If anyone were to ask me what elements from the first season of Space: 1999 were most sorely missed in the show’s second year (and trust me, I get asked this a lot…well, not really), I’d give them two names: Barry Gray and Barry Morse. Barry Morse’s character mysteriously disappeared between seasons with no explanation, never to be even so much as mentioned again. And Barry Gray’s music, which had done more to define the show’s setting and tone than anything else that could be seen or heard on screen, was swapped out for Derek Wadsworth’s more rock/disco-driven scores in the second season.
No disrespect is intended toward Wadsworth here, but I always felt that was a bad move (though I learned from this CD’s extensively detailed liner notes that it was Mr. Gray who decided to bow out at that stage). The plight of Moonbase Alpha’s crew, to put it mildly, is a hopeless one, at least so long as they’re pining for Earth. And Barry Gray’s music reflects that almost too well; it’s somber, almost tragic in places, and even in epilogue scenes that would seem to be trying to tack some kind of hopeful or light-hearted moment onto the show, the music is a reminder that these people are so screwed. Continued use of Gray’s small library of music throughout the first season reinforced that better than anything that the writers and actors did. In a show where the cast occasionally served overbaked ham to the audience, where the special effects sometimes jarringly reminded one of producer Gerry Anderson’s string of puppet series, and where the plots sometimes took sharp turns right through the guard railing and off the road, Barry Gray’s music was the dramatic anchor.
Finally back in commercial release after nearly 30 years, this collection of music from Space: 1999 is pared down from an extensive 2-CD archive of every cue recorded for the show’s first season that was given an extremely limited release by the Gerry Anderson fan club, Fanderson. That double CD collection included “library” tracks not composed by Gray (i.e. Holst’s “Mars: Bringer Of War” was used to track the episode Space Brain), as well as early demos of the music Gray played for the show’s producers; a similar double CD release through Fanderson similarly chronicled Derek Wadsworth’s music for season two. Prior to the Fanderson release, whose value has skyrocketed on the collector’s market, there was an LP of music from the series released in the 1970s. Therefore, not only is this CD the first time that the Space: 1999 music has gotten a general release since the show’s heyday, but at its budget price…well, it’s nice to not have to worry about chasing down the Fanderson CDs on eBay and watching them escalate beyond the price of my next house payment. Eight pounds sterling beats a few hundred dollars anyday, and Silva Screen has my immense gratitude for that. It’s also worth noting that this CD adds material that had been unavailable during the Fanderson CD production, so completists, you still have to get this.
Things kick off with Gray’s energetic, starts-out-heroic-and-gets-downright-funky main theme for Space: 1999, co-written with Vic Elms (of The Prisoner incidental music fame). While a recent marathon review of the series on DVD brought into sharp relief how diluted my childhood memories were of the quality of the show itself, my fond memories of this theme music remain intact. I loved how the thundering tympani roll would actually start in the episode teaser itself before you actually saw the titles (shades of the build-up to the revised main theme from Farscape season 3 and 4!), and that fanfare…wow. Most of the fanfare didn’t even include the words “Space: 1999” on the screen. No, that heroic fanfare was there to tell you, prior to identifying the show, that MARTIN LANDAU and BARBARA BAIN were starring in this series! After the final blast of brass, Gray kicks into dramatic-but-funky mode with a jammin’ guitar solo (played by Elms himself) covering the highlights from “This Week’s Episode” and the recap of the fateful events of September 13th, 1999. Yes, it’s dated – very dated. But in its day, this was one of the coolest intros ever for an action-adventure show.
The healthy number of cues from the series-launching Breakaway are a reflection of how often that episode’s music turned up in later shows, and with good reason; the first 35 or so minutes of that particular show were so intentionally nervous and heavy with dread that the music does a masterful job, when re-used later, of re-establishing the underlying hopelessness of the characters’ situation. The liner notes, which I can’t say enough nice things about, reveal that Gray only scored four episodes of the show, and the music from those shows was reused in just the right places for the remainder of the season. The score for Another Time, Another Place is another winner, including a tragically sad little cue called “Flowers For Helena” which seemed to play over the epilogue of nearly every installment of the show’s first year.
Now, all of this effusive praise for Gray’s evocative music doesn’t mean that the show’s scoring didn’t occasionally go off the deep end. The cues from Testament Of Arkadia – drawn from library music, not from Gray’s scores, but included here because of that episode’s pivotal place in the show’s history – start out with a very formal classical feel, and then segue into something that sounds like a 70s peace-and-love rock jam (think of something you’d hear if you were actually budgeted to buy the world a Coke). The cue from “The Troubled Spirit” is probably the wildest track on the whole CD, and I love it. It’s an extremely well-performed electric sitar jam which essentially was the only sound hear during the unusually off-format teaser for that episode. Granted, it’s a bit of an Indian music clichè, but for contrast’s sake, I could listen to this track three times in a row easily…and can barely stomach the Beatles’ “Within You, Without You” once.
The Mission Of The Darians was tracked from library music as well, though it’s a very close match for the show’s general musical direction as established by Barry Gray. Ring Around The Moon is represented by a funky guitar/organ track composed by Vic Elms, another frequent Anderson musical collaborator (possibly by virtue of, as the liner notes reveal, being Anderson’s son-in-law).
Even if you’re unfamiliar with this series, I strongly recommend the soundtrack to you if you enjoyed the soundtrack releases for Gatchaman/Battle Of The Planets or Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato. It’s in much the same vein, though more string-oriented where those shows’ scores were brass-heavy, and all of 
those titles together are an interesting study in television scoring in the 1970s. If you’re more accustomed to the modern-day John Williams/Jerry Goldsmith school of film scoring, there are passages here that will trip your trigger, and just as many that you’ll want to skip. But it’s definitely worth a listen. Barry Gray seemed to know better than anyone what the dramatic thrust of Space: 1999 was, and this CD is the proof.
- Space: 1999 Main Title (1:10)
- The Dark Side Of The Moon (2:12)
- People Are Dying Up Here (4:10)
- Breakaway (4:29)
- Human Decision Required (1:42)
- Alien Attack (“The Astronauts”) composed by Mike Hankinson (4:05)
- Terra Nova (3:06)
- Phase Two (1:42)
- Matter Of Life And Death (4:18)
- Paradise Lost (0:42)
- Space: 1999 End Titles – Alternate Version (0:32)
- The Late Shift / Gwent’s Arrival / Gwent’s Farewell (5:13)
- The Solarium: “The Latest Fashion” composed by Giampiero Boneschi (1:35)
- Captives Of Triton / Moonwalk composed by Vic Elms and Alan Willis (1:41)
- Asteroid (1:50)
- Black Sun (4:25)
- Event Horizon (4:25)
- Home (1:34)
- Daria: 100 Square Miles composed by Robert Farnon / Macrocosm composed by Frank Cordell (2:13)
- Atonement composed by Jim Sullivan (2:58)
- Space: 1999 Main Theme – Extended Alternate Version (1:42)
- The Origin Of Life: Suite Appassionnata – Andante composed by Paul Bonneau and Serge Lancen / The Miracle: Picture Of Autumn composed by Jack Arel and Pierre Dutout (5:44)
- Moon Odyssey (3:57)
- Regina’s World (3:54)
- Earthbound (1:33)
- Santa Maria (7:08)
- Flowers For Helena (1:05)
- Space: 1999 End Titles (0:34)
Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2004
Total running time: 79:52
