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.
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