About the Soundtrack: The mini-series event,
Torchwood: Children of Earth, has started airing on BBC America and so it's a perfect time to review the soundtrack.
Ben Foster, who assists
Murray Gold on his
Doctor Who activities and is the main composer for the regular
Torchwood series, wrote a staggering amount of music for this 5 part special event. The soundtrack offers music that presented in segments based on the day-to-day activities from
Children of Earth, which was rather fun to follow along with while listening to the music. In total, 40 tracks make up the Soundtrack with the final 2 cues serving as bonus entries, in a sense.
What You Need to Know: Children of Earth is a high energy miniseries with a rather complex amount of genre touches. Ben Foster had to someway come up with a score that captured all the fantasy, drama, humor, and science fiction themes coursed through the mini-series. For such a daunting task, the talented maestro did quite a nice job with it.
In looking at the music of Torchwood, I consider the scores to be quite indulging but not with the same type of magical touches that are heard from Gold's Doctor Who pieces. The vibe, however, is present and Foster does a capable job of carving out his own voice in this universe. Children of Earth allowed him to attack the material as if he were scoring one giant film since the events in the mini-series take place over the course of 5 days. With that, the score is divided into daily segments on the soundtrack, with each one having a series of tracks representing the happenings of that particular episode. Again, I found this to be a rather enlightening way to present the music on the soundtrack as this approach offered a bit more of a storytelling touch!
For me, the music in Torchwood is all about the fabulously constructed theme for Captain Jack. On Children of Earth, Jack's theme drops in for a couple of guest appearances, but on a whole, it isn't heard from too often. Instead, an overarching sci-fi theme serves as the center piece and guides the listener through the journey. It's not a rousing theme like Jack's, since it's meant to convey a different type of vibe, but I found it to be a nice anchor for the storyline of this saga. That said, I did lament that I did not hear more from Jack's theme because it really does play well and has an addicting energy about it.
As far as which "days" are my favorite from the score? That would have to be day 4. The selections from this segment provide some of the more moving experiences on the soundtrack and appears to be where the most dramatic turns of the story take place. Indeed, Ben really extended the score to epic proportions during this segment of the score and it proved to be the most memorable for me. But don't get me wrong -- along the journey there are quite a bit of other stellar moments, ranging from its action material to that of a stirring, dramatic variety. In all, it's a very nice score that trumps most of what you hear on television in the States and makes for a nice companion soundtrack for Doctor Who fans.
