Tag: Murray Gold

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2015 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who: Series 8 – music by Murray Gold

3 min read

Order this CDThough Matt Smith’s first season seemed to take a momentary sidestep into sounds inspired by Doctor Who’s radiophonic, synth-heavy past, the musical paradigm for the new Doctor Who series’ first decade has always been John Williams: big, unapologetically brassy action music, widescreen action cues, and heavy choral doom when the occasion demands.

Peter Capaldi’s first season, however, seems to mark a major turn left (sorry, had to) for new Doctor Who’s musical style: the paradigm has shifted from Williams to a Hans Zimmer-inspired sound, more reliant on synths and urgent low cello ostinatos. There are still brassy action scenes, but they’re brassy in a different way than before. Several cues seem to echo Doctor Who’s 1980s sound, including the new theme tune arrangement (included here in a full-length version).

A suite of themes and variations of the musical signature of the new Doctor proves to be more introspective than the popular, in-your-face bombast of “I Am The Doctor” (a running theme throughout Matt Smith’s tenure). Inexplicably missing is Foxes’ unexpectedly catchy big band cover of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” – a musical highlight of the season that could have served as a single to 3 out of 4raise this collection’s visibility. (Only an instrumental version is available…and even then, only as a bonus track on the download version, not on CD.)

The first two CDs cover the entirety of Capaldi’s freshman year in the TARDIS, while the third presents virtually the complete score of his first Christmas special, Last Christmas.

    Disc One
  1. Doctor Who Theme (01:17)
  2. A Good Man (Tweleve’s Theme) (07:34)
  3. Something It Ate (02:40)
  4. Concussed (03:28)
  5. It’s Still Him (02:00)
  6. Pudding Brains (05:27)
  7. Breath (04:45)
  8. Hello Hello (03:17)
  9. Drink First (02:02)
  10. Aristotle We Have Been Hit (01:00)
  11. We’re Still Going To Kill You (03:56)
  12. Tell Me, Am I A Good Man? (04:04)
  13. Blue Rescue One (01:38)
  14. What Difference A Good Dalek (03:32)
  15. The Truth About The Daleks (02:08)
  16. You Are A Good Dalek (01:49)
  17. Old Fashioned Hero (02:16)
  18. This Is My Spoon (02:07)
  19. Robert, Earl of Loxley (02:00)
  20. The Legend of Robin Hood (02:18)
  21. Robin of Sherwood (03:15)
  22. The Golden Arrow (01:37)
  23. Listen (02:25)
  24. Rupert Pink (03:57)
  25. Fear (02:47)
    Disc Two
  1. The Architect (01:28)
  2. Rob The Bank (00:59)
  3. Account Closed (02:09)
  4. Open Up (02:07)
  5. The Caretaker (05:16)
  6. Missy’s Theme (01:34)
  7. Hello Earth, We Have A Terrible Decision To Make (00:54)
  8. Are You Going To Shoot Me? (01:57)
  9. When I Say Run (01:46)
  10. They’ve Been Here The Whole Time (02:48)
  11. That Is The Moon (02:02)
  12. NASA Is That Way (01:00)
  13. Start The Clock (01:33)
  14. There’s That Smile (02:24)
  15. The Sarcophagus Opens (03:59)
  16. The Artefact (02:05)
  17. Study Our Own Demise (02:13)
  18. Not Knowing (03:01)
  19. Siege Mode (01:27)
  20. In The Woods (02:22)
  21. We Weren’t Asleep That Long (01:03)
  22. The Song of Danny and Clara (02:41)
  23. Forgetting (01:46)
  24. Throw Away The Key (04:15)
  25. Browsing (02:23)
  26. Missy Theme Extended (02:06)
  27. Heaven (01:30)
  28. They Walk Among Us (02:21)
  29. There is No Clara Oswald (01:00)
  30. Missy And Her Boys (01:18)
  31. Freefall (01:41)
  32. Need To Know (05:00)
  33. Missy’s Gift (02:04)
  34. (The Majestic Tale of) An Idiot With Box (02:22)
    Disc Three: Last Christmas
  1. Perfectly Ordinary Roof People (04:21)
  2. Unsealing The Infirmary (02:47)
  3. Ghosts (01:53)
  4. What Seems To Be The Problem (01:08)
  5. We Don’t Know What’s Real (02:34)
  6. Thinking About It (01:16)
  7. Clara’s Dream Christmas (03:57)
  8. The Doctor’s Dream Christmas (05:33)
  9. Dreams Within Dreams (04:51)
  10. Believe In Santa (01:31)
  11. Sleigh Ride (02:48)
  12. Reunion (03:12)
  13. Every Christmas Is Last Christmas (03:49)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: May 26, 2015
Disc one total running time: 1:12:54
Disc two total running time: 1:14:01
Disc three total running time: 39:27

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2014 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television

Doctor Who: Day Of The Doctor / Time Of The Doctor

5 min read

So it turns out I owe Murray Gold an apology.

As I watched Day Of The Doctor for the first time, I was mildly annoyed that its score seemed to be a cut-and-paste of “greatest hits” of themes from the modern series dating back to 2005. Not new versions of those themes, mind you, but the same recordings we’d been hearing for years now. It seemed like an uninspired choice, but as it was already known that the BBC had asked for an episode 30 minutes longer than the usual 45-minute shows, in 3-D, with big-name guest stars, without increasing the budget much beyond that of the typical 45-minute episode, it seemed likely that the decision had been made to edit together a score from the music of past episodes. After all, what’s a decadal Doctor Who anniversary special if it’s not a kiss to the past?

As it turns out, the truth is even sadder than that: Day Of The Doctor did have a brand-new score custom-made for its requirements, and a dandy one at that. In various interviews, Gold has hinted that the heavily-promoted special had more cooks in the kitchen than usual, resulting in Hollywood-style second-guessing of creative decisions that rarely occurs with the series’ weekly episodes. Reading between the lines, the answer is simple: some BBC suits, freaked out by a fantastic original score which not only brought back numerous musical themes but paid homage to the show’s long history by incorporating various vintage synthesizer sounds into the orchestral mix, insisted that Day Of The Doctor should largely be “tracked” with existing music, not unlike the original Star Trek. The result is a soundtrack which was either buried in the sound mix or, in some instances, not used at all.

Some of the most eye-opening fun you can have with the Day Of The Doctor half of this 2-CD set is to cue up the DVD to key scenes, turn your TV down, and let the music be heard as originally intended. “He Was There”, which takes us from outside the National Gallery into the three-dimensional painting of the Time War, is a knockout cue that works outstandingly well; the rising howl as we zoom through the painting until we settle on the War Doctor is hair-raising stuff. On TV, this material was dropped in favor of the choral Dalek music from The Stolen Earth, but in the original unused cue, Gold holds off on quoting that theme until the Daleks show up in person. His opening volley, meant to accompany Clara’s motorcycle ride into the TARDIS control room, is an electro dance piece omitted in its entirety. A great many of his more interesting, “radiophonic” sounding pieces were either savagely dialed down in the sound mix or covered/replaced with “whooshy” sound effects to emphasize the show’s all-important (for one night only before the BBC abandoned the technology) 3-D. Even the final scene – all the Doctors dreaming of home – was scored differently, building up to a triumphant flourish that quotes the Doctor Who theme itself as a heroic fanfare: all left on the cutting room floor.

The second disc contains the music from The Time Of The Doctor, and in this case, at least, what you hear is what was heard in the show itself – unless it’s just not on the album, such as the criminal omission of the haunting choral piece heard as Clara bellies up to the crack-in-the-wall that has follow the eleventh Doctor through his entire tenure, appealing to the Time Lords to help the Doctor survive. How that didn’t make the album, I’ll never know.

Highlights of Smith’s final episode as the Doctor include “The Crack” and the bite-sized but propulsive “Rhapsody Of War”. Even some of the more obscure cues, like the John-Williams-esque morsel “Papal Mainframe”, are fun. But the show is stolen by the solid wall of music that takes up the last 25% of the show; “Never Tell Me The Rules” is the accompaniment of modern Doctor Who’s extension of the “explosive regeneration” to ridiculous extremes, while “Trenzalore / The Long Song / I Am Information” – its title giving away that it’s a mashup of themes already established in the previous season of the show – accompanies Smith’s record-settingly long send-off speech. “Hello Twelve”, naturally, rings in the Doctor’s new face in the form of Peter Capaldi.

4 out of 4So it turns out I owe Murray Gold an apology. Here I thought that, out of budgetary necessity, he’d had to phone in one of the most pivotal installments in the entire series, but whether it’s the seventh Doctor’s straw hat, the eleventh’s Fez, or the first Doctor’s shapeless lump of an astrakhan hat, I hereby eat that hat – Murray Gold did his best to honor the show’s sonic history, only to be let down by the marketing department. At least this 2-CD set lets us hear it all in its original intended glory.

Order this CDDisc 1: The Day of the Doctor

  1. I.M Foreman (1:10)
  2. Will There Be Cocktails? (0:40)
  3. It’s Him (The Majestic Tale) (2:04)
  4. He Was There (4:22)
  5. No More (1:05)
  6. The War Room (1:42)
  7. Footprints In The Sand (1:42)
  8. Who Are You (4:37)
  9. England 1562 (1:02)
  10. Nice Horse (1:43)
  11. The Fez And The Portal (2:44)
  12. Two Doctors (1:01)
  13. Three Doctors (1:56)
  14. Somewhere To Hide (1:50)
  15. Rescue The Doctor (1:08)
  16. 2.47 Billion (4:28)
  17. Zygon In The Painting (1:34)
  18. Man And Wife (1:32)
  19. We Don’t Need To Land (2:27)
  20. We Are The Doctors (0:49)
  21. The Moment Has Come (3:06)
  22. This Time There’s Three Of Us (The Majestic Tale) (7:03)
  23. Song For Four/Home (3:41)

Disc 2: Time Of The Doctor

  1. The Message (1:15)
  2. Handles (2:07)
  3. The Dance Of The Naked Doctor (2:12)
  4. You Saved It (0:56)
  5. Papal Mainframe (0:44)
  6. Tasha Lemm (1:06)
  7. Bedroom Talk (1:48)
  8. The Mission (0:54)
  9. Christmas (2:26)
  10. The Crack (5:24)
  11. Rhapsody Of War (0:52)
  12. Back To Christmas (3:09)
  13. Snow Over Trenzalore (Song For Four) (2:45)
  14. Beginning Of The End (2:46)
  15. This Is How It Ends (3:06)
  16. Never Tell Me The Rules (3:11)
  17. Trenzalore/The Long Song/I Am Information (Reprise) (4:03)
  18. Hello Twelve (0:39)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: November 24, 2014
Disc one total running time: 53:26
Disc two total running time: 39:23

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2013 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection

13 min read

25 years ago, if someone had been asking for a go-to album for casual fans of the Doctor Who theme tune and its accompanying incidental music, I would have somewhat reluctantly pointed them toward the Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album on BBC Records; reluctantly on the grounds that while it did indeed include the major iterations of the theme tune, its incidental music was drawn entirely from Sylvester McCoy’s first two seasons, largely scored by Keff McCulloch with very ’80s hand clap samples for percussion backing his very ’80s synths. It was a nice enough sound for its time, but not one that has dated very well. In 1993, for the show’s 30th anniversary, the default selection became the BBC’s 30 Years At The Radiophonic Workshop, which I’d recommend with a different set of reservations: most of its tracks were pure sound effects. Very evocative ones, to be sure, the pride of the BBC’s sonic skunkworks at Maida Vale, but little of the 30th anniversary album was actually music.

We had to reach the show’s 50th anniversary to strike the right balance at last. The four-disc Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection is an unapologetic romp through the tunes accompanying the TARDIS’ travels from 1963 through 2013. If a single show’s sound has evolved more radically over time (without it being a variety show with an ever-changing selection of musical guests), I’d love to hear about it. In five decades, Doctor Who has gone from experimental-going-on-avant-garde analog electronic music, to small orchestral ensembles, to tuneful (and sometimes showy) ’80s synthesizers, and then to full-on orchestral grandeur. That journey is sampled at various points across four CDs here. (A limited edition of 1,000 copies of a more expansive – and, undoubtedly, expensive – 11-CD set will be available in early 2014; Silva has already fessed up that this 4-CD set is a sampling of that larger collection, without giving any indication as to whether the material will be available separately on individual CDs, iTunes, or what have you.)

For those who faithfully bought Silva Screen’s ’90s CD releases of Mark Ayres’ late ’80s scores and the label’s reissues of classic BBC albums, as well as the BBC’s own attempt to fill out the Doctor Who soundtrack library in the early 21st century, there will be a lot of familiar material here, sometimes only in briefly excerpted form. Ayres’ scores, and familiar material such as “March Of The Cybermen” and music from Tom Baker’s last season, can be found here as edited highlights, as can already-released ’60s and ’70s gems such as excerpts from the now-hard-to-find-on-CD-without-getting-a-second-mortgage CD featuring Tristram Cary’s music from the second-ever Doctor Who story, The Daleks. Ayres was the archivist responsible for picking out the best bits from the classic series, and his choices line up almost exactly what what I would have picked. (Note: almost. Leaving the music accompanying the Brigadier’s flashback out of a Mawdryn Undead suite is an unexpected choice, to say the least.)

But there are many surprises as well. The sheer amount of pristine, not-smothered-in-sound-effects Dudley Simpson music to be heard is impressive. For decades, short of Silva Screen’s singular experimental attempt in the 1990s to do a Simpson “cover album” with the best synthesizers and samples available at the time, almost none of Simpson’s music has been available, despite the fact that he remains the reigning champion among Doctor Who composers (having scored episodes from 1964 through 1979). Copies of Simpson’s music simply were not retained, for who knew that it would ever be in demand as a standalone product? But thanks to Simpson’s occasional collaborations with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – a group which did a better job of archiving, and occasionally had to add synthesizer overdubs to Simpson’s more otherworldly cues – some selections of Simpson’s unique small-ensemble sound now survive. A few other Simpson specimens are culled from scenes in which the music was virtually the only sound in the mix (such as the music from the Patrick Troughton story The Seeds Of Death). This brings us such wonderful lost treats as the suite from 1977’s The Invasion Of Time, a selection of music which reminds me of Blake’s 7 as much as it does Doctor Who, and concludes with a great “slimy” synth motif for the Sontarans, a piece of music that screams “short, squat and ugly”. Other unearthed Simpson gems include music from The Android Invasion, the aforementioned Seeds Of Death, and the Pertwee space opera Frontier In Space. There are surprises from the small stable of other composers who scored the Doctor’s travels in the ’70s, including Carey Blyton’s stuttering stacatto saxophones from Death To The Daleks and his more traditional “Simpsonesque” strains from Revenge Of The Cybermen.

Another surprise heard here is a handful of stock library music pieces used during the 1960s, from the first piece of music ever heard within an episode of Doctor Who (on Susan’s portable radio, no less) to the familiar and oft-reused action cues that accompanied Cybermen and Yeti in equal measure. Many of these pieces have surfaced over the years, in such forms as the fan-compiled Space Adventures CD and short-lived one-off CDs timed to coincide with the releases of such things as The Tenth Planet and Tomb Of The Cybermen. But this is the first time than an officially sanctioned BBC release has declared these to be the Doctor Who music that the fans have always known them to be. The inclusion of a piece by Les Structures Sonores (used in the Hartnell four-parter Galaxy Four) is historically significant: when trying to describe the sound she wanted for Doctor Who’s still-unwritten theme tune, producer Verity Lambert fell back on the work of Les Structures Sonores as a suggested listen. (What actually emerged was wonderfully different from that suggestion, but however your tastes run regarding the show’s stories main theme, every major iteration is included here for your listening pleasure.)

The ’80s, the final decade of original Doctor Who, present a different problem: nearly everything survives from that era, so it becames a question of judiciously picking what to leave out. The major pieces that everyone would wish for are present, however: Tom Baker’s swan song from Logopolis, the thematic bookend of Peter Davison’s first trip in the TARDIS in Castrovalva, Earthshock‘s “March Of The Cybermen”, The Five Doctors, the percussive Sontaran march and the flamenco-style acoustic guitar work of The Two Doctors, edited highlights from three of the four stories making up The Trial Of A Time Lord, and the final moments of music from the original series in 1989’s memorable (and perfectly scored) Survival, which demonstrated that the show’s decade of synths was on the cusp of giving way to a more interesting mix of synth, guitar and live violin if the story demanded it.

Things then transform dramatically. For the first time outside of a 1990s “composer promo” release of questionable legality, selections from the Hollywood-spawned score of 1996’s Paul McGann TV movie come in from the cold on an official Doctor Who soundtrack compilation. Not much more than a taster, to be sure, and yes, the entire score’s been available as the music-only audio track on the DVD of that movie for about a decade now, but it’s nice to see this release taking in the entirety of the franchise’s musical history (with one major omission – more on this in a moment). From here, we jump to an extended best-of from Murray Gold’s reign as the sole musical voice of modern Doctor Who, covering everything from Rose’s theme through The Rings Of Akhaten. As much as some fans have only ever grown up with Murray Gold’s bombastic orchestral music as the sound of Doctor Who, it’s impressive that Silva Screen managed to constrain the new series highlights to a single disc.

But considering that, before the track listing was announced, I fully expected much of this set to be tilted in favor of the new series, the 50th Anniversary Collection is a pleasant surprise from start to finish. Fans weaned on the David Tennant years may be shocked to discover how much the “house style” of Doctor Who has changed, but those of us who grew up with Tom Baker or his predecessors will find much to love here. Yes, the first disc has a lot of sound effects on it, but they’re almost music in their own unique way – the sound of the living, breathing alien worlds found in Lime Grove Studio “D” so many years ago. And I never thought we’d get, on CD, such music as Don Harper’s sinister spy-movie-inspired strains from The Invasion, or the Dudley Simpson tracks that we have here.

I’m a little surprised to see that the two 1960s movies starring the late Peter Cushing as quirky but perfectly human inventor Dr. Who are not represented here. Silva released all of the available score material from both of those movies in their entirety some time back, so they have access to (and rights to) the recordings. I suppose they get excluded for not being part 4 out of 4
of the TV franchise, but if there was any concern that the ’60s-centric CD had too many sound effects, I wonder why these tracks weren’t considered for inclusion. With every passing year, Cushing’s brief tenure as the TARDIS traveler grows more obscure, so I suspect I’m alone in thinking there should have been some hint of the movies here.

The 50th Anniversary Collection is a dandy sampling of the Doctor’s ever-evolving musical accompaniment over the years.

Order this CDDisc One

  1. Doctor Who (Original Theme) (2:20)
  2. An Unearthly Child: Three Guitars Mood 2 (2:03)
  3. An Unearthly Child – TARDIS Takeoff (0:49)
  4. The Daleks (The Dead Planet): Forest Atmosphere (1:07)
  5. The Daleks (The Dead Planet): Forest With Creature (0:54)
  6. The Daleks (The Dead Planet): City Music 1 and 2 (0:56)
  7. The Daleks (The Dead Planet): The Daleks (0:32)
  8. The Daleks (The Survivors) – Dalek Control Room (0:34)
  9. The Daleks (The Ambush): The Ambush (2:00)
  10. The Daleks – Capsule Oscillation (Dalek Destructor Fuse / Bomb Countdown) (0:19)
  11. The Edge of Destruction – Explosion, TARDIS Stops (1:10)
  12. The Keys of Marinus – Sleeping Machine (0:52)
  13. The Chase – Dalek Spaceship Lands (0:17)
  14. The Chase – TARDIS Lands (0:11)
  15. Galaxy Four – Chumbley (Constant Run) (0:27)
  16. Galaxy Four – Chumbley at Rest (0:28)
  17. Galaxy Four: Marche (Les Structures Sonores) (2:40)
  18. The Daleks’ Master Plan (The Nightmare Begins): A Strange Sickness (0:44)
  19. The Daleks’ Master Plan (Destruction of Time): Growing Menace (2:08)
  20. The Gunfighters: Excerpts from ‘The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon’ (3:51)
  21. The Tenth Planet: Space Adventure Part 2 (1:21)
  22. The Macra Terror – Heartbeat Chase (1:57)
  23. The Macra Terror – Chromophone Band (1:56)
  24. The Macra Terror – Propaganda Sleep Machine (1:08)
  25. The Tomb of the Cybermen – Sideral Universe (2:26)
  26. The Tomb of the Cybermen – Space Time Music Part 1 (1:21)
  27. The Web of Fear – Space Time Music Part 2 (1:19)
  28. Fury from the Deep – Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill (Incidental Music) (0:39)
  29. The Wheel in Space – Cyberman Stab & Music (1:32)
  30. The Wheel in Space – Birth of Cybermats (0:44)
  31. The Wheel in Space – Interior Rocket (Suspense Music) (1:55)
  32. The Dominators – Galaxy Atmosphere (1:04)
  33. The Mind Robber – Zoe’s Theme (1:20)
  34. The Invasion: The Dark Side of the Moon (0:31)
  35. The Invasion: The Company (1:31)
  36. The Krotons – Machine and City Theme (1:49)
  37. The Krotons – Kroton Theme (2:14)
  38. The Seeds of Death: Titles (0:35)
  39. The Seeds of Death: Ice Warriors Music (0:26)
  40. The War Games – Time Lord Court (1:32)
  41. Doctor Who (New Opening, 1967 – full version) (2:20)
  42. The Mind of Evil: The Master’s Theme (0:43)
  43. The Mind of Evil: Hypnosis Music (0:36)
  44. The Mind of Evil: Dover Castle (0:29)
  45. The Mind of Evil – Keller Machine Appears and Vanishes (0:22)
  46. The Mind of Evil: Keller Machine Theme (0:43)
  47. The Claws of Axos – Copy machine tickover (0:16)
  48. The Claws of Axos: The Axons Approach (1:45)
  49. Music from ‘The Sea Devils’ (5:24)
  50. Music from ‘The Mutants’ (7:12)
  51. Music from ‘Frontier in Space’ Episode 1 (1:46)
  52. Music from ‘Death to the Daleks’ (3:50)
  53. Planet of the Spiders – Metebelis III Atmosphere (1:53)

Disc Two

  1. Doctor Who Opening Title Theme (0:44)
  2. The Ark In Space – Nerva Beacon Infrastructure and TMat Couch (1:42)
  3. Music from “Revenge of the Cybermen” (5:28)
  4. Terror of the Zygons: The Destruction of Charlie Rig (0:42)
  5. Terror of the Zygons: A Landing in Scotland (1:22)
  6. Terror of the Zygons: The Zygons Attack (0:51)
  7. Music from “The Android Invasion” Episodes 3 and 4 (6:32)
  8. The Brain of Morbius – The Planet Karn (1:50)
  9. The Seeds of Doom: Antarctica – The First Pod (2:17)
  10. The Seeds of Doom: Get Dunbar! / Krynoid On The Loose (2:55)
  11. The Masque of Mandragora – The Mandragora Helix (1:26)
  12. Music from “The Invasion of Time” Episodes 3 and 4 (5:36)
  13. Doctor Who Closing Titles (40? Version) (1:15)
  14. Doctor Who 1980 (Opening Titles) (0:38)
  15. The Leisure Hive: Into Argolis (1:44)
  16. Full Circle: K9 on a Mission (0:35)
  17. The Keeper of Traken: Nyssa’s Theme (0:41)
  18. Logopolis: It’s The End… (3:18)
  19. Doctor Who 1980 (Closing Titles) (1:16)
  20. Castrovalva (3:18)
  21. Four to Doomsday: Exploring the Lab (1:46)
  22. Earthshock – March Of The Cybermen (5:13)
  23. Mawdryn Undead (4:19)
  24. The Five Doctors (5:29)
  25. Warriors of the Deep (3:53)
  26. Resurrection of the Daleks (5:01)
  27. The Caves of Androzani (Alternative Suite) (6:07)
  28. Doctor Who Theme (1980 – Full Version) (2:42)

Disc Three

  1. The Twin Dilemma (4:04)
  2. The Mark of the Rani (3:45)
  3. The Two Doctors (3:15)
  4. Timelash (5:51)
  5. Revelation of the Daleks (3:53)
  6. Doctor Who 1986 (2:53)
  7. The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet (3:21)
  8. The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids (2:44)
  9. The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe (3:16)
  10. Doctor Who 1987 2:38()
  11. Music from ‘Time and the Rani’ (1:38)
  12. Delta and the Bannermen: “Here’s to the Future” (1:57)
  13. Music from ‘Dragonfire’ (3:02)
  14. Music from ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ (5:32)
  15. Music from ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ (3:23)
  16. Music from ‘Battlefield’ (4:41)
  17. Music from ‘The Curse of Fenric’ (6:35)
  18. Music from ‘Survival’ (5:28)
  19. “…and somewhere else, the tea’s getting cold” (from ”Survival”) (0:24)
  20. Prologue: Skaro / “Doctor Who” Theme (1:34)
  21. “Who Am I?” (1:55)
  22. The Chase (Original Version) (2:20)
  23. “Open the Eye” (2:25)
  24. Farewell (1:35)
  25. End Credits / “Doctor Who” Theme (0:49)

Disc Four

  1. Doctor Who Theme – TV Version (0:42)
  2. Doctor Who: Series 1 – Rose’s Theme (2:15)
  3. Doctor Who: Series 2 – Doomsday (5:08)
  4. Doctor Who: Series 3 – All The Strange Strange Creatures (The Trailer Music) (4:07)
  5. Doctor Who: Series 3 – Martha’s Theme (3:42)
  6. Doctor Who: Series 3 – Boe (3:44)
  7. Doctor Who: Series 3 – The Doctor Forever (4:19)
  8. Doctor Who: Series 3 – This Is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home (3:18)
  9. Doctor Who: Series 3 – Donna’s Theme (3:16)
  10. Doctor Who: Series 4 – Song Of Freedom (2:51)
  11. Doctor Who: Series 4-The Specials – The Master Suite (4:33)
  12. Doctor Who: Series 4-The Specials – Four Knocks (3:58)
  13. Doctor Who: Series 4-The Specials – Vale Decem (3:20)
  14. Doctor Who: Series 5 – I Am The Doctor (4:03)
  15. Doctor Who: Series 5 – The Mad Man With A Box (2:09)
  16. Doctor Who: Series 5 – Amy’s Theme (2:08)
  17. Doctor Who: Series 6 – Melody Pond (4:43)
  18. Doctor Who: Series 6 – The Wedding Of River Song (2:36)
  19. Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol – Abigail’s Song (Silence Is All You Know) (5:33)
  20. Doctor Who: Series 7 – Towards The Asylum (2:25)
  21. Doctor Who: Series 7 – Together Or Not At All – The Song Of Amy And Rory (3:17)
  22. Doctor Who: Series 7 – Up The Shard (3:02)
  23. Doctor Who: Series 7 – The Long Song (3:39)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2013
Disc one total running time: 79:01
Disc two total running time: 78:40
Disc three total running time: 78:58
Disc four total running time: 78:48

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2011 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who Series 6 – music by Murray Gold

6 min read

It’s rare, but not unheard of, to claim to have enjoyed the music from a movie or TV show tremendously, while not enjoying the story that spawned the music. Much of the sixth season of revived Doctor Who is like that for me – the season’s reliance on, and constant referral to, the Doctor’s apparent date with death, just rubbed me the wrong way. It might’ve been a brilliant device to use if it had been the final season for the incumbent Doctor, but in this day and age the general public knows that the actor in question is contracted for several years, and won’t be bowing out at the end of his second season. All the constant refrain of the season’s already-witnessed cliffhanger did was remind me how suspense-free the whole enterprise was. It was right up there with the third season (the “Martha season”) as my least favorite year of the show’s revival.

Could I separate my noncommittal grunt of a response to the season from the music? Yes and no. Murray Gold gamely gives his all to every episode, though there’s a lot of referring back to the Doctor’s new theme established in the previous season (and on that season’s soundtrack). There’s also a lot of referring back to the style that Gold employed for much of the Davies/Tennant years – unashamed orchestral bombast, even in scenes that don’t always call for it – and less of the promising experimentation of the fifth season. The season’s opening two-parter is at its best when it’s using a slightly twangy electric guitar to signify its setting, although the “Apollo 11” cue is as good a musical theme for the launch of the first moon landing mission as I’ve ever heard. “Another Perfect Prison”, “Day Of The Moon” and “I See You Silence” are the best examples of this, recalling the best of John Barry’s James Bond scores.

The Curse Of The Black Spot and The Doctor’s Wife have outstanding music, with the latter being a standout of the season both musically and story-wise. The “Run, Sexy” cue is one of the few overt examples of the orchestra-and-electronics-joined-at-the-hip style that made the fifth season’s soundtrack such a welcome change of pace from what had come before. The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, a two-parter dealing with clones demanding independence, are more subdued to make way for dialogue.

But things crank up for the second half of the mid-season cliffhanger. (Sadly, it’s one of the silliest episodes in the series’ nearly-50-year history, but nobody’s perfect.) Let’s Kill Hitler gets a snarlingly oppressive march for the Nazi terror, a good place for orchestral bombast if there ever was one.

The second half of the season has more interesting episodes and more interesting scores. Night Terrors has a deceptively calm opening theme and sinister passages, while The Girl Who Waited is dripping with uncertainty as Amy comes to grips with a TARDIS-free reality on the run, and then learns that even that isn’t immutable. The God Complex has some very unusual keyboard/synth-heavy cues (including the recurring “muzak” motif). “Room Of Your Dreams” opens up with the kind of electronics that haven’t been heard since the original series.

Closing Time sounds almost like a sitcom in its opening track, and most of the cues presented here stay light-hearted. The music from the season closer, The Wedding Of River Song, starts with a rollicking opening track, “5:02 PM”, before becoming surprisingly quiet. One of the better tracks, “Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart”, accompanies the kick-in-the-gut meta moment where the Doctor learns of the his old friend’s death (Nicholas Courtney, the actor who portrayed the Brigadier in all of his appearances, had died earlier in the year) to a wistful tune.

Wedding finishes off by rehashing the Doctor’s theme in various ways, and includes the cue that sees out the season, accompanying the closing moments in which a portly severed head bellowing “DOCTOR…WHO?” over and over. The soundtrack itself closes by wrapping around to a cue from Day Of The Moon which, again, repeats the Doctor’s theme.

3 out of 4There’s some music here that I’ve had no desire to re-listen to, but that may well represent a failing on my part to separate music from story subject matter. Murray Gold still delivers a unique, full-blooded sounded that’s unlike anything else on TV, and the soundtracks released by Silva Screen are uncommonly generous with their double-disc set covering all 13 of the season’s episodes. Next year, I just want the stories to be as good as the music.

Order this CDDisc One

    The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon
  1. I Am The Doctor In Utah (1:44)
  2. 1969 (2:01)
  3. The Impossible Astronaut (3:16)
  4. Trust Me (1:39)
  5. Help Is On Its Way (3:59)
  6. Another Perfect Prison (0:53)
  7. Greystark Hall (2:53)
  8. Apollo 11 (0:54)
  9. Day Of The Moon (2:44)
  10. I See You Silence (1:05)

    The Curse of the Black Spot

  11. You’re A Dead Man (1:40)
  12. Deadly Siren (5:30)
  13. Perfect Reflection (1:03)
  14. All For One (3:49)
  15. The Curse Of The Black Spot (1:14)

    The Doctor’s Wife

  16. I’ve Got Mail (0:45)
  17. My TARDIS (1:30)
  18. Run, Sexy (1:56)
  19. Locked On (1:11)

    The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People

  20. The Chemical Castle (1:30)
  21. Which One Is The Flesh? (1:39)
  22. Scanning Me (2:31)
  23. Ransacked (2:01)
  24. Always With The Rory (1:22)
  25. Double Doctor (2:02)
  26. Tell Me The Truth (3:48)
  27. Loving Isn’t Knowing (The Almost People Suite) (5:29)

    A Good Man Goes to War

  28. River’s Waltz (1:53)
  29. Pop (1:36)
  30. Tell Me Who You Are (1:52)
  31. Melody Pond (2:36)

Disc Two

    Let’s Kill Hitler
  1. Growing Up Fast (1:21)
  2. The Blush Of Love (1:22)
  3. Terror Of The Reich (3:05)
  4. The British Are Coming (1:07)
  5. A Very Unusual Melody (2:53)
  6. When A River Forms (1:32)
  7. Pay Attention Grown Ups (2:10)
  8. The Enigma Of River Song (3:59)

    Night Terrors

  9. Bedtime For George (2:24)
  10. Tick Tock Round The Clock (2:11)
  11. A Malevolent Estate (3:58)
  12. Night Terrors (1:19)

    The Girl Who Waited

  13. Apalapucia (1:29)
  14. 36 Years (0:55)
  15. Lost In The Wrong Stream (3:25)

    The God Complex

  16. The Hotel Prison (0:47)
  17. Room Of Your Dreams (1:21)
  18. Fear Enough (1:17)
  19. What’s Left To Be Scared Of? (1:00)
  20. Rita Praises (1:08)

    Closing Time

  21. Stormageddon, Dark Lord Of All (1:34)
  22. Definitely Going (1:56)
  23. Over Your Shoulder (1:11)
  24. Ladieswear (0:45)
  25. Fragrance (2:17)
  26. My Time Is Running Out (4:55)
  27. Tick Tock (vocal track) (1:23)

    The Wedding of River Song

  28. 5:02 PM (2:43)
  29. The Head Of An Enemy (1:15)
  30. My Silence (1:13)
  31. Brigadier Lethbridge–Stewart (2:19)
  32. Forgiven (2:31)
  33. Time Is Moving (1:31)
  34. The Wedding Of River Song (4:32)

    Day of the Moon

  35. The Majestic Tale (Of A Madman In A Box) (4:01)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2011
Disc one total running time: 68:05
Disc two total running time: 55:27

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2011 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol – music by Murray Gold

3 min read

Order this CDIf the soundtrack from the fifth season of the revived Doctor Who was a marvelous change of pace for composer Murray Gold, the stand-alone soundtrack release for A Christmas Carol, the 2010 Christmas special, is a homecoming. A Christmas Carol returns to the big, unapologetically brassy sound that Gold used for much of the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who. About the only thing that’s missing is an orchestral action piece set to a rock drum beat.

That’s not to say that this special’s music wasn’t just as firmly entrenched in the more subdued musical sensibility of the Steven Moffat era, however. After “Come Along Pond,” the all-out action intro for the show’s Star-Trek-spoofing opening teaser, many of the early tracks take on the dark tone of the Doctor’s latest destination. Once the Doctor travels back in time to Kazran Sardick’s childhood, the story’s essentially dealing with a child who’s been neglected at best and abused at worst – not really the kind of material for jubilant tunes. Once we get into scenes such as the Doctor inadvertently feeding his sonic screwdriver to a flying shark, however, Gold is off to the races in his old style.

The sharks (flying or otherwise) would be circling if the album didn’t also include the mesmerizing “Abigail’s Song (Silence Is All You Know)”, whose title – as of the middle of the 2011 season – sticks out like a sore thumb trying to disguise itself as a subtle hint. Unlike some of the songs that have accompanied past Christmas specials, this one is indeed sung by Katherine Jenkins, who played Abigail on screen, and whose operatic pedigree means she certainly doesn’t need to be dubbed. The melody of the song, however, begins creeping into the score long before the song’s appearance late in the episode.

4 out of 4As always, Gold coaxes an awesome wall of sound out of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, whose presence has occasionally become a bit sparse as the BBC becomes more budget-conscious across the board. Fully orchestral passages have become a kind of special flavoring during the regular season, and an ear-popping stocking stuffer at Christmas. I wasn’t crazy about the plot of A Christmas Carol, but the music is one of the better things about the show, and is well worth a listen.

  1. Come Along Pond (1:51)
  2. Halfway Out Of The Dark (1:38)
  3. Pray For A Miracle (0:37)
  4. Geoff (3:48)
  5. You Didn’t Hit The Boy (1:44)
  6. Fish (0:50)
  7. Kazran Sardick 12 1/2 (1:29)
  8. Ghost Of Christmas Past (1:33)
  9. Babysitter (0:47)
  10. Talk About Girls (1:41)
  11. Sonic Fishing (1:43)
  12. Just A Little One (1:16)
  13. Big Colour (1:50)
  14. I Can’t Save Her (3:34)
  15. The Other Half’s Inside The Shark (1:08)
  16. Abigail (1:47)
  17. He Comes Every Christmas (1:09)
  18. Shark Ride (1:24)
  19. New Memories (1:00)
  20. Holding Hands (1:45)
  21. Christmas Dinner (0:38)
  22. Goodlucknight (1:51)
  23. Goodnight Abigail (2:10)
  24. This Planet Is Ours (2:00)
  25. Ghost Of Christmas Present (0:48)
  26. The Course Of My Life (1:35)
  27. Ghost Of Christmas Future (1:50)
  28. Abigail’s Song (Silence Is All You Know) (4:41)
    performed by Katherine Jenkins
  29. Everything Has To End Some Time (1:14)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 49:21

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2010 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who: Series 5

5 min read

Following hot on the heels of the Series 4 – The Specials 2-CD set, Doctor Who: Series 5 uses much the same format – two CDs again, and as with The Specials, most of the music is presented as unedited individual cues instead of compilations. Most of the season’s episodes are represented here, so there’s something to keep everyone happy.

Following the suddenly-more-gothic-than-it-used-to-be new rendition of the theme music, The Eleventh Hour storms out of the gates, with Murray Gold’s music sounding very much as it did during the tenure of showrunner Russell T. Davies. But as the music from the season opener progresses, we get a very different musical picture than what we’re used to: darker, heavier with synths, and altogether more moody. Moments of traditional Gold bombast do crop up in several scores, but the brass section isn’t necessarily getting a workout with every episode.

It should be pointed out that this is not a bad thing. Without a change of composer, the new season of Doctor Who managed to sound like a completely different show after the opening titles rolled for The Eleventh Hour. Sinister things are afoot throughout the season, and they’re handled with sinister, slithering music. The major themes for the Doctor, Amy (both young and younger) and the lingering threat of Prisoner Zero / the Atraxi / the Silence (which, we are told repeatedly, will fall) are rolled out fairly early on, and the whole thing has a more mystical feel to it. Highlights of the first disc include the quirky “Fish Custard”, “Amy In The TARDIS”, the unnervingly abstract “Time Of The Angels”, and both tracks from “Amy’s Choice”, an episode that’s atypical both musically and in a narrative sense. Those looking for the Murray Gold sound of old won’t be let down: seek out “Down To Earth”, “Battle In The Sky” (from Victory Of The Daleks‘ silly Spitfires-in-space scene) and “The Silurians”.

Disc two kicks off with the season’s musical highlight, Vincent And The Doctor. I’m going to put my cards on the table and say that the track “With Love, Vincent” – accompanying a scene in which Vincent van Gogh helps the Doctor and Amy visualize the night sky as one of his paintings – is the best piece of music that anyone’s put on our TV screens in the past twelve months, with the only serious challenger to that being the music from Lost’s Ab Aeterno episode.

Other highlights on the second CD include “A Useful Striker” (underscoring a true oddity: a Doctor Who sports montage, from The Lodger), and the music heralding perhaps the quietest Doctor Who cliffhanger in the show’s storied history, “The Life and Death of Amy Pond”. Just about every note of music from the season-ending two-parter is found on this disc, from big set pieces (“Words Win Wars”) to nearly fairy-tale material (“Into The Museum”). I found the cue-by-cue approach – which was unfamiliar ground with the Series 4 – The Specials album – worked very well here. The music of the fifth season of new Who was much more interconnected than the disjointed (and disparately scheduled) final batch of Tennant episodes, and it’s interesting to hear the themes develop.

Minor complaint: as with Series 4 – The Specials, there are two iTunes exclusive tracks that mean you’d have to buy the album all over again in digital if you sprang for the physical CDs. Cut it out, guys. Even assuming 74-minute discs, there was enough room for these tracks on the CDs as well. (For the record, one track was from Victory Of The Daleks, and the other from Amy’s Choice.)

Murray Gold can still do music that makes it sound like the house is on fire, but where I was tiring of some of his orchestra-playing-to-a-rock-beat material under Russell T. Davies’ reign, he’s giving the 4 out of 4Moffat era a very fresh and enjoyable sound. At one point, I hoped that the shakeup of personnel might usher in a new composer, but after hearing Doctor Who: Series 5, I’m now of the opinion that Murray Gold can stick around as long as Dudley Simpson if he so chooses.

Order this CD

    Disc One
  1. Doctor Who XI (1:04)

    The Eleventh Hour

  2. Down To Earth (1:06)
  3. Little Amy (1:45)
  4. Fish Custard (2:00)
  5. Can I Come With You? (1:38)
  6. Little Amy: The Apple (1:12)
  7. The Sun’s Gone Wibbly (2:25)
  8. Zero (1:42)
  9. I Am The Doctor (4:04)
  10. The Mad Man With A Box (2:11)
  11. Amy In The TARDIS (4:18)

    The Beast Below

  12. The Beast Below (1:49)
  13. Amy’s Theme (2:06)
  14. A Lonely Decision (3:24)

    Victory Of The Daleks

  15. A Tyrannical Menace (2:03)
  16. Victory Of The Daleks (1:14)
  17. Battle In The Sky (3:25)

    The Time Of Angels / Flesh And Stone

  18. River’s Path (1:17)
  19. The Time Of Angels (3:59)

    The Vampires Of Venice

  20. I Offer You My Daughter (1:37)
  21. Chicken Casanova (1:24)
  22. Signora Rosanna Calvierri (4:26)
  23. Cab For Amy Pond (2:08)
  24. The Vampires Of Venice (4:50)

    Amy’s Choice

  25. Wedded Bliss (1:07)
  26. This Is The Dream (2:53)

    The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

  27. Rio de Cwmtaff (4:03)
  28. The Silurians (2:02)
    Disc Two
    Vincent And The Doctor
  1. Paint (0:35)
  2. Vincent (2:00)
  3. Hidden Treasures (1:01)
  4. A Troubled Man (2:30)
  5. With Love, Vincent (3:27)

    The Lodger

  6. Adrift In The TARDIS (0:45)
  7. Friends And Neighbours (1:16)
  8. Doctor Gastronomy (1:08)
  9. You Must Like It Here (0:53)
  10. A Useful Striker (1:34)
  11. A Painful Exchange (1:11)
  12. Kiss The Girl (5:14)
  13. Thank You Craig (0:45)

    The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

  14. River Runs Through It (1:28)
  15. Away On Horseback (1:25)
  16. Beneath Stonehenge (3:45)
  17. Who Else Is Coming (1:52)
  18. Amy And Rory (0:46)
  19. The Pandorica (2:00)
  20. Words Win Wars (1:49)
  21. The Life And Death Of Amy Pond (3:12)
  22. Amy’s Starless Life (1:41)
  23. Into The Museum (1:17)
  24. This Is Where It Gets Complicated (1:08)
  25. Roman Paradox (1:22)
  26. The Patient Centurion (2:49)
  27. The Same Sonic (0:55)
  28. Honey, I’m Home (2:13)
  29. The Perfect Prison (2:41)
  30. A River Of Tears (1:00)
  31. The Sad Man With A Box (3:18)
  32. You And Me, Amy (2:27)
  33. The Big Day (2:20)
  34. I Remember You (1:53)
  35. Onwards! (0:58)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2010
Disc one total running time: 67:12
Disc two total running time: 64:38

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D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who: Series 4 – The Specials

5 min read

Released purely by popular demand (a fan campaign that was, admittedly, egged on by composer Murray Gold), this 2-CD set of music from David Tennant’s final Doctor Who episodes is quite different from the collections of Gold’s music that have been released before. Previous Doctor Who CDs from the new series have featured short suites of music from given episodes and, in a few cases, complete cues from particularly high-profile scenes. Doctor Who: Series 4 – The Specials presents almost all of its material as discrete cues rather than edited highlights.

Since modern Doctor Who relies to a certain extent on a “library music” approach – certain pieces of music recorded for earlier episodes in a given season frequently recur throughout that season – some episodes are more heavily represented than others. In the case of the Series 4 – The Specials soundtrack, the episodes that drew the short straw – because they leaned heavily on existing music – are Planet Of The Dead and The Waters Of Mars. As these are generally regarded to be the weak points in the tenth Doctor’s finaladventures, this probably won’t meet with too many howls of protest.

Represented much more fully are The Next Doctor (the 2008 Christmas special) and both episodes of The End Of Time, a two-parter that wrapped up the tenth Doctor’s story. The Next Doctor actually has a rather Christmassy feel to it, and it reinterprets some of Gold’s previous Cybermen music from Rise Of The Cybermen and The Age Of Steel. This is typical Murray Gold: a bit overblown, like a student of John Williams set loose in a candy shop, but a lot of fun.

Somewhat more interesting is the lengthy selection of music from The End Of Time, which has a much heavier, more doom-laden feel to it; whereas The Next Doctor‘s title was a red herring, The End Of Time makes good on its promise to end the tenth Doctor’s story and introduce the Time Lord’s eleventh incarnation. From the beginning, The End Of Time is painted in shades of epic, with an abundance of choral pieces and less jubilant music than a typical Murray Gold Doctor Who outing. Highlights include the scenes set on Gallifrey during the Time War, and a new suite of music expanding the “four knocks” motif from the Master’s previous appearance at the end of series three. Even casual listeners will probably zoom straight forward to “Vale Decem”, the choral piece that sees Tennant’s Doctor out of the Doctor Who mythos. (A prelude to this piece, “Vale”, opens and closes the whole collection.) The energetic, rock-oriented “The New Doctor” gives us our first glimpse of the eleventh Doctor in action – but for more of him, there’s a whole different soundtrack.

Even the music from The End Of Time isn’t all new – the disappearance of Gallifrey back into its rightful (and doomed) place in time isn’t included here, having been tracked with music from the fourth season episode Midnight (already available on that season’s soundtrack). Also, there are two iTunes-exclusive tracks – one from The End Of Time and one from The Next Doctor – which owners of the physical 2-CD set would have to buy the entire thing all over again, this time in digital form, to get. (As a general rule, this kind of exclusivity annoys the hell out of me: digital delivery has killed the brick-and-mortal music store already. Further incentives to abandon physical media are, quite simply, no longer necessary. Put the same material on both formats and let consumers make up their own minds, as those still buying CDs are most likely doing so for reasons that won’t be overridden by two extra tracks.)

It almost seems as though The Waters Of Mars gets shortchanged here, as its very scary, drippy-liquidy music comes and goes all too briefly; I would’ve traded some of The Next Doctor‘s music in for more Waters.

4 out of 4Overall, it’s a nice musical chronicle of David Tennant’s extended swan song as the Doctor, and should more than satisfy fans who are looking for any particularly memorable scene from his final episodes. The change from “brief suites covering much of the season” to “mostly unedited full cues straight off the master tapes” is a bit of a gear shift that’ll take some getting used to.

Order this CD

    Disc One
  1. Vale (1:37)

    The Next Doctor

  2. A Victorian Christmas (1:34)
  3. Not the Doctor (3:19)
  4. A Bit of a Drag (1:23)
  5. In the Sea of Memory (0:44)
  6. Hidden in the Closet (1:51)
  7. The Wonder of Balloons (1:23)
  8. A Forceful Intelligence (1:12)
  9. The Greats of Past Time (5:04)
  10. The March of the Cybermen (4:13)
  11. Goodbyes (5:04)

    Planet of the Dead

  12. A Disturbance in the Night (0:38)
  13. The Cat Burglar (1:30)
  14. Alone in the Desert (3:19)
  15. A Special Sort of Bus (2:19)
  16. Stirring in the Sands (1:58)
  17. Lithuania (1:48)

    The Waters of Mars

  18. Letter to Earth (2:15)
  19. By Water Borne (2:23)
  20. The Fate of Little Adelaide (5:05)
  21. Altering Lives (3:23)
    Disc Two
    The End of Time
  1. We Shall Fare Well (1:26)
  2. A Frosty Ood (2:50)
  3. A Dream of Catastrophe (1:18)
  4. All in the Balance (0:55)
  5. A Ruined Gaol (1:22)
  6. Wilf’s Wiggle (0:43)
  7. Minnie Hooper (1:31)
  8. The End Draws Near (3:46)
  9. Gallifrey (2:22)
  10. Final Days (1:43)
  11. The Council of the Time Lords (0:41)
  12. The Master Suite (4:33)
  13. The Ruined Childhood (3:27)
  14. A Chaotic Escape (2:59)
  15. The World Waits (5:18)
  16. A Longing to Leave (1:18)
  17. A Lot of Life Behind Us (4:20)
  18. Dealing with the Menace (1:35)
  19. Speeding to Earth (1:18)
  20. The Time Lords’ Last Stand (3:27)
  21. The Clouds Pass (1:53)
  22. Four Knocks (4:04)
  23. Song for Ten (Reprise) (2:21)
  24. Vale Decem (3:19)
  25. Vale (4:20)
  26. The New Doctor (1:07)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2010
Disc one total running time: 52:02
Disc two total running time: 64:06

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Categories
2008 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who: Series 4 – music by Murray Gold

4 min read

It just goes to follow that, as I liked season 4 of the new Doctor Who better than season 3, I hold its soundtrack album in a similar regard. In terms of both story and soundtrack, the new Who’s fourth season is everything I wanted – but didn’t get – from the third season, and composer-in-residence Murray Gold delivered music to match the more effective storytelling.

Most of the season’s highlights are represented here, with a wealth of music from Voyage Of The Damned, Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead, Turn Left, The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End, and even slightly less obvious gems like Midnight. Voyage is represented by a ten-minute suite of highlights from that expanded, nearly-movie-length Christmas special, while there’s no shortage of music from the season’s two-parters – with one disappointing exception. The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky sported some suspenseful, brassy music to accompany the attempted invasion by the warlike spuds, only one piece of which – a rehash of the first soundtrack volume’s UNIT theme – shows up here. As fearsome as this two-parter made the Sontarans out to be, their music is notable by its absence here.

Fan favorites such as the Ood songs from Planet Of The Ood (reprised in the climactic moments of Journey’s End), the reverse-echoed rendition of the Doctor’s theme from Turn Left, and even the rapid-fire techno-action piece “Hanging On The Tablaphone” (which, aside from being a play on a Blondie song title, underscored frantic preparations in Torchwood during the finale) can be found here. My favorite surprise is the brutal music from Midnight, truly scary in its intensity (and apparently the composer’s homage to Jerry Goldsmith’s music from Planet Of The Apes). It’s an exhausting listen, even with its just-over-three-minute running time, and really makes you feel like you’ve been beaten up by the end of it. It’s interesting to note that some of the Midnight music – whose howling, descending trombones call to mind Michael Giacchino’s music from Lost – also shows up in the “Davros” track.

4 out of 4The real question now is: will Murray Gold stay? Several major behind-the-scenes figures are following departing showrunner Russell T. Davies out the door after what has almost certainly been an exhausting four years, and even David Tennant is going to bow out in the last of the 2009 special episodes (airing in place of a full season). Having collaborated on such projects as Second Coming, Torchwood and Queer As Folk with Davies, Murray Gold is definitely a Davies loyalist. It remains to be seen if he’ll follow his boss out the door, though – if I’d been asked a season ago, I would’ve said that it was perhaps time for a chance in the show’s creative and musical directions. But season four was so engrossing that I’d like to see Gold stick around long enough to score some Steven Moffat episodes with the 11th Doctor – and yet at the same time, I’ll admit that I could do with fewer appearances of the “orchestra plus a rock drummer” sound. Time, as always, will tell.

Order this CD

  1. Doctor Who Season Four Opening Credits (0:46)
  2. A Noble Girl About Town (2:14)
  3. Life Among the Distant Stars (2:30)
  4. Corridors And Fire Escapes (1:12)
  5. The Sybilline Sisterhood (1:53)
  6. Songs Of Captivity And Freedom (4:03)
  7. UNIT Rocks (1:11)
  8. The Doctor’s Daughter (1:38)
  9. The Source (3:21)
  10. The Unicorn And The Wasp (3:11)
  11. The Doctor’s Theme Season Four (2:47)
  12. Voyage Of The Damned Suite (10:21)
  13. The Girl With No Name (2:45)
  14. The Song Of Song (2:14)
  15. All In The Mind (1:18)
  16. Silence In The Library (2:57)
  17. The Greatest Story Never Told (6:17)
  18. Midnight (3:07)
  19. Turn Left (2:20)
  20. A Dazzling End (2:22)
  21. The Rueful Fate Of Donna Noble (2:44)
  22. Davros (2:07)
  23. The Dark And Endless Dalek Night (3:44)
  24. A Pressing Need To Save The World (4:55)
  25. Hanging On The Tablaphone (1:07)
  26. Song Of Freedom (2:51)
  27. Doctor Who Season Four Closing Credits (1:07)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2008
Total running time: 76:27

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2008 Doctor Who Soundtracks T Television

Torchwood – music by Ben Foster & Murray Gold

4 min read

Featuring the darker, moodier music of Doctor Who’s darker, moodier and decidedly more “adult” spinoff, the Torchwood soundtrack album is full of surprises, but some listeners may be dismayed to find that part of the surprise is what isn’t on it.

From the beginning, Torchwood’s musical score has been the work of two composers, Doctor Who maestro Murray Gold and Ben Foster, who has served as his orchestrator for several years. Foster steps into the limelight here, as the Torchwood CD concentrates almost entirely on his work. However, what this means is that some of the most recognizable pieces of music associated with Torchwood are missing from the album. Many of Gold’s themes, established in the series premiere, were reused throughout season one, and they’re absent from the album, including the drum beat lead-in to the opening teaser (over which John Barrowman explains the show’s premise), and an energetic, pulsating theme that often accompanied the appearance of the team’s trademark black Land Rover in season one. There’s one suite of music from the premiere episode, Everything Changes, and it’s hardly the most striking music from that episode.

What is on the CD is no slouch, mind you; there isn’t anything that’s so bad that I’m reaching for the skip track button. But sometimes it all seems to blend together – there are lengthy stretches of fairly similar music that reach across several tracks. There are some standout cues: “Sleeper”, “Look Right, Then Leave” and the one-two punch of “Jack Joins Torchwood” and “Captain Jack’s Theme” are action-oriented highlights. The best of the lower-key fare includes “Out Of Time”, “Owen’s Theme” and the eerie back-tracked piano work on “Pearl And The Ghost Maker.” Some pieces, like “Into The Hub”, straddle the fence between gentler orchestral music and the show’s trademark electro-inspired action music. A nicely expanded version of the Torchwood theme (which is almost painfully short on TV) rounds out the collection.

Compositionally, there are some incredibly clever things about the music from Torchwood – in the track “Owen Fights Death”, it’s possible to hear how the themes for the various characters are in a common key, making it possible to interweave the themes for Jack and Owen in this track, or the themes for Owen and Toshiko in “Goodbyes”. Toshiko’s theme also finds its way into the extended version of the show’s main theme.

3 out of 4I can understand that it vastly simplifies things to limit an album to one composer almost exclusively. But the problem here is that there are memorable major themes that have been left out in the cold. Casual fans may not notice…but then again, how many truly casual fans will bother to pick up the soundtrack? Perhaps some of Gold’s compositions should be piggybacked onto a future Doctor Who soundtrack release (particularly the rumored “best of the first four seasons’ music that didn’t make it onto any of the other CDs” album that, like the TARDIS, may or may not materialize), or offered as download-only pieces; without his work from the first season, as nice as Foster’s music is, the Torchwood CD just seems to be missing something.

Order this CD

  1. Everything Changes (1:24)
  2. The Chase (3:28)
  3. Ghosts (2:00)
  4. Sleepers, Awake! (1:14)
  5. Toshiko And Tommy (3:09)
  6. Into The Hub (2:08)
  7. The Mission (2:36)
  8. Gray’s Theme (2:45)
  9. Jack’s Love Theme (1:53)
  10. Another Day, Another Death (2:48)
  11. Look Right, Then Leave (2:50)
  12. Welcome To Planet Earth (1:54)
  13. The Plot (3:25)
  14. Out Of Time (1:31)
  15. The Death Of Dr. Owen Harper (2:13)
  16. King Of The Weevils (4:12)
  17. Owen Fights Death (1:52)
  18. The Woman On The Roof (2:26)
  19. Owen’s Theme (3:13)
  20. Pearl And The Ghostmaker (2:28)
  21. Flat Holm Island (2:12)
  22. A Boy Called Jonah (4:55)
  23. Toshiko Sato: Betrayal And Redemption (3:49)
  24. Gwen And Rhys (1:15)
  25. Jack Joins Torchwood (1:37)
  26. Captain Jack’s Theme (3:20)
  27. I Believe In Him (1:34)
  28. Memories Of Gray (2:32)
  29. Goodbyes (2:23)
  30. The Death Of Toshiko (2:23)
  31. The End Is Where We Start From (2:28)
  32. Torchwood Theme (1:36)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2008
Total running time: 79:33

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2007 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who: Series 3 – music by Murray Gold

4 min read

Keen observers may have noticed that I wasn’t as thrilled with the third season of the new Doctor Who as I was with the first two. When the tracklist for the eagerly-anticipated Doctor Who Series 3 CD was revealed, I’ll admit that I was a little underwhelmed there too: half of it seemed to come from the two-parter Human Nature / The Family Of Blood, and those just weren’t my favorite episodes. Apparently I’d forgotten that they sported some of the season’s most distinctive music by a long way.

And when I say “distinctive,” it brings me neatly around to something that did bug me about the third season’s music – it seemed to repeat, a lot. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the third season’s music took on the feeling of library music drawing from a limited number of pieces, much like the original Star Trek, which tracked many of its 80 episodes from only 20 or so original scores. But compress that effect into 13 episodes of a single season, and the effect becomes more apparent even to the casual viewer/listener. “All The Strange, Strange Creatures (The Trailer Music)” is a tune that cropped up incessantly throughout the season, almost like the Amok Time fight music from Star Trek. It’s a fine tune, but man, did we hear it over and over again. Let me point out that it sounds great on CD, and its habit of turning up every other episode may have been an editorial decision on the producers’ part, not the composer’s.

There are quite a few episodes that broke that mold, and they’re the ones that are featured most prominently here: The Shakespeare Code, Evolution Of The Daleks (the best excerpt from which is the borderline-risque Broadway-by-way-of-burlesque song “My Angel Put The Devil In Me”), Human Nature / The Family Of Blood, Blink, and the closing trilogy of episodes, Utopia / The Sound Of Drums / Last Of The Time Lords. The Runaway Bride is represented by three cues, one of which may well be the new Who’s best chase scene ever, and there’s a “preview” number from this year’s Christmas special, a seasonal (but original) tune called “The Stowaway”.

“The Master Vainglorious” is the cue that represented Professor Yana’s regeneration into the Master as well as the arrival of the Toclafane, while “YANA (Excerpt)” accompanied the launch of the rocket to Utopia and Yana’s hijacking of the TARDIS. These two tracks, along with “The Futurekind”, which is a much heavier take on the same basic melody as “All The Strange, Strange Creatures”, are great stuff, as is the wild “The Runaway Bride” cue, which was heard during Donna’s freeway-rescue-by-TARDIS in the episode of the same name.

What I had forgotten was how nice the music from Blink was – and that was an episode I actually liked and rewatched a lot. “Blink (Suite)” is unique and atmospheric, almost like a modern take on ’70s TV detective show music. Gridlock is represented by “Gridlocked Cassinis”, which has some unique sounds (even a little cheesy in places, but it works), and “Boe”, which heralded that character’s demise. It’s the same basic tune as “The Face Of Boe” from the first new series soundtrack, but takes on a more elegiac tone before turning into a gentle, pleasant variation on the same melody. The choral version of “Abide With Me” is also heard here, from the end of Gridlock, but it’s pretty enough to silence even that persistent voice that’s still wondering if we’re ever going to get the music from School Reunion on CD.

The Human Nature music is pleasant, reflecting on the shattering of simpler times by leaning on simple, sparse music played by a smaller ensemble than you’re used to from the show’s big action setpieces. In retrospect, and away from the context of the episode and my opinion thereof, it’s actually quite nice music, and it’s easy to see why it became the centerpiece of the whole album.

4 out of 4Doctor Who: Series 3 may well be an example of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture effect – i.e. the music was better than what it accompanied – and it’s a great listen.

  1. All The Strange Strange Creatures (The Trailer Music) (4:07)
  2. Martha’s Theme (3:42)
  3. Drowning Dry (1:54)
  4. Order this CDThe Carrionites Swarm (3:23)
  5. Gridlocked Cassinis (1:17)
  6. Boe (3:43)
  7. Evolution Of The Daleks (1:53)
  8. My Angel Put The Devil In Me (3:08)
  9. Mr. Smith and Joan (2:05)
  10. Only Martha Knows (2:31)
  11. Smith’s Choice (1:42)
  12. Just Scarecrows To War (1:30)
  13. Miss Joan Redfern (1:51)
  14. The Dream Of A Normal Death (1:55)
  15. The Doctor Forever (4:18)
  16. Blink (Suite) (2:55)
  17. The Runaway Bride (4:18)
  18. After The Chase (1:26)
  19. The Futurekind (1:44)
  20. YANA (Excerpt) (0:54)
  21. The Master Vainglorious (3:22)
  22. Martha’s Quest (3:19)
  23. This Is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home (3:17)
  24. Martha Triumphant (2:49)
  25. Donna’s Theme (3:14)
  26. The Stowaway (3:36)
  27. The Master Tape (1:55)
  28. Abide With Me (2:28)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2007
Total running time: 74:17

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