u/RetroRaiderD42

Congrats to Americans for having the marginally less stupid political news for the next few weeks.

This is Day 8 of the Ben Bartlett Memorial Walking With Music Rankings. For the preamble, see the first post, but these are daily votes on the best piece of music from each episode in the Walking With series composed by Ben Bartlett.

The votes are in, and Battle of the Salt Plains is the winner from The Ballad of Big Al.

I'm handling the Chased by Dinosaurs episodes differently as none of the music has been officially released and the Unreleased Score uploads combine the music into "Titles" and "Score" for each episode and I haven't the time to split them out specially for this, so consider this the general thread for talking about/voting on the music from The Giant Claw and Land of Giants:

The Giant Claw (Titles)

The Giant Claw (Suite)

Land of Giants (Titles)

Land of Giants (Suite)

Via r/SimpsonsShitposting

This is Day 7 of the Ben Bartlett Memorial Walking With Music Rankings. For the preamble, see the first post, but these are daily votes on the best piece of music from each episode in the Walking With series composed by Ben Bartlett.

The votes are in, and The End of the Dinosaurs is the winner from Death of a Dynasty. 

Here’s the music from The Ballad of Big Al, a Walking with Dinosaurs special:

The Fossil

Young Allosaurus (BBC/Bartlett/Original)

Unsuccessful Hunt/The Tar Pit

Battle of the Salt Plains

The Female Allosaurus

A Fatal Accident

The Dead Allosaurus

This is Day 4 of the Ben Bartlett Memorial Walking With Music Rankings. For the preamble, see the first post, but these are daily votes on the best piece of music from each episode in the Walking With series composed by Ben Bartlett.

The votes are in, and Stormy Weather is the winner from Cruel Sea.

Here’s the music from Giant of the Skies, Episode 4 of Walking with Dinosaurs:

Giant of the Skies inc. His Last Flight & The Ornithocheirus

Flight of the Ornithocheirus inc. Flight (Part I)

Secret Flight inc. A Stranded Pterosaur/Flight (Part II) & Flight (Part III)/The Breeding Ground

Iguanodon Chase inc. The Utahraptors (Part I) & Bully Pterosaur/The Utahraptors (Part II) & The Utahraptors (Part III)

This is Day 3 of the Ben Bartlett Memorial Walking With Music Rankings. For the preamble see the first post, but these are daily votes on the best piece of music from each episode in the Walking With series composed by Ben Bartlett. The votes are in and, shocker, Time of the Titans is the winner.

Here’s the music from Cruel Sea, Episode 3 of Walking with Dinosaurs:

Cruel Sea (BBC/Bartlett/Original)

Opthalmosaurus Birthing/Liopleurodon (Original)

Young Opthalmosaurus/Lonely Dinosaurs (Original)

The Hazardous Ocean (Original)

Liopleurodon Rivals (Original)

Stormy Weather/Liopleurodon Beached (Original)

This is Day 2 of the Ben Bartlett Memorial Walking With Music Rankings. For the preamble, see the first post. The votes are in, and Death of the Postosuchus (Original) is the winner.

As I said yesterday, my approach to which tracks to list is to include all the official tracks released on the soundtracks put out by the BBC at the time the series released and by Bartlett in 2024, but also the tracks extracted from the episodes by Unreleased Score on YouTube where they’re otherwise unavailable. What I hadn’t said to avoid further extending the preamble was that I wasn’t including the Unreleased versions which are essentially snippets of the official tracks to avoid bloating the list. However, since everyone voted for specifically the original Death of the Postosuchus, and this is a music appreciation thread on the Walking With subreddit, I will in fact include all variations so folks have the option to easily listen to them and make their choice. This will include both official versions when there’s a notable (>5s) difference in length; will label them BBC for the original soundtracks, Bartlett for the anniversary soundtracks, and Original for the extracted music.

With that said, here’s the music from Time of the Titans, Episode 2 of Walking with Dinosaurs:

Time of the Titans (Original/Bartlett)

Escape of the Podlets (Original/Bartlett)

Jurassic Forest (Bartlett)/The Sauropods (Original)/One Year Later (Original)

Canyon of Terror (BBC/Bartlett/Original)

Woodsmoke (Original)

The Brachiosaurus Appears (Original)

Five Years Later (Original)

The Allosaurus Attack (Original)

Time of the Titans (Reprise) (Original)

The passing of Ben Bartlett last week has, as I’m sure is the case w/all of us here, given cause to revisit the music he composed for the Walking With series. Though Kenneth Branagh’s narration, the lush, real-world backdrops, and still incredible blend of practical and digital effects were all great, I think few will disagree that Bartlett’s music is what elevated it to being a truly timeless piece of not just paleomedia but television documentary, often challenged but never truly matched over a quarter century later.

I was 5 when WWD aired, so there’s certainly nostalgia at play there – if you took a microscope to the very core of my being, you’d see the initial run of Dinosaurs/Big Al/Beasts sits alongside the original Wallace & Gromit shorts and Toy Story as being foundational to who I am today. But this series wouldn’t have lasted if it was just 90s kids on here, and the music is part of that.

So, to pay tribute and because I’m surprised no-one’s done it here before, I’m launching the Ben Bartlett Memorial Walking With Music Rankings. You know how this works; one episode per day, I’ll be listing the relevant music tracks w/YouTube links and you put forth which one(s) you think are best, upvotes determine the winner. Along the way we’ll have the chance to nerd out over the incredible music and the, by all accounts, incredible and all-round decent man who gave it to us, may he rest in peace.

A word on the eligible music: Thanks to Bartlett’s anniversary release of the WWD and WWB soundtracks, we now have a few more available tracks that were missed off the original releases from the BBC. However, there are those that have still only been excavated thanks to the YouTube channel Unreleased Score. These versions are understandably plagued by artefacts from the attempt to isolate the music, but are still the cleanest way of listening to the pieces in isolation. Several of these are snippets derived from the longer, officially released tracks, but where they aren’t I’ve included them for completion.

First up, New Blood, Episode 1 of Walking with Dinosaurs.

Title Music – As with End Credits (which I’ll include with Death of a Dynasty,) this is used in every episode, but makes most sense here.

Walking with Dinosaurs

Coelophysis Kill

Survival of the Cynodonts

Death of the Postosuchus

Triassic Water

The Plateosaurus Arrives – Mostly derived from Time of the Titans, but this is an iconic version in its own right.

Nothing got Lola to show tongue better (or be a messier eater) than pepper.

Lola and Gizmo (but mostly Lola) wearing the litter box through the years.

For context, in the bonus ep on GoldenEye N64, Nova said that she once did a shitpost that tagged Film!Natalya as "How you think transition will make you look" and N64!Natalya as "How transition actually makes you look." Whilst I find that funny, I decided to do a nicer version via inclusion of XBLA!Natalya.