47 - Battlefield

Composer: Keff McCulloch
Director: Michael Kerrigan

What's the score?
For the final time, Keff McCulloch provides the music for the season opener, and indeed this is his last DW score. Well, his last until the charity skit Dimensions in Time and the video release of Shada. Once again he's given the story with heavy martial overtones - UNIT and Arthurian knights this time - so naturally there's some common ground between this score and his work on the previous year's Dalek and Cyberman stories. Having said which, his choice of sound palette has undergone something of a shift, with synth strings and woodwind providing the backbone of this score. Percussion and horns are still prominent, but less so than in his earlier work, and his beloved orchestra hits hardly get a look-in. The synth choir does put in an appearance, though.

Musical notes

• As with McCulloch's two scores in the previous season, solid foursquare beats are the order of the day, but that doesn't stop McCulloch from having a little fun with the rhythm. There's actually a touch of swing in the battle scenes in Part One, which isn't a big help when the scenes themselves are so leisurely. The stand-out funky cue, however, must be the one that accompanies the scene of Mordred summoning Morgaine in Part Two - a regular beat underpins a pleasingly jumpy synth string melody.
• As ever, McCulloch favours character sounds over themes or motifs, and Battlefield has a few to offer. Ancelyn is represented with an upward electric guitar whine in his first (armoured) appearance, and repeatedly thereafter during the story - he may be the "good guy" knight, but McCulloch obviously thinks he's a bit of a badass. Parts One and Three feature some upward violin scratching for Morgaine, although this isn't a consistent feature of her scenes. The sword Excalibur, in its cutaway appearances in Part One, is heralded by high synth and faint organ notes, not entirely unlike the material used in Silver Nemesis on shots of the Nemesis asteroid in space. The use of martial snare drum rolls to represent UNIT should be obvious to everyone.
• The tick-tock harpsichord rhythm from Silver Nemesis makes a surprise reappearance at the start of Part Two when the Doctor, a.k.a. "Merlin", stares down Mordred. It wasn't used to represent the Doctor in the previous story, but as a motif for magical time-travellers from England's past - it's not a bad match for "Merlin" in that sense, then, although nobody at King Arthur's court would have played the harpsichord. 
• The reveal of Bessie, the Doctor's vintage car, in Part Three is heralded with a charming old-fashioned violin piece capped off with an "oo-wee-oo". Cherish this "oo-wee-oo", folks, because it's the last of McCulloch's long line of DW theme references.
• Readers who've been playing the Spot the Latin Music Moment game should take particular note of the big fight scene near the start of Part Four. Unless your humble blogger has missed something, this is the only musical cue in 1980s DW to feature the cowbell.
• When the Destroyer, unleashed, prepares to devour the world in Part Four, there's a sound that reminds your humble blogger of the siren of an ambulance. And what should we hear in the tail end of the climactic scene in which the Doctor persuades Morgaine not to start a nuclear war? Why, it's an up-and-down sound reminiscent of an ambulance siren - not the same cue, but similar enough to be worth mentioning. Perhaps McCulloch and/or director Michael Kerrigan have shrewdly picked up on the subtextual connection - apparently intended by the scriptwriter - between the world-eating demon and UNIT's nuclear missile.
• There's a lovely moment in Part Four when Ancelyn and Mordred are about to launch into a swordfight and the Doctor casually strolls between them - the music pauses and double-takes along with the knights.
• McCulloch is not averse to ending a DW score with a cheesy walkdown - ample proof can be found in Season 24 - and this story ends with the cheesiest of them all. A lengthy piece of lounge piano plays over the final scene at the Brigadier's country house, leading into a jaunty wrap-up in pizzicato strings and woodwind as the ladies take the Doctor's car for a joyride. And they call this Sylvester McCoy's "dark" season.

Vox pop
This is Keff McCulloch at his most reined-in. We lost the wild invention of Season 24, now we've lost most of the bombast of Season 25 - what we're left with is pleasant, but a bit too smooth. This score veers closest of all McCulloch's scores to what I've referred to before as the sound of daytime/lifestyle TV - for that matter, there are several cues in Battlefield that wouldn't sound out of place in a corporate training video (most notably, the first exterior shot of the Gore Crow Hotel in Part One). This is certainly the safest of McCulloch's scores, but I wouldn't say that playing safe is one of his strengths as a composer, or something I look for in a DW score.
And so, farewell, Keff McCulloch. I still maintain that he's a varied and interesting composer, undeservedly overlooked by too many DW fans. His work is of its time, but the same can be said of his contemporaries Glynn and Ayres, and there's less distance between the three of them than a lot of fans might care to admit.

Availability

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