With the music recorded and delivered, the next step was deciding where it would be used. The man chosen to do the series music editing was Igo Kantor, a behind-the-scenes show business veteran from age fourteen. His first job was subtitling films from English into his native tongue of Portuguese. He came to UCLA to study political science and ended up working part time at a small theater as a projectionist. It was through that theater's owner that he landed a job at Columbia Pictures in their post-production department.

By the time he was brought in to work on Battle of the Planets, Kantor had managed to work for a wide variety of interesting motion picture personalities such as Ed Wood and Russ Meyer. Kantor did not work on the pilot of Battle of the Planets, he was brought in after it had already been given the go-ahead for series production.

Kantor recalled, "Jameson Brewer hired me as the music editor on Battle of the Planets because of my expertise at 'tracking.' That's using prerecorded music and selecting and cutting it to fit the action." Kantor also remembered he was left alone to supervise the inclusion of the new music, "I was an independent contractor. I had my own editorial facilities. They trusted me to do my job." He said, recalling he didn't work with anyone else on the staff on a day-to-day basis.

To do his job, Kantor received the quarter-inch tape reels from Jameson Brewer. He then transferred them to 35mm mag, from which they would be cut into the 16mm Battle of the Planets prints for the final composited product. He would receive multiple episodes at a time, and since this was the final stage in the production, all the other visual/audio elements were already in place.

It was his job to watch the programs and decide where to use Curtin's music to round out the show. He could use the music to enhance the mood of any given scene, providing there was no previous Japanese music cue that already existed at that point. He also had to use the new music to smooth over the previously-mentioned editing gaps that were caused out of necessity.

Once the decisions were made for the new music inclusions, the pieces were rough cut into the print and a cue sheet was created by Kantor. The cue sheets were done both to remind the production staff of what had been added and where, but they also served as documents to show every scrap of new music that was put in, its name, who published it, how long the cue was and other important information. This was important for legal reasons and also for any later dubbing crews in foreign markets.

"I could track a show in two days," Kantor continued. But since he was working on more than one show at a time, he occasionally needed some assistance, "When the schedule got too busy, I brought in my good friend Jim Henrikson to edit a few of the shows. Jim used to work for me when I had my post-production company, and I even made him a film editor on my first production, so I had complete confidence in him."

Other than Jameson Brewer, Kantor rarely saw anyone else involved in the production of Battle of the Planets, and even catching up with Brewer was a relatively infrequent event, "The only time I'd see him is when we mixed the shows at Todd-AO. One of my jobs was to supervise the mix. We used to mix two shows a day in five to six hours." Once this stage of mixing was completed, that would mean that the episode was finished, and that multiple prints could be struck and distributed around to the various stations that had purchased the show.

Kantor enjoyed his work on Battle of the Planets, and shared this about its completion, "It was a pleasant assignment with pleasant people and they gave me complete freedom to do my job. No fuss, no muss, proven by the fact that the final mixes went very smoothly without any problems or second-guessing. A dream job."

- - - - - - - -

Note: Tapes of four alternate versions of Hoyt Curtin pieces were located. These tapes included different performances of Space Chase, BP-1 Zark's Theme, Alien Planet and BP-1000. The exact date of recording for these four pieces is unknown, but they were likely done at some point between the theme song recording and the proper sessions.

These versions were probably done as demos to give Alan Dinehart, Jameson Brewer and Sandy Frank an idea of the type of music that Curtin would come up with for the series. This theory seems supported by the pieces that were chosen to record, since they illustrate examples of action, comedy, mystery and heroic compositions.

They were stored along with the other twenty-four track tapes in two separate undated boxes. It is possible that they were simply recorded rehearsal takes. But the differences in instrumentation from the final versions, the fact that these four pieces are on the only undated reels, plus their overall sound quality seem to lessen that likelihood. They appear to have been recorded at their own separate session with a smaller group of musicians.

The full set of twenty-four track session tapes were not closely reevaluated until well after Hoyt Curtin's death. Many of the questions about the sessions and the order in which some events occurred may never be answered. I have done my best to reconstruct the events from the surviving documentation and the memories of those involved.

Special thanks to music composer Hoyt Curtin, head writer Jameson Brewer, music editor Igo Kantor and producer Sandy Frank, as well as Phil May and Kenneth Urheim for their invaluable information and assistance.