Released through composer Dennis McCarthy’s web site, the music from the first and last episodes of the first season of Fox’s 1995 SF series Sliders will probably sound familiar to fans of McCarthy’s Star Trek work. It’s more of the same of McCarthy’s signature style, though it’s just possible that he gets to cut loose a bit more here – there are more action setpieces in the music than one would expect to find in the average episode of Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. This CD includes selections from the two episodes McCarthy scored in the first season – the two-hour pilot movie and the season finale Luck Of The Draw.
McCarthy’s trademark foreboding style is all over the pilot; with the exception of a few more exciting than usual action cues, much of his pilot score might as well be a Star Trek score, if a slightly more energetic one than usual. Cues like “The Ice Tornado” are big, bustling action cues of precisely the kind that executive producer Rick Berman discouraged at nearly all costs on Trek; fortunately, though, this isn’t Trek.
McCarthy splits the difference between his orchestral style and something a bit more contemporary with the cues from Luck Of The Draw, the first season finale episode which involved a parallel Earth that uses lotttery-selected suicide as a means of population control. For action cues that don’t have to musically illustrate that society, McCarthy slips back into full orchestral mode, again a little more boisterously than he generally would’ve been allowed to be in that other SF universe.
The rest of the first season was scored by Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo fame), who also composed the series’ main theme; his contributions don’t appear here.
Wrapping up the Sliders CD is a McCarthy original, “Past, Present & Future Suite”, which combines a wild electric guitar intro with some of the composer’s favorite Trek cues, including the heroic opening from the second season opener The Child, and some completely original “rock” material. The opening minute or so of this piece is just awe-inspiring, but its more contemporary middle section peters out about before getting back to business. Still, it’s basically a piece of Next Generation music that hasn’t been heard elsewhere, which is why I’ve got this in the database as a Star Trek soundtrack.
The Sliders soundtrack is an interesting piece of work, and fans of his work (or even listeners who thought he was playing action sequences awfully tame on Star Trek) will probably dig it, whether they’ve seen the show in question or not.
- Main Title (1:38)
- The Wormhole (1:56)
- The First Slide (4:42)
- The Ice World (3:16)
- Ice Tornado (4:11)
- Strange Land (3:33)
- The Rescue (2:23)
- Wade’s Death? (1:46)
- Sliders Escape (2:28)
- Interlude (1:11)
- Finale / End Credits (1:38)
- Slide In (0:29)
- A New World (1:15)
- The Girl’s Suicide (2:51)
- Jail Break (2:26)
- Wade In Danger (1:23)
- Slide Out / Quinn Shot (3:12)
- Past, Present And Future Suite (2:40)
Released by: Dennis McCarthy
Release date: 2007
Total running time: 42:58
