24 - Frontios

Composer: Paddy Kingsland
Director: Ron Jones

What's the score?
Paddy Kingsland returns to compose his final score for DW. His now-legendary electric guitar doesn't get a look in, which is a surprise and a bit of a shame, but there's plenty of exposure for that exotic, hip new sound that's all the rage: the pan pipes.

(The British band Incantation had scored a surprise hit two years earlier with "Cacharpaya", a South American-flavoured tune played on Andean folk instruments; pan pipe cover albums would be all over British record shop shelves in the '90s. Kingsland would appear to have had his finger on the pulse with this score.)

The overall feel of the score is a bit grim, a bit melancholy, which is a fair fit for the story's setting on the last human colony. As usual, Kingsland makes good use of motifs, with a few character sounds mixed in as well.

Musical notes

• The first of this story's many motifs is the set of three descending notes that stands for Captain Revere. It plays in the opening cue of Part One when Revere vanishes; it makes a strident return at the end of Part Three when Revere is revealed as the power source in the Tractators' excavating machine.
• The remaining representatives of authority on Frontios have a staccato theme in snare drum and horns. The snare drum seems particularly drawn to the militaristic figure of Brazen, but this motif is also heard when Plantagenet addresses the colonists in Part One and when the rebellious Retrogrades take control of the colony ship in Part Four.
• Most memorable of all is the pan pipe motif that first plays as the TARDIS arrives on Frontios. It seems to stand for the hope of the colonists - it attaches itself to the youthful Norna in the scenes in which she confides in Turlough in Part Two and is menaced by the Retrogrades at the start of Part Four, but it's also heard over the TARDIS' departure as well as its arrival. Other phrases on the pan pipes are variously heard over scenes of Tegan, Turlough, the Doctor and Norna, and even in the scene of Mr Range entering the tunnels in Part Three accompanied by Brazen and his snare drum. 
• Lurking behind the cues in Part One of Norna leading Tegan and Turlough to the supply room in search of an acid battery and of the three sneaking the battery out of the colony ship is a faint touch of church organ. It's a nice way of reinforcing the sanctity of the colony ship to the colonists, who guard it as if it were a shrine.
• The Tractators have a theme and a signature sound. Their theme is a pensive four-plus-four-note up-and-down affair, first heard in Part Three when Turlough's race memories come to the surface. It's played in various other scenes relating to the Tractators' activities, sometimes in plain synth (when Turlough starts to remember them, for instance), and sometimes in combination with their signature sound (such as when Tegan discovers parts of the TARDIS scattered across their underground tunnels).
• Their sound is something like a hammered dulcimer, although it could simply be some variety of bass guitar. (Given the Tractators' peculiar powers of control over gravity, your humble blogger is tempted to attempt a joke about "string theory". No? Please yourselves.) The first hints of this sound are heard during Captain Revere's disappearance and the meteoric bombardment, both later revealed to have been caused by the Tractators. There's a secondary motif, a stringy "da-dum dum dum da-dum", that emerges in Part Two when Brazen finds out about Mr Range's records of Deaths Unaccountable - all caused by the Tractators - and when the creatures finally make their appearance at the end of the episode.
• Also in the cue at the end of Part Two is an intriguing downward "beowww" noise. It pops up again twice in Part Four, when the enslaved Captain Revere is pronounced dead and when the Tractators capture Turlough. The significance of this sound remains a mystery to yours truly. Something to do with the Tractators' gravity effect? But then why doesn't it feature in the story's denouement?

Vox pop
The unusual choice of pan pipes really sets this score apart from those around it, and puts a new spring in Kingsland's musical step. If his scores for The Visitation and Mawdryn Undead were a little hum-ho, this one's a return to form.

And so Paddy Kingsland leaves the stage - among the first of the '80s DW composers, and now the first out. I've commented often enough on the repetitive tendencies of some of his scores, but perhaps I haven't said often enough just how lovely his compositions have been. Certainly none of his seven (and a bit!) scores are what I would call unpleasant, and the double bill of Logopolis and Castrovalva ranks among the pinnacles of electronic Who music. His accessible melodies have always been a great complement to the experimental stylings of other composers, and I've often detected - or believed I detected - a cheeky edge of wryness in his work. I mean it in the best possible way when I say that I think of his DW scores as "comfort music".

Availability

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