Discovered – A New Dimension To Stargate SG-1

You have to understand something here. I am deaf, or at least very hard of hearing. My normal routine is to lip read and enjoy closed captioning on my favorite television shows.

I don’t use the phone much, and if I do, it is with an amplified phone. The amplification is very good. If I miss what someone said when I answer the phone, my neighbor next door can usualy tell me what I missed.

But I much prefer email for all my communications. For some reason I can hear much better with email than I can with a land line.

But I digress. Stargate SG-1, if you were to ask me, is the best sci-fi to be found on television today. It is beginning its eighth year next month, and the writing is superb. I know the writing is good. It is what’s shown on the captioning for each episode.

And, because I can lip read, I can also pick up the little nuances that are spoken, which captioning misses. Consider captioning a digest, especially when there is a lot of talking going on.

This new dimension I discovered to my eight year old TV show is the music. I recently got a real hearing aid, and when its cranked up, and when my TV speakers are madly vibrating enough to rattle the windows, I can actually hear the music that this show (obviously) has had all along.

My first impression of it, is that it is pretty sucky. The show did very well without it for all these years, and I am not sure it is an improvement at all. The music is not an orchestra playing a score written to each scene. Its more like electronically generated music, but with a heavy dose of that music you could hear on ham radio a long time ago, coming from Moscow every evening. Heavy on theatrics, and smarmy emotional grift.

Some of it reminds me of my early youth, mispent in front of the radio, listening to Sargent Preston of the Yukon. That was always an odd, upbeat piece of music designed for its young audience, and for some reason, it is almost completely recreated as the background music for Stargate SG-1.

Talk about a paradigm shift! Now, with the sound on, my favorite show seems more like saturday morning cartoons!

I’m going back to captioning, and leave the sound off. The show is much better and more mature science fiction without all that electronic cacophony.

Perhaps its the music, guys, that keeps that show from being more popular, or begin taken more seriously. At least get Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams to redo your music for you.

Anyone else have problems with their music? Are there other shows which actually have good background music? Or should I keep my hearing aid in its box?

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