...doing in a rotten series like this?
My knowledge of Star Trek arcana may not be enough to make me a hard-core Trekkie, but I was dedicated enough almost a decade ago to actually look forward to the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise. But my first hearing of the dreadful Faith of the Heart should have warned me about just how seriously the show would eventually suck. The Diane Warren composition didn't even fit with the visual part of Enterprise's opening title, let alone the spirit of the Star Trek franchise. I won't dignify that song with a link, because this Friday Double isn't about wastes of bad music on brutally disappointing television series.
It's about wastes of good music on brutally disappointing television series.
There are a few reasons why I don't hate Enterprise nearly as much as its predecessor, Star Trek: Voyager. First, Enterprise had better plots. Second, it didn't have salamanders. Third, I might have felt better about Enterprise had its opening title resembled the gorgeous treatment Voyager got.
To tell the truth, I had given up on Voyager well before it got to those salamanders. It's just too bad Jerry Goldsmith's theme couldn't grace a show that deserved it.
Jeff Beal, whom I sometimes call HBO's resident composer, penned my other feature today. Carnivàle had an opening title that framed it even more perfectly than Voyager -- but it sold a series that proved even more bitterly disappointing.
A blown Star Trek production like Voyager was inevitable, and so, too, was a bad HBO series. Even at that, though, Carnivàle gave the HBO viewing world a shock. Not even producer Ronald D. Moore liked it, as he would admit in a DVD comment track for his better known and liked series, Battlestar Galactica (2004).
So which other bad TV series got great opening credits?
2 comments:
I won't say bad series necessarily, but here's a few series where the theme is the best thing about them.
Peter Gunn
Mission: Impossible
True Blood
I'm sure there are others and your mileage may vary.
Gunn and Mission don't make my list because, well, I was too young to have expectations for TV series. But I can certainly see lots of folks putting them on their lists. The original theme for Hawai'i Five-O also falls in that category.
My opinion on True Blood will have to wait until I've seen an episode.
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