25 - Resurrection of the Daleks

Composer: Malcolm Clarke
Director: Matthew Robinson

What's the score?
Originally scripted in four episodes, this story was retooled as two 50-minute episodes in order to make room for coverage of the Olympic Games. The director took the opportunity to move some scenes around to improve the narrative flow of the story. The four-parter and two-parter edits have both now been released on DVD. No significant changes were made to the incidental score in the re-edit, but because these two versions of the story exist, we have to be careful about which bit of the story we mean when we talk about "Part Two". This blog will treat the story as a four-parter (I had to check the extra cliffhanger reprises, you understand).
It's the Daleks' big comeback story - their first (barring the cameo in The Five Doctors) since John Nathan-Turner became the show's producer - and Malcolm Clarke is assigned to compose the music. He's already worked on one big monster comeback story, namely Earthshock, so perhaps he was considered the natural choice for this one. The Daleks are, of course, "bubbling lumps of hate"™, so growling and hissing sounds abound. Although there are motifs and notable cues to be found, the score generally tends towards the abstract.

Musical notes

• The first and probably most reprised cue in the score is the grim, off-key piece that accompanies the establishing shot of a warehouse in present-day London. This will become a theme for any kind of activity at the warehouse, sometimes played straight and sometimes adapted into other cues. There's a particularly twisted, sneering version early in Part Three as the bomb disposal team, who've all now been replaced with Dalek replicas, mill about the place.
• For a story about martial aliens, marches are the order of the day. The opening cue segues into a particularly riotous example as Commander Lytton and his clone policemen massacre the fugitives who've appeared from inside the warehouse. A far grungier, growlier march is used several times for action scenes that feature the Daleks or (less frequently) their shock troops - it hits a clangorous peak in Part One when the Daleks storm the space station in which Davros is being held prisoner.
• There are a couple of amusing cues for the character of Stein. A twinkly mecha-theme is heard whenever he fights to overcome his Dalek conditioning, as if he were some kind of robot. In Part Four, when he heroically hurls himself onto the space station's big self-destruct button, Clarke lets rip with a cheesy fanfare. 
• It's been a few stories since we had a good, solid "oo-wee-oo"; there's one here in Part Four when the Doctor finally returns from the space station to the warehouse. 
• The harmonica tune that plays over the parting scene of the clone policemen sounds as if it's a reference of some sort. It sounds structurally similar to the theme from Z-Cars, but it isn't quoting directly from it; your humble blogger suspects it could be a variation on the theme from Softly, Softly, a Z-Cars spin-off reported to have had a theme tune in a similar vein, but sadly I'm completely unable to find a recording of that online so can't check my hunch. Reader input on this point would be most welcome.
• Perhaps the highlight of the score is the sad, fluting tune that plays in Tegan's farewell scene at the end of Part Four. It's heard earlier in Part Four as well, when the TARDIS returns Tegan and Turlough to the warehouse in the Doctor's absence, so it's not so much a theme for Tegan at long last as a "without the Doctor" theme. (I'm pretty sure it's actually a variation on the massacre cue from Part One, but the resemblance isn't clear enough for me to press the point.)

Vox pop
Well, this is a solid score from Malcolm Clarke - perhaps not a great listen in isolation, but a fine fit for the TV episodes. But still... isn't it just a little bit similar to the work Clarke did for Earthshock? I've already mentioned the banging, clanging march of the Daleks, and the opening massacre cue has a certain... cybernetic quality to it as well. The cue that plays when Galloway is shot by a Dalek trooper in Part One could be dropped into any number of "lurking menace" scenes in Earthshock without the least difficulty, and the overall musical textures of the Earthbound scenes and those set on the space station/freighter are a close fit in both stories too. It's hardly unusual for composers on DW to fall back on familiar sounds over time, but it seems unusual for Clarke, whose scores up to this point have all had such distinct characters. I suppose it would be too much of a stretch for me to suggest an intentional musical comment on the increasing interchangeability of the Daleks and Cybermen as DW monsters...

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music II included a suite of music from this story.

24 - Frontios

Composer: Paddy Kingsland
Director: Ron Jones

What's the score?
Paddy Kingsland returns to compose his final score for DW. His now-legendary electric guitar doesn't get a look in, which is a surprise and a bit of a shame, but there's plenty of exposure for that exotic, hip new sound that's all the rage: the pan pipes.

(The British band Incantation had scored a surprise hit two years earlier with "Cacharpaya", a South American-flavoured tune played on Andean folk instruments; pan pipe cover albums would be all over British record shop shelves in the '90s. Kingsland would appear to have had his finger on the pulse with this score.)

The overall feel of the score is a bit grim, a bit melancholy, which is a fair fit for the story's setting on the last human colony. As usual, Kingsland makes good use of motifs, with a few character sounds mixed in as well.

Musical notes

• The first of this story's many motifs is the set of three descending notes that stands for Captain Revere. It plays in the opening cue of Part One when Revere vanishes; it makes a strident return at the end of Part Three when Revere is revealed as the power source in the Tractators' excavating machine.
• The remaining representatives of authority on Frontios have a staccato theme in snare drum and horns. The snare drum seems particularly drawn to the militaristic figure of Brazen, but this motif is also heard when Plantagenet addresses the colonists in Part One and when the rebellious Retrogrades take control of the colony ship in Part Four.
• Most memorable of all is the pan pipe motif that first plays as the TARDIS arrives on Frontios. It seems to stand for the hope of the colonists - it attaches itself to the youthful Norna in the scenes in which she confides in Turlough in Part Two and is menaced by the Retrogrades at the start of Part Four, but it's also heard over the TARDIS' departure as well as its arrival. Other phrases on the pan pipes are variously heard over scenes of Tegan, Turlough, the Doctor and Norna, and even in the scene of Mr Range entering the tunnels in Part Three accompanied by Brazen and his snare drum. 
• Lurking behind the cues in Part One of Norna leading Tegan and Turlough to the supply room in search of an acid battery and of the three sneaking the battery out of the colony ship is a faint touch of church organ. It's a nice way of reinforcing the sanctity of the colony ship to the colonists, who guard it as if it were a shrine.
• The Tractators have a theme and a signature sound. Their theme is a pensive four-plus-four-note up-and-down affair, first heard in Part Three when Turlough's race memories come to the surface. It's played in various other scenes relating to the Tractators' activities, sometimes in plain synth (when Turlough starts to remember them, for instance), and sometimes in combination with their signature sound (such as when Tegan discovers parts of the TARDIS scattered across their underground tunnels).
• Their sound is something like a hammered dulcimer, although it could simply be some variety of bass guitar. (Given the Tractators' peculiar powers of control over gravity, your humble blogger is tempted to attempt a joke about "string theory". No? Please yourselves.) The first hints of this sound are heard during Captain Revere's disappearance and the meteoric bombardment, both later revealed to have been caused by the Tractators. There's a secondary motif, a stringy "da-dum dum dum da-dum", that emerges in Part Two when Brazen finds out about Mr Range's records of Deaths Unaccountable - all caused by the Tractators - and when the creatures finally make their appearance at the end of the episode.
• Also in the cue at the end of Part Two is an intriguing downward "beowww" noise. It pops up again twice in Part Four, when the enslaved Captain Revere is pronounced dead and when the Tractators capture Turlough. The significance of this sound remains a mystery to yours truly. Something to do with the Tractators' gravity effect? But then why doesn't it feature in the story's denouement?

Vox pop
The unusual choice of pan pipes really sets this score apart from those around it, and puts a new spring in Kingsland's musical step. If his scores for The Visitation and Mawdryn Undead were a little hum-ho, this one's a return to form.

And so Paddy Kingsland leaves the stage - among the first of the '80s DW composers, and now the first out. I've commented often enough on the repetitive tendencies of some of his scores, but perhaps I haven't said often enough just how lovely his compositions have been. Certainly none of his seven (and a bit!) scores are what I would call unpleasant, and the double bill of Logopolis and Castrovalva ranks among the pinnacles of electronic Who music. His accessible melodies have always been a great complement to the experimental stylings of other composers, and I've often detected - or believed I detected - a cheeky edge of wryness in his work. I mean it in the best possible way when I say that I think of his DW scores as "comfort music".

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.

23 - The Awakening

Composer: Peter Howell
Director: Michael Owen Morris

What's the score?
It's a historically themed story, so out come the synthesized harpsichord, fife, tenor and snare drums and a scattering of horn sounds. After the near miss with the previous year's The King's Demons, Peter Howell at last gets to score a story set in England's past. As with The Five Doctors, this isn't an occasion on which he can really indulge his experimental tendencies.

Musical notes

• Like Paddy Kingsland and Jonathan Gibbs before him, Howell draws a musical line between the earthly and the unearthly, with the sounds of historical instrumentation for the humans - those who've come from the past and those who re-enact it - and futuristic sounds for the alien Malus. The snare drum is generally used in rhythm for the Civil War re-enactors, and in rolling bursts to indicate the effects of the Malus' increasing influence, notably including the apparitions of ghostly soldiers. More innocent apparitions are accompanied by the harpsichord. Nimble fluting sounds are used in Tegan's big scenes. The Malus itself is generally heralded by sustained eerie notes, although weirder electronic whirring notes are heard in the build-up to Part One's cliffhanger.
• There's an odd rising sound that plays twice in Part Two, firstly when Turlough is locked up in a barn with Tegan's grandfather and then when Sir George says the Malus will alter the future of mankind. It's a plausible choice of noise for a scene in which the rise of the Malus is discussed, but its significance in the former scene is lost on your humble blogger.
• There are a couple of points in Part Two at which Howell maintains or builds the tension in a scene by repeating low-key musical elements for most of a minute. The scene of ghostly Roundhead soldiers closing in on the Doctor and his friends in the church is sustained by thumping and rolling drums, leading into a synth wail as they kill one of the re-enactors. Later, a repeated combination of growling and shrilling synth noises carries the final confrontation with Sir George into the moment when he topples into the Malus, accompanied by a horn and drum fanfare. It's a simple but effective technique. Howell did something similar in the climactic scenes of his previous three scores, but this is the point at which I think it's most noticeable. More of the same can be found later on in Planet of Fire. 
• The drum rhythm of the dramatic escape cue at the end of Part Two is remarkably similar to the bassline of the DW theme tune.

Vox pop
There's nothing ostensibly wrong with this score - on the contrary, it's very lovely, with its juxtaposition of period instrumental sounds and uncanny synth noises. But for me it's overshadowed by the incidental soundtrack for The King's Demons, which had all this plus a real lute! And it's Peter Howell's rotten luck that the two stories should fall so close together, which only invites comparisons between the two scores.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music II included a suite of music from this story.

22 - Warriors of the Deep

Composer: Jonathan Gibbs
Director: Pennant Roberts

What's the score?
Were it but for the interruption of The Five Doctors, this would be another instance of one composer bridging the gap between seasons. In fact, barring the transition from the Radiophonic Season 22 into the mostly freelance Season 23, this is the only time on the Radiophonic Workshop's watch that musical continuity across seasons is broken.
Not that it matters much - Jonathan Gibbs is attentive to the needs of whichever story he's working on and keen to experiment, and so the score for Warriors of the Deep is very different from the "olde worlde" strains of The King's Demons. It's futuristic and heavy on the action - some might even call it hyperactive. There's a fair amount of repetition in the score; Gibbs relies less on melodic themes than on repeated structural elements, with short phrases passed between the tuned and percussive synth "instruments" in a way that often feels like call and response.

Musical notes

• A variety of watery sounds - bass burblings, undulating echoes and submarine hull clankings - feature in exterior underwater scenes and in scenes set inside the Sea Devils' hibernation chamber. They come across as a more accessible interpretation of Malcolm Clarke's The Sea Devils score. These sounds are most prominently used in Parts One and Two as the Silurians travel to the underwater Sea Devil installation and then on to the Sea Base. It's a stretch, albeit a thematic fit for the story, but there may be hints of the chords of Holst's "Mars, Bringer of War" in the more brooding passages in Part One.
• The first notable repeated element of the score is the stuttering drum sound that introduces the Sea Base crew and is liberally used throughout the story to punctuate any action inside the Sea Base. It's often intercut with cyclical patterns of stabbing synth sounds in the treble range.
• The second notable element is the pair of identical notes. Gibbs starts out with one pair followed by a higher pair, usually repeated with some additional development in the repetition. Before long they've become groups of three pairs (first pair, higher pair and lower pair). The pairs first appear in the scenes of Nilson and Solow scheming in Part One, but are also heard as the Doctor creeps into the Sea Base in Part Two, as various pairs of characters escape from captivity and crawl through air ducts in Part Four, and in a disparate variety of other contexts. 
• There's the merest ghostly echo of the theme tune in Part Two when the Sea Base security staff discover the TARDIS.
• The Radiophonic Workshop's vibraslap - remember it from Meglos? - is put back into service here as the signature sound of the Myrka in Part Three. It may be meant to represent the creature's electric sting - there's certainly a loud rattling blast when it kills Solow. The lumbering beast also gets a tremendous funereal march that's far better than it deserves. The march is recycled after the Myrka's death, without the vibraslap, as the Silurians and Sea Devils parade through the Sea Base towards the bridge.
• The Sea Devils also have a five-note fanfare that goes through several variations during the story, reaching its most triumphant expression in Part Three as they force their way into the Sea Base. The first clear occurrence of it is at the start of Part Three as the Myrka makes its grand entrance as the vanguard of the Sea Devils' strike force. Faster, quieter and inverted variations pop up elsewhere during Parts Three and Four. (Not to be confused with the recurring five-note motif Malcolm Clarke employed in his score for The Sea Devils, although it may be that there's a subtle homage here. Fun fact: Malcolm Clarke's five-note motif is a direct reference to the first five notes of the "Dies irae" from Berlioz's Requiem!)
• In the chaotic fight for control of the Sea Base towards the end of the story, the Silurians succeed in setting off a nuclear missile countdown; this scene is scored with an energetic action cue overlaid with descending wailing sounds that might suggest falling missiles to the listener.
• I said above that this score is a far cry from Gibbs' previous score, but there is just one moment in which something very like the avant garde sci-fi Kamelion cues from The King's Demons can be heard. It's the penultimate cue from Part Four, the one that plays when the Doctor links his mind into the synch-op machine to abort the missile launch. Kamelion was also a machine that the Doctor had to struggle to control with his mind, so there's a clear connection here.

Vox pop
A confident start to the season. Although not a personal favourite of mine, it's a smarter score than the first hearing might suggest - the more I listen to it, the more I seem to find in it. This is one that definitely benefits from being listened to in isolation.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music II included a suite of music from this story.