While fans continue to await word of whether the cult hit sci-fi series “The Orville” will be renewed for a fourth season, Hollywood Records March 3 released the soundtrack for the show’s third season on all music streaming platforms.
Created by and starring Seth MacFarlane, “The Orville” ran for two seasons on the Fox network before moving to the Hulu streaming platform, where the third season, dubbed The Orville: New Horizons, debuted in 2022. Episodes later became available on Disney+.
The Orville: New Horizons Original Television Soundtrack contains more than four-and-a-half-hours of music, with selections from all 10 episodes from the season — a total of 72 tracks. The playlist mostly comprises the show’s original score, but also includes two songs from members of the cast: Simon & Garfunkel’s “Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall” performed by Scott Grimes and Anne Winters in the episode “Domino,” and Grimes singing James Taylor’s “Secret O’ Life” from the finale, “Future Unknown.”
The score was composed by Joel McNeely, John Debney, Andrew Cottee and Kevin Kaska, and recorded with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the historic Newman Scoring Stage at Fox Studios by Academy Award-winning sound engineer Shawn Murphy.
“These four composers have written the finest, most lush orchestral scores in television today. Enjoy their brilliant work. I know I do,” MacFarlane said in a statement.
In addition, composer Bruce Broughton recorded a new arrangement of his main title theme for “The Orville.”
A downloadable version of the album is available to purchase through online retailers — Amazon has it for $23.99, while the iTunes store has it for $24.99.
The soundtrack album was produced by Dan Goldwasser, McNeely, Debney, Cottee and Kaska, alongside executive album producers MacFarlane and Joy Fehily.
Soundtracks for the first two seasons were previously released on CD and online.
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At the “Orville” press event during the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con International, the show’s executive producer Brannon Braga and co-producer/editor Tom Constantino discussed the process of scoring the show, which begins with the editors temporarily adding pre-existing music.
“Seth is a human jukebox,” Constantino said. “Seth’s musical breadth of knowledge is beyond anything we’ve ever seen. So he takes our music, and then takes his own music and does a music pass with the music editors, and that sort of becomes the shorthand for the amazing composers we have.”
“The temp scores on this show are airable,” Braga said. “So much work goes just into the temp score. Then you get a composer coming in. And we don’t reuse cues; every single score is an original score for that episode, recorded with a full orchestra, a 90-piece orchestra that Seth supervises himself. It’s a really important thing to him. So much work goes into the score of this show.”
“We’re very blessed with our composers,” Constantino said. “Those guys should be doing every single ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Marvel’ movie that ever came along.”