Why did Williams only score 4 episodes of lost in Space?

[King Mark 3,625]

Just wondering .They tracked his music in most of the episodes of the series for 3 years . Why didn't they have him score more episodes?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Because in the 60's that's how TV music was done generally. You hired a composer or a few composers do a a certain amount of music and track that music in episodes throughout the season. It saved money and time. I think it wasn't till the mid-80's after the musicians strike that TV shows in the US were required to have full original scores.

[Thor 7,465]

I think it's mostly because Williams' contract with Revue had expired at this point, after which he mostly focussed on pilots and the occasional episode as a freelancer. His four episodes for LiS is actually more than most other TV things he did in his post-contract period between 1964/65 and 1968 (the length of his contract varies according to which source you use -- I've seen 5, 6 and 7 years given as the duration).

 

It must have been a cool gig for Williams at the time (he was recommended to Irwin Allen by Lionel Newman), the opportunity to do science fiction, which he hadn't done before. I think that's why he did a bit more than usual.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Didn't he have better things to do than commit to an entire TV series that ends with the main dude turning into a hammy vegetable?

[karelm 2,903]

How many episodes of Gilligan’s Island did he do?  Probably similarly he just did the pilot and maybe first episode or two but his music was tracked throughout the series making it feel Williamsy.  Same with Sandy Courage with Star Trek.  He wrote just the theme and pilot but staff composers wrote the series.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Sandy Courage was a "staff composer" actually.

[Thor 7,465]

1 hour ago, karelm said:

How many episodes of Gilligan’s Island did he do?  Probably similarly he just did the pilot and maybe first episode or two but his music was tracked throughout the series making it feel Williamsy.  Same with Sandy Courage with Star Trek.  He wrote just the theme and pilot but staff composers wrote the series.

 

Williams only wrote music for the unaired pilot episode that was then subsequently tracked throughout the series.

 

As I said earlier, Williams wrote a lot of 'pilot' music from 1965 onwards, and then moved on to other projects (whether the pilots were picked up or not).

[JoeinAR 1,949]

I only know that somedays I am a season 1&2 theme guy and others I am a season 3 guy. Either way its great.

[The Five Tones 302]

And yet Allen/Fox choose to track Bernard Herrmann's "The Marker" from Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) for the (actually filmed real-life tech) jet pack scenes. The jet pack, only the single most coveted and jokingly resented piece of personal technology of the past 60 years, or essentially since human consciousness. He's the greatest composer of our era, but JW has had to deal with getting put in his place a lot, which might seem unbelievable now. Fwiw, 12-Mile Reef (I have the 2001 FSM release) is a great score.

[Thor 7,465]

5 hours ago, The Five Tones said:

And yet Allen/Fox choose to track Bernard Herrmann's "The Marker" from Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) for the (actually filmed real-life tech) jet pack scenes. The jet pack, only the single most coveted and jokingly resented piece of personal technology of the past 60 years, or essentially since human consciousness. He's the greatest composer of our era, but JW has had to deal with getting put in his place a lot, which might seem unbelievable now. Fwiw, 12-Mile Reef (I have the 2001 FSM release) is a great score.

 

That was also Lionel Newman's decision. I thought it worked great in that scene.

[The Five Tones 302]

It's iconic, no doubt about it. If I had seen 12-Mile as a child, I don't remember it, but when I did seek out the DVD decades later, I could only hear that cue as the jet pack music.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

On 2/4/2019 at 7:18 AM, karelm said:

How many episodes of Gilligan’s Island did he do?  Probably similarly he just did the pilot and maybe first episode or two but his music was tracked throughout the series making it feel Williamsy.  Same with Sandy Courage with Star Trek.  He wrote just the theme and pilot but staff composers wrote the series.

 

I've only ever seen Gerald Fried credited for doing Gilligan scores. His name is in every episode's end credits. I don't remember any music from the unaired pilot aside from the awful Calypso song that we're all thankful was never used, but some people believe that the recurring Gilligan theme that appears in many episodes was composed by Williams.

[Thor 7,465]

2 hours ago, Ghostbusters II said:

 

I've only ever seen Gerald Fried credited for doing Gilligan scores. His name is in every episode's end credits. I don't remember any music from the unaired pilot aside from the awful Calypso song that we're all thankful was never used, but some people believe that the recurring Gilligan theme that appears in many episodes was composed by Williams.

 

Series creator Sherwood Schwartz composed the discarded 'calypso' song, just as he composed the final theme song (I've always found it amusing that J. J. Abrams did the same thing for LOST, another 'desert island' series, albeit totally different). Williams is credited in a lot of end credits, as if he had written new music for each episode (when it was just re-use of his unaired pilot material). Depends on what you mean with recurring "Gilligan theme". Williams did indeed write several themes that recurred throughout the series.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

I remember the song Ginger performed for the Miss Castaway contest.

[King Mark 3,625]

is there a you tube video of a Williams Gilligan theme?

 

did he compose the theme song?

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

 

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Well, you ain't gonna get that with reruns of Gilligan's Island... Gilligan's Island... Yeah, the one with the boat.