Director: Matthew Robinson
What's the score?
Malcolm Clarke returns and, for the last time, musical continuity is maintained across seasons. As it's a Cyberman story and Clarke scored the last one of those - and as Clarke scored the previous story Matthew Robinson directed - he's an obvious choice here. Unsurprisingly, the music he composed for Earthshock provides the model for some of this score, but there's plenty of new material thrown into the mix.
Musical notes
- As in The Twin Dilemma, the harpsichord represents the Doctor. Here we get a sort of bad-tempered clock chime alternating with jollier moments at the start of Part One - the Doctor's still having mood swings, but he's properly himself this time.
- One prominent recurring theme in this story is the one that introduces the bank heist gang - reintroduces, in the case of Lytton. Variations of it play in scenes featuring Lytton and/or members of his gang in the sewers and on Telos - there's a mournful version over his final appearance in Cyber Control. It's a strangely jaunty piece, intended perhaps to reinforce the idea that most of the gang are cheeky London wideboys caught out of their depth. (It starts to grate on my nerves pretty quickly, mind you.)
- The cue for Halley's Comet - stately horns over sparkly synths - that plays in both episodes is based on Clarke's own composition for the 1981 BBC programme The Comet Is Coming! This hour-long documentary featured inserts scripted by Nigel Calder that starred Tim Brooke-Taylor as Halley's ghost and Leo McKern as the Voice of the Comet. You couldn't make it up. The original four minute composition is included in the double CD release BBC Radiophonic Workshop: A Retrospective.
- This is a score full of references - in this sense, it's well suited to a story so obsessed with in-series continuity. Besides the Comet cue, we have: the cue for the clone policemen reprised from Resurrection of the Daleks (which may or may not be based on a TV show theme tune); an obvious homage to the Steptoe & Son theme as the setting of IM Foreman's junk yard is introduced; and a phrase from JS Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor which the Doctor plays diegetically on the TARDIS in its temporary new form as a church organ, and which is continued in the incidental music as the Doctor and Peri explore the junk yard. Tat Wood, in About Time vol 6, suggests that Lytton's heist theme is intended as some sort of musical reference to Gangsters, another well-known BBC series to feature actor Maurice Colbourne. However, your humble blogger has watched all of Gangsters (so you don't have to) and can't hear any real musical resemblance.
- Although Clarke makes extensive reference to his own score for Earthshock, he doesn't just quote cues but develops them as well. The famous March of the Cybermen is reprised liberally throughout the story, in its original form and with variations - there's a kind of "ultimate smackdown" version in Part Two when we get our first sight of the Cyber Tombs on Telos. It's also worth noting the six-note "time travel" motif that appeared in Earthshock when the freighter was slipping back in time, which is reprised here when the Cybermen force the Doctor to take them to their future base on Telos in the TARDIS.
- The delicate Cryons, liable to evaporate entirely if they get too warm, are represented by appropriately ethereal sounds throughout Part Two. Most of their cues consist of "wooo" sounds in down-up-down-up stepping sequences, with icy sparkling ornamentation. There are a couple of particularly lovely examples in the scenes of Flast preparing to sacrifice herself in order to blow up Cyber Control.
- This season of DW, and Attack of the Cybermen in particular, came in for heavy criticism of its violent content - could the incidental music have contributed to the critics' perception of the series? Clarke is certainly prone to lashing out musically whenever he sees a cliffhanger coming, and when the Doctor dispatches a Cyberman in this story, that too is accompanied by a particularly cacophonous cry of alarm from Clarke. The incidental music goes into a full-on killitkillitkillit! frenzy when the Doctor is cornered by the Cyber Controller and guns him down in Part Two - might this scene seem less shocking with different music?
Vox pop
If any story demands that Malcolm Clarke repeat himself, it's this one, so I can't really hold this score up as further evidence of staleness after his previous two. In fact, Clarke's work here is surprisingly fresh considering how reference-heavy it is. Season 22 is one of the most musically diverse seasons of DW - five different composers across six stories - and for my money, musically one of the best seasons, and this score gets it off to a good start.
Availability
- The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
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