Source: Hospitality Muzak (2:10)

Disc Two
1. Exploration / Main Title (1:49)
2. Episode Titles (0:46)

   Murder On The Rising Star

3. No Fighting (1:17)
4. Sudden Draw / The Victim / Cassiopeia Waits / Grim Starbuck (1:19)
5. Laser Test / A Match (1:55)
6. Starbuck Gets Help / Not Guilty (2:58)
7. Escape (0:45)
8. Starbuck’s Mistake / Change of Heart (0:49)
9. Questioning Baltar (0:59)
10. Night Of The Cylons / Cella Reacts (1:46)
11. Apollo’s Plan / Stowaway (1:56)
12. Baltar – The Skeptic (0:51)
13. Cassiopeia – The Witness / The Villain (1:18)
14. Karibdis Overcome (1:36)
15. Friends (0:34)

    Take the Celestra!

16. Ceremonial Fanfares (1:42)

    The Hand of God

17. The Dome (1:05)
18. Strange Signal (1:37)
19. Boomer Embarassed (0:28)
20. From The Past (0:44)
21. Cylon Base Ship Rising (1:29)
22. Tired of Running (1:43)
23. A Great Plan / An Agreement (1:29)
24. Some Deal / A Share of Loneliness / More Casi And Starbuck (2:40)
25. Good Luck (1:04)
26. They’re Gone (1:02)
27. Strays (0:39)
28. Man Your Vipers (1:11)
29. In The Lair Of The Cylons (2:45)
30. Here They Come (1:28)
31. There She Is (1:13)
32. We Did It! (0:53)
33. Waggle (1:21)
34. The Dome II / The Eagle Has Landed (1:29)

    The Return of Starbuck

35. Main Title – Galactica: 1980 (1:19)
36. I Had a Dream (1:13)
37. Starbuck And Boomer (1:19)
38. Starbuck Lives (0:46)
39. Trek / Perhaps To Sleep (2:53)
40. Shelter / I’m Sorry (1:12)
41. In Search Of Woman (1:37)
42. Taking Care Of Angela / Starbuck’s Planet (1:40)
43. Spiritual Son (1:02)
44. Ship Building (2:06)
45. Three Humans (1:46)
46. Cy Leaves (1:11)
47. Goodbye Angela (0:52)
48. Friend Cy (0:50)
49. Sermon on the Mount / Zee, Son of Angela (1:26)
50. End Titles (0:36)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: 2012
Disc one total running time: 62:47
Disc two total running time: 68:02