Whats this, another special edition of Film Score Friday? That’s right, with the massive summer season beginning in just a few short weeks I wanted to spend a little time now on a topic I have long wanted to write about, famous film composers who have written classic TV Themes.

Many famous film composers have taken their talents to the small screen, writing music for pilots or crafting original main themes. Unfortunately a lot of that really great work goes under valued in the overall catalog of these talented musicians. In this week’s Film Score Friday I aim to make up for some of that oversight, and spend some quality time focusing on some of the great TV work these renowned film composers have done.

-John Williams-

The best place to start is with the most famous of all film composers, John Williams. Back in his earliest days Williams, then known as Johnny, wrote music for TV shows. He did music for the pilot episode of Gilligan’s Island, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants, but his most famous early TV work was writing for Lost in Space.

In a time when it sounds like a good idea to studio executives to rerelease classic films in 3D, it’s nice to see a simple gesture done to a classic set of films like upgrading them to 1080p that really makes you appreciate the times we live in.

That’s exactly what 20th Century Fox’s Home Entertainment brand did when they released the original Robocop trilogy in Blu-Ray. And you can believe that these classic sci-fi films still hold up to this day.

There isn’t much to the discs except for the film. There are very little special features, with the exception of some great old trailers. Though if you’re going to shell out money on films like these, you’ve got to do it purely for the fact that you can now add the Robocop films to your fancy new Blu-Ray collection.

For those who were in a cave from 1987 to 19992, the films are about the murder of Officer Alex Murphy by a group of drugged up thugs. The officer is brutally gunned down, with only part of his brain and chest still intact. Scientists from the ubiquitous company OCP rebuild Murphy into a state of the art crime fighting cyborg called Robocop who is built to clean up the town, avenging his death along the way.

If seeing Peter Weller blow stuff up and walk through fire in 1080p isn’t enough, consider how the storytelling of acclaimed directors Paul Verhoeven, Irvin Kershner, and Fred Dekker will look in these cleaned up prints and digitally remastered audio.