49 - The Curse of Fenric

Composer: Mark Ayres
Director: Nicholas Mallett

What's the score?
The second of Mark Ayres' DW scores, and the last to be transmitted. As with Ghost Light, harp and violin synth voices lead the way - the snare drum, horns and woodwind play a smaller part. As Ayres observes in his liner notes for the '90s CD soundtrack release, the more obviously electronic elements of the score are restricted to the more otherworldly scenes of the story.

Musical notes

• Various cues during the story, notably at the start of Part One, include a six-note phrase in strings (the very first cue also includes a six-note counterphrase) signifying the approach of Russian soldiers up to and across the Northumberland coast. Hints of it re-appear in scenes of the Haemovores' advance from the sea in Part Three. As Ayres has confirmed on several occasions, this phrase is based on - but not directly quoted from - part of Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird". (Specifically, on what the cellos and bass do in the first couple of bars of the Introduction, folks!) It doesn't seem to have been a narratively significant choice - Ayres apparently just wanted something with a Russian sound to serve as a hook for his score. The story of Stravinsky's ballet isn't a great match for The Curse of Fenric, but on a related note "The Firebird" is supposed to be the source of the original sample for the synth "orchestra hit" so beloved of the Sylvester McCoy era composers. (Check out the start of the "Infernal Dance" movement, folks!).
• There's a short reference to the Glenn Miller recording of "In the Mood" as the Doctor and Ace arrive at the military base in Part One. Ayres has recalled in interview that he stuck this in as a joke at the expense of the scriptwriter, who'd expressed a concern that the whole score for his 1940s story would be influenced by the Big Band sound. A further small reprise of the swinging percussion from this cue can be heard later in Part One when the Doctor fakes his credentials in Dr Judson's office.
• As Rev Wainwright glad-hands his parishioners on their way out of the Church of St Jude in Part One, we can hear an organ pastiche of Hubert Parry's tune for the hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". It's common enough for organists to improvise a voluntary around some well-known bit of sacred music after a service, but we never get to see St Jude's organist - in fact, the organist and the music have both mysteriously vanished by the time the Doctor and Ace have followed Wainwright back into the church. What a wasted opportunity for a cameo from Ayres! 
• The "enemies coming from the sea" motif isn't the only prominent six-note phrase in this score - the titular Curse is represented by a descending sequence of notes plucked out on the harp. A slow four-note sequence is heard first, when the ancient runes in the St Jude's crypt are revealed; the full motif, the four downward notes plus a two-note "bounce", turns up in the next cue as the Doctor notices some Nordic family names in St Jude's graveyard. The fast six notes and the slower four notes re-appear throughout the rest of the story with varying degrees of electronic embellishments depending on the significance of the scene. Ayres throws in some Vangelis-style Chariots of Fire percussion business when the Doctor starts talking about "Evil from the Dawn of Time" in Part Three. The percussion and the harp motif go their separate ways in Part Four after Fenric finally makes an appearance.
• Less prominent themes include a slightly uncanny piece on the piano for the baby that turns out to be Ace's mother, which is picked up in the final cue of Part Four when Ace's "dangerous undercurrents" have been dealt with; and a series of sombre string chords over a higher-pitched string drone to represent Commander Millington.
• Readers who don't believe that the DW scores of Mark Ayres and Keff McCulloch warrant comparison should check out the cues that play while the Haemovores are attacking the Church of St Jude in Part Three. These bombastic slices of mayhem feature the liberal application of synth choir and orchestra hits over a sustained percussive assault - McCulloch would be proud.
• A soundtrack CD for this story was released in July 1991, but what it contained wasn't exactly what had been heard on the story's original broadcast. The story had been released on VHS earlier in the year with deleted scenes re-inserted, and Ayres had been asked to expand some of his cues with new material to match the extended visuals, notably in Parts One and Four. The CD, released in the wake of the video release, showcased this extended version of the score. A few of the shorter cues from Part One were left off the CD, such as those mentioned above of the Doctor forging his credentials and of the organ voluntary heard at the Church of St Jude; other cues were expanded substantially. The net quantity of music on the CD was only two or three minutes more than the quantity used on the broadcast episodes.

Vox pop
It's hard to find fault with a Mark Ayres DW score. This is probably my least favourite of his three - quite possibly a reflection of my ambivalence towards the story itself - but it's still tremendously listenable. As with Ghost Light, the balance of conventional to unconventional sounds is spot on, and the sense of a lurking and building horror is brought off beautifully.
This isn't really farewell for Ayres - he continued to provide the music for DW tie-in videos after working on the show just as he had before, and as custodian of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop archives, he's still involved today in the production of the DW soundtrack CDs that Silva Screen Records have laudably started issuing again. He can even be seen in public performing alongside Radiophonic Workshop members from time to time. Still, it's tempting to wonder what more he might have done if DW hadn't been taken off the air in 1989 - of the three McCoy era composers, he's the one I can most easily imagine scoring DW again in 1990.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option. The DVD also includes a special "movie" edition of the story with a re-recorded score, but no isolated audio option was included for this version of the score.
• A soundtrack CD for this story was released by Silva Screen Records in 1991, with changes from the broadcast soundtrack as noted above.

48 - Ghost Light

Composer: Mark Ayres
Director: Alan Wareing

What's the score?
This is the last of Mark Ayres' three DW scores to be composed - and the last story of this season to be recorded - but the second to be transmitted. Once again Ayres uses character sounds to "narrate" the story, although not to the extent that he did with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. But in a sense, the use of incidental music as a narrative device is here taken to a different extreme, with Ayres' music brought up so high in the audio mix and the studio dialogue turned down so low that in many scenes the music is left carrying the burden of having to lead the viewer through. The story goes that director Alan Wareing had so little confidence that viewers would be able to follow the script that he deliberately skewed the sound balance in post-production in order to drown out the dialogue - whether there's any truth to this anecdote is moot.
In the liner notes for the recent CD release, Ayres recalls that he was on a tight schedule to complete this score owing to the fact that it had been filmed so late but was to be transmitted so early in the season. A false start on the music for Part One left him working on Ghost Light up until the week before Part One was due to be broadcast, but the extra time allowed him to come up with the orchestra-on-a-budget sound that producer John Nathan-Turner had wanted. Harp and violin sounds do much of the heavy lifting in this score, with scattered cello and woodwind sounds and a healthy dose of unorthodox electronic effects.

Musical notes

• Ayres' CD liner notes mention a distorted dinner gong sound for Mrs Pritchard, but it's pretty hard to spot this. There's certainly a faint cymbal-like noise in the background of some of her cues, but it's hardly a prominent element and really no more so than anywhere else in the score. The signature sound for Mrs Pritchard would surely have to be the sustained, discordant organ notes heard in Parts One and Two, for example in the early scene in which she stares down Rev Matthews.
• If your humble blogger had to pick out one element of this score that sounds like a distorted sample of a gong, it'd have to be the alarming metallic noise that represents Control, most prominently in her scenes in the "lower observatory" in Part One. There's a decidedly knife-like quality to this sound - Ayres seems to be positioning Control as the most sinister character in the story, certainly the most alien character. Although to begin with this sinister use of sound is just backing up the script, it continues after the script's bluff has been called and Control has been revealed as a friendly character.
• Nimrod the Neanderthal butler has an interesting signature sound (sadly, one that's not easy to pick out in the mix or, consequently, to illustrate with audio clips). It's a kind of wobbly "oo" sound wedded to something a bit like the sound of the workings of an old clock. Something similar but less polished - a much more raw, simian "oo" sound - can be heard in the scene in Part Two in which Rev Matthews de-evolves into an ape-like form (again, it's too low in the mix to be easily illustrated here). We might assume that Ayres is making a connection between the two, but given the subtlety of the sounds, it's likely to pass the listener by. 
• Redvers Fenn-Cooper, the quintessential image of the white colonial explorer, has plundered the African continent for his sounds. Percussive, wooden and pipe sounds are heard in several substantial cues featuring Fenn-Cooper - I wouldn't like to guess whether these are meant to be generic "ethnic" instruments or specific to a particular country, but well-informed readers are welcome to leave a comment on the subject.
• Organ music - more tuneful than Mrs Pritchard's sinister notes - is used for scenes in the "lower observatory", where Light sleeps and Nimrod prays to him. Once Light appears in person in Part Three, the organ is joined by bells, clashing cymbals and a hushed performance from the synth choir.
• The BBC's Programme-as-Completed documentation attributes "That's the Way to the Zoo", the comical piece Gwendoline performs on the piano while Rev Matthews is regressing, to Irish balladeer JF Mitchell some time around 1883. (It's played "out of vision" by pianist Alasdair Nicolson.) Ayres cannily reprises the melody of the chorus from this song, in tinny music-box tones, when we see Gwendoline preparing to send the ape-Matthews "to Java" later in Part Two. Later again in the same episode, there's a snatch of one phrase of the melody when Ace uncovers Matthews' display case. Less pertinently, the music-box melody crops up in Part Three when Josiah tells Gwendoline to send an unregressed Ace "to Java".
• The cues for Ayres' first attempt at Part One are included on the 2013 soundtrack CD as bonus tracks. The producer had lamented that he'd wanted an authentic acoustic score for this story but couldn't afford it; Ayres' stated intention was to emulate the sound of the family/chamber ensemble typical of the Victorian period. The problem evidently wasn't in selecting the appropriate synth voices, but in making the result muscular enough to carry a DW story - the main run of the draft score is led by the flute, clarinet and harp, with relatively little string accompaniment and some surprising moments of silence, and overall this feels rather more coy and less sinister than the story requires. Ayres' final version, with a much fuller string section and a stronger element of percussion, fits the bill nicely. It's worth noting, though, that the less orthodox elements of the score - including Control's sting and Redvers' African music, as well as the organ music for the crypt - are already present in the draft cues.

Vox pop
Another delightful score from Mark Ayres, although I find it harder to pick out favourite bits than I do with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy - this one's more concerned with atmosphere than with incident, which does of course make it the right choice for such an atmospheric story. For all that the use of period instrumentation (or a good synth imitation) is appropriate, I think it's the unearthly sounds and animalistic noises that add the sinister edge that really makes this score.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Silva Screen Records issued a soundtrack CD for this story in 1993; an updated version was released in 2013.

46 - The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Composer: Mark Ayres
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
  Rather than providing specific themes for the characters, Ayres uses these sounds as the basis for a score that varies in response to whoever's on screen in a given scene. The character sounds can even be heard arguing with each other at certain points in the story - for instance, when Captain Cook deflects the murderous approach of the Bus Conductor in Part One, or when Deadbeat baits a caged Nord in Part Two.
• 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.