Special Features #7: Don’t Shoot The Pianist

Alternate soundtracks are not uncommon in the film world, but on Doctor Who, given the constraints of budget and (even moreso) time, it’s hardly surprising that directors tend to stick with their composers. A couple of unusual instances, however, give us a chance to experience stories with different musical approaches – always an interesting way to see familiar material in a new way, but in both of these cases an invaluable experience in its own right.

Jonathan Gibbs’ score for The Mark of the Rani is one of the very best Doctor Who soundtracks from the period, one that evokes Saturday teatime drama and, apart from some synth sounds to accompany the Rani’s technological interference, complements the period setting with a largely ‘real instrument’ feel that sets the score apart from those around it (Gibbs explains that there was almost an unwritten rule that the Radiophonic Workshop weren’t in the business of imitating real instruments, not least given the proximity of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the same building).

But Gibbs’ score was actually a bit of a rush job, commissioned to replace a half-finished score by John Lewis, not because Lewis’ score was deemed unsuitable but because he died before it was finished. That said, a whole episode’s worth of the first score was recorded, plus a couple of cues for episode two, which is what you can now hear on the alternative soundtrack (on The Collection: Season 22 (Blu-ray). Lewis hadn’t written for Doctor Who before, and it shows a bit – unlike the development of themes and leanings toward leitmotif that were de rigueur for soundtracks by the mid-80s, Lewis relies more on stings and atmosphere, with rising motifs at points of dramatic tension giving it a slightly repetitive feel. He is also rather dependent on synth sounds over harmony, often relying on the kind of monophony that was more in fashion in the Pertwee era for effect. When you reach episode two and the Lewis fragments at the start give way to Gibbs’ familiar music, you can feel the whole production lift.

It’s more than possible that the shortcomings of Lewis’ score were evident at the time – after all, there was a whole episode’s worth of music in the bag, somebody could simply have finished it off (there’s a precedent in Meglos, which radically changes sound-world when a new composer takes over from episode two onwards). John Lewis’ family were paid for the work he had done, but I suspect the production team saw an opportunity to bring in something superior. However, there is some correlation between the two scores, for example the ‘English pastoral’ feel of the opening (a less obvious choice than you’d imagine when you look at the usual style of Radiophonic Workshop composers) and the snare drum taking on a railway-inspired ‘diddly dum’ in the cue leading up to the cliffhanger – similarities which hint at the input director Sarah Hellings might have had when discussing the music with composers.

The opportunity to watch Paradise Towers with the score David Snell wrote for it (either on the DVD or The Collection: Season 24), which on this occasion was rejected, is even more valuable: not because it’s especially successful (it isn’t), but because it allows us to see just how much Keff McCulloch brought to the party. If John Lewis’ score feels a little old fashioned then that’s even more the case with Snell’s work, a ponderous series of cues that might have been at home in some of Peter Davison’s bleaker stories, but even in those days would have felt a little bland in the shadow of Howell, Kingsland and Limb.

The replacement score shows just how much of a gargantuan leap Doctor Who’s music was undergoing in the last few years of the programme. McCulloch’s music has occasionally been unfairly maligned by people who reckon it has aged badly (though I’ve never heard those people complain about the barrage of blips and squeals that Malcolm Clarke and Dudley Simpson gifted the early 70s); in fact, he brought a radically new sensibility to Doctor Who scoring. He heaves it into the late 80s, taking full advantage of the rich new samples available, and writes with a startlingly bold approach to dissonance, bitonality, and the use of noise. He also takes a truly cinematic approach to scoring, providing a clear sense of location and shape – something we take for granted now, but which was a rarity on television in the late 80s. Paradise Towers is not the best example of his work – and he wrote the whole thing in a couple of weeks, for goodness’ sake – but it’s vastly more effective than what it replaced, and points the direction towards even greater things to come. Just as the writers in the last three years of classic Who would meet and share ideas, you get the sense of the programme’s composers pushing each other onto greater and better things, as Dominic Glynn continues to take his writing to new heights and Mark Ayres give Doctor Who the most sustained musical development the show has ever had.

In fact, there’s another alternative score experience available in from Mark Ayres, in the demos he wrote to scenes from Remembrance of the Daleks (watch them on the DVD of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy), which provide insights into what he bring to the programme when he was employed on the basis of the same demos (and which also use themes that would pop up some time later in 30 Years in the TARDIS). This also gives us another opportunity to appraise McCulloch’s contribution (in this instance, whilst Ayres’ gift for melody, atmosphere and timing are all abundantly evident, I reckon the McCulloch is still the more effective underscore).¹

But Paradise Towers remains the only complete story available with an entirely different score. Whilst it is generally accepted that the story itself fails to meet its potential due to some flawed casting, misjudged performances and bad lighting, comparison of the soundtracks shows us that it did, at very least, get the right composer.

Next: ‘I’m just going to lift your head up then drop it. Well, not DROP it…’

1. There’s a similar option to see a scene from The Horns of Nimon set to a demo by Peter Howell (not his best work, by his own admission), though in this case the difference between the two is a whole universe apart. ↩︎