1962: Great Title Sequences (From My Living Memory)

Re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine recently has made me more conscious of something that had been on my mind for a while: the fact that TV doesn’t really seem to do lengthy credits sequences any more.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as in the case of Star Trek you’re sitting there for a good few minutes watching swirly space and Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko (still in season one at the moment) and, consequently, without a credits sequence the show itself has a few more minutes to play with. But does that few minutes really make a difference? Perhaps when the show is a short 20-minute affair, but when it’s 45 minutes or more there’s a strong argument for saying the writers should maybe look at where a few bits can be snipped.

But anyway. Whether or not credits sequences are a good thing isn’t really what I want to talk about today, since that would be a short discussion — yes, they are — but what I did want to talk about is the ones that have stuck in my head over the years. A good credits sequence is strongly iconic and does a good job of summing up what the show’s all about — either literally, by introducing characters, or sometimes in a more abstract sense by using representative imagery.

These are in no particular order. Given how I’m attempting to call them up from my living memory, they’ll probably in roughly chronological order, but I am making no promises. I’m simply going to provide them for your delectation, with a few words about why I like them, why they’re important to me or why I simply find them memorable.

Henry’s Cat

I hadn’t thought about Henry’s Cat for the longest time, but a brief Twitter discussion with the fine Mr Alex Connolly the other day reminded me of both its existence and its terrible but strongly iconic credits sequence.

I honestly don’t remember much about Henry’s Cat beyond the title sequence and the little bit of an episode I watched out of curiosity on YouTube the other day. But I do suspect it’s rather a product of its time, and not the sort of thing that kids are watching on TV these days.

Count Duckula

Whoever uploaded this gets bonus points for including the “Thames” logo at the beginning. Ahem. Anyway. Count Duckula was brilliant. And I’ve watched a few episodes recently and it’s still genuinely quite amusing thanks to some wonderful voice work and characterisation… not to mention its baffling premise of a vegetarian vampire duck voiced by David Jason.

Unlike Henry’s Cat, the Count Duckula theme and intro has stuck with me all these years. However, I did not know until two minutes ago when I looked at Wikipedia (to make sure it really was David Jason who voiced Duckula) that Count Duckula was actually a Danger Mouse spinoff series. TIL, and all that.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

You can’t really get more iconic that Star Trek when it comes to title sequences, and there’s really not much more that needs to be said about The Next Generation — aside, perhaps, from the fact that when you look at it, it’s actually rather basic. Once the credits themselves start rolling, it’s little more than text and the Enterprise occasionally hurling itself at the screen.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

I didn’t like Deep Space Nine all that much when I was younger; its relatively “static” nature of being set on a space station rather than on an exploratory starship made it feel a bit more “boring” to the young me. Revisiting it recently has made me realise (or remember?) that it’s actually really rather good — and certainly a lot more consistent than The Next Generation was in its early seasons.

I like the theme very much. It’s one of those pieces of music that just sounds satisfying. What I did find interesting, though, was when they changed it very subtly starting in the fourth season:

It becomes faster, I think it’s in a different key, the orchestration is different and the accompaniment is less “bare”. It accurately reflects the show’s noticeable change in direction from the fourth season onwards, not to mention the changes in the cast: Commander Sisko becomes Captain Sisko, The Next Generation’s Worf joins the crew and Shit officially Starts Getting Real with regard to interstellar conflicts.

Friends

Friends was everywhere when I was a teenager, and I didn’t mind because I enjoyed it a whole lot. The credits sequence was simple and straightforward, accurately summing up each character with a selection of season-unique snippets of their most iconic moments. It was fun to try and identify which episode each of the snippets had come from… you know, if there wasn’t anything better to do.

Angel

Ah, Angel. Probably one of my favourite TV shows of all time, next to its companion piece Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is also one of my favourite TV shows of all time, but whose credits sequence I never really rated all that much). Angel’s intro was great in that it reflected the dark, brooding nature of its title character, but it also allowed the show to pull off one of its best features: the unexpected and surprising fact that while it wasn’t afraid to deal with some seriously dark themes, it was very happy to poke fun at itself and show the silly side of the supernatural as well as the scary. The intro helped with this in that it set the expectation for a very “serious” and dark story, then in true Whedon fashion, it often subverted these expectations with the actual content of the episode.

Yuru Yuri

(This was the best video of the intro I could find that hadn’t been snagged by YouTube’s copyright laws. You’ll just have to deal with the Spanish subtitles.)

I love Yuru Yuri. It’s such a delightfully mundane and silly anime; very little actually happens in it, but by the end you have such a wonderful understanding of these loveable characters that it doesn’t matter that they haven’t done anything of note. The opening titles complement it perfectly, introducing the characters visually and setting the energetic, joyful tone for the rest of the show.

Love Live!

You’d hope a show about music would have a catchy theme tune, and Love Live! doesn’t disappoint. This video (which repeats several times; you’re not going mad) is from the first season and, like any good opening sequence, neatly summarises the show and its characters without them actually “saying” anything (although one could argue the lyrics of the song have a certain degree of meaning). Also it’s just plain catchy.

Akiba’s Trip

One thing I really like about Japanese games is that they treat them the same as anime — and that means that a big deal is made out of the opening credits, with music that is often released as a single in its own right. Akiba’s Trip had a particularly strong opening with a catchy theme song, a good introduction of all the characters and, again, a summary of what to expect from the next few hours of your life.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory

The Neptunia series has some excellent songs throughout, but the opening theme for third game Victory is one of the stronger ones. It does a great job of capturing the games’ energetic, joyful spirit and acknowledges their origins as a parody of the video games industry at large through heavy use of electronic effects and synthesised sounds. It also makes a point of demonstrating the extremely strong friendship between the core cast members — they may not see eye-to-eye about everything (or anything) but they stick together and help one another out.

Omega Quintet

Last one for now, otherwise I’ll be here all night and I quite want to go to bed. I wrote a few days ago about how I like the fact Omega Quintet treats its episodic story just like an anime series, complete with opening and ending credits sequences. Here’s the opening sequence, which you see not just at the beginning of the game, but at the start of every chapter. It’s as delightful as the game itself.