Director: Chris Clough
What's the score?
Dominic Glynn returns to provide his annual score (sadly, one a year from Glynn is all we'll get in these final years of the '80s). Musically, this is an unusual story for DW, and Glynn appears to relish the challenge - he recalls on the DVD commentary how delighted he was to be asked to score a DW story in which music played such an integral part.
Two key cultural influences are at work within this story: the blues and film noir, although the director was prevented from making very much of the latter. Glynn nods towards the film noir element with several minor key piano phrases, but musically he's able to make far more out of the blues angle, and this score is liberally seasoned with melancholic harmonica. The harmonica was played by guest musician Adam Burney, who did his best to provide something in line with Glynn's requirements that would nevertheless match up with the visible breathing and hand movements of actor Richard D Sharp in those scenes where Burney was required to dub diegetic material.
Musical notes
- As part of the incidental music, the harmonica is heard almost immediately in Part One, wailing and snarling as Silas P moves to entrap a miserable woman on the streets of Terra Alpha. The first bit of diegetic harmonica turns up about halfway through the episode, when Earl Sigma is first seen strolling down an otherwise empty street. It's at this point that the score's main harmonica theme is introduced, a relatively straightforward upward and then downward sequence of notes. Variations on this are heard through the rest of the story, including several provided by Glynn's synths - there's a particularly lovely flute version in Part One when Susan Q helps Ace to escape from the Happiness Patrol's headquarters. A full orchestral swell backs up the harmonica in the final cues of Part Three.
- As with Dragonfire, Glynn produces no fewer than three pieces of muzak to give some variety to the sounds of Radio Terra Alpha. The most prominent (and horribly earwormy) of these is a hyperactive xylophone tune over airy synth chords with muted trumpet accents. It's playing in the Forum Square when the TARDIS arrives in Part One, and pops up frequently thereafter - Earl Sigma even mimics it on the harmonica when he's surprised by the Happiness Patrol. A sort of synth calypso tune is very briefly heard just before the TARDIS' arrival, and is heard at greater length in the Waiting Zone in Part Three. The third piece, which plays in the Waiting Zone while the Doctor and Ace are there in Part One, is a slow, cowboy-esque tune in synth violins and a kind of whistling sound. It's strangely mournful; you can practically hear the howling of small dogs in it - however did it get past Terra Alpha's censors?
- Time for the obligatory mention of a DW theme reference - there's a burst of the theme tune's bassline in Part One as the Doctor and Ace are escorted into the Waiting Zone.
- The Kandy Man has a special theme of his own, a fairgroundy oom-pa-pa in an eerie high-pitched glassy synth voice. It's first heard before he appears, in the scene in which Helen A and Gilbert M discuss what he's cooking up for that night's public execution. Glynn serves up a particularly grandiose version with trumpets and violins for the scene in which the Kandy Man first appears in his Kandy Kitchen, arranging the execution in Part One, and again in Part Three when he's killed in the pipes with his own fondant.
- One odd element of the soundtrack: for the scenes of the factory Drones marching through the streets in Parts Two and Three, there's a literal humming drone. At one point, this humming seems to take on a variant melody of the main harmonica theme.
Vox pop
This is a real high point for Dominic Glynn, and while I'd be hard pressed to say that it's the best of the Sylvester McCoy era scores (although that's a measure of the general high quality of this era's music, not a slight against Glynn), it's as good an example as any we've had of the incidental music working in partnership with the story. More than this, it's a rare instance of the music taking up the slack from other areas of the story's production that were compromised by time and budgetary constraints. With his perky, saccharine muzak, Glynn helps to build the world of Terra Alpha; with his sinister piano cues, he nails the director's vision of a DW film noir; with Adam Burney's harmonica, he provides the heart of the story. That this score is so enjoyable in isolation is just the icing on the Kandy cake.
Availability
- The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
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