Director: Peter Moffatt
What's the score?
The last televised DW score from Peter Howell. The Two Doctors, equivalent in length to a 1970s six-parter, is the longest single story-unit (this blog counts The Trial of a Time Lord as four of those) of the 1980s, yet the incidental score is no longer than that of the average four-parter, clocking in at only a little over 45 minutes. This season alone, it's outweighed by the scores for Attack of the Cybermen and Revelation of the Daleks, both of which boast close to an hour of music.
Musical notes
- This score is dominated by melodic flurries of Spanish guitar. Session musician Les Thatcher plays on several cues, as indicated on the BBC's Programme-as-Completed documentation. The acoustic melodies are obviously appropriate to the story's setting in Seville, a nice counterpoint to the synthesized elements of Howell's score, and just all-round pleasant to listen to. Notable highlights include the mournful tune that plays for the Dona Arana (complete with freakish "Eeeeee!" sound as Shockeye kills her); the melancholic theme that introduces the clownish Oscar in Part One and plays again over his death in Part Three; and my personal favourite, the piece heard in Part Three while everyone's stalking everyone else through the streets of Seville, with its little synthetic Latin 3-2 horn phrase on top.
- The second most significant character theme in this score is the untuneful and slightly fey whistling motif that stands for the Androgums. It generally plays during Shockeye's most triumphant moments - elsewhere, he's represented by brooding synth sounds with metallic, somewhat knife-like accents. The Androgum whistle also plays in Part Three when Chessene reverts to type.
- And the number one most significant character theme belongs to the Sontarans, a rousing march with tattoos of increasingly loud snare drum as its most prominent feature. A high plucked string melody plays over the top of the leading part of the theme - it has a bit of a Spanish flavour about it, even before the Sontarans set foot in Spain. Fast and slow variants of the theme crop up throughout the story, while the snare tattoo on its own quietly intrudes into the scenes in Part One in which the Sixth Doctor investigates the ruined space station Camera.
- As usual, Howell's score includes some more abstract atmospheric moments. The scene in Part One of the Sixth Doctor and Peri fishing on an alien world is accompanied by a sustained alto ethereal sound that sounds a little bit as though someone's left the tap running in a metal sink. Later in the same episode, we hear an assortment of creaking sounds as the Doctor explores space station Camera, suggesting the raddled edifice could give way at any minute.
- There are several DW theme tune moments for our perusal this week. There's an "oo-wee-oo" into descending notes as the Sixth Doctor collapses in Part One, two "oo-wee-oos" with snare drum tattoo early in Part Three when the Sontarans force the Doctor to prime their bootleg time machine, and a pair of high and low "oo-wee-oos" in Part Three when the two Doctors finally meet. Like the bassline heartbeats in Howell's score for The Five Doctors, this last moment seems to gesture back (in broad principle, if not in specific pitches) to the difference in pitch between Howell's contemporary arrangement of the theme tune and the Delia Derbyshire arrangement that was in use during Patrick Troughton's tenure. There's also a flash of the bassline rhythm in Part One when the Sixth Doctor starts to hack into Dastari's computer.
- And then, when the Sixth Doctor and Jamie escape from the Sontarans in Part Three, the drums suddenly go haywire. Somehow, in 1985, Peter Howell has anticipated the advent of drum 'n' bass.
Vox pop
And there goes Peter Howell. Nobody's going to be surprised to hear that Howell is my favourite Radiophonic Workshop composer - he just seems to have struck the right balance between accessibility and experimentation in each story, and I can't think of a single dud score he composed. His association with DW doesn't end here - the Beeb brought him back to provide the music for their original Jon Pertwee radio DW stories in the '90s, which again should surprise no one. But this is where he leaves our story.
Availability
- The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
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