86. Robotech II: The Sentinels Music Guide

What follows is a list of all the music that appeared in the standard version of Robotech II: The Sentinels. Bold text denotes that this is the first appearance of that piece of music.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Before I even get started, I have to address the question of which came first, Robotech II: The Sentinels or Robotech: The Movie? On the one hand, I've read that the only reason they were able to record the new "Robotech Theme (Enhanced Version)" was because of Robotech the Movie, so that would imply it came first. But on the other hand, Robotech: The Movie heavily reuses music that we know was written first for The Sentinels. I suspect there was all this crossover because they were both being worked on at more or less the same time in 1986. Counting which one comes first would then seem to depend on which one was released first, but even that isn't cut and dry. Robotech: The Movie did premiere in 35 movie theaters in Texas and ran for at least three weeks, but thanks to Cannon Films' reaction to that Texas run it failed to ever get a nationwide release in the United States, leading many people to consider it as unreleased to this day, while The Sentinels has been released twice on VHS and multiple times on DVD (although I think only one time uncut). So Sentinels wins, right? Well, not really, because Robotech: The Movie did get a nationwide home video release by Rank Home Video in the UK in 1987 (thanks, Memory Matrix!) beating The Sentinels to any kind of wide release by at least nine months!

So here's my verdict: Harmony Gold did release The Sentinels on home video worldwide first, and did not give Robotech: The Movie a worldwide release until the edited version in the 2011 box set. So as far as this blog goes, The Sentinels wins. If you disagree, well then... feel free to arrange your MP3s differently! It's all good.

With that out of the way, let's talk Sentinels music!

The new "Sequel Music Collection" disc in the Robotech 30th Anniversary Soundtrack is the best collection of Sentinels music ever released. It doesn't cover everything, but it comes damn near close, and gets major bonus points for including tracks that were never used. (So why didn't they include all the music used in the Sentinels video if they had room left over for the unused music? My guess is they don't have it anymore. The HG staff have been very open about how much of their original master tapes have been lost over the years.) All titles given to the unreleased tracks in this listing are (as usual) completely made up by yours truly.

Some of the music on the CD seems to have been taken not from the original master recordings of the actual music, but from the Sentinels video itself. This explains why "A Penny for Your Thoughts" makes such a dramatic and obvious cut at the very end of the song; it completely mirrors the way the track was used in the video, and that was where the music needed to change because the scene ended. (I'm guessing no one checked with the composer Michael Bradley himself, because he briefly streamed the complete piece on his MySpace page (remember MySpace?) back in 2006, along with another unreleased piece of  Sentinels music. At the time he seemed to be under the impression that neither piece had been used, but they both had, one here and the other in Robotech: The Movie. It's a shame that Harmony Gold has burned their bridges by not paying royalites to their artists, and having a soundtrack with an edited song when the full version still exists is sadly another example of how it's hurt all of us in the long run.)

"Procession of the Invid" seems to have a similar situation, but it's an odd bird. The CD release runs 1:11. From 0:00 - 0:50 it sounds like one piece of music, and then it starts to change its tone into a different piece, with a more upbeat tempo and different melody.  The transition is so natural I'm inclined to believe that it was originally composed that way; perhaps the upbeat part is the musical "bridge" portion of the song and it would have gone back to the first part? We'll probably never know, because it fades out pretty quickly on the CD.

But here's where it gets weird-- the upbeat part is the one that's used when the Regent's shuttle arrives earlier in the video, but the video version runs longer! And this isn't just the part on the CD being looped, this is a new portion of the song not included on the CD. And just to make things even more confusing, the entire set of both pieces is used later in the video when the Regis and Regent are arguing with each other, including the transition to the upbeat part-- but then the first part of the song just starts again over top of it! So I'm inclined to believe that "Progression of the Invid" as it appears on the CD is taken from the Sentinels video master print, but whether that itself was originally a creative editing of two songs or just the song being cut in half and used in two locations, I have no idea.

And lastly, there's the Captain Harlock issue. There's two pieces of music used in this video that were both heavily used in Harmony Gold's Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years. Harlock credited Jack Goga for "Theme and Principal Music" in its opening credits, and James L. Hart for "Incidental Music" in its closing credits. And Harlock recycled very little music from previous projects; it reuses the "Intrigue (final notes)" sting that was used so often in the second half of Robotech, but otherwise it was all original, and very much all had the same feel. And lastly, the end credits establish a copyright for the music dated 1985. So when The Sentinels came out and it featured two pieces in it that I recognized from Harlock, I just assumed both pieces were recycled. The Sentinels video credits do include Jack Goga along with Michael Bradley, Steve Wittmack, Arlon Ober, and Ulpio Minucci, which would seem to back that up.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to find one of those Harlock tracks (specifically "Crisis") included on the 30th Anniversary CD, and credited to Bradley and Wittmack! I don't honestly believe it's correct; either Harlock Music Editor John Mortoratti fell in love with this one piece of Sentinels music and mixed it in with Goga and Hart's music and failed to credit Bradley & Wittmack, or this piece was just pulled from the Harmony Gold Music archives and used in the Sentinels, and upon its recent rediscovery was miscredited to Bradley & Wittmack. The style is much more in tune with Harlock then Sentinels in my opinion, so I believe it's the latter. But I may never know for sure.


Robotech Theme (Enhanced Version) - TV length still unreleased; CD version has been extended. 
The Young Warriors
Reprimand
Earth Government at Work (a)
Private Time Theme (a1)
Bliss Theme (a)
Private Time Theme (b) 
Incoming
Intrigue 
Zeb's Escape Attempt - unreleased
 Hellcats
Procession of the Invid (second portion - 0:50-1:11, includes unreleased music) 
The SDF-3
Robotech Love Theme I
The Zentraedi
Rick Hunter's Theme
Minmei's Theme
The SDF-3 
Expeditionary Debriefing
The REF March
Incoming
The Point of No Return
Hellcats 
Crisis 
Procession of the Invid (main portion (0:00-0:50) plus brief usage of second portion before going back to the first portion.)
Hellcats (intro only) 
Rocket Science
The SDF-3
The REF March
Black Magic
 Private Time Theme (c)
The Way to Love (Minmei Version)
Dissension
Expeditionary Love Theme
A Penny for Your Thoughts (Soundtrack version has the same edit as is used in the video.)
At the Alter
Reflections
Robotech Love Theme I
Reflections
At the Alter
The Raid
Invid vs. Bioroid Battle - unreleased
Expeditionary Debriefing
Zeb's escape attempt - unreleased 
Interrogation - unreleased 
Tirol Has Fallen - unreleased
At the Alter
The REF March 
Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years Victory Music - unreleased
Together
It's You (Piano Version)
The SDF-3
It's You
The Regent
Robotech Theme (Enhanced Version)