10 - Kinda

Composer: Peter Howell
Director: Peter Grimwade

What's the score?
Peter Howell's only contribution to this season. The overall range and timbre of the sounds used here are pretty similar to those used in Warriors' Gate, with the experimentalism carried a bit further - the Mara is represented by weird shriekings and howlings rather than melodic cues. There's also some use of ambient atmospheres in this score - possibly from Howell rather than Dick Mills, since Mills' "time wind" atmosphere from Warriors' Gate was included and credited on the 30 Years at the Radiophonic Workshop sound effects CD, whereas the background noise of the wind chime glade from this story doesn't appear on the album. Hold onto the glade sound, it'll be making a return appearance...

Musical notes

• A couple of recurring themes stand for the Kinda in this story. The main one, which plays over various group scenes as well as over the final scene after peace has been restored, is a slow, pensive-sounding piece. Keen listeners may notice some structural similarity to that eerie cue from Part Four of Warriors' Gate. The other theme is airier and slightly more mysterious - it plays over the images of the Kinda that appear during the Doctor's hallucination in Part Three.
• The Kinda's wind chimes play an interesting part in the incidental score. They start out as a diegetic sound in Part One when the Doctor, Adric and Tegan first find them - Howell is careful to respond to the verbal/visual cues of the Doctor striking "a perfect fifth" and playing the opening notes of "Three Blind Mice". However, they seem to become part of the non-diegetic music when we get to the scenes inside Tegan's mind. It's debatable whether the chimes heard during the scene in which the Kinda tribespeople tend to the sleeping Tegan are meant to be diegetic or not.
• The mental contact between the Kinda is signalled by a breathy shimmering sound. An extended version of the sound is heard near the start of Part Four when Panna's mind merges with Karuna's. A washed-out version forms a continuous background in the scene in which the Mara telepathically directs the Kinda to help it attack the Dome.
• When Sanders opens the Box of Jhana in Part Two, there's a build-up of rising synth sounds culminating in a falling, trilling sound that could be described as, um, ecstatic. The Part Two cliffhanger relies on an element of uncertainty and possible menace about the Box, but it's hard to take that seriously when we've already heard this noise. Conversely, the cue that plays in Part Four when Hindle opens the Box and is mentally healed is strangely sinister.
• Sanders' return to the Dome in Part Two, having been mentally regressed to childhood, is announced with a cheeky snatch of "Girls and Boys Come Out to Play".
• A slightly weird moment: at the very start of Part Three, and without any obvious reference to the opening shot of the episode, the theme tune fades directly into the Box of Jhana sound. (The Doctor actually opens the Box a couple of minutes later.) It's as if Howell is suggesting that DW itself is our Box of Jhana, and we the viewers are about to be granted a revelatory vision. Sure enough, this is the episode in which we see what the characters see when the Box is opened. Still, part of me wishes this could happen at the start of every episode of DW.

Vox pop
Much as I like this score, I don't feel it's a huge departure from Peter Howell's work in the previous season. The Mara scenes are strange and unsettling, but the more melodic material, lovely as it is, feels quite familiar. Next season will see Howell's work on DW undergo a radical change; this is just a small step towards that change.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Doctor Who - The Music included one track from this story, a one-minute cue called "TSS Machine Attacked". It's the cue from Part Four that plays when the Trickster makes Adric lose control of the TSS.