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.
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