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.

27 - The Caves of Androzani

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: Graeme Harper

What's the score?
This is the story that sees the return to DW of Roger Limb, although it's hard to believe he's the same Roger Limb who worked on Arc of Infinity and Terminus. Limb himself attributes the marked difference in his output to director Graeme Harper, who had strong ideas of his own on how The Caves of Androzani should sound and gave Limb very clear indications of what he wanted, something that John Black and Ron Jones apparently hadn't done.
Limb's familiar free-wheeling compositional style can be found here and there, but the sound palette is refreshingly different from what he's used before. The "angry wasp" synths have had their day. Also worth noting is the change in cue length across the story: Part One contains a lot of short cues, but as the story picks up steam the cues get longer, until in the final act of Part Four we're presented with a massive seven-minute piece.

Musical notes

• A recurring motif in the score is the six-note phrase representing spectrox, the wonder drug of Androzani Minor. It's usually played in chimes and heard in scenes around the middle of the story, for instance when Sharaz Jek and the arms dealer Stotz are arguing over a trade of guns and spectrox. However, it's anticipated in a discreet tenor synth early in Part One when Peri steps into a raw spectrox nest; the same cue foreshadows the Doctor's demise in Part Four with a touch of the TARDIS' cloister bell, a familiar portent of doom.
• The presence on-screen of Sharaz Jek - forced into hiding, dangerous and probably insane - is marked with a rattlesnake sound. This is one of the elements of the score Graeme Harper is known to have requested.
• I mentioned under The King's Demons that this was the year the BBC Radiophonic Workshop got their hands on a synthesizer that could do a convincing snare drum sound. Limb makes liberal use of this new toy, with stumbling snare phrases throughout the story in action scenes, notably where Stotz' gun-runners are involved. There's a sustained snare roll at the end of Part One when the Doctor and Peri are apparently executed by firing squad; it's reprised in Part Four when Stotz guns down his own men after cutting a deal with Trau Morgus, so we might think of it as a "people are shot for Morgus' convenience" theme. 
• The lengthy cue in Part Four that covers the Doctor's rescue of Peri and return to the surface of Androzani Minor is a slow, atmospheric piece punctuated by a thudding heartbeat. Somewhere around the midpoint, as the Doctor's own condition deteriorates and it becomes more of an ordeal for him to continue, the heartbeat becomes the tolling of the cloister bell, the TARDIS' warning alarm. It's a nice, subtle way of reinforcing the gravity of his situation. 
• An anxious penultimate cue leads into the final cue of the story, a high-pitched pulsing whine that escalates into a grinding upward synth crash as the Doctor regenerates. Graeme Harper famously asked Limb to deliver something that sounded like the end of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". It may lack the tenderness of Paddy Kingsland's regeneration cue for Tom Baker's departure, but it's certainly intense.
• Having served up this heart-stopping over-the-cliff moment, Limb remains silent during Colin Baker's first words as the Doctor. This is the right decision for several reasons: it gives the new Doctor centre stage; it means Limb doesn't tread on the toes of Malcolm Clarke, who will provide the score for Colin Baker's first full story as the Doctor; and it's hard to imagine any further musical cue steering clear of bathos after that regeneration crash.

Vox pop
Dramatic (melodramatic, even) but restrained when it needs to be, this score is a real quantum leap forward for Roger Limb. He maintains a melancholic feel throughout, but doesn't let the pace drag, as befits an action-filled story. It's a pulse-racing, spine-tingling score, as listenable in isolation as it is suited to the transmitted episodes; it could even be the best of the season.

Availability

• A soundtrack CD for this story was released by Silva Screen Records in 2013.
• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• This is the last story to be represented by a suite of music on Doctor Who - The Music II.

18 - Terminus

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: Mary Ridge

What's the score?
The last of Roger Limb's "early period" scores - after this, he takes a bit of a break from DW, returning at the end of the next season with The Caves of Androzani. There's not a lot of difference between this one and Limb's score for Arc of Infinity.

Musical notes

• Limb picks up the Black Guardian theme from Paddy Kingsland's score for Mawdryn Undead. (It's Four Notes of Villainy - how could he possibly resist?) But more than this, he positively runs with it, trying out several new variations. There's a lovely mournful version at the end of Part Four after Turlough has received an unspecified horrible punishment from the Black Guardian. Curiously, Limb also takes the sound effect for the crystal the Black Guardian gave to Turlough - presumably created by Dick Mills for Mawdryn Undead - and incorporates it into his score.
• This being Nyssa's last story, it's not surprising that Limb reprises the character theme he composed for The Keeper of Traken - again, including a lovely melancholic version in Part Four. It's more surprising to hear Limb reprise Paddy Kingsland's theme for Adric in Part One, when his old room in the TARDIS becomes Turlough's new quarters. At a time when the show relied heavily on its own continuity, it's actually not all that common for the incidental composers to tap into the show's musical continuity in the way that Limb does here.
• Beyond that, it's very much business as usual for Limb. His familiar four-note phrases pop up throughout; there's even a theme - a theme! - for the Vanir. Valgard gets the gruffest and the most frequent variation of this theme.

Vox pop
So, the good news is that this is the last time I'm going to be rude about Roger Limb. The bad news is that I'm going to be rude about Roger Limb now.
What we have here is a step up from the Arc of Infinity score, at least. (I'd describe it as the "dead cat bounce" after Arc's pavement impact, except that the next time we encounter Limb the cat will miraculously rocket back into the air, so the analogy isn't going to stick.) The character moments are lovely, but they're gems scattered in the gravelly textures of Arc's synths and Limb's familiar meandering style. New ideas are wanting here - it's notable that the stand-out moments of the score have all been built on already existing cues.
But as I've pointed out before, we've come through a two-year period in which Roger Limb was called on to score at least every third story - he's been overused. The break between Terminus and The Caves of Androzani will do Limb (and us) a power of good.

Availability

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

15 - Arc of Infinity

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: Ron Jones

What's the score?
Here Roger Limb bridges the gap between Seasons 19 and 20, just as Paddy Kingsland did for Seasons 18 and 19. In a similar way, this provides a kind of musical continuity (probably unintended) across the show's off-air months. In other words, the score for Arc of Infinity isn't a radical departure from Limb's other DW work to date. This time he gives full vent to his unmelodic muse, with raucous mid-range trumpet sounds throughout on a base of higher-range noodlings.

Musical notes

• This story features sinister goings-on in Amsterdam. Limb sets the scene by playing a snatch of "Tulips From Amsterdam" in the style of a calliope before shifting straight into some sinister synth business.
• There's a pleasant treble fanfare when Tegan shows up in Part Two. It's an oasis in a cacophonous desert, which (intentionally or not) gives a welcome air to her reappearance after her apparent departure in Time-Flight. As previously noted, Tegan doesn't actually have a theme - this is another one to add to the list of candidates that didn't make it.
• The Roger Limb Four Note Structure of Villainy is all over this score, although the arrangement of the notes changes during the story. It's three notes up and one down in Part One, in which the villain's identity is a mystery - we might perhaps read a questioning tone into this phrase. Later, it changes to a stepped sequence that's closer to earlier instances of the Four Notes - it's actually the inverse of George Cranleigh's tragic Four Notes in Black Orchid. By the time Omega is running around Amsterdam in Part Four, the phrase has entered fully tragic territory, as has the villain himself.
• When we see the zombie Colin Frazer in Part One, there's a sound as if Limb has leant his whole arm across the keyboard. It could perhaps be described as an electronic vomiting sound. This one moment sums up this score for me.

Vox pop
Once again, there's not much to say about Limb's score, because there aren't many notable features to it. (Is it just down to Limb's creative choices, or is it because for a third time he's being given notes by director Ron Jones?) It's less varied even than the score for Time-Flight, and it's a lot more confrontational - one might wonder whether Limb was in a particularly bad mood that week. Sometimes it's nearly tuneful, sometimes it sounds like someone screaming into a kazoo. Quite a lot of the time it's just a wall of noise. It could be argued (cruelly, perhaps) that it's a fitting soundtrack for Arc of Infinity, but in isolation it's appalling.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Three tracks on Doctor Who - The Music were taken from this story, all augmented by Dick Mills' sound effects. "Omega Field Force" (sic, presumably meant to read "Omega Force Field") is a combination of two cues from Part One that play as Omega invades the TARDIS and attempts to bond with the Doctor. "Ergon Threat" is the cue immediately following that, during the scene of the Ergon firing at the young backpackers. "The Termination of the Doctor" is the penultimate cue from Part Two, leading into the Doctor's apparent (and very noisy) execution.

14 - Time-Flight

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: Ron Jones

What's the score?
Roger Limb takes his familiar sound palette and changes the pitch up. Droning and buzzing synths are in evidence again, along with some trumpet-like sounds, but most of the score is taken up with extremely high-pitched jangling and echoey sounds, generally to accompany scenes of the ethereal Xeraphin or Kalid's supernatural shenanigans.

Musical notes

• Part One contains an astonishingly long gap between cues, more than eight minutes between the disappearance of Concorde #1, Golf Victor Foxtrot, and the flight crew preparing to board Concorde #2, Golf Alpha Charlie. Incidental silences of this length are almost unheard of (so to speak) in the electronic 80s; this is almost certainly the longest example, with Peter Howell's score for Part One of Planet of Fire providing a distant second place with a six minute silence.
• Presumably copyright restrictions prevented any use or spoofing of British Airways' marketing jingle, "We'll Take More Care of You", during the story. Limb provides a distant cousin to the tune in Part One - a triumphal mid-range synth fanfare - when Golf Alpha Charlie apparently lands safely back at Heathrow.
• The only other notably tuneful bit of the score - a march that starts in an earnest minor key but soon turns jolly - plays in Part Four when the flight crew are making repairs to Golf Alpha Charlie's landing gear. According to the production notes on the DVD, it was during the shooting of this scene that the real "We'll Take More Care of You" was played on the studio floor, to the amusement of all.
• There's a really good bit about halfway through when Captain Stapley is caught listening to "Better the Devil You Know" by Kylie Minogue on his headphones. Oh no, wait, that's the parody version. I wish, I wish I was watching the parody version instead of the real one.

Vox pop
There's an interesting question to be pondered here: Does my opinion of a story affect my opinion of its soundtrack, or vice versa? Time-Flight is a story that I actually find it draining to watch - were it but for this project, I wouldn't have pushed my way through to the last episode again, and I could have spared myself the physical sensation of having wall cavity insulation pumped into my skull. It's a solid dud. I'm reasonably sure that the combined efforts of Bernard Herrmann, Wendy Carlos and the sainted Delia Derbyshire couldn't have made it look good. Would Time-Flight have made a great composer sound bad? Could a better story have made Roger Limb's score sound better?
In fairness, there's more going on in Limb's score for Time-Flight than I've given him credit for above. It's probably on a par with Four to Doomsday's score in terms of content - the thing is, it's much less varied and less appealing in terms of timbre, and it's hard to pull out notable features from all that shrilling. As much as my opinion of the story itself might have reflected onto the music, I don't think Limb does himself any favours here. There are points of interest around the score, as noted above, but none within the score itself.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release does not include the full isolated score, but the DVD photo gallery features eight minutes of Roger Limb's music.

12 - Black Orchid

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: Ron Jones

What's the score?
For this "country house murder" pastiche set in 1925, Roger Limb uses his now-familiar buzzing mid-range synth sound, but adds a piano for period flavour. Most of the cues are extremely short. As usual, Limb holds fire during expository scenes - the Doctor defending himself and the reveal of George Cranleigh's identity in Part Two - but he also maintains a reverent silence for the entire duration of the cricket match in Part One. He also gets a break during the party scenes, when stock music takes over.

Musical notes

• The party scenes that occupy much of Part One and the early portion of Part Two are set to a selection of dance tunes from the 1920s, taken from stock. The Millennium Effect website has a comprehensive list of the tunes used. Although these are used diegetically (we see the butler's hand changing the records), two of the tunes were recorded after the year in which the story was set... It's a pity the stock music couldn't have been matched to specific scenes with a bit more self-awareness - "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" (a.k.a. "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue") would have been an amusing choice for the scene in Part Two in which Charles Cranleigh asks if anybody's seen his fiancée.
• The rest of the time, Limb either buzzes and tinkles quietly in the background, or indulges in melodramatic flourishes of the dun-dun-daaa! variety - the opening cue from Part One is fairly representative. There's a hint of characterisation in the music, with low notes representing the murderous George Cranleigh and high notes the Doctor or Ann Talbot, but this isn't applied uniformly.
• A small note - Part Two features (what I think is) the first use in Limb's work of a four-note phrase to represent villainy. The actual sequence of notes changes from score to score, but the basic concept makes repeat appearances. It will play quite a large part in Limb's score for Arc of Infinity; we might associate it with tragic villainy, then, except that it also pops up briefly in Time-Flight.

Vox pop
Well, it's time to drop the mask, and I'm not talking about George Cranleigh's Harlequin costume. There isn't a lot to say about Roger Limb's music in this story, because there just isn't a lot of music; that leaves me with space to fill, which makes this a convenient point at which to address my opinion of Limb's first six scores in general.

Firstly, though, I should stress that Limb's music undergoes a radical change in his final two scores, and I'll be a lot more complimentary about those. The following remarks only concern his work 1981-83, and in no way reflect on his work 1984-85.
The problem I have with Limb's work in Seasons 19 and 20, when he dominates the musical landscape of DW, isn't that he favours a meandering compositional style with only occasionally structured cues. Nor is it that, despite the tremendous range of synthesized sounds available to him (and his contributions to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop - A Retrospective album show that he knew of their existence), he restricts himself to a narrow band of irritating waspish sounds. Either of these things would be tolerable without the other (the meandering more so than the wasps, I'd suggest). The problem is both things in combination, compounded by Limb's repeated use of the same technique six times in succession. There are brief flashes of something more - the show pieces of Kassia's theme and wedding music in Part One of The Keeper of Traken, the froggy sounds and furious march in Part Four of Four to Doomsday, the addition of the piano in Black Orchid - but they are only flashes, and they're not enough to alleviate the more general gloom.
The chief point in favour of Limb's score for Black Orchid is precisely that there's so little of it - without a stand-out cue, it simply fades into the background and lets the stock music do all the heavy lifting. Innocuous is the word for it. Limb's previous two scores were largely background affairs too, and when a scene required the music to take centre stage, he generally came through. That's not something I can say of his next three scores, which sound more like a composer at war with his client. My opinion of Roger Limb's work will eventually get better, but first it's going to get worse.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release does not include the full isolated score. The DVD photo gallery features four and a half minutes of music; however, three minutes of this are compiled from the stock music used in the story, and only ninety seconds of Roger Limb's score are included, making this the least available of all the Radiophonic Workshop's DW scores.

9 - Four to Doomsday

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: John Black

What's the score?
Roger Limb's second DW score is similar to his first in terms of style and timbre, but adds brassy tones for emphasis in the more dramatic moments. Setting the trend for this season, the music is broken up into shorter and more frequent cues. As with The Keeper of Traken, Limb's music becomes sparse in the latter two episodes, especially during expository scenes; he remains notably quiet while Bigon is explaining the plot to the Doctor in Part Three. When it does make itself known, however, the music in the second half of the story is a lot more assertive than in the first half.

Musical notes

• Part One opens with an establishing model shot and a bold fanfare; after this, Limb's music moves into the background for the rest of Parts One and Two.
• Several echoey, jangly cues play while the Doctor and his companions explore the laboratory in Part One. Similar echoey sounds are heard over the scene in Part Three in which Nyssa is hypnotised.
• Whenever Monarch is heard scheming or loses his temper, the music spoofs him with croaking bass synth notes, sounding something like a bassoon. It's a suitably froggy sound for an alien villain who's repeatedly described as frog-like.
• Four pieces of diegetic music feature during the cultural presentations in Parts Two and Four: didgeridoo music for the Aborigines, tuned chimes for the Mayans, clashing cymbals and drum for the Chinese dragon dance, and a fast tattoo on a tenor drum for the Greek gladiatorial contest. The Millennium Effect website identifies the Aboriginal music as coming from a 1963 BBC programme called Adventure: Quest Under Capricorn - presented by David Attenborough and with the subtitle "The First Australians", this programme can be found on the BBC iPlayer website (UK readers only!). Millennium Effect also notes the mention of The Royal Hunt of the Sun by the National Theatre on Four to Doomsday's documentation - as The Royal Hunt of the Sun was a 1964 play about 16th century Mesoamerica, it's safe to assume that this was the piece used for the Mayan dance. It's a fairly safe bet that the Greek drums and Chinese dragon music were taken from stock too.
• Unusually, Limb provides a lengthy structured cue - a kind of angry march - for the scene in Part Four in which Monarch sends his ministers to put an end to the Doctor's spacewalk. Note the frog-bassoon at the start of the cue as Monarch shouts out his orders. Because this kind of structured piece is generally so rare in Limb's work for DW, it's all the more remarkable and welcome here.

Vox pop
Like Roger Limb's previous score, this is one that I don't think I'd appreciate in isolation, but a serviceable backdrop for the TV episodes. The use of the deep croaking synths to represent the Urbankans and the echoey "space" music for early scenes in the deserted lab suggest a burgeoning sense of narrative in Limb's work, which is a pleasing development (and sadly, one that won't be followed up over the next couple of seasons). This score has a few memorable cues - the opening fanfare and the bombastic march in Part Four are the stand-outs - although overall the hit rate isn't great. Still, this is possibly the most surprising and rewarding of Limb's early scores.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release does not include the full isolated score, but does have a compilation of about six and a half minutes of Roger Limb's music over the photo gallery.
• Two tracks represented this story on Doctor Who - The Music: "Exploring the Lab", which combined the opening cues for Monarch's spaceship and the Doctor inspecting the lab with sound effects from Dick Mills; and "Nyssa is Hypnotised", from the scene in Part Three.

6 - The Keeper of Traken

Composer: Roger Limb
Director: John Black

What's the score?
Roger Limb's first score for DW - the first of many. In this season he's the odd man out, but over the next two seasons he contributes more than a third of the incidental music. From this point until the 20th anniversary, you're never more than two stories away from a Roger Limb score.
Some people regard this story as little more than a run-up to Tom Baker's big finale, and Limb's music seems to contribute to that impression. He tends to convey a general mood rather than emphasise or offer comment on particular moments, and he spends most of this story building up an air of anxiety, which is left hanging at the end of Part Four. He favours low buzzing synths coupled with high and mid range droning sounds.
It's also worth noting that, in stark contrast to the frequent short cues favoured elsewhere in this season in Howell's and Kingsland's scores, The Keeper of Traken features lengthier cues of a minute or two in duration with much longer silences in between. Presumably this was at the request of director John Black, but it may also reflect Limb's preference - his other DW scores tend towards longer cues. He's particularly cautious about intruding on moments of plot exposition, and on the latter parts of the story in general.

Musical notes

• Nyssa has a theme, but like Adric's, it isn't hers to begin with. It plays in full over the scene in Part One in which the young Kassia brings flowers to Melkur. The light sounds of harp and flute, conventionally considered to be feminine instruments, suggest youthful innocence, with a certain otherworldliness in the melody. A minor key variant is heard when Kassia visits Melkur after her wedding and hears him speak. Variants of the theme turn up in Part Two when Nyssa tends to Melkur, and at the end of Part Four when Nyssa leaves Tremas on his own in the council chamber.
• Another notable musical feature of Part One is the diegetic music heard after the wedding of Kassia and Tremas. It's a fast, jolly tune comprised of pipe, xylophone and tambourine sounds.
• Limb is a practitioner of the recap switcheroo, although given his compositional style it's not always easy to spot. In Part Four he extends and merges the last two cues from Part Three, and in doing so he strikingly alters the timbre and balance of the constituent parts. This leads to one of the stronger features of the composition being obscured: the three note phrase that practically defines the re-recorded cue included on the Doctor Who - The Music album is audible in the penultimate cue of Part Three, but is almost completely buried in Part Four.
• In interview, Limb cites Debussy as an influence on his work as an incidental music composer. I'm not familiar enough with Debussy's work to be able to spot any definite references in this score - perhaps there are DW-watching Debussy fans out there who can do better? In any case, Limb's atmospheric but very loosely structured score doesn't generally lend itself to this kind of analysis. It doesn't give commentators like myself very much at all to get hold of, in fact. But the style is an appropriate match for the art nouveau visual design of the story, since Debussy was composing at the height of the art nouveau vogue around the turn of the 20th century.

Vox pop
I prefer music with more form to it, so for me Roger Limb's score doesn't work so well in isolation. As an accompaniment to the TV episodes (which was, after all, its intended purpose), it's fine - as noted above, it's an appropriate choice for the story, and it's pretty enough. It also adds some welcome variety to a season that's otherwise musically dominated by Howell and Kingsland.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music included three tracks from this story: "Nyssa's Theme", actually the cue that introduces Kassia in Part One; "Kassia's Wedding Music", also from Part One; and "The Threat of Melkur", a combination of Dick Mills' sound effects and the penultimate cue from Part Three.