As SG-1 become a major hit series largely due to its excellent actors (Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, Chris Judge and Don S Davis) and writters (Jonathon Glassner and Brad Wright) the fans became increasingly more demanding for a CD release of SG-1 score. The album of the pilot episode released in 1997 had released some music from the series amidst insertions of Arnold's original film score. But this was only music from 1 episode and 20 of the 50 minutes on album were recordings of the original Stargate film.
This album, The Best of Stargate SG-1 Season 1 made that previous release obsolete.
This time the composers for the series have selected several of their best scores from season 1 and composed them all into 5-10 minutes suites. The choice of episodes is very good ranging from character driven episodes to all out action and cliffhangers. "The Torment of Tantalus" and "Cold Lazarus" are the quieter more melodic tracks and the other tracks all have lots of tension cues and short bursts of action particularly in "Within The Serpent's Grasp", the season 1 cliffhanger in which SG-1 covertly invades a Goa'ould mothership. The Goldsmith tracks like this one are very good and occupy most of the album. He makes alot of use of choral accompanyment and his action cues are heavily driven by percussion especially in the Serpent's Grasp suite where SG-1 has numerous fights with the armour clad Jaffa which the percussion tries to represent.
However good Goldsmith's music is though the other composers's works are better still. Kevin Kiner in particular for his two suites produces some diverse and interesting music.
"Emancipation" begins with an excellent action cue. Kiner's experience in composing for film is noticable here with the cue being fast paced,flowing and complex with toms toms beating in the background and David Arnold style instrumentation in the foreground. This suite also, apart from "Within The Serpent's Grasp", has the best ending on the CD, with a big heroic statement of the SG-1 theme.
His other suite "The Torment of Tantalus" starts of with a jazzy saxophone solo and the developes into a very melodic suite that again is far richer sounding than the Goldsmith and McCarthy tracks.
"Cold Lazarus" by Richard Band is by far the softest track on the CD and comes from an episode where O'Neill confronts the truth about his son's death and comes to terms with the loss and begins to accept the fact that he couldn't have changed things. The track is mostly piano driven and expands the SG-1 theme into a more sensitive piece. Its good but not as rich or diverse as the Kiner tracks.
McCarthy's sole contribution to the SG-1 series is also on the album as "The Enemy Within". This whole track is one long action cue and surprisingly for a McCarthy piece it is quite good. It is the least varying of all the tracks and the action beat does get tiresome but the track has its moments of both tension, drama and action.
Overall this album is way ahead of the first release. McCarthy does better than any of his usual CD releases, Goldsmith and Band's work is great, Goldsmith's choral effects and cliffhanger ending especially. But the underpraised and underused Kiner produces the best music on the album with his two entries.
****
2. Suite From The Enemy Within (McCarthy/Kiner) (6:46)
3. Suite From Cold Lazarus (Band) (6:10)
4. Suite From Emancipation (Kiner) (3:36)
5. Suite From Torment Of Tantalus (Kiner) (10:14)
6. Suite From Thor's Hammer (Goldsmith) (7:33)
7. Suite From The Nox (Goldsmith) (10:02)
8. Suite From Hathor (Goldsmith) (6:45)
9. Suite From Tin Man (Goldsmith) (6:57)
10. Suite From Within the Serpent's Grasp (Goldsmith) (8:43)
11. Stargate SG-1: End Credits (Goldsmith) (0:58)