Director: Graeme Harper
What's the score?
This is the story that sees the return to DW of Roger Limb, although it's hard to believe he's the same Roger Limb who worked on Arc of Infinity and Terminus. Limb himself attributes the marked difference in his output to director Graeme Harper, who had strong ideas of his own on how The Caves of Androzani should sound and gave Limb very clear indications of what he wanted, something that John Black and Ron Jones apparently hadn't done.
Limb's familiar free-wheeling compositional style can be found here and there, but the sound palette is refreshingly different from what he's used before. The "angry wasp" synths have had their day. Also worth noting is the change in cue length across the story: Part One contains a lot of short cues, but as the story picks up steam the cues get longer, until in the final act of Part Four we're presented with a massive seven-minute piece.
Musical notes
- A recurring motif in the score is the six-note phrase representing spectrox, the wonder drug of Androzani Minor. It's usually played in chimes and heard in scenes around the middle of the story, for instance when Sharaz Jek and the arms dealer Stotz are arguing over a trade of guns and spectrox. However, it's anticipated in a discreet tenor synth early in Part One when Peri steps into a raw spectrox nest; the same cue foreshadows the Doctor's demise in Part Four with a touch of the TARDIS' cloister bell, a familiar portent of doom.
- The presence on-screen of Sharaz Jek - forced into hiding, dangerous and probably insane - is marked with a rattlesnake sound. This is one of the elements of the score Graeme Harper is known to have requested.
- I mentioned under The King's Demons that this was the year the BBC Radiophonic Workshop got their hands on a synthesizer that could do a convincing snare drum sound. Limb makes liberal use of this new toy, with stumbling snare phrases throughout the story in action scenes, notably where Stotz' gun-runners are involved. There's a sustained snare roll at the end of Part One when the Doctor and Peri are apparently executed by firing squad; it's reprised in Part Four when Stotz guns down his own men after cutting a deal with Trau Morgus, so we might think of it as a "people are shot for Morgus' convenience" theme.
- The lengthy cue in Part Four that covers the Doctor's rescue of Peri and return to the surface of Androzani Minor is a slow, atmospheric piece punctuated by a thudding heartbeat. Somewhere around the midpoint, as the Doctor's own condition deteriorates and it becomes more of an ordeal for him to continue, the heartbeat becomes the tolling of the cloister bell, the TARDIS' warning alarm. It's a nice, subtle way of reinforcing the gravity of his situation.
- An anxious penultimate cue leads into the final cue of the story, a high-pitched pulsing whine that escalates into a grinding upward synth crash as the Doctor regenerates. Graeme Harper famously asked Limb to deliver something that sounded like the end of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". It may lack the tenderness of Paddy Kingsland's regeneration cue for Tom Baker's departure, but it's certainly intense.
- Having served up this heart-stopping over-the-cliff moment, Limb remains silent during Colin Baker's first words as the Doctor. This is the right decision for several reasons: it gives the new Doctor centre stage; it means Limb doesn't tread on the toes of Malcolm Clarke, who will provide the score for Colin Baker's first full story as the Doctor; and it's hard to imagine any further musical cue steering clear of bathos after that regeneration crash.
Vox pop
Dramatic (melodramatic, even) but restrained when it needs to be, this score is a real quantum leap forward for Roger Limb. He maintains a melancholic feel throughout, but doesn't let the pace drag, as befits an action-filled story. It's a pulse-racing, spine-tingling score, as listenable in isolation as it is suited to the transmitted episodes; it could even be the best of the season.
Availability
- A soundtrack CD for this story was released by Silva Screen Records in 2013.
- The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
- This is the last story to be represented by a suite of music on Doctor Who - The Music II.
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