The score to Star Trek II makes a good movie great.
Easy one.
My two favorite movie soundtracks regardless of genre are
Blade Runner (Vangelis)
and
Alien (Goldsmith).
third place goes to a Western: Long Riders (Cooder, Lindley)
Another nice Williams piece is that for E.T. the Extraterrestial.
I’d nominate a good many of the bits from Babylon 5. It’s a show that you have to watch at least twice to really appreciate; it’s only when the plot doesn’t hold you that you appreciate how good the music is. One bit in particular, however, moved me when I first heard it, before I’d actually, technically, watched the show, the background music here: Londo Mollari comments on the Earth-Minbari War - YouTube
The part I’m talking about kicks in at about a minute.
I happen to like Carmina Burana a lot, and I know it is overused, but the usage of O Fortuna in *Excaliber *was excellent.
Strauss Waltz, 2001 a Space Odyssey
The opening theme to the original “Total Recall” with Arnold.
Runner-up is from “Superman,” but not the main theme, the haunting sequence as the **Dome Of Justice! ** (or whatever) opens on Krypton , closing with the sound effect from The Hula Hoops of Imprisonment!.
Third place, theme from High School of the Dead, a zombie-apocalpyse anime. A poem about loss and crying in the rain, set to speed-metal, but it’s catchy.
The Blue Danube, to be precise. While “Also sprach Zarathustra” is great, the audacity of scoring the spacecraft scenes to a waltz takes it for me.
i’ll second the music for Homeworld. it’s simply approriate, echoing the loss of your home and the feeling of desolation amidst the vastness of space.
My favorite is the Cliff Martinez soundtrack to the 2002 Steven Soderbergh remake of Solaris, especially the various interpretations of the central theme music, such as: this and also this.
Written by Peter Schickele, of all people.
There are so many scores and themes from sci-fi that I like, but the one I find myself listening to more often than others is This Is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home from the 3rd series of NuWho. I’d heard it first in the series, but when I saw a fan-made Doctor Who video on youtube by Seduff, it definitely became my favorite.
Honorable mentions would be:
- I Am The Doctor and Doctor Who XI (opening title music) from NuWho series 5
- Enterprising Young Men from the Star Trek 2009 reboot
- the score from the binary sunset sequence in Star Wars: A New Hope
“The Power of Seven” Halo theme.
I always expect to see Ric Flair “walk that aisle” when I hear that. Woooooo!
I really love “Princess Leia’s Theme” from the original Star Wars and “Yoda’s Theme” from The Empire Strikes Back, both by John Williams, of course.
I’m also partial to Wendy Carlos’ Tron soundtrack and Vangelis’ work on Blade Runner.
The only movie music that I’ve loved so much that I went out and bought the soundtrack was Lord of the Rings. All three of them. Awesome stuff.
Another great video game soundtrack - Mass Effect. Reminiscent of the NuWho soundtracks.
Suicide Missionfrom Mass Effect 2.
Has anything from Holst’s *The Planets *been used in a movie?
Barry Grey’s Thunderbirds theme ought to be the planetary anthem of Earth.