a look at 'The Viking Mission'

The inspiration for 'The Viking Mission' came a few years ago, starting when on a whim I rented a copy of the TV adaption of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles  from the local video store. I enjoyed it so much that I thought it would be fun to write a theme that might work as the opening title music to a weekly TV show about similar subject matter. Therefore, I wanted to keep it short; which is why this piece runs about 1:20. (EDIT: In January '09 I remixed the piece and extended it!)

The theme starts off as a soundscape, with the visualization that we are in a ship gliding over the barren planet surface of Mars and seeing it from above. Then unexpectedly, we suddenly encounter something startling which is punctuated at the precise moment the orchestra comes in. Before we have a chance to comprehend what we are looking at, the music and visual abruptly ends in an almost menacing, unsettled tone. Then our story starts...

The title is borrowed from the name of NASA's 1976 un-manned probe (The Viking) that landed on Mars.

Listen to The Viking Mission

(note: The Viking mission was the same expedition where the since-controversial alleged geological artifacts were discovered. The investigation into this by Dr. Richard Hoagland has always fascinated me, and is also part of the reason why I named my piece after the Viking.)