In these difficult times, an escape can be nice, and there’s nothing more escapist than the 1968-1970 TV series Land of the Giants, from legendary producer Irwin Allen. Its premise, similar to Allen’s earlier megahit Lost in Space, follows a group of travelers on a spaceship in the then-distant future of 1983. Their craft goes off course, leaving them marooned on a planet inhabited by 70-foot-tall people, from whom our heroes must constantly try to escape.

To compose the score for the pilot, Allen turned to his trusted friend John Williams. Although beloved today by film music fans for his epic symphonic scores such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Superman, his 1960s output was surprisingly different. Working under the name Johnny Williams, his film scores consisted largely of frothy comedies, but he also composed for a huge number of TV shows.

Irwin Allen (L) and John Williams (R)

Fun fact! Among other projects, Williams scored the pilot and much of the first season of Gilligan’s Island. In addition, and more importantly for his future career, he scored the pilot and four more episodes of Lost in Space for Irwin Allen – as well as the pilot of Allen’s later series The Time Tunnel.

Allen brought Williams back to score the pilot of Land of the Giants – along with the main title cues for each season. Their relationship would eventually lead to two of Williams’s breakout scores in the early 1970s – the Allen-produced films The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Both of those scores garnered Oscar nominations for Williams and are important milestones in his progression to the sweeping symphonic style he’s best known for. Both have also recently been restored and re-released by La-La Land Records, alongside his score for Earthquake, in a gorgeous box set.

A limited amount of music from Land of the Giants was previously released on CD by GNP/Crescendo Records in 1996. That disc, part of a series of Irwin Allen TV show soundtracks, is now long out of print. It included a majority of Williams’s score for the pilot, along with his main and end title cues from seasons 1 and 2. It also included a bonus suite of music from an earlier rejected score for the pilot by noted Star Trek (original series) composer Alexander Courage, who would go on to work with Williams countless times as an orchestrator.

La-La Land’s 4-CD set (released in 2018) blows that album out of the water. It features music from nearly 30 episodes over the entire two-season run of the show. In addition, it includes Williams’s complete score for the pilot, for the first time ever, as well as his theme tunes from the earlier CD. Courage’s rejected music from the pilot is included at the end as bonus material.

The primary draw for many collectors will likely be the Williams material, and even though much of it was already released, 20 years of technical advancements mean the remastered music sounds markedly superior to the 1996 CD.

That said, it’s important to remember two things about these scores. First, they were created more than 50 years ago, so they reflect the limitations of recordings from that era. Second, they were recorded for use on a show that was broadcast in mono, as all television was at the time. The liner notes are a bit unclear on these specs – all the music here sounds like it’s mono – but it’s beautifully preserved.

The film Planet of the Apes was released just before Williams recorded his replacement pilot score, and producer Allen was a huge fan of it. As a result, portions of Williams’s score have nods to Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic score for the original Apes, with its brutal, atonal percussion. Land of the Giants was intended to have a more dramatic tone than Lost in Space, so the score reflects that darker mood.

This is not as melodic a score as Williams fans will be used to. Most of it is more like the suspense music in The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno – atonal and unsettling. It has lovely lyrical portions, too, and it brilliantly gives a sense of epic sweep, even with a more modestly sized orchestra than the massive ones Williams would eventually command.

Williams’s pilot score jumps out, as much as anything, for all the hints of his future epic scores – brilliant flashes and flourishes, fragments and shadings of mood and tone. It’s clear he was destined to go on to greatness.

In addition to the Williams material, the real treat here is the inclusion of three and a half discs filled with previously unreleased scores from over two dozen other episodes. They are the work of eight other composers from within Fox’s music department, which controlled the scoring of the series. Leith Stevens, Joseph Mullendore, Paul Sawtell, Irving Gertz, Harry Geller, Richard LaSalle, Artie Kane, and Robert Prince – most of whom had worked on previous Allen projects – are all represented here.

Although they are not the household names that John Williams has become, it’s impressive that La-La Land has assembled such a thorough overview of the music from the show’s two-season run. Some portions of these scores have never been heard before at all, as they were dropped from the broadcast versions and replaced with cues from earlier episodes – often Williams’s pilot score.

True devotees of the show will know the exact scenes the music was written for, and fans of the individual composers will be able to discern their unique voices, which are definitely present.

They are subtle, however, because the composers were all writing, as the liner notes explain, to something of a “house style,” set both by Williams’s pilot score and by the head of Fox’s music department, the legendary Lionel Newman, for the shows Allen produced.

The scores are all wonderfully entertaining and skillfully executed, filled with melodrama and mystery. Every bit of it is a joy to listen to, and though there’s a consistent tone running through it all, it’s never monotonous. Some cues have a jazzy feel, whereas other portions have thrilling suspense work reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann. What could be more fun than to slip away into hours and hours of 1960s television fantasy?

It can be particularly fun to pick out the influences of various film scores on the episode scores here. This is not meant to be a criticism in any way – scores in television and features are routinely based on existing material, which is used as temp tracks in editing. The skillful composers here bring a great deal more to their work than just mimicry; it’s simply enjoyable to look for all the direct quotes and more indirect homages.

The primary influence hanging over the entire collection is Goldsmith’s iconic Planet of the Apes score, which looms large over both Williams’s pilot score and later scores.

One score that’s especially lively is Richard LaSalle’s for the episode “A Small War.” It was recorded and aired only weeks after the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service premiered, and the influence of John Barry’s score for that film is clearly felt. The central melodic line of the score is almost identical to Barry’s main theme – either Allen or LaSalle was clearly a fan.

In the later episode “Graveyard of Fools,” LaSalle references Lalo Schifrin’s score for Bullit, creates a witty homage to the main theme from Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo, and even quotes Barry’s OHMSS again.

Alexander Courage’s rejected score for the pilot is brief but powerful, and the opening portion seems to nod to Ernest Gold’s score to the sci-fi classic On the Beach, from a decade earlier.

It’s amazing to think that television shows all used to have big orchestral scores like these, and La-La Land deserves enormous credit for diving deep into the vaults and bringing out such a comprehensive overview of the music from this series, as well as for finally making Williams’s complete pilot score available.

The limited-run 4-CD set retails for $59.98 (only 1,000 are available), but La-La Land is running a 30% off sale until May 31. If you plan to buy it, keep in mind that they only pressed 1,000 copies, and remaining supplies are apparently very limited.

FYI: A gorgeous new coffee table book called The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen was also published last year. It’s lavishly illustrated with amazing color photos from Allen’s archives and details the development and production of his many movies and TV shows, with a section on Land of the Giants.