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Doctor Who: The Invasion – music by Don Harper

By Earl Green
January 25, 2024

5 min read

The scores for Doctor Who‘s 20th century Cybermen episodes seem to have a habit of taking a torturous route to being released in their original form. A bit of clarification is in order: this release contains the original recordings from 1968 by Don Harper (whose handful of other scoring credits include an episode of the BBC2 sci-fi anthology Out Of The Unknown, and stock music used in George Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead), the only music he ever composed for Doctor Who. Better known as a jazz musician, Harper’s services were engaged due to director Douglas Camfield’s curious habit of actively avoiding using Doctor Who’s “house composer” at the time, Dudley Simpson. Though many composers contributed to the 20th century series, there’s not another score quite like this one in the series’ history. Harper’s jazz leanings are on display, along with a very good dramatic instinct for the uniquely eerie music heard throughout The Invasion‘s eight episodes.

Why the clarification? Because Harper also re-recorded this music for the De Wolfe production music library under the title New Decades, which itself was later re-released as Cold Worlds, whereas this release has the original 1968 recordings. (The stories behind Doctor Who’s music can be just as strange-but-true as the rest of its behind-the-scenes lore.) On the one hand, The Invasion’s score sticks out quite noticeably from what came before and after it (the following story, The Krotons, has also been the subject of its own soundtrack release). But Harper has a very good sense of what the show’s “feel” is, and unnervingly dissonant tracks such as “International Electromatics Headquarters”, “The Cyber Director”, “The Cybermen, My Allies”, and “Plans For Invasion”, though brief, make the case that Harper would’ve made a fine addition to the rotation of the series’ musical talent if he had been hired to do so again. A much chirpier tone – almost “smurfy” in a way, and yet very, very 1968 in its feel – takes hold in the track “Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart”, giving the newly-promoted future series regular his own theme music in only his second appearance.

But the story doesn’t end there. Harper recorded a total of barely 20 minutes of music, intended to be used and re-used to track eight 25-minute episodes, and then, somewhat confoundingly, Camfield didn’t even use everything that was recorded. (One almost gets the feeling at times that Camfield would have preferred to skip musical underscores altogether but was coerced into including incidental music by the producers.) Also included are several tracks of effects and sound-design-bordering-on-music by Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, intended to provide additional musical options; tracks 15-34 are Harper’s unused score cues. Also tracked into the episode is a track by John Baker of the Radiophonic Workshop, “Time In Advance” (simply titled “Muzak” here), originally composed for an Out Of The Unknown episode of the same name. Baker’s work – with a lovely jazzy piano overdub sitting on top of an abstract yet tuneful radiophonic backing – sits nicely alongside Harper’s own jazz influences and doesn’t seem out of place. (I’ve never made a secret of the fact that “Time In Advance” is one of my all-time favorite pieces of classic Doctor Who music, so consider this reviewer’s biases fully on display here.)

With the brevity of the tracks presented, and the brevity of the score overall, it’s something of a minor miracle that this album tops out at just over an hour (thanks in large part to some of the lengthy, looped background sound effects tracks), and it’s a bit mind-boggling that a majority of the tracks presented have no story context, as they were left on the cutting room floor. So very much like the later Revenge Of The Cybermen release (perhaps not coincidentally the next TV outing for the Cybermen), a lot of what’s on the disc was never actually heard in the show itself. Harper achieves a great deal with very limited resources (the liner notes indicate that he never had more than five players, six if he too performed, presumably achieving a denser sound with overdubs), so it’s nice to hear his work free of the context of the show itself. It’s a pity so much of it went unused; some of the material that was left out is some of the most distinctive and enjoyable of the lot. Clearly, the Cybermen can’t have nice things.

Doctor Who (new opening theme, 1967) (0:52)

The Dark Side of the Moon (Music 2 Variation) (0:33)

The Company (Music 7) (1:31)

Hiding (Music 8) (4:54)

International Electromatics Headquarters (Music 3) (0:16)

Muzak (2:46)

The Cyber Director (Music 5) (0:08)

The Cybermen, My Allies (Music 7) (0:27)

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Music 12a) (1:22)

Plans for Invasion (Music 8) (1:25)

Mysteries (Music 12) (1:31)

Fire Escape (Music 11) (1:11)

The Dark Side of the Moon (Reprise) (Music 2) (0:31)

The Cybermen, My Allies (Reprise) (Music 7, looped) (1:07)

Music 4 (Trapped in Gas Chamber – v. 1 & 2) (1:29)

Music 9 (2:20)

Music 10 (2:00)

Music 13 (0:05)

Music 14 (0:15)

Music 15a (0:04)

Music 15b (0:20)

Music 15c (0:04)

Music 15d (0:20)

Music 15e (0:16)

Music 15f (0:04)

Music 15g (0:04)

Music 15h (0:23)

Music 16a (0:04)

Music 16b (0:05)

Music 16c (0:06)

Music 16d (0:07)

Music 16e (0:04)

Music 16f (0:08)

Music 16g (0:05)

Part of TARDIS disappears (0:25)

All of TARDIS disappears (0:24)

TARDIS take off slow and painful (2:13)

International Electromatics Headquarters Exterior (10:33)

International Electromatics Headquarters Interior (6:26)

Computer Background (0:21)

Computer Whirrs (1:01)

Electronic Eye (2:37)

Cyber Director Appears (2:26)

Cyber Director Constant (7:51)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: September 14, 2018
Total running time: 1:01:15

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Cybermen – music by Carey Blyton

By Earl Green
January 9, 2024

5 min read

There are quite few releases out there now of unused/rejected film scores. But with television? Not so much. The production timetable of TV just can’t handle an unusable score. It’ll either use less/none of what’s produced, but in most cases, there’s no time to hire someone else to come up with a replacement score, assuming that the budget can absorb a replacement. And it’s rarer still for anything left on the cutting room floor to ever be heard again.

All of that is to explain that Revenge Of The Cybermen, the more-than-complete score from Tom Baker’s first season-closing story as the star of Doctor Who in 1975, is a highly improbable release. The powers that be weren’t exactly crazy about the music Carey Blyton turned in, his third and final contribution to the series’ music. (His two prior scores were in Jon Pertwee’s first and final seasons, under a different producer.) With little time for a fix, Blyton’s recordings were handed off to Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to add some analog synths to the existing music…and then the makers of the show didn’t use most of that either. In the end, Revenge Of The Cybermen‘s four 25-minute episodes were sparse on music, and the vast majority of what’s on this CD was never heard in the show. Add to that the fact that it’s a Tom Baker-era score, and the music presented here is all sorts of rare. (The discovery that Blyton had kept tapes of his largely-unheard work for himself makes this release possible; even Revenge‘s DVD release and the 50th anniversary soundtrack collection had very little music from this story.)

The liner notes are particularly fascinating, digging into Blyton’s own correspondence to examine his reliance on non-traditional instruments, something the composer felt was a good fit for the show’s often non-traditional subject matter. But to Blyton’s mind, this meant instruments that had fallen out of common use in orchestral ensembles – some of them decidedly closer to “ancient” than “futuristic”, which may have been meant to signify the Vogans rather than the Cybermen, but may also have explained the synthesizer overdubs ordered by the show’s makers. All of this information helps to explain why so little of Blyton’s distinctive music was used…and, perhaps, why he was never tapped to provide music for Doctor Who again.

The resulting sound is spare (like Doctor Who’s more frequent composer, Dudley Simpson, Blyton simply couldn’t afford to assemble a full orchestra), and in all likelihood, this album will achieve the hat trick of feeling odd both to modern audiences (accustomed to the full force and fury of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales) and to fans of the 20th century series’ frequent scoring with synthesizers and radiophonic sound. There are synths here, but they weren’t intended to be there in the music’s original formulation, and they don’t really “rescue” it in any meaningful way (assuming you listen to the original, non-overdubbed pieces and feel that some kind of triage was needed). It’s an interesting listen that may fall into the category of being only for completists or the very curious. Despite that, it’s still incredible to hear a complete – and almost completely unused – score from a Tom Baker story from the ’70s.

Doctor Who – Opening Title Theme (0:45)

Return to Nerva Beacon (2:02)

Can Anyone Hear Me? (0:36)

Cybermat / Unspool / Plague (1:53)

Cybership I (0:23)

Searching Kellman’s Room (1:05)

Sarah vs Cybermat Part 1 (0:31)

Sarah vs Cybermat Part 2 (0:18)

Sabotage (0:42)

It’s Happening All Over Again (0:11)

The Skystriker (0:26)

On Voga (0:40)

Sarah and Harry Captured Part 1 (0:47)

Sarah and Harry Captured Part 2 (0:10)

Cybership II (0:19)

Enter Vorus (0:08)

Remote Control Threat (0:33)

Tyrum and Vorus (0:37)

One More Pull (0:17)

Caves Chase (0:50)

Caves Chase Continued (0:29)

Surrounded (0:35)

Boarding Party (0:59)

The Beacon is Ours (0:41)

Tyrum Fanfare (0:15)

Prisoners (0:13)

Fresh Orders (0:19)

It Cannot Be Stopped (0:21)

Loose Thinking / The Bomb (1:27)

The Countdown Has Commenced (1:01)

Cybermarch (1:27)

Radarscope (0:23)

Adventures on Voga (1:19)

Rockfall (1:15)

Surface Party and Detonation (1:47)

Nine Minutes (0:26)

Cybermat vs Cybermen (0:44)

The Biggest Bang in History? (0:45)

Waltz – All’s Well That Ends Well (0:17)

Doctor Who – Closing Title Theme (53” Version) (0:54)

Alternative and Synthesizer Cues

Sarah vs Cybermat (end of part 1 alternative) (0:20)

Sarah vs Cybermat (start of part 2) (0:56)

It’s Happening All Over Again (random organ) (0:06)

Sarah and Harry Captured (alternative) (0:46)

Put That Gun Down (synth cue) (0:20)

Cybership II (alternative) (0:24)

Remote Control Threat (alternative) (0:35)

One More Pull (alternative) and Vogan Gunfight (0:58)

Cybership III (synth cue) (0:17)

Caves Chase (alternative) (1:20)

Cybership IV (synth cue) (0:23)

Caves Chase Continued (alternative) (0:36)

Surrounded (alternative) (0:38)

Boarding Party (end of Part 2 alternative) (0:25)

Jelly Babies (synth cue) (0:10)

Tyrum Fanfare (edited cue as used) (0:10)

It Cannot Be Stopped (alternative) (0:37)

Loose Thinking (alternative) (0:31)

The Bomb (alternative) (0:19)

The Countdown Has Commenced (alternative) (0:06)

Looped Cybermarch (0:29)

Looped Cybermarch with Synth (0:47)

Adventures on Voga (synth cues) (1:07)

The Red Zone (Random Organ) (0:06)

Heartbeat Countdown I (synth cue) (1:25)

Heartbeat Countdown II (synth cue) (1:09)

Rockfall (alternative) (1:17)

Bonus Tracks

Session Tapes – Random Organ, Specimen Gong, Timps (3:08)

Session Tapes – m42a & 42b (improvs) (1:58)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: November 24, 2023
Total running time: 51:54

Doctor Who: The Survival Mixes – music by Dominic Glynn

By Earl Green
December 19, 2023

2 min read

If the Time And The Rani soundtrack was the alpha of the seventh Doctor’s era on Doctor Who, Survival is its omega, and of course already has its own soundtrack release. But its composer, Dominic Glynn, is back among the cat people, and this time he’s here to get them dancing. The Survival Mixes remixes four key cues from the Survival score, and as with Glynn’s past remixes of his Doctor Who music, we start with the track that changes the least about its source material and the mixes after it gradually make more significant changes to the original tracks.

“Catflap” takes an eerie, piano-based cue and gradually builds an insistent, urgent rhythm around that loop, making for a nicely atmospheric track. “Run Doctor, Run!” has a more aggressive, percussion-driven cue from the original soundtrack as its starting point, and adds to that percussion, as well as new bassline layers and samples of dialogue from the show. (While the dialogue is neat, I kind of wish that maybe the tracks with dialogue had been repeated in dialogue-free form as bonus tracks.) “The Dead Valley” takes a quieter piece of the soundtrack and turns it into a mesmerizing, hypnotic loop, again with some show dialogue toward the end. The dialogue starts almost immediately in “Good Hunting, Sister” and quickly becomes the most radically reworked track of the bunch. Those four tracks are followed by “Indefinable Magic: Podcast Theme”, an original commission for a podcast hosted by Toby Hadoke; while not based on anything from Survival, it has a feel that certainly fits in with the other tracks.

If you’re a fan of classic Doctor Who music, and don’t mind mixing things up a bit, this EP is a nice way to spend the better part of a half hour. That it starts out with bits of one of the best scores to grace the Sylvester McCoy era of the show doesn’t hurt (to be fair, McCoy’s entire final season in the role of the Doctor was full of great music).

Catflap (5:15)

Run Doctor, Run! (4:49)

The Dead Valley (5:53)

Good Hunting Sister (4:35)

Bonus track: Indefinable Magic: Podcast Theme (2:30)

Released by: No Bones Records
Release date: November 24, 2023
Total running time: 23:00

1987 2023 D Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title T Year

Doctor Who: Time And The Rani – music by Keff McCulloch

By Earl Green
December 5, 2023

5 min read

So, picture this if you can: it’s the end of 1987, and my local PBS station presents the four-part Doctor Who story Time And The Rani in “movie” format during a pledge drive, talking about how viewer support keeps imported shows like Doctor Who on the schedule. Wow! I’m getting to see Sylvester McCoy’s first episode as the Doctor the same year it premiered! And the following week, Doctor Who was no longer on the schedule, leaving my home-recorded VHS tape of Time And The Rani as my only specimen of the seventh Doctor’s adventures until a tape trade in 1991 or so brought the rest of his televised adventures to me. By the time I saw any more of McCoy’s Doctor Who tenure, I had to experience it via Target novelizations and soundtracks such as the 25th anniversary album and the 1991 release of The Curse Of Fenric soundtrack. I’d go back and rewatch Time And The Rani a lot in that time, too, just trying to envision what the rest of the shows were like. Its soundtrack was burned into my brain.

And now, at least, it’s burned on a CD for everyone to hear independent of the dialogue and sound effects. I’ve always held the view that, for all of the awkwardness of Time And The Rani as a whole (not only is there a new Doctor, but incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel‘s influence was hardly felt on the scripts, which were originally conceived for Colin Baker’s Doctor), it holds a lot of charm as well, and one of my favorite elements was the soundtrack. It was Keff McCulloch’s first score for the show, as well as his first film or TV score of any kind, and it’s both identifiably ’80s and very atmospheric. In the CD liner notes, McCulloch pleads guilty on perhaps overusing the “orchestral stab” sample, and while that may be true, he’s hardly the only composer working during that period whose work over-relied on that sound. (I used to have a Yamaha keyboard with “orchestral stab” on it, and I too used the hell out of both that and the “handclaps” which would feature prominently in later McCulloch scores.)

The most interesting thing about the score for Time And The Rani, in hindsight, is that it brings a pop music sensibility to Doctor Who’s music that hadn’t been heard since, arguably, the last time Paddy Kingsland had scored the show during the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s early ’80s heyday of handling all of the series’ music. The various iterations of “Future Pleasure” have vocal samples that may sound whimsical now, but were still part of the Art of Noise‘s playbook when this music was first heard on TV – pretty cutting-edge stuff for television scoring. But the numerous musical visits to “The Tetrap Eyrie” and especially “Cliffhanger In The Eyrie” have a superbly eerie atmosphere. In an admittedly synthesized way, some of these tracks hint at an orchestral future for Doctor Who’s sound.

Bonus tracks reveal the evolution of McCulloch’s take on the Doctor Who theme from demo to the version used on the show, as well as the evolution of elements of the score. In particular, the gradual cluttering-up of what was a perfectly good piece of music for the new Doctor picking his new wardrobe was eye-opening; I wonder who made the decision that what that scene really needed was the sound of breaking glass as punctuation. (There was no breaking glass as part of the scene itself, where the sound comes across as a comedy affectation that really didn’t boost the scene’s chances of being taken seriously.)

With its mind-bendingly colorful cover artwork and the sounds within, this long overdue release is a reminder that, regardless of what some fans might claim, all was not lost when it came to late ’80s Doctor Who. I still have a lot of love for this score, orchestral stabs and all. It may be a more challenging listen for those who have been raised on 21st century Doctor Who’s less-sampled orchestral sound, but for those of us who watched the show in something not far removed from real time, this was the sound of the Doctor’s travels, and it’s a delightful nostalgia trip.

The Rani Takes the TARDIS (Sound Effects) (0:22)

Leave the Girl, It’s the Man I Want (0:23)

Doctor Who (Opening Theme) (0:54)

Einstein (0:21)

A Nice Nap (0:34)

Urak and Ikona (1:12)

The Death of Sarn (1:05)

Bull in a Barbershop (0:24)

Not Your Enemy (1:52)

The Tetrap Eyrie (1) (0:46)

Landscape (0:25)

New Wardrobe (1:27)

Mel and the Bubble Trap (1:04)

Mel and the Bubble Trap (continued) (1:33)

The Tetrap Eyrie (2) (0:44)

Wait Here (0:56)

Memory Like An Elephant (1:18)

Faroon, Ikona and the Mourning (1:34)

Urak Nets The Rani (1:39)

Pulses (0:26)

The Rani’s TARDIS (1:03)

You’re a Time Lord (0:39)

She’s Coming (0:29)

Cliffhanger in the Eyrie (1:30)

Doctor on the Loose (Part 1) (0:55)

Doctor on the Loose (Parts 2-4) (1:28)

Doctor on the Loose (Part 5 – The Bubble Trap) (0:33)

Faroon Forlorn / Doctor on the Loose (Part 6) (0:46)

Future Pleasure (4:58)

Beez (0:47)

Hologram Mel (1:29)

Just the Expert (0:24)

As Sentimental as He Is (0:17)

Fixed Trajectory (0:48)

Second Bluff (0:47)

All as Planned (0:20)

The Brain (2:08)

The Brain (reprise) (1:19)

Dissidents to Heel (0:40)

March of the Tetraps / Anklet Death (1:48)

The Rani Explains (1:48)

Urak Overhears (0:27)

Loyhargil (1) (0:48)

As You Snore So Shall You Sleep (0:38)

Loyhargil (2) (0:14)

Where there’s a Will (0:27)

Loyhargil (3) (0:24)

The Rani Leaves (0:20)

Undoing The Rani (2:08)

Fingers Crossed (0:21)

Not Forgotten (0:54)

Time and Tide Melts the Snowman (0:15)

Doctor Who (Closing Theme) (1:13)

Bonus Tracks

Doctor Who 1987 (2:40)

The Death of Sarn (part, alternative version without rattle) (0:22)

Two “stings” (1m10 and 1m12) (0:18)

New Wardrobe (original mono mix without overdubs) (0:57)

New Wardrobe (overdubs) (0:57)

New Wardrobe (original mono TV mix as used) (0:58)

She’s Coming (unused version 1) (0:43)

Cliffhanger in the Eyrie (unused version 1) (1:30)

Cliffhanger in the Eyrie (Part Two Reprise edit) (1:18)

Future Pleasure (original master) (4:32)

The Brain (25th Anniversary Album edit) (3:03)

Doctor Who Theme 1987 (original demo) (2:54)

Doctor Who Opening Title 1987 (original demo) (0:43)

Doctor Who Closing Title 1987 (original demo) (1:16)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: November 24, 2023
Total running time: 76:05

2022 2023 D Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils – music by Segun Akinola

By Earl Green
June 13, 2023

3 min read

When the modern revival of Doctor Who brought back the Silurians in 2010, their cousins, the raspy-voiced Sea Devils, were nowhere to be found. Like the Silurians, they were creations of the Jon Pertwee era and were last seen in the all-star indigenous-sentient-repitle team-up Warriors Of The Deep in 1984, joining forces against Peter Davison’s Doctor. But while the Silurians got a 21st century makeover, their cousins, the Sea Devils, remained in the show’s past – until they resurfaced, literally, in one of 2022’s run of special episodes. Interestingly, while the Silurians emerged with a very different look from their ’70s/’80s incarnations, the Sea Devils returned looking much the same as before, with obvious improvements in how their aquatic lizard look was achieved.

And they got a marvelous soundtrack too. The story’s setting deals with piracy in Chinese waters in the early 19th century. Segun Akinola, who wowed with his sensitive musical treatment of The Demons Of Punjab in Jodie Whittaker’s first season as the Doctor, deploys a similar musical strategy here: call in real live players for real live ethnic instruments, and save the synths for the purely synthetic elements of the story. The result is, again, a very nice mix with authenticity where it counts the most. The main thematic material for the episode reveals itself fairly quickly, and is repeated and riffed upon throughout, with a percolating synth bassline persisting in many of the tracks, its role in the tension depending on its prominence in the mix rather than in any changes in key or tempo; the pace really doesn’t quicken appreciably until “This Is Gonna Be Tricky”.

Things take a more sensitive turn halfway through “A Good Legend” with the scene that either launched a thousand gleeful fanfics or launched a thousand middle-aged male fan tantrums, as the Doctor and Yaz skip some rocks across the water and discuss whether there’s any “there” there. It’s a nicely understated closer for the show, though I’m still undecided on whether the Doctor somehow being aware of an impending regeneration (something that started with Tom Baker’s exit) becoming a recurring trope of the show (used in the last run of specials for both David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker). Either way, the music for the scene is easily the standout highlight of this soundtrack.

You Have No Idea What You’re Doing (02:48)

Catching A Whopper (03:56)

Pirate Queen (07:33)

Who Wants To Be Next (05:07)

Celestial Navigation (04:00)

Going Up (07:26)

Say Hello To My Crew (05:18)

This Is Gonna Be Tricky (04:49)

A Good Legend (06:07)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: December 9, 2022
Total running time: 46:50

2022 D Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Doctor Who: Eve Of The Daleks – music by Segun Akinola

By Earl Green
May 2, 2023

3 min read

A bit of pastoral acoustic guitar is almost the last thing you’d expect to here from any soundtrack whose title ends in the words “…of the Daleks”, and yet here we are, with the first of the “series 13 specials” leading up to the end of Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as the Doctor (whose music has already been reviewed here).

Things quickly get more modern, though, with a sense of technological urgency defining much of the score to Eve Of The Daleks. The lower-register minimalism works wonders when contrasted with outbursts of menacing brass, but there’s another kind of minimalism on display in some tracks – particularly “Deja Vu” and “Not A Great Plan” – where things slow down, there’s a little bit more breathing room between notes rather than the insistent bass synth ostinato running through most of the tracks. Particularly in “Not A Great Plan” and “Took You Long Enough”, when the music resumes its slower, acoustic feel, with the addition of a double bass, it’s almost jazzy – might be Doctor Who, might be an episode of The Avengers.

Much of Eve Of The Daleks‘ musical landscape lies in the tension between those two modes: acoustic vs. electronic, less predictable rhythms vs. a steadily percolating synth bass line, and ultimately, as the story itself dictates, human vs. machine. Really a simple idea, but it serves the story remarkably well.

Though “A Brilliant Plan” and “Important Stuff To Do” shake things up with some rapid-fire strings to accompany the score’s synthetic pulse, and “Fireworks” closes things out with a more relaxed sense that all has turned out as it should (and the return of the jazzy acoustic motif), there just isn’t much of a musical exclamation point at the end. The previous end-of-year special (and previous Dalek episode score) Revolution Of The Daleks provided that kind of major shift to accompany the exit of Ryan and Graham, but Eve Of The Daleks just doesn’t have that kind of catharsis at the end of its story or its score. It’s just another day at the office, nobody’s leaving, and the status quo is restored. Without that, Eve Of The Daleks just quietly ends. An interesting episode, and an interesting score, but as a standalone listening experience, it’s the least remarkable of the series 13 specials.

Here We Are Again (02:17)

Out Of Service (03:27)

I Am Not Nick (02:33)

Deja Vu (03:39)

The Correction (03:06)

Sorry Sorry Sorry (01:09)

Not A Great Plan (06:57)

Took You Long Enough (08:44)

We Will Not Stop (03:50)

We Go Again And We Win (04:01)

The Doctor Cannot Save You (03:29)

A Brilliant Plan (03:56)

Important Stuff To Do (04:11)

Fireworks (03:06)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: December 2, 2022
Total running time: 54:21

2022 D Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Doctor Who: The Power Of The Doctor – music by Segun Akinola

By Earl Green
January 12, 2023

1 min read

If there’s anything that draws wayward eyeballs back to Doctor Who, fans who have perhaps given up following the show’s every new adventure, it’s a regeneration episode. Right up there with round-number anniversary specials and holiday specials, they’re sure to reel in even the casually curious. And if you have a regeneration episode that coincides with either a round-number anniversary or a holiday special? That probably means even more curious viewers sampling the Doctor’s adventures than usual.

The Power Of The Doctor was already known to be the episode in which Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to play the Doctor on a regular, ongoing basis, would be bowing out, and it also coincided with the BBC’s centenary celebratory programming – as if it was a tacit admission that, no matter how aghast certain high-ranking members of BBC management past or present might view it, Doctor Who is one of the BBC’s more enduring contributions to popular entertainment and television over a century of broadcasting. (Spoiler: Doctor Who is, in fact, one of the BBC’s more enduring contributions to popular entertainment and television over a century of broadcasting.) This special automatically ticked two of the boxes right there. … Read more

2014 A Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Year

An Adventure In Space And Time – music by Edmund Butt

By Earl Green
November 20, 2022

4 min read

According to the liner notes, composer Edmund Butt was given one major instruction before embarking on the score for the 2013 one-off docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time: don’t let this piece about Doctor Who’s original star sound anything like Doctor Who. Oh, that simple, right?

Except that Doctor Who has run the gamut from electronic music to small chamber ensemble to electronic again and now orchestral-with-electronic. Anyone trying to avoid a category as broad as those will probably take off screaming for the hills. What the score for An Adventure In Space And Time does manage to do is land its musical style somewhere in an old-fashioned kind of timelessness, while occasionally trying on the more typical musical sci-fi trappings when the story calls for it. Starting things out with a waltz is not something that’s in the Doctor Who scoring playbook, providing the first signal that this isn’t “in universe”. (It’s also not entirely reality, but in a bit of a simplified uncanny valley in between the two, just enough to get some of the broad strokes of William Hartnell’s life across.)

You’re not too far into the album before the score does drop something that could easily fit into Doctor Who proper. “The Daleks” may accompany the first appearance of the Dalek props at the BBC, but it would work just as well in-universe, with a staccato synth bassline eerily hinting at the heartbeat-like signature sound associated with Dalek technology. Whether that was intentional or not, it’s a nice, subtle reference. (It’s also somewhat present in “JFK Assassinated”, a scene that appears adjacent to the Daleks’ first appearance in the movie; see notes below about the sequencing of the album.) The playful beginning of “What Dimension?” suddenly hangs a sharp left turn into a startlingly mysterious, almost foreboding passage accompanying the first glimpse of the TARDIS set transitioning from idea to a real place (existing on a soundstage), a theme also heard on its own in the track “The Tardis”.

But the heart of An Adventure In Space And Time, whether it’s the movie or just its score, is in sketching out a somewhat idealized version of Hartnell’s life. “Autograph Hunting” accompanies a montage of such scenes very effectively, just as “Piss & Vinegar” follows Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman’s thread through the story. Though there are some standouts that musically portend major developments in the mythology of Doctor Who, most of the score is concerned with the stories of the people making that mythology.

The one thing I really count any points off for with this otherwise wonderful release is that the tracks are wildly out of order with regard to how and where they appear in the show itself – the first piece of music heard in the show is literally the last track on the album. Only toward the end of the album do things start to appear in anything reasonably resembling their sequence as aired, with a loose suite of cues clustered around the theme of Hartnell’s decline and eventual departure from the role (“I’m So Sorry, Bill”, “My Successor”); the real stunner of this almost-a-suite at the end is “The New Doctor”, which includes the scene of Hartnell shooting his last scene, and the in-universe-or-maybe-not glimpse of Matt Smith that follows. I can’t fault any of the music, but the sequencing is a bit baffling.

Main Title – An Adventure in Space and Time (00:36)

The Right Man (01:15)

The First Woman Producer (01:18)

I’ve Got an Idea… (01:32)

The Daleks (02:49)

Kill Dr. Who (01:49)

What Dimension? (01:23)

This is My Show (01:49)

Autograph Hunting (02:28)

Sydney Newman (01:02)

Scarlett O’Hara (01:02)

Piss & Vinegar (01:23)

Dressing Room (01:19)

JFK Assassinated (01:48)

The TARDIS (00:51)

Goodbye Susan (02:29)

10 Million Viewers (00:56)

The Fans (00:36)

I’m So Sorry, Bill (02:39)

Kiss Goodbye (01:05)

My Successor (01:06)

ISOP Galaxy (00:50)

Irreplaceable (01:20)

The New Doctor (03:54)

Time’s Up… (01:16)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: March 3, 2014
Total running time: 38:23

2017 D Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Year

Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Remixes – music by Dominic Glynn

By Earl Green
October 23, 2022

4 min read

Remixing soundtrack recordings is fraught with difficulties and pitfalls. You’re taking something that probably wasn’t originally designed to conform to a certain number of beats-per-minute and you’re now imposing that rhythmic structure onto a piece that may not be best suited to that format. And as often as not, as with, say, the remixes of the themes from The X-Files or Mission: Impossible that accompanied those properties’ emergence as movie franchises, what you end up doing is rebuilding the whole piece from the ground up, resulting in something that is less of a remix and more of a completely new recording (as was the case with FAB’s tribute to The Prisoner). The music from the subversive 1988 Doctor Who three-parter The Happiness Patrol is definitely a tough nut to crack; though largely performed on synthesizers (and a bit of real harmonica), it creates its tension by stretching things out occasionally, and to try to force those occasional pauses or changes in meter to conform to a certain beat would seem to be a bit self-defeating to the atmosphere.

But wait! The advantage this release has is that the remix is done by the original composer for those three episodes, and not someone coming in later with limited experience or appreciation for the original music. Glynn has done prior Doctor Who remix albums (The Gallifrey Remixes, The Ravolox Remixes), and scored episodes of Doctor Who from 1986 through its final 20th century season in 1989, as well as creating the theme music arrangement for the 1986 Trial Of A Time Lord season. Glynn understands the feel; he wrote the music to begin with. The longest track, “Happiness Will Prevail”, begins without the slightest hint that it’s a remix. Layers of added synths deepen the harmonies, and by the time percussion that wasn’t in the original score starts to subtly creep in, nothing feels out of place – everything supports and strengthens the original piece rather than clashing with it. At around the four-and-a-half-minute mark, Glynn slips in dialogue from one of the story’s most powerful scenes (truthfully, one of Sylvester McCoy’s most powerful scenes as the Doctor), and by this time, you’re on board with it. The rhythm starts becoming more pronounced, the added synths more modern, but it all serves to enhance, rather than intrude on, the remaining elements of the original score. And yes, you could conceivably dance to it. I was originally skeptical of the ten-minute run time of this track, but that run time allows Glynn to layer things in without the additions feeling rushed or intrusive.

The shorter tracks introduce new elements over the original recordings from the word go, because surely by now you’re aware this is a remix album. “Brandy Of The Damned” does a good job of picking up the momentum from the first track and running with it; you’re over two minutes into this track before some very busy synths and percussion suddenly drop in. “Kandymania”, as the name implies, builds new layers on top of the off-key calliope theme for the Kandyman, an experiment that perhaps mercifully lasts only two minutes but is still enjoyably moody. “I’m Happy You’re Glad” brings the sinister mood to its conclusion, dropping in its own extra layers of percussion to round out the EP’s total run time which is, generously enough, almost equal to the length of one of The Happiness Patrol‘s three episodes.

It’s all very nicely done, and at no point detracts from the original cues from 1988; if anything, it’s like we already have a score on hand in case the modern Doctor Who ever decides to bring back the Kandyman. Which is something that’s very unlikely to happen, but then I would’ve said the same of anyone’s chances of building a decent remix EP on top of this story’s score. Now I have the urge to hear Survival get the same treatment beyond the tantalizing single track devoted to remixing it on The Ravolox Remixes.

Happiness Will Prevail (Remix) (10:39)

Brandy Of The Damned (Remix) (4:47)

Kandymania (Remix) (2:02)

I’m Happy You’re Glad (Remix) (5:11)

Released by: No Bones Records
Release date: September 18, 2017
Total running time: 22:39

1983 2018 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors – music by Peter Howell

By Earl Green
July 26, 2020

5 min read

It says a lot for the evolution, over time, of what listeners expect from a soundtrack purchase, when one considers that The Five Doctors – the 90-minute Doctor Who 20th anniversary special – once lent its name to an LP of “suites” from various 1980s Doctor Who stories, but didn’t merit its own full soundtrack release until 35 years after its 1983 premiere. But now that it’s here, was it worth the wait?

In the liner notes, composer Peter Howell himself says that he was firing on all creative cylinders in a way that he hadn’t before. The Five Doctors was a special production, not part of an ongoing season, so there was a bit of breathing room to come up with ideas. The Five Doctors score is one of the high water marks of 1980s Doctor Who soundtrack music, being possibly the first use of sampling, or at least the first use of sampling as a key part of the music. The unearthly, menacing exclamation point of the Cybermen’s percussive music cues is the slowed-down sound of a lid being pulled off of a metal can. The foreboding horn heard in the Death Zone on Gallifrey isn’t a brass musican instrument, but a sampled ship’s horn. And the Time Lord-centric story gets appropriately clock-like percussive elements, very much a first in Doctor Who.

Of course, none of that would really matter if Peter Howell wasn’t one of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s masters of memorable melodies. It really wasn’t until the Radiophonic Workshop came along that any of the show’s various resident composers had employed Ron Grainer’s theme tune as a leitmotif; even Dudley Simpson crafted his own theme for the Doctor that had virtually nothing to do with Grainer’s theme. But here, Howell leans hard on the show’s signature theme throughout the adventure, which really helps to point up the momentous nature of the story being told: the story doesn’t just involve the Doctor, it’s about the Doctor and the Time Lords. And it’s not just the motif itself, but the fact that it’s still – after 20 years – the BBC Radiophonic Workshop doing the honors, bringing all of the lovely analog tricks and reverb to the table in quoting that theme authentically. The Five Doctors was really the first Doctor Who music that even a non-fan could listen to and say, “That’s Doctor Who music, isn’t it?”

Much of the second half of the disc repeats the score, but with some sonic enhancements Howell added for a 1990s extended VHS reissue of the story, which restored some deleted scenes and added new effects, forcing Howell to rethink sections of the score to match the new edit. Bonus tracks include the “cliffhangers” composed for syndicated versions of The Five Doctors that broke the story up into a traditional four-parter, as well as some Radiophonic Workshop sound effects.

It all adds up to a long, long overdue package. I know that there was a fairly comprehensive suite of highlights from the score of The Five Doctors on CD and, before that, on LP going back to 1984, and I know that the score was available on DVD as an isolated audio track…but it really has been a long wait for a properly remastered release of the original, pre-special-edition score as I remember hearing it back in 1983 when The Five Doctors blew my mind by finally showing me all of the Doctors and companions that I’d only read about in Starlog. It’s nice to finally have it, and even with all of the widescreen orchestral grandeur that has become the sound of Doctor Who since the turn of the century, The Five Doctors remains one of the show’s all-time great scores.

Doctor Who – Opening Theme (0:36)

New Console (0:24)

The Eye Of Orion (0:57)

Cosmic Angst (1:18)

Melting Icebergs (0:40)

Great Balls Of Fire (1:02)

My Other Selves (0:38)

No Coordinates (0:26)

Bus Stop (0:23)

No Where, No Time (0:31)

Dalek Alley and The Death Zone (3:00)

Hand In The Wall (0:21)

Who Are You? (1:04)

The Dark Tower / My Best Enemy (1:24)

The Game Of Rassilon (0:18)

Cybermen I (0:22)

Below (0:29)

Cybermen II (0:58)

The Castellan Accused / Cybermen III (0:34)

Raston Robot (0:24)

Not The Mind Probe (0:10)

Where There’s A Wind, There’s A Way (0:43)

Cybermen vs. Raston Robot (2:02)

Above And Between (1:41)

As Easy As Pi (0:23)

Phantoms (1:41)

The Tomb Of Rassilon (0:24)

Killing You Once Was Never Enough (0:39)

Oh, Borusa (1:21)

Mindlock (1:12)

Immortality (1:18)

Doctor Who Closing Theme – The Five Doctors Edit (1:19)

Death Zone Atmosphere (3:51)

End of Episode 1 (Sarah Falls) (0:11)

End of Episode 2 (Cybermen III variation) (0:13)

End of Episode 3 (Nothing to Fear) (0:09)

The Five Doctors Special Edition: Prologue (Premix) (1:22)
Special Edition

Doctor Who – Opening Theme (0:35)

Prologue (1:17)

The Eye Of Orion / Cosmic Angst (2:22)

Melting Icebergs (0:56)

Great Balls Of Fire (0:56)

My Other Selves (0:35)

Nothing Can Go Wrong (0:35)

Bus Stop (0:22)

No Where, No Time (0:36)

Enter Borusa (0:28)

Enter The Master (0:14)

Dalek Alley and The Death Zone (3:06)

Hand In The Wall (0:20)

Recall Signal (0:34)

Who Are You? / Tell Me All About It (0:49)

Thunderbolts (0:33)

The Dark Tower (0:25)

My Best Enemy (1:11)

The Game Of Rassilon (0:17)

Cybermen I (0:22)

Below (0:43)

Cybermen II (1:12)

The Castellan Accused / Cybermen III (0:35)

Raston Robot (0:24)

Not The Mind Probe (0:32)

Where There’s A Wind, There’s A Way (0:31)

Cybermen vs. Raston Robot (2:04)

Above And Between (1:41)

The Fortress Of The Time Lords (1:04)

As Easy As Pi (0:22)

I Hope You’ve Got Your Sums Right / Phantoms (2:29)

The Tomb Of Rassilon (0:29)

Killing You Once Was Never Enough (1:26)

Oh, Borusa (1:21)

Mindlock (1:11)

Immortality (1:17)

Doctor Who Closing Theme – The Five Doctors Edit (1:16)

The Eye Of Orion Atmosphere (3:07)

Time Scoop (0:24)

Transmat Operates (0:09)

Rassilon Background (3:49)

Borusa Ring Sequence (0:37)

The Five Doctors Titles Zap (0:10)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: September 14, 2018
Total running time: 77:56

Category: Doctor Who

Doctor Who: The Invasion – music by Don Harper

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Cybermen – music by Carey Blyton

Doctor Who: The Survival Mixes – music by Dominic Glynn

Doctor Who: Time And The Rani – music by Keff McCulloch

Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils – music by Segun Akinola

Doctor Who: Eve Of The Daleks – music by Segun Akinola

Doctor Who: The Power Of The Doctor – music by Segun Akinola

An Adventure In Space And Time – music by Edmund Butt

Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Remixes – music by Dominic Glynn

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors – music by Peter Howell

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