Even if a composer deliberately moves between genres to test the mind in scoring comedy, romance, action, horror, and sci-fi, it’s still a struggle to treat each project as unique – and that includes developing a sound that doesn’t recall prior works. There’s personal style, and then there’s old habits that can sometimes sneak into the writing process, and affect the development of themes, motifs, and the overall score.

With Battlestar Galactica permanently etched into his brain, Bear McCreary’s manic workload is probably representative of a solid work ethic, but may also be the composer’s own solution to keeping the ideas fresh, the mind nimble, and the desire for new sounds constant.

In our Q&A, McCreary touches upon these subjects, as well as the new CD release of Human Target which gathers some rough material for fans to make their own judgments of early thematic concepts.

Mark R. Hasan: Was the show’s large orchestral design present from the onset?

Bear McCreary: It was. In fact, even before I was hired, showrunner Jonathan Steinberg knew that he wanted an orchestra, even for the pilot(!), and in fact one of the things he fought for and got was we recorded the pilot score before the show was even picked up. [That's] very unusual for a television pilot, to spend that kind of money up front, but he knew from the beginning that it was an integral part of the character of the show, and the tone of the show, and I think he was right; the show got picked up, and it was really just a wonderful experience.

MRH: The series itself is based on a graphic novel, and I’m curious if the showrunner may have be influenced by some of the early productions. For me, one of the most standout soundtracks written for a comic book series was The Flash (1990) – which is truly amazing.

BM: I can’t speak for John Steinberg, but I’m sure that he’s aware of that. I think his influence was more on the cinematic side, personally. He and I both were sort of not looking at television so much as an influence but movies. We wanted to make an action movie every week, and I think the biggest influence - for the character of the show, and the music as well - would be the Indiana Jones movies, the Die Hard movies, and the Lethal Weapon movies, especially the early ones of those franchises. That’s the kind of balance between action and comedy where it’s action and it’s intense, but it’s also funny and it makes you smile. It’s that kind of seventies and eighties sensibility that isn’t so popular now.

People don’t do this, and in many ways it’s a very different series than something like 24 or Prison Break or any other contemporary action show. It was a little more old school, and the music more than anything else helped establish that tone, and I think helped bring the audience in and say ‘Look, this is what we’re doing. We’re going for this kind of vibe.’