Since I have never seen the show, I certainly think that it's a good thing that this CD was released. Had it not been, I never would have known just how good television music can still be. While most of it is indeed sampled, as opposed to live performance, it does not hurt the effectiveness of the music. The samples themselves are of very high quality, and in some cases, will decieve your ears into believing that they're real. So, sound quality, despite the heavy use of synth, should not be a factor to worry about when considering to purchase this or not (though some of the action music in track 6 is an exception).

Since his name is obviously the most recongnizable, Joel Goldsmith has the largest portion of the CD devoted to his music. While he and the other composers do make heavy use of David Arnold's original themes, they decide to introduce new themes of their own into the mix. Even Kevin Kiner, whose music I was badly dissapointed by on Wing Commander, does an excellent job. Though I'm really not in a position to judge his entire career since I've heard so little of his music, though I could swear that he adds a statement of Arnold's Independence Day main theme near the center of track 5 (listen to the strings at about 6:13).

Rather than being cues directly from the shows, the tracks on the CD are divided into lengthy suites, which actually makes the music work much better on disc. It would have been more of a pain to sift through smaller cues, and while a couple of the tracks start to wear out their welcome after a while (tracks 5 and 7 are over ten minutes each), none of the music really becomes unlistenable.