Various Artists

Hollywood Records

The Orville seeks New Horizons…

Or, to put it another way, this is The Orville Season 3 soundtrack, with the artists being a variety of composers, who should be familiar names to both fans of The Orville and assorted other SF TV shows. Obviously we open with Bruce Broughton’s gorgeous and earworm-worthy “Orville New Horizons Main Theme,” which is always a joy to hear. This is a new and slightly different version of the Orville theme, recorded for the third season, but it’s really difficult to notice the differences without playing it directly alongside the original.

Apart from the theme, we have contributions from experienced composers Joel McNeely (Dark Angel, A Million Ways To Die in the West, American Dad), and John Debney (Iron Man 2, End Of Days, Doctor Who, Deep Space Nine, Hocus Pocus 2), plus newbies Kevin Kaska and Andrew Cottee. For the most part, each episode is scored by one composer, and there are an average of about half a dozen tracks per episode. A couple of episodes see the composing duties shared, so “A Tale Of Two Topas” is split between McNeely, Kaska, and Cottee, while “Domino” is shared between Kaska and Debney.

There are two songs included also, both headlines by Scott Grimes, who plays Gordon in the show, which were sung by his character in the episodes. “Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall” is a duet with Anne Winters from “Domino,” while “Secret O’Life” is the wedding song from the final episode.

 

As anyone familiar with The Orville probably already knows, the show and the music both have a feel of pastiching – or indeed continuing – the stylings of music (among other elements) from Galaxy Quest and Berman-era Star Trek, most especially that of Voyager, and to a lesser degree Enterprise.

Whether this is really a pastiche planned by Seth McFarlane, or a continuation of the style by Brannon Braga and the other Trek producers on the show, is impossible to tell, but in either case it’s fully present and correct here, notably in Andrew Cottee’s action tracks. Despite not having previous Trek experience, Cottee has a gift in tracks like “Kaylon Ambush” for catching that tone in his scoring.

There are also some moments that really capture the musical spirit of some other franchises too. John Debney’s “Aliens Evacuate” track has its own feel in the first half, but then captures a spot-on sense of the trembling undertones and creeping woodwinds that Jerry Goldsmith brought to the score for Alien. Mostly, though, the influences seem to have come from a galaxy far far away, with Kevin Kaska’s input having the lighter and flightier tones of the Prequel Trilogy, and John Debney giving us tones more reminiscent of the John Williams’s work on the original Star Wars trilogy. “More Near Death Experiences” gives us some passages very reminiscent of John Williams’s “The Forest Battle” from Return Of The Jedi, for example.

This is not to say that either the pastiches are bad – it’s part of the show’s lifeblood – or that they’re all the score has to offer, because that’s far from the truth. There are plenty of memorable themes and motifs for the likes of the Kaylon and Krill, as well as for individuals characters like Topa, whose episode has probably the most emotionally effective tracks of the score.

In the end, we have a score that really matches what the show is – an ensemble labour of love blending wondrous new material with the familiarity that the musical references and pastiche elements help it carry. It’s also a great value score too, being around four and a half hours, yet it sides by most pleasurable and deceptively, never feeling repetitive or padded.

This is the sort of top SF stuff that the 4-disc Enterprise, Voyager, and Deep Space 9 collections managed to pull off, but all as one release. Whether you’re an Orvillian or not, this is an awesome release. 10/10

David A McIntee