Director: Pennant Roberts
What's the score?
Startlingly, Elizabeth Parker is the only woman ever to have composed incidental music for DW. (That is to say, specifically been asked to compose the music for the story. Some of Delia Derbyshire's compositions were used as incidental music on Inferno (1970), but these were taken from stock.)
She'd previously provided the special sound for the latter two and a half seasons of Blake's 7, and for the 1970s DW story The Stones of Blood, but this was the first and only time she scored a DW story.
The score for Timelash is often understated, particularly to begin with, but it has an experimental edge throughout, venturing into the avant garde in the story's more active moments.
Musical notes
Vox pop
It's hard to assess Elizabeth Parker as a DW composer based on this one, somewhat unusual score. The best way to get a proper idea of her musical range is to listen to her work on various BBC wildlife documentaries, most pertinently The Living Planet, which was broadcast the year before Timelash. A CD of the soundtrack to The Living Planet was released by Silva Screen in 2016; many of the cues wouldn't have sounded out of place on a contemporary or historical DW story. It's certainly a shame she wasn't brought back to work on The Trial of a Time Lord - of all the Radiophonic Workshop composers, I think she (and blogger favourite Peter Howell, naturally) would have been most capable of giving the new stable of freelance composers a run for their money. Listening to the stutters and rattles of the action scenes of Timelash, I half expect it to burst into full-on techno at any minute - it's intriguing stuff. We're lucky at least to have this one incidental score from Parker.
Musical notes
- Much of the incidental music for Timelash consists of atmospheric sounds with small synth phrases added as accents, but even the atmospheric material is out of the ordinary. Lurking amid the ethereal flourishes and misty washes are a variety of knockings and other small percussive sounds that keep the listener from getting too comfortable, which adds an alien dimension to the planet Karfel that the visuals on this occasion can't quite muster. The clearest examples of this otherworldly ambience can be heard in the scenes of the Doctor clambering about inside the well of the Timelash in Part Two.
- Fans of DW theme tune references, rejoice - "oo-wee-oo" moments are liberally peppered across this score. Most of these are ghostly echoes during the scene in Part Two in which the Doctor demonstrates the pendant he's created that allows him to leave a time-delayed image of himself in one place and wander unseen elsewhere. There's more of this later when the Doctor uses the pendant to distract the Borad while he sabotages the computer controls. A little bass "oo-wee-oo" can be heard when the Bandrils report the Doctor's death, while at the opposite end of this episode there's a drawn-out rendition as the Doctor rallies after the cliffhanger reprise.
- What we get after the "oo-wee-oo" at the start of Part Two is mayhem, as the Doctor instigates an all-out fight in the Timelash chamber. First there's an outburst of crazy atonal synth stabs as he dazzles an android with a mirror, then the struggle itself is accompanied by a low but frenzied beat that reminds me more than a little of the end music from Blade Runner. Over this beat, Parker plays a rising series of repeated phrases, three resonant bass notes in what may or may not be another nod to the theme tune followed by three short harpsichord stabs. This action theme is heard again when the Borad's forces break in and try to take the Timelash chamber back from the rebels later in the episode.
- There are a couple of other notable repeated elements in the score. One is the use of bass harpsichord sounds to emphasise the footfalls of the Borad's androids - these are tentative, only on every other step, in the first appearance of an android in Part One, but become more strident in scenes when they chase after other characters. The other prominent character element is the use of a downward wailing sound on both occasions when the Borad's face is revealed to the viewer - the first time when he's revealed to the Doctor, and the second time when the Borad's clone pops up from nowhere.
Vox pop
It's hard to assess Elizabeth Parker as a DW composer based on this one, somewhat unusual score. The best way to get a proper idea of her musical range is to listen to her work on various BBC wildlife documentaries, most pertinently The Living Planet, which was broadcast the year before Timelash. A CD of the soundtrack to The Living Planet was released by Silva Screen in 2016; many of the cues wouldn't have sounded out of place on a contemporary or historical DW story. It's certainly a shame she wasn't brought back to work on The Trial of a Time Lord - of all the Radiophonic Workshop composers, I think she (and blogger favourite Peter Howell, naturally) would have been most capable of giving the new stable of freelance composers a run for their money. Listening to the stutters and rattles of the action scenes of Timelash, I half expect it to burst into full-on techno at any minute - it's intriguing stuff. We're lucky at least to have this one incidental score from Parker.
Availability
- The BBC DVD release does not include the isolated score, but does include a photo gallery featuring about eight and a half minutes of Parker's music.
- The 1993 CD release Doctor Who: 30 Years at the Radiophonic Workshop included a six minute suite of music from this story.
really liked this score and for me it is distinct from the output of other contributors from Radiophonic Workshop. PPG and Fairlight feature heavily.
ReplyDeleteNot related to Liz's contribution but one other fun musical reference cones as the android says the line "Yes indeed he was" to the tune of the musical "hello" from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
ReplyDelete