The Bear Necessities

Bear McCreary is responsible for some of the most memorable sci-fi soundtracks of recent years. Richard Edwards goes behind the music with the Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead composer.

Even if you don’t recognise Bear McCreary’s name, you probably know his work. Since making his name on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, he’s become sci-fiand fantasy TV’s composer of choice, working on an impressive roster of shows including The Walking Dead, Defiance, Agents Of SHIELD and Outlander – even cropping up to supply tunes for the odd movie, like 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Arriving at this point was no accident for the prolific composer. “I definitely did not fall into it,” he says. “It was my goal from childhood. around the time I was five or six was when I started really noticing the music in my favourite movies, and then, very quickly, I would go to movies because my favourite composers were scoring them – they were my heroes.

“It was always my singular focus,” he laughs. “I never really seriously considered doing anything else. I was destined to be a soundtrack nerd or a composer or both!”

Here McCreary tells SFX about creating the music for four major shows from his eclectic career...

The new Battlestar theme had to be “nonorchestral”.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

I was very young, 24, when I started, and I didn’t realise at the time that the show I was starting my career with was going to be part of this renaissance in television. But I knew it was special. There was something electric about it.