34 - Revelation of the Daleks

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: Graeme Harper

What's the score?
Once again Roger Limb is assigned to score a story directed by Graeme Harper - the last time either of them would work on DW during its original run. Limb builds on his previous score, adapting elements from The Caves of Androzani and adding to them, creating something bigger and more adventurous. Plaintive and ethereal high synth sounds form the bedrock of this score.

Musical notes

• Revelation of the Daleks is quite an operatic story, with its characters undergoing various grandiose tragedies, killing each other off or commenting on the action as if standing in for the chorus. Here, Limb takes the synth moaning sounds he used on The Caves of Androzani and ramps them up into exaggerated wails; these operatic wailings punctuate his score, usually signalling moments of shock or sudden violence.
• Once again, Limb uses shuffling snare drum beats to liven up action scenes - everything from the gunfights in the catacombs in Part One down to the Doctor being apprehended by the Daleks early in Part Two. Snares and wails combine in the scene in Part One in which the Doctor wrestles with a mutant; as they tumble down a hill, Limb also sets his high-end synth notes tumbling.
• Character sounds are plentifully used here, more so than is usual in a Limb score. A rattling tambourine sound seems to represent the bodysnatchers, based on its use throughout most of Part One, but its reappearance in scenes such as the Part One cliffhanger and the face-off between Kara and Orcini in Davros' lair in Part Two suggest it's actually a signature sound for the Tranquil Repose mortuary. It may be meant to generally signal underhand dealings at Tranquil Repose. 
• Other character sounds include the growling, snarling sting used for Davros and the Daleks; the "Last Post" phrases performed in synth trumpet when Orcini reminisces about his days in the Grand Order of Oberon, and when he asks the Doctor to return his medal to them; and the rather lovely Laurel and Hardy stuff that plays when the double act of Takis and Lilt interact with the officious Tasambeker.
• Lovelier still are the mournful melodies that lead into the Doctor's apparent death at the end of Part One and into Jobel's death scene in Part Two. Picked out in high synths with soft beats, these are real standout cues. The Part One cliffhanger is picked up in Part Two with the cheeky tolling of a funereal bell (not the cloister bell, it should be noted), another nice touch.
• I've got a real soft spot for the sound used for the DJ's "concentrated beam of rock an' roll!" which he uses to blow up a couple of Daleks. (Presumably this is Dick Mills' work rather than Limb's - either way, it's included in the isolated music track on the DVD.) It's an almighty howl of feedback - surely the best and aptest sound ever used for a sonic weapon in DW.
• Speaking of the DJ, the Millennium Effect website has the full details of the pop songs used in his scenes elsewhere in the story.

Vox pop
Although this isn't quite the last hurrah for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, it feels like the end of an era. It's the end of the last season to be musically dominated by the Workshop - next season, the freelancers take over. Happily, Roger Limb is on the top of his game here, and Season 22 goes out on a high note. So does Limb - he started on DW on a story that suited his abstract leanings, he went through a prolonged lull during Peter Davison's tenure, but he bows out with as fine a score as any produced during these five years under the Workshop, finer even than his work on The Caves of Androzani. Paired with the right director, he might have gone on to even greater heights.

Availability

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

33 - Timelash

Composer: Elizabeth Parker (credited as Liz Parker)
Director: Pennant Roberts

What's the score?
Startlingly, Elizabeth Parker is the only woman ever to have composed incidental music for DW. (That is to say, specifically been asked to compose the music for the story. Some of Delia Derbyshire's compositions were used as incidental music on Inferno (1970), but these were taken from stock.)

She'd previously provided the special sound for the latter two and a half seasons of Blake's 7, and for the 1970s DW story The Stones of Blood, but this was the first and only time she scored a DW story.

The score for Timelash is often understated, particularly to begin with, but it has an experimental edge throughout, venturing into the avant garde in the story's more active moments.

Musical notes

• Much of the incidental music for Timelash consists of atmospheric sounds with small synth phrases added as accents, but even the atmospheric material is out of the ordinary. Lurking amid the ethereal flourishes and misty washes are a variety of knockings and other small percussive sounds that keep the listener from getting too comfortable, which adds an alien dimension to the planet Karfel that the visuals on this occasion can't quite muster. The clearest examples of this otherworldly ambience can be heard in the scenes of the Doctor clambering about inside the well of the Timelash in Part Two.
• Fans of DW theme tune references, rejoice - "oo-wee-oo" moments are liberally peppered across this score. Most of these are ghostly echoes during the scene in Part Two in which the Doctor demonstrates the pendant he's created that allows him to leave a time-delayed image of himself in one place and wander unseen elsewhere. There's more of this later when the Doctor uses the pendant to distract the Borad while he sabotages the computer controls. A little bass "oo-wee-oo" can be heard when the Bandrils report the Doctor's death, while at the opposite end of this episode there's a drawn-out rendition as the Doctor rallies after the cliffhanger reprise.
• What we get after the "oo-wee-oo" at the start of Part Two is mayhem, as the Doctor instigates an all-out fight in the Timelash chamber. First there's an outburst of crazy atonal synth stabs as he dazzles an android with a mirror, then the struggle itself is accompanied by a low but frenzied beat that reminds me more than a little of the end music from Blade Runner. Over this beat, Parker plays a rising series of repeated phrases, three resonant bass notes in what may or may not be another nod to the theme tune followed by three short harpsichord stabs. This action theme is heard again when the Borad's forces break in and try to take the Timelash chamber back from the rebels later in the episode.
• There are a couple of other notable repeated elements in the score. One is the use of bass harpsichord sounds to emphasise the footfalls of the Borad's androids - these are tentative, only on every other step, in the first appearance of an android in Part One, but become more strident in scenes when they chase after other characters. The other prominent character element is the use of a downward wailing sound on both occasions when the Borad's face is revealed to the viewer - the first time when he's revealed to the Doctor, and the second time when the Borad's clone pops up from nowhere.

Vox pop
It's hard to assess Elizabeth Parker as a DW composer based on this one, somewhat unusual score. The best way to get a proper idea of her musical range is to listen to her work on various BBC wildlife documentaries, most pertinently The Living Planet, which was broadcast the year before Timelash. A CD of the soundtrack to The Living Planet was released by Silva Screen in 2016; many of the cues wouldn't have sounded out of place on a contemporary or historical DW story. It's certainly a shame she wasn't brought back to work on The Trial of a Time Lord - of all the Radiophonic Workshop composers, I think she (and blogger favourite Peter Howell, naturally) would have been most capable of giving the new stable of freelance composers a run for their money. Listening to the stutters and rattles of the action scenes of Timelash, I half expect it to burst into full-on techno at any minute - it's intriguing stuff. We're lucky at least to have this one incidental score from Parker.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release does not include the isolated score, but does include a photo gallery featuring about eight and a half minutes of Parker's music.
• The 1993 CD release Doctor Who: 30 Years at the Radiophonic Workshop included a six minute suite of music from this story.

32 - The Two Doctors

Composer: Peter Howell
Director: Peter Moffatt

What's the score?
The last televised DW score from Peter Howell. The Two Doctors, equivalent in length to a 1970s six-parter, is the longest single story-unit (this blog counts The Trial of a Time Lord as four of those) of the 1980s, yet the incidental score is no longer than that of the average four-parter, clocking in at only a little over 45 minutes. This season alone, it's outweighed by the scores for Attack of the Cybermen and Revelation of the Daleks, both of which boast close to an hour of music.

Musical notes

• This score is dominated by melodic flurries of Spanish guitar. Session musician Les Thatcher plays on several cues, as indicated on the BBC's Programme-as-Completed documentation. The acoustic melodies are obviously appropriate to the story's setting in Seville, a nice counterpoint to the synthesized elements of Howell's score, and just all-round pleasant to listen to. Notable highlights include the mournful tune that plays for the Dona Arana (complete with freakish "Eeeeee!" sound as Shockeye kills her); the melancholic theme that introduces the clownish Oscar in Part One and plays again over his death in Part Three; and my personal favourite, the piece heard in Part Three while everyone's stalking everyone else through the streets of Seville, with its little synthetic Latin 3-2 horn phrase on top.
• The second most significant character theme in this score is the untuneful and slightly fey whistling motif that stands for the Androgums. It generally plays during Shockeye's most triumphant moments - elsewhere, he's represented by brooding synth sounds with metallic, somewhat knife-like accents. The Androgum whistle also plays in Part Three when Chessene reverts to type.
• And the number one most significant character theme belongs to the Sontarans, a rousing march with tattoos of increasingly loud snare drum as its most prominent feature. A high plucked string melody plays over the top of the leading part of the theme - it has a bit of a Spanish flavour about it, even before the Sontarans set foot in Spain. Fast and slow variants of the theme crop up throughout the story, while the snare tattoo on its own quietly intrudes into the scenes in Part One in which the Sixth Doctor investigates the ruined space station Camera. 
• As usual, Howell's score includes some more abstract atmospheric moments. The scene in Part One of the Sixth Doctor and Peri fishing on an alien world is accompanied by a sustained alto ethereal sound that sounds a little bit as though someone's left the tap running in a metal sink. Later in the same episode, we hear an assortment of creaking sounds as the Doctor explores space station Camera, suggesting the raddled edifice could give way at any minute.
• There are several DW theme tune moments for our perusal this week. There's an "oo-wee-oo" into descending notes as the Sixth Doctor collapses in Part One, two "oo-wee-oos" with snare drum tattoo early in Part Three when the Sontarans force the Doctor to prime their bootleg time machine, and a pair of high and low "oo-wee-oos" in Part Three when the two Doctors finally meet. Like the bassline heartbeats in Howell's score for The Five Doctors, this last moment seems to gesture back (in broad principle, if not in specific pitches) to the difference in pitch between Howell's contemporary arrangement of the theme tune and the Delia Derbyshire arrangement that was in use during Patrick Troughton's tenure. There's also a flash of the bassline rhythm in Part One when the Sixth Doctor starts to hack into Dastari's computer.
• And then, when the Sixth Doctor and Jamie escape from the Sontarans in Part Three, the drums suddenly go haywire. Somehow, in 1985, Peter Howell has anticipated the advent of drum 'n' bass.

Vox pop
And there goes Peter Howell. Nobody's going to be surprised to hear that Howell is my favourite Radiophonic Workshop composer - he just seems to have struck the right balance between accessibility and experimentation in each story, and I can't think of a single dud score he composed. His association with DW doesn't end here - the Beeb brought him back to provide the music for their original Jon Pertwee radio DW stories in the '90s, which again should surprise no one. But this is where he leaves our story.

Availability

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

31 - The Mark of the Rani

Composer: Jonathan Gibbs
Director: Sarah Hellings

What's the score?
The task of composing the incidental music for this story was originally given to freelance composer John Lewis. Lewis wasn't a completely out-of-left-field choice - he'd worked with Brian Hodgson, recently returned to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, on a couple of experimental albums back in the 1970s under the band name "Wavemaker". Sadly, Lewis succumbed to a terminal illness while working on The Mark of the Rani, and he died with only the first half of his score completed. His music went unused, but his commissioning marks another step in DW's transition from the Radiophonic Workshop to freelance composers.
Jonathan Gibbs was now brought in to score this story in addition to Vengeance on Varos. As he explains in the "Lords and Luddites" documentary on the DVD, Gibbs didn't listen to Lewis' music before composing his own. Presumably director Sarah Hellings indicated which scenes she wanted music on, but Gibbs' score for Part One covers more scenes than Lewis'. Lewis' cues are fewer but longer, and all fall on scenes that Gibbs also scored. In another DVD extra, "Playing with Time", Gibbs explains how he used visual cues instead of a click track in order to make the rhythm of his music more fluid.

Musical notes

• The bucolic opening cue of Part One sets the tone for much of the score, with mid-range synth chords and brassy accents. It's picked up again early in Part Two and reprised in the final cue at the end of the story. The "paa pa-paa" brass phrase is used at various points to represent the Killingworth miners. The sound of brass instruments has long been a form of soundtrack shorthand for "t' North", a musical stereotype based on the popularity and perceived universality of community brass bands in working class industrial towns in Britain, particularly colliery bands in mining communities.
• But the trios of brass notes in these cues take the Northern (or rather, "t' Northern") associations still further. Their "paa pa-paa" rhythm calls to mind the second movement of Dvorak's Symphony no. 9 ("From the New World"), or "Goin' Home" as it's widely known thanks to William Arms Fisher. This classical piece, specifically as arranged for brass instruments, is forever linked to "t' North" in the British consciousness thanks to a long-running TV advert for Hovis wholemeal bread, which featured a delivery boy on his bike in an industrial town (actually filmed in the very Southern county of Dorset!) and a "t' Northern" accented voiceover. The pitch of the notes in Gibbs' cue is wrong for the Dvorak piece - too high - but then the Hovis ad arrangement was higher still.
• The opening cue ends with the Rani's signature phrase, three notes in a high-pitched, kind of strained synth voice. It sounds a bit like the horn synth squeezed up an octave. It's jarringly out of line with the rest of the cue, which helps to point out the alien nature of the Rani, and her phrase is heard several times during the story. 
• The Master, meanwhile, is represented by a deeper horn sound. During his first few scenes in Part One, he has his own signature phrase, an inquisitive four note sequence (the Four Notes of Villainy again!) that sounds not dissimilar to the Rani's theme.
• More otherworldly sounds mark out the signs of the Rani's interference in history. Sightings of the titular Mark itself are accompanied by a tinny jangling sound. There's a harsher high-pitched buzzing chime effect for the Rani's mind-controlling grubs. In Part Two, as she plants her metamorphic landmines in Redfern Dell, Gibbs plays an up-and-down clockwork sound.
• It's well worth listening closely during the scene near the end of Part One in which the Rani discovers the Doctor, masquerading as a miner, among the unconscious humans in her laboratory. As she leans over the Doctor to listen for his Time Lord heartbeats, Gibbs provides a bass synth heartbeat sound, while over the top of this he plays the four-beat rhythm of the DW theme tune bassline disguised in the miners' brass tones.
• We have not one but three "oo-wee-oo" moments in the lead-up to Part One's cliffhanger - two high and fluting renditions as the TARDIS is wheeled to the mineshaft and tipped in, and a more plaintive one as the Doctor himself hurtles towards the shaft on a trolley.
• The DVD release includes the option to watch Part One with a reconstruction of John Lewis' score in place of Gibbs' music. It's quite downbeat and very folky compared to Gibbs' pastoral horns and synths, although perversely Lewis' score feels heavier on the synths as well. Signature sounds range from high fluting organ tones for the Doctor, through a sort of oboe/theremin hybrid for the Rani, to a low harpsichord for the Master. Lewis' musical voice is a very distinctive one, and it's a real shame he didn't get the chance to add it to this season's diverse choir of composers.

Vox pop
It's hard to pick a favourite of Gibbs' four DW scores, but I think I like this one the most. Like all his scores, it rewards close and repeated listening, but it's also quite accessible. It's interesting to see what's changed - and what hasn't - in his compositional style since he started working on DW two years earlier.
And with that, we bid farewell to another composer. Jonathan Gibbs' body of work on DW is of a consistently high quality, and although his interests at and since this time lay elsewhere, it's a pity he couldn't have stuck around just a little longer.

Availability

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

30 - Vengeance on Varos

Composer: Jonathan Gibbs
Director: Ron Jones

What's the score?
Jonathan Gibbs was working on the score for this story when he was suddenly given The Mark of the Rani to work on as well. As if this weren't pressure enough, Gibbs reveals in the "Lords and Luddites" documentary on the DVD release of The Mark of the Rani that he had no designated studio of his own at the Radiophonic Workshop at this time, and was using Peter Howell's equipment in overnight shifts in order to complete his assignments. Either circumstance could explain why both scores run shorter than the usual, just over 30 minutes for each story.
Vengeance on Varos provides Gibbs with a futuristic setting to work with, so - as with Warriors of the Deep - conventional melodies are out of favour and unconventional sounds are in. Some of those unconventional sounds will be pressed into use again to signify alien elements in the next story.

Musical notes

• In keeping with the story's desolate setting, Gibbs' score is a frequently bleak affair, with plenty of quiet sustained whines and little metallic flourishes. One notable feature in the more tense moments of Part One is the use of a rattling four-beat rhythm, either with or without a synth tone laid over the top.
• Another prominent recurring element is the Governor's pompous fanfare in synth horns. Vengeance on Varos takes place in a brutal offworld regime where scenes of science fiction characters in violent and dangerous situations are recorded and sold on for the entertainment of the folks back on Earth... It's pushing the point hugely, but it's worth it for a laugh - is anyone reminded of the fanfare BBC Video were using in 1985? The connection wouldn't be out of place in such a knowing, self-aware story as this one.
• Gibbs tackles the hallucinatory scenes of monsters in the Punishment Dome in Part One with some relish. The second instance is the more notable - as the Doctor, like a showman, reveals how a false monster has been conjured up with a pair of lamps and a manufactured stench, Gibbs launches into a lurid piece of fairground calliope music. The first instance, the encounter with an apparently gigantic fly, is accompanied by loud buzzing synths; when the actually tiny fly is revealed, a tinny buzzing sound effect is added to the soundtrack - but Gibbs anticipates this even before the main encounter, hinting ahead of time at the true nature of the fly. 
• This week's "oo-wee-oo" is a particularly long-drawn-out one, as the Doctor collapses from thirst in the Part One cliffhanger. The third note is held for a full thirty seconds, finally slumping downwards when the Doctor does.
• My favourite cue from this story must be the appropriately off-balance piece that introduces the two doomed acid bath attendants. This scene at the start of Part Two also provides a follow-up to my suggestion last week that the incidental music could have accentuated the public's reaction to scenes of violence in this season of DW. Vengeance on Varos comes in for particular criticism here, perhaps not so much over the Doctor knocking the two attendants into the acid (a long-standing misconception - they manage to fall in by themselves while he's busy avoiding being pulled in by them), but more because he reacts with a callous quip in the James Bond style. Gibbs emphasises this with a grim musical chuckle, followed by a mockingly sad reprise of the attendants' theme. It's also worth noting that he uses almost exactly the same "woops, he's fallen in the water" cue that he used over the Part One cliffhanger for Warriors of the Deep when the poor duo topple in.

Vox pop
This is a solid but unassuming score at first glance, but it's grown on me with repeated listens. There's enough accessible material in the mix to act as a gateway for the more ambient and discordant elements. Considering the pressure under which it was composed, it's a highly proficient piece of work.

Availability

• The original BBC DVD release did not include the option of listening to the isolated score; this was rectified with the release of the special edition DVD.