20 - The King's Demons

Composer: Jonathan Gibbs (with lute compositions in Part One by Peter Howell)
Director: Tony Virgo

What's the score?
There's a tangled story behind this score, but the DVD production subtitles are there to talk us through it. Peter Howell was initially assigned to work on The King's Demons, and he began by writing the pieces to be played on set - or rather, to be recorded beforehand by lutenist Jakob Lindberg, and then mimed to by the actors. These included the music played in the opening scene of Part One by a minstrel (actually Lindberg himself - he isn't exactly credited for his cameo, but he does get a crew credit alongside Fight Arranger John Waller), and the King's song performed by the false King John.
Howell then had to back out of scoring The King's Demons in order to focus on other commitments, and the assignment was handed on to BBC Radiophonic Workshop newcomer Jonathan Gibbs. Gibbs thus ended up composing all the incidental music for the story, but he did take some inspiration from Howell's song, and Lindberg was brought back into the studio to provide some more lute sounds. A drummer, Tim Barry, was also called in to perform on the soundtrack - this time next year the Radiophonic Workshop will have a synthesizer that can do snare drum rolls, but at this point they have to employ a session musician.

Musical notes

• As noted, the lute music that opens Part One is not part of the incidental music (and thus not included in the isolated score on the DVD). The first incidental cue in the story plays over the start of the joust scene, and comes across as an ostentatious piece of scene-setting. Synthesized recorders, shawms and horns are added to the lute and drums - look how gosh-darned medieval we are, the music seems to say. In fact the feel of the composition is more Renaissance than 13th century, and the snare drum is anachronistic, but there's an air of heritage park historical re-enactment about the story, so it's not as out of place as it might be. And given the later revelation of the King and his champion as fakes, we might even argue that this subtle wrongness in the music is entirely appropriate.
• The King's song is also not part of the incidental score, having been played during the filming of the banquet scene in Part One, with the false King John singing and "playing" along. (Perhaps I should have put "singing" in inverted commas as well...) Gibbs doesn't make use of the lute composition that opened Part One in his score, but he does use the King's song as a motif in the immediate next cue as Sir Gilles threatens Sir Geoffrey Lacy. There's also a tinny high-pitched reprise at the moment that Kamelion is revealed in Part Two (one for the dogs and small children there).
• The use of synthesizers notwithstanding, Gibbs stays in character until the end of Part One, when the revelation of the Master thoroughly breaks the medieval atmosphere. All-out electronic sounds and weird oscillations burst free in this cue. The scenes in Part Two that feature Kamelion in his robotic form also feature some notably "alien" musical cues, in contrast with the conventional melodies that precede them.
• The downbeat cue that plays as the Master reappears in the castle dungeon in Part Two sounds mysteriously like part of the Oompa-Loompa song from the Gene Wilder film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Vox pop
A promising DW debut for Jonathan Gibbs. The story allows him to play with historical and futuristic musical forms side by side, and he proves to be comfortable with both. A solid and pleasant score to round off the season.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music II included a suite of music from this story.

19 - Enlightenment

Composer: Malcolm Clarke
Director: Fiona Cumming

What's the score?
Malcolm Clarke, the (re)discovery of 1982, is brought back this season to round off the "Black Guardian trilogy". There's a nautical theme to the story, which informs several of Clarke's cues. The soundscape in general is high-pitched and sparkly, tentative and mysterious much of the time, but tending towards the theatrical in dramatic moments in the final episode.

Musical notes

• Clarke doesn't continue the use of the Black Guardian theme, although like Limb, he does incorporate the “Turlough's crystal” sound effect into his score. Poor old Blacky is reduced to a grumpy descending three-note phrase that sounds strangely reminiscent of the Cybermen's theme from Earthshock. The White Guardian, meanwhile, gets a theme of his own to mark his long-awaited appearance. It's a high-pitched phrase, seven notes long, over a repeated lower-pitched four-note phrase. (Does the four-note phrase remind anyone else of the Flying Pickets cover of "Only You"?) The seven-note phrase is liberally repeated during the story whenever something Guardian-ish happens, in various forms - timid and jangling when the White Guardian is attempting to make contact with the Doctor at the start, more subdued at quiet moments in the middle, grandiose when the Guardians' pavilion is revealed in Part Four.
• Billowing, rolling sounds are used to reinforce the maritime atmosphere when the TARDIS first materialises in the hold of the 'Shadow'. More maritime flavour is provided by the jolly hornpipe-like march that represents the human deck hands. Later, when we go up on deck and see the stars, Clarke employs an ethereal choral sound that seems to suggest a combination of awe and terror.
• Several boatswain's (or bosun's) pipes are incorporated into the soundtrack (apparently one plays a pipe on the call, rather than a call on the pipe, although your humble civilian blogger welcomes corrections). The shrill whistle of the boatswain's call has been used for hundreds of years to communicate orders at sea on military ships; I've no idea whether it would have been used on a racing vessel like the 'Shadow'. The little research I've carried out suggests that - horror of horrors - the pipes heard in Enlightenment aren't entirely authentic. They should probably all be preceded by a call to attention and end with an abrupt high note, for a start.
  
  • The low-high-low pipe that announces Captain Striker's entry to dinner is the “Pipe the Side” or “Pipe Aboard” (played at twice the speed it should be). It's generally used to announce the arrival of officers or royalty on board the ship, or as a show of respect for passing vessels or those being buried at sea. Serving aperitifs probably isn't a standard occasion for its use. Then again, given the nature of the Eternals - and none of the deck hands have seen him at this point - this could literally be the moment at which Striker arrives on board. A sarcastic version of this pipe is played when the piratical Captain Wrack makes her first appearance.
  • The pip-pip-pip-warble that calls the sailors onto the deck during the race past Venus is probably meant to be some kind of “all hands on deck” or “action stations” pipe, but it doesn't bear any resemblance to any relevant pipes that I've been able to find online. Still, it sounds convincingly urgent.
  • The pipe that sounds after the ship has rounded Venus actually does start with (a close approximation of) an attention call. We then get a downward trill and a sustained high note. This isn't the “Carry On” or the “Secure Quarters”; at a push, it might be taken for the “Pipe Down”, which is usually played to announce lights out or other moments of quiet nautical reflection.
• The music heard during the party scenes on board Captain Wrack's ship is a pre-existing piece by Clarke called "The Milonga". "The Milonga" is included in the double CD release BBC Radiophonic Workshop: A Retrospective - it was originally composed as the closing theme for a BBC Radio 3 programme about Jorge Luis Borges in 1979. Clarke must have been fond of the piece - thinly disguised versions of it feature on three of the five albums of Radiophonic Workshop material licensed out by BBC Enterprises to the Cavendish Music Library in 1994.
• We get a sad little burst of the DW theme tune in Part Four when Tegan thinks the Doctor's been thrown overboard.

Vox pop
Another fine score from Clarke. It doesn't have the same impact as his previous incidental scores for DW, but the more gentle tone of much of the music here shows another side to his work that suits this contemplative story.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• This is the first story to be represented by a suite of music on the Radiophonic Workshop's follow-up album, 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.

17 - Mawdryn Undead

Composer: Paddy Kingsland
Director: Peter Moffatt

What's the score?
This is the first of two scores Paddy Kingsland composed for DW after he left the Radiophonic Workshop and set up his own PK Studios. Despite this, I don't really think of him as the first of the freelance '80s composers - he isn't so much leading the charge of the new wave as doing a gig for his old employer while he establishes his freelance business.
The score for Mawdryn Undead is a fairly conventional affair, picked out in mid-range synths and Kingsland's trusty guitar.

Musical notes

• Turlough is introduced with a rather smug tune picked out in guitar and cheesy lounge synth. It leads into an outrageously jaunty piece of music in the early scene in Part One in which Turlough TWOCs the Brigadier's vintage car; it's heard again when Ibbotson visits him in the school sanatorium in Part One and when he returns there in Part Two. It's reprised in Part Four when the Brigadiers are dropped off in 1977 and in 1983, suggesting that it's a theme for Brendon Public School rather than a character theme. (Perhaps it's the school song, although that suggests the peculiar image of the choirmaster in a white tuxedo sat at a Bontempi organ.) It's a bit of a shame that this didn't become a recurring theme for the weaselly Turlough - instead he's overshadowed by...
• The Black Guardian's theme, a four-note minor key phrase repeated throughout this story and picked up in the next. It's generally played slowly and comes across as mysterious - although the Black Guardian isn't the most mysterious of villains, we might wonder at the motivation of Turlough as his agent.
• Scenes aboard Mawdryn's ship have a theme of their own, a descending pair of descending pairs of notes. The notes have something of a dreary sound to them; the theme itself is heavily repeated (with variations and embellishments), and the nested structure of the phrase amplifies that repetition. All of this plays up to the ship's portrayal as a sort of alien 'Flying Dutchman', doomed to drift on through eternity. Mawdryn himself is represented by a descending set of three notes.
• There's also a theme for the Brigadier - or rather, for both Brigadiers. It's varied throughout the story - sometimes it's little more than an alternation between two chords, sometimes it fills out to something more like a march, complete with snare drum ornamentation. The 1983 Brigadier gets rising chords; the 1977 Brigadier gets the inverse arrangement.
• The cue that plays over the 1983 Brigadier's flashback in Part Two is particularly lovely, and includes hints of the bass line and "oo-wee-oo" elements of the DW theme. There's another little "oo-wee-oo" in Part Four when the Doctor agrees to help Mawdryn and his fellow mutants, even though it means the loss of his own ability to regenerate.

Vox pop
As ordinary as this score is, it's nice to hear some straightforward melodic material after the heavy experimentation of Earthshock and Snakedance, not to mention the three least appealing Roger Limb scores. It is, however, extremely repetitive; the real issue may not be the frequency of repetition (well, not only that) so much as the simplicity of the motifs, which makes their repetition more obvious and more wearing. One might argue that it's appropriate for a story in which immortal characters talk about their endless suffering, but even so.

Availability

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

16 - Snakedance

Composer: Peter Howell
Director: Fiona Cumming

What's the score?
Peter Howell returns to provide music for the sequel to Kinda, which he worked on the previous year. There's a heavy reliance on atmospheres and diegetic music; in other parts of the score, Howell lets himself be guided by the narrative in his choice of sound. The score overall is unusually experimental, a departure from Howell's normal melodic style. Deep scraping synths and dry serpentine rattles are the order of the day.

Musical notes

• There are two prominent atmospheres in Snakedance; the first of them is the ambient sound of Dojjen's mountaintop retreat. It consists of wind and a sort of dry crystalline sound. It might initially be mistaken for the ambient sound used in the wind chime glade scenes in Kinda, but it isn't - in fact...
• Atmosphere number two is the glade sound. Curiously, it's heard in scenes in the lounge area of the Manussan palace. Is there any significance in the decision to musically connect the dreaming glade of the Kinda with the home of Manussa's bored royal family? The palace isn't the place in which the Mara enters the story this time, nor is it said to serve a particular function as the glade does. It's a bit of a stretch, but we might argue that the atmosphere stands for a kind of soporific quality in both environments that makes Tegan and Lon vulnerable or receptive to the Mara - Tegan by putting her to sleep, and Lon by frustrating him with idleness.
• The other major element of the incidental score is the music played by the band in the marketplace; several different tunes are heard during the course of the story. Although they're not named as such on screen, ancillary material (notably the track listing for Doctor Who - The Music) describes the players as a Janissary band. Time for a quick history lesson: the yeniçeri (or "New Soldiers") were a branch of the Ottoman Empire's armed forces, originally comprised of press-ganged prisoners of war, then of the conscripted children of conquered nations. They became the world's first salaried, uniformed, standing army, gaining in prestige and political power to the point that ambitious freeborn Turks started to enlist their sons in the Janissaries. They were also notable for their marching bands, which consisted of shrill shawms and horns, booming kettledrums and clashing cymbals - essentially the combination of sounds Howell uses in the market scenes. The way it was told to me by a wise percussionist Dojjen, the hammering and crashing of the Janissary band was used as a form of psychological warfare, which would make the choice of this musical style particularly appropriate for this story.
• One other piece of (presumably) diegetic music features during the dinner party in Part Two, while Ambril is boring Tanha with his display of antiquities. It's a lovely off-kilter slow waltz in plucked and bowed string sounds.
• Other cues are clearly influenced by what's happening on screen. Scenes of the various Mind's Eye crystals glowing with psychic energy are accompanied by an appropriately crystalline sound, something like a sustained note on a glass harmonica. Clashing swords are heard in the Part Three cliffhanger, when the Doctor and friends are menaced by armed guards. The standout cues, however, are those that play during Tegan's nightmare in Part One and when the Mara finally manifests through her in Part Four - a blend of distorted screams and roars with a scattering of weird vocal samples. It's freaky stuff.

Vox pop
This score's a real tour de force for Peter Howell, thoroughly exploring the ways in which incidental music can supplement a story. Although there are some beautiful bits in it, there's no way it could ever be described as "easy listening" (uneasy, certainly), but it's a superb soundtrack to the TV episodes.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music included one track from this story: "Janissary Band". It's specifically the music that the band play in Part Four during their procession to the Mara's cave.

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.