Just was thinking about favourite tv themes of mine....

Battle of the planets is my all time fav.... six feet under was great too...

Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek theme from The Motion Picture used for Star Trek: The Next Generation is great! And his gorgeous theme for Star Trek: Voyager is also spectacular!

Joel Goldsmith's Stargate: Atlantis theme is also amazing and very well structured to present the show's themes: Jumping from the Atlantis introduction to the powerful Wraith theme and onto a full-blown rendition of the Atlantis theme!

And I have a soft-spot for Joss Whedon's country tune for the main title of FireFly.

Nearly every Goldsmith TV theme is amazing. Dr. Kildare, The Lineup, The Loner, The Man from UNCLE, his attempt at a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea theme, Room 222, Police Story, Medical Story, the theme to the British series HELP, Barnaby Jones, The Waltons, Voyager, and whatever else I'm ignoring.

Then there's Rawhide, both themes for The Twilight Zone, Ben Casey, Staccato, Saints & Sinners, Riverboat, Peter Gunn, Surfside 6, 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, Route 66, The Untouchables, Mr. Novak, Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, both themes for Lost in Space, Mr. Lucky, Checkmate, Kraft Suspense Theater, It's About Time, Gilligan's Island, The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Cimmaron Strip, Hawaii 5-O, Mannix, The Avengers, Joe 90, UFO, Stingray, both themes for Space:1999, The Wild Wild West, Green Acres, The Addams Family, The Persuaders, The Invaders, THE Cat, Hogan's Heroes, The Bill Cosby Show, I Spy, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Monkees, Dragnet, and Jesus I wasn't kidding when I said I could fill a page of these.

There are so many obscure series I'm skipping over too. So may things came & went or were good despite their pop sound & lyrics: Three's Company as just one example out of hundreds. And you never knew what you were going to find where: Mancini's theme for What's Happening! as another example.

This is just a hopeless undertaking. There are very few TV themes that actually sucked until recently and there are a ton of new ones that (when I hear them) are still solid.

The Elfman ones are too few. Sledgehammer was even better than The Simpsons. The West Wing & The X-Files are almost anti-themes done in a very generic style and there are too many synth drones as TV themes now.

dont know may of the other shows.... too young and from australia limits what comes over here...

do any of you remember the battle of the planets (g-force) theme?...

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Originally posted by bouncytsunami:
funny you should mention serenity...i've just watched it for the first time the last few days (watching it now too) and it took me a while to enjoy the cowboy stuff but the theme is definately growing on me.... goldsmiths stuff i know, mostly the startrek, and its great great....

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Yeah with FireFly it took me a few episodes to get over that "Oh, come on!" attitude about the country theme for a sci-fi show that initially plagued me. David Newman's score for the film follow-up Serenity is also incredible (and superior to FireFly), and definitely one of my favourite scores!

SEBULBA: Believe it or not, I'm walking on air...

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Originally posted by Stargate:
Stargate (SG-1)! David Arnold did a great tune.

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Isn't that Joel Goldsmith using Daniel's theme from Arnold's Stargate movie score with some original material, as well? I believe Goldsmith and Arnold discussed how the theme would be, but that Joel wrote it using Daniel's theme as the preface.

So how young are you? And where down under are you from? I wouldn't expect you to have seen all the old American TV shows that I grew up with but there was a time when a TV theme was a key part of the show. What would Batman be without Neil Hefti's riff? Or the Brady Bunch without its song? The theme sets the stage for the tone of the show and gets you ready to watch it. Now they want to dispense with the thing altogether.

I'm 30 and from newcastle basicly.... i agree that it doesn't seem as important as it use too... the themes i mean.... I have been composing in different situations for years but only recently i began doing some ads, short movies and live theatre stuff...

only just found this place.... you guys seem to really love your stuff.... I still only really know people who have contributed to movies i love... like badalamenti with Lynch movies and danny elfman.... but i dont seek much of it out to be honest....

OH! ... i was playing in this band about 5 yrs ago and most of the guys i didnt know when i joined ... we went to practice at the guitarists house cause hes dad was a producer and had a good set up... so i'm looking around the room and on the wall he has a gold single record for guess what ?..... the greatest american hero theme.... god is there any kid that didnt love that song?

I also liked all those Capitol cues used in so many tv series back then. Those library cues used in so many series and B films back in those days. The series I heard them the most on were Ruff and Ready, US Marshall with John Bromfield, Soldiers of Fortune with John Russell and Chick Chandler and many others. Also shows like Rescue 8 and so forth.

Dominic Frontiere wrote a lot of good tv themes back then too. Rat Patrol, Stoney Burke and many others. The Outer Limits that Lou mentioned.

Frontiere wrote some great western stuff for John Wayne too. Train Robbers and Chisum two of those and did the great score for Barquero with Lee Van Cleef.

That Cains Hundred theme by Goldsmith is really good too.

He also reminded me of Goldsmith's Cain's 100 theme (which I only have as a re-do by someone).

I think the scores for episodes of Thriller & Star Trek are amazing and they are just the tip.

Leaving aside what John Winfrey brought up (the actual underscores to series - STAR TREK had some of THE greatest scores ever written, yet the Alexander Courage theme itself always struck me as being more Desi Arnaz/Lucille Ball than outer space), I'm just having a look at the tracks on that TVT CD, and wow...

STINGRAY etc (Barry Gray) - ALL these Barry Gray themes were brilliant. THUNDERBIRDS, JOE 90 etc. These really hit the nail on the head in 60 seconds or less, which is, I suppose, what a great TV theme is all about.

THE MEN FROM SHILOH (Ennio Morricone) - Which actually seems to have come AFTER "The Virginian", not vice versa as I thought. What's that Maurice Jarre TV Western theme I'm thinking about? I thought it was this.

JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE (Alexander Courage) - I can now forgive Courage's Desilu theme for STAR TREK. This is thrilling stuff.

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (Oliver Nelson) - A man barely alive, but the theme had plenty of driving, tympanic energy to counteract Steve Austin's moribund state (and Lee Major's appropriately comatose acting).

THE BIONIC WOMAN (Jerry Fielding) - Hey Jerry, don't be embarrassed about this (he once said, kind of defensively "But you'll never catch me doing an underscore for that kind of thing!" - or something like that). Actually, come to think of it, it IS a little bit embarrassing in the poofy pianos, but it's still great, and one of the most idiosyncratic superhero themes I can think of.

NIGHT GALLERY (Gil Mellé) - Somebody at FSM said this was the scariest theme ever, and I tend to agree. Not Gil Mellé's best theme however (as regards listenabilty). That would be...

KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER (Gil Mellé) - Powerhouse brilliance. There was only one Gil Mellé.

THE INVADERS (Dominic Frontiere) - And there was only one Dominic Frontiere. Scary, creepy, great.

LAND OF THE GIANTS and all the other Irwin Allen themes (John Williams).

Other stuff not on that compilation I was gazing at a minute ago -

THE OUTER LIMITS (Dominic Frontiere again) - And great GREAT underscores too! Get the upcoming LaLaLand thingy!

THE MAN FROM UNCLE (Jerry Goldsmith) - Goldsmith adapts the Booker T "Green Onions" blues sound for 60s spies!

IRONSIDE (Quincy Jones) - What a brilliant piece of gritty cop music. What happened to ya, Quincy? You let a lot of geeks down when you got more famous with Michael Jackson.

And lots and lots and lots and lots of other really good stuff.

Also much of the underscoring and episode scores for Gunsmoke are quite good too.