Director: Alan Wareing
What's the score?
So here, at last, is Mark Ayres, last of the Sylvester McCoy era's Big Three of DW composers. Ayres secured this particular gig on the strength of two test cues he composed after being passed the script for Part One of Remembrance of the Daleks. These were later included in his album of DW spin-off related music, Myths and Other Legends, as "Terror in Totter's Lane" (the appearance and destruction of a Dalek in the junkyard) and "The Headmaster" (the Doctor and Ace first meet Coal Hill School's Headmaster and observe that he's being mind-controlled). They can be heard in context, slightly crushed to fit the scenes as finally shot, as an extra on the DVD release of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
Ayres provides a massive 70 minutes of music for Greatest Show - his score for The Curse of Fenric is similarly large, while even the score for the three-part Ghost Light tops 50 minutes. Whereas Dominic Glynn likes to build a score around a few strong repeated themes and a selection of story-specific sounds, and Keff McCulloch generally uses a small palette of favourite sounds to react in the moment to whatever's happening on screen, Ayres uses signature character sounds and occasional motifs in a very deliberate and information-heavy way to retell the story through his music - this is true of all his DW scores, but particularly of this one. In keeping with the circus theme of the story, the soundtrack is peppered with beats on the big bass drum, cymbal swells and crashes, snare drum rolls (for example, when Nord does his weightlifting act), and plenty of calliope music in the background.
Musical notes
- Signature sounds for everyone! In addition to the frequent use of high synths and tinging bells for exterior scenes on the planet Segonax, we have the following:
- a snarling electric guitar for Nord, Vandal of the Roads
- a pipe organ for the Chief Clown's hearse
- dramatic stabbing sounds for the footsteps of the robotic Bus Conductor
- pompous horns for the boorish explorer Captain Cook
- a hissing, gasping sound (actually an electronically distorted sample of Ayres' own voice) for Mags, intended to hint at her later unmasking as a werewolf
- a collection of percussive knocks, snaps and ratchets for the troupe of anonymous robot clowns
- a lazy, spaced-out guitar for the burnt-out Deadbeat
- a somewhat higher guitar and tinging bells for Bellboy
- One cue that is repeated is the love theme for Bellboy and Flowerchild, heard in their scene together Part One and again in Part Three when Bellboy reminisces to Ace. It's a heartstring-tugger in a sad guitar and flute, and worth the repeating - DW (pre-2005, at least) doesn't often present composers with the opportunity for love themes, and Ayres rises to the occasion.
- The dark powers behind the Psychic Circus have their own set of signature sounds: two beats on the bass drum in any cue announce that something sinister is about to happen; there's a downward hollow sound for scenes of the eye at the bottom of the ancient well behind the big top; and echoing, grinding footsteps in the later episodes signal the acceleration of events and the increase of the Gods' power. When the Gods are revealed, Ayres accompanies the shots of their glowing eyes with a sustained high ringing sound.
- There are a couple of "oo-wee-oo" moments in this score. Ayres gets the first one in early, as we cross to a scene in the TARDIS after the Ringmaster's opening rap in Part One. The second one, heard later in Part One when the Doctor and Ace approach the Stallslady on their way to the circus, carries a small extra riff on the bassline rhythm with it. It's a pretty oblique reference, but Ayres recalls at this point on the DVD commentary that he was told not to do it again, because the production office would have to pay for any extensive extra use of Ron Grainer's theme melody. This seems to confirm the scuttlebutt about Keff McCulloch's heavy riffing on the theme in Season 24, but doesn't explain why even McCulloch's most tentative post-reprimand theme reference, in Silver Nemesis, is longer than the almost-reference here.
- I can't not mention the series of cues covering the end of Part Three and the start of Part Four, during which the Doctor fends off a werewolf attack in the circus ring and the robot Bus Conductor attempts to kill Ace. (These cues were stitched into a single continuous piece on the 1992 soundtrack CD release, and I still think of them as parts of a single unit.) The werewolf cues are driven by a rhythm section of bass synth and snapping percussion with a panicky high synth keeping pace, overlaid with the expected bass drum pairs and werewolf hisses. The beat lapses into half speed and back again to follow the action in a most pleasing way. The main Bus Conductor cue, meanwhile, features an extremely cheeky "ding! ding!" motif that I'm rather fond of.
- Following the prevailing trend for providing background muzak in addition to the incidental music, Ayres rustles up three circus tunes for use in the ring, in the vestibule of the big top and in exterior scenes just outside the vestibule. Two of these are executed in calliope and snare drum, and are easily recognised as distortions of popular circus tunes. The tune heard in the ring in Part One is clearly based on an inversion of the melody of "Entry of the Gladiators" by Julius Fučík - it can also be heard in Part Four, very faintly and played backwards, when the Doctor walks across the dimensions to the ancient circus and in subsequent scenes in the vestibule. A spoof of "The Liberty Bell" by John Philip Sousa is playing in the background of scenes in the vestibule in Part Two. The third tune, heard on the junkbot's promotional video in Part One and in the ring when characters are led out to be sacrificed in Parts Three and Four, is a bit of a mystery - it sounds rather like the raucous "trombone smear" pieces made popular by the famous circus march composer Henry Fillmore, but your humble blogger can't nail down the specific inspiration for Ayres' tune. Answers on a spinning plate.
- There's one bit of diegetic music in Part Four not included in Ayres' score, and that's a stock recording of Ethelbert Nevin's "Narcissus" in the scene of the Doctor performing conjuring tricks. The DVD production subtitles reveal that the use of this tune was specified in the script. "Narcissus" is a light piano piece once popular with comedians, stage magicians and other light entertainers.
- During the troubled making of Greatest Show, members of the cast kept their spirits up by recording a song about the story. "The Psychic Circus" was produced by Ayres, featured vocals from Christopher Guard and Jessica Martin, and included a middle section in which TP McKenna does what can only be described as "the Vincent Price bit". It was offered to BBC Records, but they declined - perhaps they didn't want to crowd the market while The Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album was on sale. The song can be found among the extras on the DVD.
Vox pop
Having character sounds pop up every time the relevant characters do seems like a somewhat over-literal approach to incidental composition, but somehow it works. This is a fantastically rich score, extremely listenable on its own and the perfect complement to the TV episodes. It's easily my favourite of Mark Ayres' three DW scores, and one of my overall favourites.
Availability
- The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
- A soundtrack CD for this story was released by Silva Screen Records in 1992. For the CD release, Ayres stripped out the background "circus muzak" from the main cues, and presented complete versions of the three muzak tunes as separate tracks.
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