The Best of Babylon 5 – music by Christopher Franke

Posted on by Earl Green
2 min read

Order this CDThis CD, originally included free on a limited edition basis with Sierra’s nifty Official Guide To Babylon 5 CD-ROM (and later released separately), contains numerous snippets of the first two Babylon 5 compilation albums and the first series of five episodic soundtracks, arranged in a completely different order and linked together musically to some degree. The selection of cues isn’t bad at all, including the “Into The Abyss” passage from Z’Ha’Dum, and “Mobilization” and “The Big Battle” from Severed Dreams, though the latter is cut painfully short, omitting some very good music which was also left out of the Babylon 5: Messages From Earth compilation; some of the cues, when heard this close together, reveal just how repetitive Franke’s scoring can be, especially with Shadow Dancing‘s cues repeating wholesale passages from Severed Dreams. The second, third and fourth season themes are also included. The real treat is a pair of different versions of a theme specially composed by Chris Franke for the upcoming Babylon 5 space simulator game which is due around Christmas 3 out of 41998 – a very distinctively Babylon-ian piece of music which doesn’t use any of the themes established for the television show. I think this would be a nifty musical intro to the upcoming Crusade spinoff series, in fact. For B5 fans who, unlike me, aren’t ardent collectors of soundtracks, this CD features some of the best of the first five CDs’ music (but also leaves out some of the best too).

  1. Main Title – Second Season (1:27)
  2. The Geometry of Shadows III (3:43)
  3. Sheridan and Father (2:35 – from Severed Dreams)
  4. Mobilization (1:43 – from Severed Dreams)
  5. The Big Battle (5:26 – from Severed Dreams)
  6. The Signal (2:12 – from Shadow Dancing)
  7. Awakening (1:46 – from A Late Delivery to Avalon)
  8. Countdown (0:33 – from Shadow Dancing)
  9. Main Title – Third Season (1:28)
  10. Into the Abyss (8:46 – from Z’Ha’Dum)
  11. Begin to Attack the Shadows (0:51 – from Walkabout)
  12. Emergency Treatment (0:34 – from Shadow Dancing)
  13. The Geometry of Shadows II (3:17)
  14. The Geometry of Shadows I (5:40)
  15. Main Title – Fourth Season (1:38)
  16. Main Theme – Sierra Game (1:34)
  17. Main Theme (Extended) – Sierra Game (6:09)
  18. End Titles (0:37)

Released by: Sonic Images
Release date: 1997
Total running time: 50:02

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