Director: Chris Clough
What's the score?
Dominic Glynn returns to end Season 23 as he began it. Technically it's all one big story, so consistency is a virtue here. Expect more fast beats, chimes, crystallophonic sounds and pitchbending.
Musical notes
- The most remarkable feature of this score is an up-and-down-and-up-and-down stepping motif that bears an uncanny resemblance to the theme tune from The Twilight Zone. It's an appropriate choice for two episodes of weird escapades in the dreamlike fantasy environment inside the Matrix. Variations on it are heard when the Doctor is attacked by a pair of hands that try to pull his face into a barrel of water in Part Thirteen; when several hands drag him beneath the surface of the beach in the "waiting room" in the cliffhanger at the end of Part Thirteen; when he realises in Part Fourteen that the Valeyard intends to kill everyone in the courtroom from inside the Matrix; and when Mel is evacuating the courtroom as the final attack begins. There's also a hint of it at the end of the fast cue when the Doctor and Glitz are attacked with illusory nerve gas at the start of Part Fourteen. However, remarkable as it is, it may not be the first thing listeners notice...
- The most notable feature of the score is undoubtedly the fairground calliope music that Glynn uses for the reveal of the Valeyard's outlandish "Fantasy Factory" lair inside the Matrix. This is reprised whenever we get an establishing shot of the "Fantasy Factory" exterior and its gigantic illuminated sign.
- Two other phrases are repeated late in Part Fourteen. When the particle disseminator is revealed, there's a high wail and two-note fall-off repeated over a mid-range synth beat; this wailing phrase is repeated over a low staccato rhythm later in the episode when the Doctor escapes from the Matrix as the disseminator is switched on. The staccato rhythm gets its own slow, highly dramatic repeat right at the end of Part Fourteen when it's revealed that the Valeyard also escaped.
- One last bit of repetition, linking the final episode of the season back to the first: as the Doctor re-enters the courtroom in the aftermath of the Valeyard's attack, there's a rueful (and extremely high-pitched!) glassy reprise of the Trial theme that opened Part One.
- Much of the rest of the score is given over to atmospherics with chimes and glassy notes to the fore. Of the more structured one-off cues, I have a soft spot for the bare, eerie synth notes that play as the Doctor is apparently condemned to death in a fake courtroom in the Matrix. But my personal favourite, although (or because?) it stands out so much from the rest of the score, is the despairing minor-key series of high, organ-like notes heard in Part Fourteen as the Master announces his intention to take over Gallifrey.
Vox pop
Listening to this season's incidental scores again, it's not hard to spot the winner. In just fourteen episodes, Dominic Glynn has emerged as the torch-bearer for the next musical era of DW. As with The Mysterious Planet, what we have here is a solid score with highlights, not too showy but with the robust confidence needed to carry the episodes along, and with that all-important quality of freshness. The incidental music of DW will be in safe hands, if we can just find a couple more composers like Glynn...
Availability
- The BBC DVD release does not include the isolated score for this story; five minutes of Glynn's music can be heard on the photo gallery.
- An abridged version of the score was made available for a brief time on the Doctor Who Appreciation Society (DWAS) release Black Light: The Doctor Who Music of Dominic Glynn, alongside Glynn's music from The Mysterious Planet and Dragonfire.
No comments:
Post a Comment