The Fugitive : A Dissenting View On Re-scoring Of Season Two

I was initially taken by surprise by the rescoring of Season Two, Volume One, but watching the episodes I found that they were made better by the "new" scores. The biggest pet peeve I had with the original score was that too many of the cues became cliches, always a potential problem when using stock music. Viewing episodes with "new" music changed the feel of the episodes because they weren't cliched cues being used; the music kept the emotion of the original score but added a fresh dimension.

Unlike a lot of fans of the show I endorse the rescoring; indeed, I hope Season Four in particular is rescored along the lines of Season Two. I will say that perhaps CBS/Paramount should have issued Volume Two with seperate music tracks (one the original, the other with Mark Heyes' cues) along the lines of what most DVDs offer.

That's your opinion,flawed though it isor you are a studio hack

First of all, why is my argument flawed? And second, why can one not argue with soncerity that the rescoring worked?

Well, Seaverstown doesn't believe that anyone's opinion matters if it differs from his own, so just ignore him. There are more rational people who will be able to voice their disagreement with solid arguments.

Personally, I don't dislike the new scores as much as others. The only cues I truly missed were the title cues coming out of each commercial break the new cues are (were) jarringly off. Incidental music throughout I didn't think it was too bad, though the mixing was terrible, and the volume was often way, way too loud. There was also a crispness to the new music that seemed out of place.

That said, a lot of hyperbole has been used. It's certainly not terrible music it's "okay." And it's been described too often as "synthesizer music." Well, technically, yes, it is, but the words "synthesizer music" conjure up memories of Depeche Mode and the Spoons (both great bands, but not exactly Fugitive-style).

The problem with the replacement music is not the quality of the music so much as it is that it replaces familiar scores. I think the modern composer did an excellent job, in fact; it wasn't his decision to re-score the series.

Again, I could live with replacement music if there was no other way of getting the series, but it seems that now they are returning to the original scores and replacing S2V1, making the debate somewhat moot.

Up yours, Revised. You are a lonely cartoon

Way to go, Seaverstown.

You don't have the intellect to argue points, so you hurl out insults.

Make an intelligent post once in a while and you'll earn some respect. Act like a buffoon and you'll continue to be a laughing stock.

What a sad little boy.

Have you even SEEN the original episodes? I am very offended by your original postit is ignorant.

Seaverstown is absolutely correct. About the music score changes being AWFUL, but also the other posters on this thread being obvious studio hacks, bullying people for making valid complaints about these changes.

Now they;ll tell us HFCS and aspartame are harmless.

Why the hell have they done this to the score?!?

The Wikipedia says this:

For the release of Season 2, Volume 1, entirely new musical scores (created on synthesizer and composed by Mark Heyes, with additional contributions by Sam Winans and Ron Komie) were done to replace the tracked music that had been used for original and rerun broadcasts, syndication and earlier home video releases. CBS/Paramount has yet to offer any detailed explanation for the music replacement, though a recent article on the Film Music Society's web site suggests that the use of several cues from the Capitol Music Library that may have been difficult or impossible to clear could have been the cause. Many fans of the original score wrote letters of protest and boycotted this release with the hope that CBS/Paramount would fix this debacle by reissuing the collection with all of the original music intact.

On 17 February 2009, CBS/Paramount announced a program to issue replacement discs for Season 2 Volume 1, with much of the original music restored. This was a significant effort by CBS to mollify outraged fans. While this was a step in the right direction, many fans concluded that the replacement discs were too little, too late. Several episodes still had major portions of their original scores replaced by the new compositions, and at least one key scene in the episode "Ballad for a Ghost" was deleted entirely. Inexplicably, many of the missing cues were clearly owned outright by CBS. These cues (correctly) appeared in some scenes, yet were replaced in others, reflecting an overcautious CBS Legal Department and needless music replacement.

I agree with you completely-in fact, I also want the same thing, and I think that the almighty bitching, moaning and whining about the altered soundtracks was just that of spoiled children and not grown adults who didn't realize that the old tracks wern't that great anyway. I wish that the same thing was done with the Star Trek box sets as well-the music in them is getting long in the tooth as well, and tiresome to hear constantly repeated over and over again.

Not a good argument. You could say that the series themselves are getting "long in the tooth", in which case why bother with them at all?

A deception has been perpetrated against those members of the public who believed - falsely - that they were purchasing digital copies of the series AS ORIGINALLY BROADCAST.

The reasons for watching classic series such as "The Fugitive" are complex. Fans obviously enjoy the overall premise and the individual storylines. But style as well as content is a factor, and the original soundtrack music is a major determinant of style. If you're too insensitive to see that music performed on digital synthesisers is wildly anachronistic in the context of a series filmed in the early to mid 1960s then you're almost certainly going to be lacking the ability to understand why fans of the show are so angry about something that amounts to cultural vandalism. As it is, you write such legitimate reactions off as "almighty bitching, moaning and whining".

If you're not working for the company that foisted these travesties upon the paying public, then you're a fool; if you are, then you're a rat.

I'm not working for the company, and I'm not a rat, or a fool; just a realist who's not constrained by nostalgia like you into believing that the same incidental music repeated over and over again each episode is cool or okay. I also know of what hoops a company has to go through in releasing a TV show on DVD, and how expensive it can be to get said music when the company that owns it ask for a lot of money, enough to know that what happened wasn't CBS Video's fault at all, but that of the company owning said music.

Rather than acting like a bunch of spoiled children who haven't had their diapers changed, or weren't able to get the toy they wanted from Mommy and Daddy, it would have done you fans of the show well to get pissy with the rights holders of the music in question, and demand something from them, or demand that they conduct the ownership of their properties better But, you didn't; you went after CBS Video and Paramount like a bunch of idiots, even to the point of threatening the executives in addition to other insults. All because you didn't get the right music to a TV show on DVD (and no, you're not the only ones to suffer like this; WKRP In Cincinnati and many other shows have had their music replaced because of cost.) All that this has probably done is make CBS and Paramount wary of putting older shows on DVD other than Star Trek, Perry Mason, Bonanza, I Love Lucy/The Lucy Show, Mission: Impossible. All because of the actions of self-important entitled fans like you. It's amazing to know that in a nation and world plagued by economic, social and environmental problems that require the utmost attention in getting dealt with by all concerned, a group of people who can't watch anything else on TV that's new other than shows from the '50's and '60's because of moralistic bullcrap about 'morals' and 'manners' (as if what Jim Phelps & Co. did against other countries on Mission: Impossible was a moral thing to do) and are trapped in the past completely instead of dealing with the world and life as is it get their underwear all bunched up over a few pieces of music missing from an old TV show on home video. The mind boggles at the waste of time devoted to this.

I guess it's true what Noam Chomsky said about consent being manufactured, especially when it in this manner. But what else is new with people like yourself?

But that's just the point - CBS owned nearly all of the music they replaced. The reason fans were as angry as they were is because other than taking the time and effort to identify those cues the whole thing was unnecessary.

If they had only replaced the cues from the Capitol Library and the incidental music fans could have accepted that. But to remove everything including Pete Rugolo's gorgeous score - and replace it with modern sounding synthesizers? Well that was unforgivable.

Thankfully CBS has chosen to do the right thing and has gone back and restored ALL of the original music to this timeless classic. The new boxset they just released looks AND SOUNDS better than ever!

So you're a "realist" who is "not constrained" by "nostalgia" such as believing that "the same incidental music repeated over and over again" is "cool or okay"? Actually, you sound like an overgrown adolescent who has to employ manipulative, emotionally-toned language as a substitute for rational argument. If it's culpably "nostalgic" to expect the original incidental music, what other programme content might it be un-"cool" or not "okay" to repeat "over and over again" (such repetition being, on your analysis, one of the most regrettable drawbacks about a storage medium such as a DVD)? Perhaps the plot should be altered, the dialogue changed, old footage removed or new footage introduced. Where do you stop? Perhaps it's so hopelessly nostalgic, so terminally uncool to insist upon retaining any component of the original that we should actually change everything.

Such a healthy embrace of change would surely be good for "spoiled children" like me, and might, so to speak, actually constitute a salutary replacement of our "diapers"; far better, I'm sure, than soiling the same old episodes of The Fugitive, or any other classic series, by viewing them repeatedly in the absurd expectation that they ought to remain substantially what their creators intended them to be. How stupid of anyone who objects to DVD releases whose content differs drastically from what might reasonably be expected to "get pissy" by pursuing the manufacturers of the DVDs rather than doing time-consuming research and legwork in tracking down the rights holders of the incidental music, and then pursuing almost certainly complex and expensive litigation in which an asymmetrical battle between slingless Davids and corporate Goliaths with megatonnages of legal armour is joined. Perhaps we should follow the sterling example you set, when not public-spiritedly chastising pathetic individuals like us on a forum like this, and thereby instilling a better sense of true priorities, and expend our misdirected energies (currently spent persecuting blameless executives and cocooning ourselves in the womb-like security of old TV shows, many with an unfashionably reactionary subtext) on setting the problems of a nation and world besieged by economic, social and environmental problems to rights.

It seems to me that the message of the original "Fugitive" series was precisely that one should consult one's own conscience, and not blindly follow the social consensus, so I'm not quite sure why you should appeal to Professor Chomsky for corroboration of your wordy, but incoherent anathema against innocent couch-potatoes like me (the only way I can parse your strange reference to "people like yourself") who just want our old shows not to be tampered with.

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So you're a "realist" who is "not constrained" by "nostalgia" such as believing that "the same incidental music repeated over and over again" is "cool or okay"

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I'm a realist who believes in reality, and in the reality of a situation, or has to depending on said situation, unlike you and your fellow Fugitive fans. The reality at the time was that Paramount Home Video and CBS couldn't use the music then, and didn't do so, so they had a substitute set of music made. You and the other fans couldn't stand that, so you made nasty insults at reviewers and and executives just for the crime of replacing incidental music in a TV show with something better. All because your sense of nostalgia couldn't stand hearing different but similar pieces of music substituting for the same 'beloved' music you most likely heard over and over again the last few times you saw The Fugitive on TV. Neither the plot, cinematography, lighting, sound or anything else was changed. Just the incidental music. But lemming-like, you and the other Fugitive fans acted as if the breasts of your mothers had been desecrated. Over pieces of music. From a stock music catalog.

Considering how certain people have exhibited older movies like Birth Of A Nation and Nosferatu with different soundtracks (the last one has been done this way by a entrepreneur in Toronto to the music of Radiohead's Kid A), the mind boggles.

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If it's culpably "nostalgic" to expect the original incidental music, what other programme content might it be un-"cool" or not "okay" to repeat "over and over again" (such repetition being, on your analysis, one of the most regrettable drawbacks about a storage medium such as a DVD)?

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No other program but this one, at the time it was originally issued on DVD. And as I said, this music's not that important. The greater tragedy for TV programs isn't this one (you didn't lose the main theme) but a show like WKRP In Cincinnati in which the music (actual songs that comment on the mood of the show put in by the writers for a specific reason, not stock music cues from a music library) had to be left out because of the cost of getting said music from the original rights holders and also because including said music would have made the box sets of WKRP In Cincinnati quite expensive. Of course, you could care less, I guess if something like that had to happen, so long as you get your precious music intact? But the company had to care, since said prices would have meant lesser or no sales at all with a ton of boxed sets sitting on the shelves of a store, for an old show with not a lot of buyers. That's the reality[/b of business, and of DVD sales. But what is reality, business or not, to fanatics like you?

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Perhaps the plot should be altered, the dialogue changed, old footage removed or new footage introduced. Where do you stop? Perhaps it's so hopelessly nostalgic, so terminally uncool to insist upon retaining any component of the original that we should actually change everything.

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I don't, wouldn't, and didn't, start, and I only meant it for this show, not others. You on the other hand, have implied that I had for all older shows.

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Such a healthy embrace of change would surely be good for "spoiled children" like me, and might, so to speak, actually constitute a salutary replacement of our "diapers"; far better, I'm sure, than soiling the same old episodes of The Fugitive, or any other classic series, by viewing them repeatedly in the absurd expectation that they ought to remain substantially what their creators intended them to be. How stupid of anyone who objects to DVD releases whose content differs drastically from what might reasonably be expected to "get pissy" by pursuing the manufacturers of the DVDs rather than doing time-consuming research and legwork in tracking down the rights holders of the incidental music, and then pursuing almost certainly complex and expensive litigation in which an asymmetrical battle between slingless Davids and corporate Goliaths with mega-tonnages of legal armor is joined. Perhaps we should follow the sterling example you set, when not public-spiritedly chastising pathetic individuals like us on a forum like this, and thereby instilling a better sense of true priorities, and expend our misdirected energies (currently spent persecuting blameless executives and cocooning ourselves in the womb-like security of old TV shows, many with an unfashionably reactionary subtext) on setting the problems of a nation and world besieged by economic, social and environmental problems to rights.

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I'm responding to fanatics who think that they are owed everything under the sun as it relates to an old TV show on DVD, and can only go after that, but nothing else in life that's more important. With people like you, it's no wonder things are crap. But what does it really mean to you? Not much, so long as you can get somebody else to do the lifting for you of making things better.

Learning who the rights holder to the contested incidental music is hard? It's obviously not hard for you to pester Paramount Home Video and CBS, and treat them in the rude and uncouth manner you and most of the Fugitive fans did about said precious incidental music, though; they're owned by Capitol Records and you could have protested them. But you chose to go after hapless executives at Paramount Home Video and CBS in the manner previously mentioned and quite well known

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It seems to me that the message of the original "Fugitive" series was precisely that one should consult one's own conscience, and not blindly follow the social consensus, so I'm not quite sure why you should appeal to Professor Chomsky for corroboration of your wordy, but incoherent anathema against innocent couch-potatoes like me (the only way I can parse your strange reference to "people like yourself") who just want our old shows not to be tampered with.

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My conscience is crystal clear and what I had to say is also crystal clear, but obviously not to a [fan]atic trapped in the past and unable to live in the present or deal with the future. There's great TV shows on the air right now (I won't be wasting time telling you about them, you can find them out for yourself) and you could watch them. But what will you watch? The same ones you saw when you were younger. Proves most of what I've said before.

At any rate, your attitude and those of your fellow fans of The Fugitive has probably doomed any other older TV property from being issued on DVD or Blu-Ray DVD save for future releases done as DVD on demand similar to the Warner Archive (and only sold through Amazon, burned onto a DVD with no bells or whistles whatsoever.) All because you couldn't hear some old incidental music from a TV show that you've seen before, and pitched a big temper tantrum.

I haven't yet made it to season 2 (I'm a Fugitive noob) and so haven't heard the new music, but I agree that the original score is not very good. It's repetitive and melodramatic. Musically, there's nothing really interesting happening, IMO of course.