Doctor Who theme music

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The Doctor Who theme music was created in 1963, composed by Ron Grainer and "realised" with electronics by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The theme was one of the first electronic music signature tunes for television. Its haunting and ethereal sound has become as indelibly associated with the programme as the TARDIS or the Daleks, and the theme has endured over four decades.

 Audio sample composed by Ron Grainer:

Doctor Who theme excerpt

An excerpt from the classic theme music to Doctor Who
Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] 1960s

The original 1963 arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune is widely regarded as a significant and innovative piece of electronic music. Recorded before the widespread introduction of synthesisers, Delia Derbyshire used musique concrète techniques. Each and every note was painstakingly handcrafted using pre-recorded individually struck piano strings as well as electronic equipment such as wave signal generators, noise generators, filters and square- and sine-wave oscillators (which were themselves rare at the time), with the results pitch-shifted if necessary. Each individual note in the Doctor Who theme was individually created using these instruments, and recorded onto magnetic tape. The swooping sounds were created by manually adjusting the pitch of the oscillator to a carefully-timed pattern. The rhythmic hissing sounds, "bubbles" and "clouds" were created by filtering white noise to "colour" it. Examination of the original makeup tapes suggests that one of the two bass lines alone is a "concrete" sound, a plucked string sample.[1]

Once each sound had been created, it was modified. Some sounds were created at all the required pitches direct from the oscillators, others had to be repitched later by adjusting the tape playback speed and re-recording the sound onto another tape player. This process continued until every sound was available at all the required pitches. To create dynamics, the notes were re-recorded at slightly different levels.

Each individual note was then trimmed to length by cutting the tape, and stuck together in the right order. This was done for each "line" in the music - the main plucked bass, the bass slides (an organ-like tone emphasising the grace notes), the hisses, the swoops, the melody, a second melody line (a high organ-like tone used for emphasis), and the bubbles and clouds. Most of these individual bits of tape making up lines of music, complete with edits every inch, still survive.

This done, the music had to be "mixed". There were no multitrack tape machines, so rudimentary multitrack techniques were invented: each length of tape was placed on a separate tape machine and all the machines were started simultaneously and the outputs mixed together. If the machines didn't stay in sync, they started again, maybe cutting tapes slightly here and there to help. In fact, a number of "submixes" were made to ease the process - a combined bass track, combined melody track, bubble track, and hisses. Eventually, the piece was finished.

Grainer was amazed at the resulting piece of music and when he heard it, famously asked, "Did I write that?". Derbyshire modestly replied "Most of it". Unfortunately, the BBC — who wanted to keep members of the Workshop anonymous — prevented Grainer from getting Derbyshire a co-composer credit and a share of the royalties.

The theme can be divided into several distinctive parts. A rhythmic bassline opens and underlies the theme throughout, followed by a rising and falling set of notes that forms the main melody which is repeated several times. The bridge, also known as the "middle eight", is an uplifting interlude in the relative major that usually features in the closing credits or the full version of the theme. During the early years of the series, however, the middle eight was also often heard during the opening credits (most notably in the first episode, An Unearthly Child). The main section is in the Aeolian mode.

Derbyshire's realisation of the theme is in the key of E minor, as on Ron Grainer's original score.

The theme has been often cited as being both memorable as well as frightening, priming the viewer for what was to follow. During the 1970s, the Radio Times, the BBC's own listings magazine, announced that a child's mother said the theme music terrified her son. The Radio Times was apologetic, but the theme music remained.

Derbyshire created two arrangements in 1963: the first was released as a single, but was rejected by the producers. The second arrangement was used on the first episode of the programme. The two 1963 arrangements served, with only minor edits and additions requested by the producers, as the theme tune up to 1980 and the end of Season 17. The most notable of these edits were addition of 'electronic spangles', and tape echo to the bassline, from the Patrick Troughton serial The Faceless Ones onwards, and the addition of a "sting" at the start of the closing credits during Jon Pertwee's first season.

In 2002, Mark Ayres used Derbyshire's original masters to mix full stereo and surround sound versions of the theme.

[edit] 1970s

During the Third Doctor's era beginning in 1970, the "sting", an electronic shriek, was added to punctuate the episode cliffhangers and serve as a lead-in to the closing theme. A few episodes such as Spearhead from Space also used a slight rearrangement of the Derbyshire theme for the closing credits; the "middle eight" section was not heard very often during the Third Doctor era; during the era of the Fourth Doctor, the "middle eight" was heard on only four episodes prior to the adoption of the Peter Howell arrangement in 1980. For unexplained reasons, the first three serials of Season 8 reverted to the 1967 arrangement before reinstating the Third Doctor's arrangement for the last two serials of that year.

In 1972, there was an attempt by Brian Hodgson and Paddy Kingsland, with Delia Derbyshire acting as producer, to modernise the theme tune using the Radiophonic Workshop's modular "Delaware" synthesiser (named after the Workshop's location at Delaware Road). The "Delaware" arrangement, which had a distinct Jew's harp sound, was not well received by BBC executives and was abandoned. The master tapes were given to a fan at the 1983 Longleat celebrations by Hodgson and were never returned. The episodes that used it were redubbed with the old Derbyshire arrangement, but lacking the repeated notes at the beginning of the music. However, the Delaware version was accidentally left on some episodes which were sold to Australia, and survives today in this form. (The complete version of this arrangement of the music is included as an extra on the DVD release of Carnival of Monsters; it is also included on the CD release Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: Volume 2: New Beginnings 1970-1980.)

[edit] 1980s

For Season 18, Radiophonic Workshop staffer Peter Howell provided a new arrangement performed on analogue synthesisers, giving a more dynamic and glossy, but less haunting feel. Its bassline was created on a Yamaha CS-80 synthesiser, with added echo. The main melody was played on an ARP Odyssey Mk III[2]. The 1980 arrangement added the sting to the opening theme as well, while the "middle eight" was included in the closing theme arrangement of all episodes. Howell's theme is in the key of F# minor.

The Howell theme was eventually replaced by a new arrangement by Dominic Glynn for Season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord (1986). This synthesiser-driven version was arranged to sound more mysterious than previous renditions but was only used for this single season of the series. Glynn's theme reverts back to the traditional key of E minor, even though it is slightly detuned. The bassline was performed on a Roland Juno-6 synthesiser, while the melody and filtered noise effects were performed on a Yamaha DX21 and Korg 770 respectively.[3]

The Glynn arrangement was itself replaced by a new arrangement by Keff McCulloch for the Seventh Doctor's era beginning with Season 24 (1987). McCulloch's arrangement was made using a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesizer, with the initial 'sting' replaced by a crashing explosive sound. The melody itself seems to play at a much higher pitch than previous renditions, largely due to the harsher sound that was used. Producer John Nathan-Turner stated that the new music, logo and title sequence were to signal a fresh start to the programme. This was the first version of the theme since the little-used 1973 Delaware version to incorporate the "middle eight" into the opening credits. McCulloch's theme is in the key of A minor. Delia Derbyshire was reportedly very unhappy with McCulloch's version.[4]

[edit] 1990s

The 1996 Doctor Who television Movie used a fully orchestrated version, arranged by John Debney (although Debney later revealed that he had originally intended to replace the original theme with one of his own design). This contained a new introduction, being a quieter piece of music over which part of the Eighth Doctor's (Paul McGann) opening narration was read, building up to a crescendo as it began with the "middle eight", a departure from previous versions of the theme. Debney's version of the theme begins in A minor, but after the middle eight the main melody is transposed back to E minor, as in the original score. Less evident in this version of the score is the rhythmic bassline that opens and underscores all previous (and later) televised versions of the theme; a bassline is present, but it does not rise and fall in the same way. Debney is the only composer that receives screen credit during the movie, with the then-deceased Grainer not being credited on screen for composing the theme.

[edit] 2000s

When Big Finish Productions began to produce Eighth Doctor audio plays in 2001 (beginning with Storm Warning), they approached composer David Arnold, who produced a new arrangement of the Doctor Who theme for the Eighth Doctor. The Arnold arrangement was used for every Eighth Doctor audio play until 2008's Dead London.

In 2005, the television series was revived. Murray Gold's arrangement of the theme for the 2005 series featured samples from the 1963 original with further elements added, including orchestral sounds (low horns, strings, percussion) and part of the Dalek ray-gun and TARDIS materialisation sound effects. Rapidly rising and falling strings, known by fans as "The Chase", is an element that was not present in any previous version of the theme.

The sting once again served as the lead-in to the theme, but Gold omitted the "middle eight" from both the opening and closing credits. Gold has said that his interpretation was driven by the title visual sequence he was given to work around. Gold created a variation on his arrangement for the closing credits of "The Christmas Invasion", which was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Unlike his arrangement for the 2005 series, this version restored the "middle eight"; it was also used for the closing credits of the 2006 and 2007 series.

A soundtrack of Gold's incidental music for the new series was released by Silva Screen Records on December 4, 2006. Included on the album are two versions of the theme: the 44-second opening version, as arranged by Gold, and a longer arrangement that includes the middle eight. Often erroneously cited as being the same as the end credits version, this second version is in fact a new arrangement and recording.[5][6] Gold also created another new arrangement of the theme which was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales during a special televised concert, Doctor Who: A Celebration which was broadcast in November 2006 as part of the annual Children in Need appeal.[7] A second soundtrack with music from the third series plus the 2007 Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned was released on November 5, 2007.[8]

In November 2007, following the BBC's announcement that it was requiring all series to implement a shorter closing credits sequence, it was rumoured that Murray Gold was working on a third rework of his theme, making Murray Gold only the second person to have arranged two televised versions of the theme (the first being Delia Derbyshire back in 1966). The rumours were proven correct when a new version of the theme -- featuring additional drums, piano and bass guitar while retaining the original Derbyshire electronic sound to drive the melody line as was done with the 2005 arrangement, as well as a variation of "The Chase" counter-melody -- was introduced in the Christmas 2007 episode, "Voyage of the Damned" and is in use for the 2008 series. (Possibly due to a late decision to revise the theme, a recording of the new arrangement was not included on the Series 3 soundtrack CD, despite other music from the Christmas special being included.) A version of the theme is now on the SilvaScreen website, accessible with a special code in the Doctor Who Soundtrack Series 3. This theme continues to be used as the closing theme. However, a slightly different version is used for the opening credits, with the guitars lower in the mix.

[edit] Remixes, remakes, inspirations and references

 This section does not cite any references or sources. (October 2007)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
  • In 1972, Jon Pertwee recorded a version of the Doctor Who theme, with spoken lyrics, entitled "Who Is The Doctor". This song would later be covered in 2004 by comedy/novelty band The Nick Atoms.
  • Other bands have covered or reinterpreted the Doctor Who theme, such as DJ duo Coldcut, the electronica band Orbital, the bands Dr. Pablo and Dub Syndicate, New Zealand band Blam Blam Blam, and the Australian string ensemble Fourplay. The Orbital mix is heard as background music in the comedy film Haggard. The Doctor Who theme music was also used as the closing guitar solo in the 2007 song "TV" by Australian jazz rap band True Live.
  • The Pogues (intentionally, according to an interview) used a bass line in their song "Wild Cats of Kilkenny" (from Rum, Sodomy & the Lash) that is similar to the Doctor Who theme, as did Pink Floyd in their song "One of These Days" (from Meddle in 1971), which featured a brief pedal steel guitar solo that echoed the theme's melody; the musical link is more obvious in the live version on P•U•L•S•E. (This solo was copied again for the midsection of "Raving And Drooling", an early version of "Sheep" from the Animals album played in 1974 and 1975.) The Australian folk band Bullamakanka recorded a song called "Doctor Who is Gonna Fix It" in 1983.
  • Comedian Bill Bailey produced a humorous interpretation, "Dr. Qui", in the style of Belgian jazz; he also has a routine about incidental music from Doctor Who that ends with a more traditional version.
  • Nu metal band Slipknot are fans of the series, and the track "Prelude 3.0" on their third album, Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses is also based around the theme tune and dedicated to the series.[citation needed]
  • US band The Mars Volta, who claim Doctor Who as an influence, have played the music over the P.A. after their gigs have ended.
  • Fan musicians, both professional and amateur, have produced their own remixes of the theme music for non-commercial distribution. Many of these remixes are available for download from whomix.trilete.net, which also offers a podcast subscription for new tracks added to the site.
  • Many bands have used samples of the theme song, dialogue and/or sound effects from Doctor Who in otherwise unrelated songs, notably Spiderbait (in several tracks from Shashavaglava) and Eat Static (most prominently on their album Abduction).
  • In the 2007 film Sydney White, the science-fiction- and fantasy-loving characters from The Vortex college dorm go to a campus party and ask whether the request-taking DJ there would play the Doctor Who theme. One of them, Terrence, then pulls out a bootleg CD and says: "Don't worry, I brought one with me."
  • In October 2007 Martin Johnson (aka EverybodyelsE) composed the music for the stage production of The Dalek Masterplan and created what some consider to be the most epic and cinematic Doctor Who theme to date. The opening and end theme is available for download from the Whomix website, where comments can be given. [1]
  • Fred Norris, head writer on The Howard Stern Show, confirmed that he uses the music as the theme for Eric the Midget, a frequent caller to the show and member of the Wack Pack.

[edit] Use in other productions

The Doctor Who Theme is heard during "Blue Harvest", a 2007 episode of the American animated series, Family Guy. The episode, a scene-by-scene spoof of the original Star Wars film, includes a sequence in which the Millennium Falcon enters hyperspace. Hyperspace is depicted as the opening sequence of the Fourth Doctor's era of the Doctor Who TV series, circa mid-1970s, complete with the opening bars of the Doctor Who Theme.

In the Bam Margera film Haggard: The Movie Orbital's remix of the theme music can be heard in a scene when Bam and Falcone (Brandon DiCamillo) trash Glauren (Jenn Rivell)'s house.

[edit] References

  1. ^ A History of the Doctor Who Theme
  2. ^ Documentary included on BBC DVD release of The Leisure Hive
  3. ^ Glynn, Dominic. (2007-03-07). Dominic Glynn Questions and Answers (free registration required). DannyStewart.com Forums. Retrieved on 2007-10-08.
  4. ^ Related by BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer Mark Ayres on BBC DVD of Survival.
  5. ^ Silva Screen Records News
  6. ^ BBC - Doctor Who - News - Soundtrack details. BBC (November 6, 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-09.
  7. ^ An edited version of this broadcast, entitled Music and Monsters, is included as a bonus feature in the Series 3 DVD set
  8. ^ Soundtrack Vol 2 Release Date. Gallifrey One (September 30, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-02.

[edit] See also

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