McCreary Allowed 'Terminator' Movies To Influence Music

With "Sarah Connor's" cast and crew filled with fans of the Terminator movie series started by James Cameron back in the 1980s, Fox may have itself its first bonafide science-fiction hit since "The X-Files" or even "Firefly" (if you're not counting ratings), and composer Bear McCreary knows a hit when he sees one.

The musical maestro took on SciFi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica," making his cues the 12th Cylon and one of the most important characters of the series. While his music may not have the same role in "Sarah Connor," it's still an important storytelling element that can go a long way in helping or hurting a potential television series.

"I think that Terminator fans will be thrilled," McCreary recently told SyFy Portal's Michael Hinman. "My inspiration was pretty obviously the scores for 'Terminator' and 'Terminator 2.' Those were among my personal favorite scores of my childhood, and I always wanted the opportunity to do something with it."

That score was the work of Brad Fiedel, who has been composing music since 1975's "Suicide Cult." It's the kind of music that has staying power, even nearly 25 years later, and it took little effort for McCreary to incorporate that into the new Terminator's overall soundtrack.

"It's a very cold and synthetic sound," he said. "Both those scores from the first two Terminator films were very different, and they were both very cutting edge. They were really at the cutting edge of technology at the time."

Even though listening to the score from the original film might sound like something fans would've heard from the 1980s in hindsight, Fiedel was able to do a lot with a small amount of technology available to him at the time period. No matter when the music is played, however, it's still the distinctive theme of the Terminator franchise, and that is something that has to carry over into the new series, otherwise audiences will find it almost impossible to accept this outing as a true Terminator outing, McCreary said.

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