Doctor Who Music Catalogue

The 11-Disc 50th Anniversary Collection









 Of course, in the Doctor Who universe, this is a music release to be reckoned with, a main event that cannot be ignored. But as it invites easy comparison with two fairly recent large Star Trek releases, both
a 15-CD compendium of music from The Original Series, and a 14-CD set of Next Generation music called "The Ron Jones Project", this 11-disc beast marketed under the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary banner unfortunately places at a distant third. It really has nothing to do with the quality of the material presented here, which is top notch, as much as with the fact that so much of it is recycled from previous releases, which were equally top notch. Perhaps because the re-runs made it even more financially risky, it was also saddled with a one-shot purchasing window. By contrast, "The Ron Jones Project" was about 98% new material, the 15-CD TOS collection about 85% new, and wherever there was overlap, the new box set versions were by far more definitive in accurate presentation and mastering, and continue to remain available for purchase today.

At any rate, just enough new material was squeezed into this 50th Anniversary set to make it an essential purchase for Doctor Who music aficionados. Still, it was a hefty price tag, and I think many would have preferred to get just a 3- or 4-disc set with just the new material. Sorry, even the earlier 4- and 2-disc sets marketed ahead of this box set had very little new stuff and padded themselves up with re-runs. If you really wanted all the new stuff, the 11-disc set was the only way to go.

Packaging is bizarre too. I went for the simpler version, which is a compact box containing each disc in a white cardboard sleeve. Once I take a disc out to listen to it, it's not going back - it goes into a proper jewel case instead where it can be properly protected. Still, I think this is better than storing them in a big gaudy police box that makes a noise each time you open it, and I was very happy to cut the hefty price in half by leaving that packaging option out. (Actual box is 50-70% deeper than shown.)


Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 01
William Hartnell (1963-1966)

Original music tracks
composed by
Ron Grainer
Tristram Cary
Brian Hodgson
Nelson & Raymond
Dudley Simpson
Daniel Ouzounoff
Martin Slavin

Audio CD
Total Time: 78:38





























Disc 1 of 11 - Music from the William Hartnell Era

Though this 11-disc collection will rise to some very enjoyable musical heights before it is all done, the first two discs may prove to be a challenging listen for the faint of heart. Not only may it often seem like we're spending more time on sound effects than music proper, but the Hartnell disc in particular has a very high amount of re-run content as well.

Most of what we get on the Hartnell disc is drawn from two previous releases. One is "Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Volume 1: The Early Years". Though this does give us some important tracks, only Ron Grainer's main Doctor Who theme can successfully remain outside of the sound effects category. The portions of this CD that pertained to the Hartnell era only lasted about 20 minutes, but despite the fact that that CD is still widely available, EVERY track was repeated here on the Hartnell disc, occasionally at greater length, though you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference on most tracks from listening alone. And once again, most bizarrely, the rejected version of the pilot episode gets far greater coverage than all four actual episodes of the first story combined.

The biggest frustration with the music of the William Hartnell era is that, even though a wide variety of composers created original music for the show, almost none of them kept the recordings of their music for posterity. So,
God bless Tristram Cary for making sure most of his music remained intact for us to enjoy today.

In fact, the bulk of Cary's material saw commercial release previously on the double-disc audio CD set called Devils' Planets, which is the second major source of content for this Hartnell era disc. We don't quite get everything from that set related to the Hartnell era, which would be more than one entire disc could hold all on its own, but we do get A LOT. But as good as this is, it also amounts to a lot of re-runs for the long-term collector, while squeezing out space for new unreleased gems and the much wider musical variety that Hartnell's era actually boasted on screen.

"Devils' Planets" gives us music from "The Daleks" (story no. 2), which remains an important inclusion here. It is a bit bizarre in normal musical terms, but it's also very creative and cool. Additionally it is iconic, atmospheric, and nostalgic. On top of that, it is some of the most re-used music in all of Doctor Who... you effectively also have here the musical backing for "The Rescue" (story no. 12), "The Ark" (no. 23), and Patrick Troughton's debut "The Power of the Daleks" (no. 30). (Indeed, I tend to associate track 12 "Forest with Creature" more to the character of Koquillion from "The Rescue" than to anything in "The Daleks".) A number of the longer and/or less interesting tracks for this story remain exclusive to the older CD, but the most iconic pieces have been included here. Personally, I would have traded off track 15 "The Daleks" and track 17 "The Storm Continued" for "Fluid Link" and an excerpt from the opening of "The Swamp", but this is pretty good.

"Devils' Planets" also gives us a lot of music for the epic length 12-part story "The Dalek Masterplan" (story no. 21). It's great that so much music exists from Hartnell's longest adventure. It's a good score too, mixing normal orchestral performances with unique electronic and otherworldly sound constructions. The selections included here seem to favour music from the three existing episodes to a small degree, before spending nearly the whole second half of their time on two long spaced-out pieces from the last episode. Not bad, but I have a feeling that an opportunity for a more dramatic montage has been missed here, as have one or two iconic bits.


But really, in the absence of most proper recordings of original music for this era, the largest untapped source remaining is going to be music library tracks: material composed more generally for television and cinema, and only selected and applied by directors afterwards. Many of these library tracks still exist today, and though you could theoretically still pay to use them in your own productions if you proved to be a professional filmmaker, it's much harder to simply buy them as a consumer for your own listening pleasure.

Enter Space Adventures, an infamous fan-produced CD that gathered many such library cues used in Doctor Who onto one disc that consumers could buy and enjoy... which started a bit of a trend as a few very similar collections came out. It would have been nice to see more material from "Space Adventures" show up on this Hartnell disc, as it covered a wider variety of stories and did so more in terms of music than sound effects, not to mention the fact that Mark Ayres would no doubt have made noticeable improvements to the audio quality and mastering as he usually does.

As it stands, only two selections from "Space Adventures" made it to this Hartnell disc: "Three Guitars Mood 2" and "Space Adventure Part 2" - practically the first and last pieces of actual non-title music on this disc. They are probably the best two tracks you could want from "Space Adventures", if you really only wanted two. However, since I associate "Space Adventure Part 2" primarily with "The Tomb of the Cybermen" and to a lesser extent "The Moonbase", while barely noticing it in "The Tenth Planet", it feels like it should belong more to the Troughton disc than the Hartnell. "Music for Technology" and "Power Drill" more readily evoke the imagery of Hartnell's finale for me.


Well, up to this point, we've only been discussing re-runs, and they've taken up a heck of a lot of the disc so far. What's really new here?

I expect that Daniel Ouzounoff's "Marche", performed by Les Structures Sonores, will be new to most collectors. Though this isn't quite the first version made available to the public on CD, it appears to be the first that didn't bring loads of hiss and crackle from a vinyl transfer with it. This track is probably the most important one to put out for the story "Galaxy Four", as the bridge section effectively became an excellent theme for the Chumbley machines, and wound up being the most memorable bit of music from the story. But there is so much more existing music from this story that this disc did not touch....

Tristram Cary's music for "The Gunfighters" (story no. 25) didn't make it onto the "Devils' Planets" CD, and so is new here. While I would have loved to get the piano bits without the vocals and considered that highly worthwhile, we unfortunately have to put up with the versions with all the singing - which isn't different enough to the fairly clean airings of same during the story to be worth the effort. As many may know, though I'm never a big fan of vocals to begin with, the lyrics here are additionally bothersome since (a) the sentiments are not in good philosophical taste and (b) are contradicting the narrative as told by the rest of the story. This track should be one of the disc's highlights, but winds up as a lot of ick instead.

Dudley Simpson's four scores for the Hartnell era are represented solely by a suite of samplings ripped directly from the finished TV episodes of "The Chase" (story no. 16), along with whatever sound effects were happening simultaneously. The strange thing is, if it's okay to start offering episode rippings on this CD, there is SO MUCH MORE satisfying music that could be offered for the entire Hartnell era. Why do only 97 seconds of "The Chase" and nothing else? This suite sounds quite similar to one I made for myself, except many of the cues get cut off much earlier than they would have needed to be.

Seeing its first release on CD is a rough first assembly of the title music that was accidentally dubbed onto the rejected pilot instead of the more polished version. Its one truly unique attraction was the thundershot sound effect used during the opening bars... which isn't present on track 2 of this disc and makes the exercise seem a bit pointless.

The only other new bits are in the sound effects department. The best new highlight would be track 54 - the Energy Transfer from "The Savages", which is distinctive, atmospheric, and tells the story. I also appreciate track 57: "Cybership Interior Atmosphere", and the extra length of the Dalek Timeship Takeoff/Landing that track 29 brings.

The absolute killer of this disc's appeal has to be track 4, the full length Entry into the TARDIS from the rejected version of the pilot. The Radiophonic Volume 1 CD had previously given us the first 40 seconds of this, but now this Hartnell disc asks listeners to suffer a full 12 minutes of this fairly boring harsh buzzy humming noise before getting to any real incidental music from the Hartnell era - all this for a sound that got replaced for all actual episodes of the series. Where is the sound of the TARDIS interior that WAS used from episode one on through the first several years of the program? Hasn't come out yet. This track might be welcome if buried in an appendix, or with a collection of bonus tracks as we got on disc 9, but to be placed front and center at the beginning of what is meant to be a collection of music - I think it kills the repeat-listening value of the disc as is, and begs the collector to rearrange the material into a more enjoyable sequence of her own design.

Another waste of space comes from the decision to present the re-run "Activity on Dalek Ship Control Panel" as track 40. I've never been able to find this sound being used in the program. Theoretically, placing it within the list of music cues should help identify the point of its debut, but I'm still unable to find it, and I'm not surprised since no Dalek ship appears in that part of the story, nor does any control panel used to direct ships. Even if this sound was actually used somewhere, I think it's just too obscure to earn itself a second release on this disc.

In the end, this Hartnell disc really didn't probe the depths of rare and unreleased Hartnell era musical gems anywhere near to the extent that a 50th Anniversary music collection should have done, and relied on too many re-runs that didn't showcase the variety of stories and musical styles that the era actually boasts. Most other discs in this set will prove to offer much better value for money than this one....

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 1 of 11
William Hartnell 1963-1966


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who full original (Ron Grainer / Delia Derbyshire) (2:21)
2. Doctor Who rough cut accidentally used on rejected pilot (2:05)
3. Rejected Exterior Hum and Door (Brian Hodgson) (0:23)
4. Rejected Entry into the TARDIS (Brian Hodgson) (11:56)
5. TARDIS Begins - Rejected take-off (Brian Hodgson) (1:47)

6. Doctor Who - Hartnell era titles (Grainer/Derbyshire) (2:09)
7. Three Guitars Mood 2 (Nelson & Raymond) (2:03)
8. TARDIS Dematerialization (full) (Brian Hodgson) (1:23)

from "The Daleks" by Tristram Cary:
9. Forest Atmosphere (1:08)
10. Petrified Forest "Thal Wind" (SFX by Hodgson) (2:21)
11. TARDIS Computer (SFX by Brian Hodgson) (1:08)
12. Forest with Creature [Magnedon / Koquillion] (0:55)
13. City Music 1 and 2 (0:56)
14. Dalek City Corridor (SFX by Brian Hodgson) (2:02)
15. The Daleks (0:32)
16. Dalek Control Room (SFX by Brian Hodgson) (0:34)
17. The Storm Continued [Susan Meets Alydon] (2:38)
18. The Fight (1:03)
19. The Ambush (2:00)
20. Rising Tension (1:16)
21. Demented Dalek (0:22)
22. Capsule Oscillation & Countdown (0:19)

from the rest of Season One - SFX by Brian Hodgson:
23. The Edge of Destruction - Explosion, TARDIS Stops (1:10)
24. The Keys of Marinus - Sleeping Machine (0:52)
25. The Sensorites - Speech Background (1:11)

from "The Chase":
26. Music and FX from "The Chase" (Dudley Simpson) (1:37)
27. Dalek Timeship Lands (Brian Hodgson) (0:16)
28. Dalek Tracking Device (0:36)
29. Dalek Timeship Takeoff (Brian Hodgson) (0:47)
30. TARDIS Lands (Brian Hodgson) (0:11)

from "Galaxy 4":
31. Chumbley at Constant Run (Brian Hodgson) (0:27)
32. Chumbley at Rest (Brian Hodgson) (0:28)
33. Marche (Daniel Ouzounoff) (2:40)
34. Chumbley Sends Message (Brian Hodgson) (0:07)
35. Chumbley Dome (Brian Hodgson) (0:19)
36. Chumbley Dies (Brian Hodgson) (0:11)

from "The Dalek Masterplan" by Tristram Cary:
37. A Strange Sickness (0:44)
38. Kembel I (0:46)
39. Daleks I (0:41)
40. Activity on Panel (SFX by Brian Hodgson) (0:46)
41. Daleks at the TARDIS (0:25)
42. Wall of Fire (0:24)
43. At the City Walls (0:37)
44. Leaving Kembel (0:21)
45. The Experiment (0:41)
46. Invisible Creatures (0:51)
47. Dalek Time Machine (0:19)
48. The Missing TARDIS (0:51)
49. The Tomb (0:54)
50. The Heart of the Mountain (0:35)
51. Growing Menace (2:08)
52. The Time Destructor (5:17)

53. The Gunfighters - Ballad Excerpts (Tristram Cary) (3:51)
54. The Savages - Energy Transfer (Brian Hodgson) (1:56)
55. The Savages - Energy Escapes (Brian Hodgson) (0:23)

from "The Tenth Planet":
56. Space Adventure Part 2 (Martin Slavin) (1:22)
57. Cybership Interior (Brian Hodgson) (1:00)
58. Machinery Goes Wild [Regeneration] (Brian Hodgson) (1:03)

Disc Total: 78:38

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 1 of 4
(William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee)


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who original theme (2:20)






2. Three Guitars Mood 2 (2:03)
3. TARDIS Dematerialization (0:49)


4. Forest Atmosphere (1:08)


5. Forest With Creature (0:54)
6. City Music 1 and 2 (0:56)

7. The Daleks (0:32)
8. Dalek Control Room (0:34)


9. The Ambush (2:00)


10. Capsule Oscillation & Countdown (0:19)


11. Explosion, TARDIS Stops (1:10)
12. Sleeping Machine (0:52)




13. Dalek Timeship Lands (0:17)


14. TARDIS Lands (0:11)


15. Chumbley at Constant Run (0:27)
16. Chumbley at Rest (0:28)
17. Marche (Daniel Ouzounoff) (2:40)





18. A Strange Sickness (0:44)













19. Growing Menace (2:08)


20. The Gunfighters - Ballad Excerpts (3:51)




21. Space Adventure Part 2 (1:22)





Underlined cues also appear
on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 02
Patrick Troughton (1966-1969)

Original music tracks
composed by
Don Harper
Dudley Simpson
John Baker
Paul Bonneau
Wilfred Josephs
Brian Hodgson

Audio CD
Total Time: 77:44





Disc 2 of 11 - Music from the Patrick Troughton Era

Here we are at the second disc in the mammoth collection, looking for some groovy tunes and awesome soundscapes to nostalgically take us back to the adventurous odyssey of the inimitable cosmic hobo. We immediately plow into some harshly irritating sounds from season four and some super-cheesy dabbling at more melodic music. What's going on?

Well, the re-runs are back in full force. An older CD entitled Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Volume 1: The Early Years (what a long-winded mouthful) contained about 56 minutes of material from the Troughton era - and although strange electronic music and outright sound effects are something I can appreciate, it only has a niche audience at best and doesn't make particularly great repeat listening. Nonetheless, the decision was taken that this entire 56 minute collection had to be repeated here for some reason, taking up a good 72% of Troughton's disc. Yep, there's a lot of padding on this one, and hardly much space for any new gems. A strange choice, and most disappointing.

Still, there are some essential bits here worth appreciating: John Baker's two Muzak pieces, the Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill theme, Zoe's Theme, and the Dominator's Tension Builder D. Most of the others aren't really great enough to withstand their re-run status.

We should note that at least three tracks from Radiophonic Volume 1 didn't make it here in exactly the same format. "Floating Through Space" from "The Wheel in Space" got left out, but not to worry because you can take "White Void" from "The Mind Robber", increase it to double speed or raise it up an octave (same thing), and presto now it's "Floating Through Space". [Change the speed/pitch again, and it becomes "Souls in Space" as heard in "Inferno", but I digress.] The final Doctor Who closing credit on Radiophonic Volume 1 was an unused version, and though it doesn't appear here on the Troughton disc, you will find it on the Tom Baker disc (again, for reasons that escape me). Thirdly, the "Time Lord Court Atmosphere" lasted only 1:18 on Radiophonic Volume 1, but here it is expanded to a track of some 3:53. Someone must really like this sound, because although I don't think it appeared in any story other than "The War Games", it is constantly being patched over the Photo Gallery montages on one DVD after another. It's not a bad track, but I think the inappropriate overuse has since worn out its welcome with me a bit.


There are a couple of tracks here repeated from the "Space Adventure" CD releases as well. As these are far more musical and satisfying, and stand to benefit from a fresh mastering approach, I really don't know why we didn't get more of these. Indeed, it would have been a far smarter balance to repeat all "Space Adventure" tracks from Troughton's era, and only select the best excerpts from the Radiophonic CD's. But who knows to what degree politics were involved in the copyright controls....

Most specifically, I have to wonder why we got Parts 1 and 2 of Space Time Music, but not Part 3 which also features in "The Web of Fear". But then, there are so many opportunities being whittled away while the filler gets piled on thick....


So, what IS new?

Good news is, there are some worthy gems here. Two stories have music that stands out particularly well.
"The Invasion" is an obvious winner, with four Don Harper tracks seeing their first proper release on the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary albums. Both "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Company" also featured on the DVD's photo gallery, but at least here we finally get official names for these famous cues. The story's theme for UNIT is also here in full, titled "Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart", whereas the photo gallery only gave us about 1/3 of it. Finally we get the delicate suspense of "Mysteries", which the photo gallery had not used at all. Great stuff. Of course, there's a lot more available material that didn't make it to this CD. The Photo Gallery also features a few "Dark Side"-related links, plus an off-beat ambling cue heard as the Doctor and Jamie make it to the roof in the elevator, not to mention a whole smattering of cues that ultimately went unused in the finished program.

"The Seeds of Death" also fares particularly well here. The cue covering the titles also appears on the Special Edition DVD's photo gallery, but has a cleaner ending on this CD for the Troughton era. "Moon Control" and "Ice Warriors Music" give us more fresh musical cues that we hadn't had before. Then the DVD's photo gallery goes on to give us another two minutes of clean music that doesn't feature here. There's a lot of good stuff coming out from this story, but it's bizarre to see such small amounts trickle out so slowly.

Track 10 proves interesting, as the all-too-brief 1967 opening title music is artificially expanded to a full blown version by being carefully spliced to a 1970's version. It's new, it's cool, and it feels right.


And that's about all that there is to get really excited about. We have a few odd new sound effects here and there, particularly doubling the material from "The Dominators", but little of it stands out. Nicely, "The Ice Warriors" is at least represented on this disc by sampling the unique title music from the episodes, although track 15 should really be labeled as coming from episodes 3-6, as episode two had a much more underdeveloped version of the same theme. But then, if you're going to do that, and if the finished disc is allowed to have as many harsh sound effects on it as it does, you may as well sample more music from "The Ice Warriors" and present those as well, even if the odd avalanche, explosion, or sonic blast comes with it. Another lost opportunity to present some of Dudley Simpson's most creative material.

One piece of new music I've not mentioned yet is a 30-second piece of Dudley Simpson incidental from "The Macra Terror". Basically, you could probably give an old Casio synth to any 8-year-old, let him improvise for a few minutes, and a better sounding piece of music would be forthcoming. Dudley Simpson did many great things for Doctor Who over the years, but this tiny track perhaps best demonstrates why "Macra" was probably his least effective score ever.


And so, sadly, the Troughton era disc is mostly disappointing, but not without a few new highlights to tantalize us long-term collectors. Needless to say, I'll be extracting the goodies and including them in a playlist with both a more complete musical picture for the Troughton era, and with considerably fewer bizarre sounds....

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 2 of 11
Patrick Troughton 1966-1969


Track Listing:

1. Regeneration Runs Down (Brian Hodgson) (0:10)
2. The Doctor's Transitional Trauma (Brian Hodgson) (0:52)
3. The Fish People (Dudley Simpson) (0:37)
4. Heartbeat Chase (Brian Hodgson) (1:57)
5. Chromophone Band (Dudley Simpson) (1:56)
6. Controller Chimes (Brian Hodgson) (0:10)
7. Muzak from "Time in Advance" (John Baker) (3:19)
8. Propaganda Sleep Machine (Brian Hodgson) (1:08)
9. The Macra Terror (Dudley Simpson music excerpt) (0:31)

10. Doctor Who (1967 opening merged with 1970 closing) (2:19)
11. Univers Sideral (Paul Bonneau) (2:26)
12. Space Time Music Part 1 (Wilfred Josephs) (1:21)
13. Yeti Control Sphere Move, Call, Answer (Brian Hodgson) (0:42)
14. The Ice Warriors One: Titles (Dudley Simpson) (0:52)
15. The Ice Warriors Three-Six: Titles (Dudley Simpson) (0:43)
16. Space Time Music Part 2 (Wilfred Josephs) (1:19)
17. Sting & Web (Cocooning / Pulsating) (Brian Hodgson) (2:04)
18. 4 Stings (Brian Hodgson) (0:18)
19. Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill (Dudley Simpson) (0:40)

from "The Wheel in Space" (Brian Hodgson):
20. Lead-In to Cyber Planner (0:14)
21. Cyber Planner Background (0:37)
22. Cybermen Stab & Music (1:32)
23. Rocket Stab (0:07)
24. Birth of Cybermats (0:44)
25. Cybermats Attracted to Wheel (0:39)
26. Rocket in Space (1:49)
27. Interior Rocket [Suspense Music] (1:55)
28. Servo Robot Music (1:27)
29. Wheel Stab (0:14)
30. Cosmos Atmosphere (1:08)
31. Alien Ship Music (1:00)
32. Jarvis in a Dream State (0:47)
33. 2 Stabs (0:11)

from "The Dominators" (Brian Hodgson):
34. TARDIS (New Landing) (0:18)
35. Dominators' Saucer Power On (0:40)
36. Sting (0:05)
37. Statues Move (a and b) (0:35)
38. Galaxy Atmosphere (1:04)
39. Dominators' Saucer Interior (2:04)
40. Tension Builder (a) (0:45)
41. Tension Builder (c) (0:40)
42. Tension Builder (d) (1:06)
43. Low Sting (0:10)

from "The Mind Robber" (Brian Hodgson):
44. TARDIS, Extra Power Unit Plugged In (1:53)
45. Zoe's Theme (1:19)
46. White Void (1:17)

from "The Invasion":
47. The Dark Side of the Moon (Don Harper) (0:31)
48. The Company (Don Harper) (1:30)
49. Muzak from "Time in Advance" + piano (John Baker) (2:44)
50. Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (Don Harper) (1:22)
51. Mysteries (Don Harper) (1:30)
52. Cyberman Brought to Life (Brian Hodgson) (1:13)
53. Cyber Invasion (Brian Hodgson) (2:12)

from "The Krotons" (Brian Hodgson):
54. The Learning Hall (2:40)
55. Entry into the Machine (1:33)
56. Sting (0:19)
57. Machine and City Theme (1:49)
58. Kroton Theme (2:13)

from "The Seeds of Death":
59. The Seeds of Death: Titles (Dudley Simpson) (0:35)
60. Moon Control (Dudley Simpson) (0:24)
61. Diffraction (Ice Warrior Gun Impact) (Brian Hodgson) (0:22)
62. Ice Warrior Music (Dudley Simpson) (0:25)
63. Moon Homing Beam (Brian Hodgson) (0:21)

64. TARDIS runs aground out of phase (Brian Hodgson) (0:26)

from "The War Games" (Brian Hodgson):
65. Alien Control Centre (0:27)
66. Time Zone Atmosphere (0:40)
67. Dimensional Control [SIDRAT contracts] (0:50)
68. War Lord Arrival (0:16)
69. War Chief Music (0:14)
70. Silver Box (1:02)
71. Time Lord Court (3:53)

Disc Total: 77:44

This disc is a lot of sound effects and atmospherics, and not as much actual music as one could hope for.

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 1 of 4
(William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee)


Track Listing:




22. Heartbeat Chase (Brian Hodgson) (1:57)
23. Chromophone Band (Dudley Simpson) (1:56)


24. Propaganda Sleep Machine (Brian Hodgson) (1:08)


41. Doctor Who 1967 spliced (Grainer/Derbyshire) (2:20)
25. Univers Sideral (Paul Bonneau) (2:26)
26. Space Time Music, Part 1 (Wilfred Josephs) (1:21)



27. Space Time Music, Part 2 (Wilfred Josephs) (1:19)


28. Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill (Dudley Simpson) (0:39)




29. Cybermen Stab & Music (Brian Hodgson) (1:32)

30. Birth of Cybermats (Brian Hodgson) (0:44)


31. Interior Rocket (Brian Hodgson) (1:55)












32. Galaxy Atmosphere (Brian Hodgson) (1:04)








33. Zoe's Theme (Brian Hodgson) (1:20)



34. The Dark Side of the Moon (Don Harper) (0:31)
35. The Company (Don Harper) (1:31)










36. Machine and City Theme (Brian Hodgson) (1:49)
37. Kroton Theme (Brian Hodgson) (2:14)


38. The Seeds of Death Titles (Dudley Simpson) (0:35)


39. Ice Warriors Music (Dudley Simpson) (0:26)











40. Time Lord Court (Brian Hodgson) (1:32)




Underlined cues also appear
on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 03
Jon Pertwee (1970-1974)

Original music tracks
composed by
Dudley Simpson
Carey Blyton
Malcolm Clarke
Tristram Cary
Delia Derbyshire
Brian Hodgson
Dick Mills

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:07



Disc 3 of 11 - Music from the Jon Pertwee Era

Since most Doctor Who music from the 1970's was composed by Dudley Simpson, and since most of his original recordings were lost, traditionally there hasn't been much from the 70's for music aficionados to sink their teeth into. But one of the major highlights of the 11-disc 50th Anniversary music box set has been the number of previously-thought-lost Dudley Simpson cues that have been found and presented here for our enjoyment. For this reason, I initially began my listening with discs 3 and 4. The Jon Pertwee era was up first.

While most cues for "The Mind of Evil" were previously released on Radiophonic Workshop Volume 2, the new star of this story's score is the cue "Hypnosis Music". I long suspected that this cue simply MUST exist somewhere in the archive, because the exact same recording went on to be used in many more stories for the next year and a half, up to the season nine finale "The Time Monster", and probably saw more use than "The Master's Theme" itself. Do any more oft-repeated multi-story cues for the Master also exist somewhere?

The CD really warms up when it hits longer stretches of previously unavailable material from Dudley Simpson. The suite from "Carnival of Monsters" Episode 1 has quickly become my favourite piece from this disc, as it showcases Simpson's versatility, combining lighter moods with more serious ones, and evoking nostalgic memories of his general style. It's also a bit more distinctive and upbeat than many other scores, which suits my personal tastes. We got a bit of a tease of this music played over the Photo Gallery montage on the Special Edition DVD for Carnival of Monsters, but this is a much more full and respectful presentation of Episode 1's music.

Admittedly, "Frontier in Space" was never my favourite of Simpson's scores, as some of the earlier definitive thematic cues use unimpressive electronic instruments that also seem to have a hard time staying in key. However there are some surprisingly nice cues later on in this suite from episodes 1 and 2, and of course we want to be grateful to have any of these lost Simpson recordings to enjoy once more. The really good bits start at about 3:14 into the track, and continue through to the end.

"Planet of the Spiders" Part 2 evokes many of the typical moods from Dudley Simpson 1970's Doctor Who scores without definitively standing out too much. If you want the average Simpson flavour, and we do, this gives you a good and very enjoyable sample of it, spending its time on the better cues from the episode. What's bizarre is that because this particular episode was so atypical in spending most of its time on an expensive multi-vehicle chase sequence on location, I always felt that the music should have been far more bold and fast-paced and layered on more thickly than usual, which didn't happen. It's a very good track for the CD, and would make great music for most episodes of Doctor Who, but it never did quite fulfill my expectation for the episode it was actually in.


Onto the Carey Blyton material, I suspect one's enjoyment of the suites from his two stories may depend on how much the listener may have gotten into the Isolated Music tracks on the corresponding DVD releases. The suite for "The Silurians" covers the best material from that story and then some, sequentially and respectfully, but can't really present anything too new here (although "March: The Brigadier" has a better opening here than on the DVD isolated music track). I enjoyed the saxophone quartet recordings from "Death to the Daleks" much more, probably because I haven't gotten around to buying that particular DVD with its isolated track yet. Still, getting a good 10 minutes of music from my favourite season 11 score can only be a good thing.

The disc as a whole might be seen to initially repeat a previous release, specifically Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 2, and most closely in the sequence of tracks from "Inferno", "The Mind of Evil", and "The Claws of Axos", before settling into material from "The Sea Devils". In the case of "Inferno", I think I would have preferred to change things up a bit more. As much as Delia Derbyshire's tracks "Blue Veils and Golden Sands" and "The Delian Mode" are good important pieces featuring in the story, it should also be noted that: (a) They've been released in full several times already, beginning with the Earthshock CD, and (b) they're a bit on the long and dull side. Do any of us really want to be buying them this many times over? I think, considering the number of other stories on these 11 discs that are only represented by fractions of the total available music, an excerpt from "The Delian Mode" would have sufficed, allowing other music to appear here. And there is more to be had.....

The cat is out of the bag now with this release and its extensive liner notes: composer Nikki St. George is in fact Brian Hodgson under an alias. Kudos to the team for including his "Battle Theme" amongst the tracks for "Inferno" - this is the track often used to portray the oppressive heat pounding people into mutant forms throughout the story. It is strange though that this track was included, but its "Inferno" companion piece "Homeric Theme", from the same composer and library, was not. And of course there are many other existing cues from this story that have yet to see the light of day.

"The Sea Devils" is a bit of a strange inclusion. We basically get the same suite we had previously on the Earthshock CD, only this time unlike most other tracks ported over from that CD, it has been artificially processed into stereo, which turns out a bit weird in this case. I'm not convinced it's any better, or that the exercise has been worthwhile. I'd have preferred a new selection of cues in a brand new montage. The true aficionado will probably be more satisfied with the 44 minutes of music on the Radiophonic Workshop Volume 2 CD, or the isolated music track on "The Sea Devils" DVD, out of which she can select her own favourites.

We've also got a hefty 7:13 suite from "The Mutants". Since the whole score was released on the Devils' Planets CD, and I'm sorry, isn't particularly great, it makes sense to only include a brief example here. I can squeeze all my favourite bits into about 3 minutes, but sadly only the first of those bits is to be found in the suite we did get here. (On "Devils' Planets", it is merely labeled "II", but I call it "Skybase".) Definitive cues for the scheming Marshal and outer space (labeled "V") and SuperKy (excerpted from a track labeled "XXXVIII") didn't make it in here. Though there are some other interesting bits here, this is a score that suffered from that early intellectual push of electronic music into randomly toned notes on cheesy, warbly, wavering instruments, sections which sound very outdated and result in no emotional response other than "Please turn that frustrated noise down before I go mad." Thumbs down on this one; the cue selection process for this suite just didn't float my boat (grabbing only the best portions of some cues seems essential in this case) and none of what is presented here is new to the long-term collector.

The disc is rounded out by a variety of sound effect sequences and loops. About 2/3 are new ones we haven't had before, which are worthwhile, and the other 1/3 are repeats from Radiophonic Workshop Volume 2 CD, making them feel like filler. Incidentally, two new TARDIS interior sounds are indicated to have debuted with "The Curse of Peladon" - one for flight and one for stationary scenes. Those of us more familiar with early 1980's stories may find that BOTH of these sound like in-flight background loops, with only very slight differentiation. In fact, neither of these sounds appear in "The Curse of Peladon", whose one TARDIS interior scene features a completely different stationary sound, much like that of the 80's, but underdeveloped. A grand case of mislabelling, I think. But more on the difficulty of getting proper TARDIS sound loops when we get to a later disc.....

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 3 of 11
Jon Pertwee 1970-1974


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who opening title 1970 (Grainer/Derbyshire) (0:46)
2. TARDIS tries to take off (Brian Hodgson) (0:30)
3. "The Silurians" suite (Carey Blyton) (7:34)
4. Outer Space (Brian Hodgson) (2:05)

from "Inferno":
5. TARDIS Control On & Warp Transfer (0:22)
6. Blue Veils and Golden Sands (Delia Derbyshire) (3:26)
7. The Delian Mode (Delia Derbyshire) (5:32)
8. Battle Theme (Brian Hodgson) (1:01)

from "The Mind of Evil"
9. The Master's Theme (Dudley Simpson) (0:43)
10. Hypnosis Music (Dudley Simpson) (0:36)
11. Dover Castle (Dudley Simpson) (0:29)
12. Keller Machine sound effects (Brian Hodgson) (0:22)
13. Keller Machine Theme music (Dudley Simpson) (0:42)

from "The Claws of Axos"
14. Axos Cell Interior Atmosphere (Brian Hodgson) (0:50)
15. Brain Centre Atmosphere (Brian Hodgson) (0:16)
16. Copy machine tickover (Brian Hodgson) (0:16)
17. The Axons Approach (Dudley Simpson) (1:45)
18. TARDIS Lands (Brian Hodgson) (0:22)

19. TARDIS interior (stationary) (0:56)
20. TARDIS interior (in flight) (0:54)
21. "The Sea Devils" suite (Malcolm Clarke) (5:24)
22. Transfer Machine Arrival (Brian Hodgson) (0:17)
23. "The Mutants" suite (Tristram Cary) (7:13)
24. Doctor Who [stereo 1972 version] (2:23)
25. Doctor Who [1972 Delaware version] (2:10)
26. Time Lords background (Dick Mills) (1:20)
27. "Carnival of Monsters" Episode 1 (Dudley Simpson) (3:35)
28. Hyperspace Jump (0:27)
29. "Frontier in Space" Episodes 1 & 2 (Dudley Simpson) (5:37)
30. TARDIS Malfunctions (sound sequence by Dick Mills) (2:00)
31. Exxilon City Beacon (0:54)
32. "Death to the Daleks" Music (Carey Blyton) (10:25)
33. Aggedor's Temple Atmosphere (1:37)
34. "Planet of the Spiders" Part 2 Music (Dudley Simpson) (2:44)
35. Metebelis III Atmosphere (1:52)
36. Doctor Who credits 1970 (1:14 version)

Disc Total: 79:07

As you can see, the rare "Frontier in Space" suite on this version covers an additional episode and is more than three times as long, plus the 11-disc version has many more rare suites that the 4-disc version doesn't touch...

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 1 of 4
(William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee)


Track Listing:













42. The Master's Theme - Dudley Simpson (0:43)
43. Hypnosis Music - Dudley Simpson (0:36)
44. Dover Castle - Dudley Simpson (0:29)
45. Keller Machine sound effects - Brian Hodgson (0:22)
46. Keller Machine Theme music - Dudley Simpson (0:43)




47. Copy Machine Tickover - Brian Hodgson (0:16)
48. The Axons Approach - Dudley Simpson (1:45)




49. "The Sea Devils" suite - Malcolm Clarke (5:24)

50. "The Mutants" suite - Tristram Cary (7:12)





51. "Frontier in Space" episode 1 - Dudley Simpson (1:46)


52. "Death to the Daleks" - Carey Blyton (3:50)


53. Metebelis III Atmosphere - Dick Mills (1:53)




Underlined cues also appear
on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 04
Tom Baker (1974-1981)

Original music tracks
composed by
Dudley Simpson
Carey Blyton
Geoffrey Burgon
Peter Howell
Roger Limb
Dick Mills
Paddy Kingsland

Audio CD
Total Time: 78:32



Disc 4 of 11 - Music from the Tom Baker Era

The Tom Baker disc in this collection has many substantial highlights, the best of which are a selection of lengthy suites of more previously-thought-lost original Dudley Simpson recordings. As Simpson's music really hit its stride during this period, these selections are even more satisfying than most of the ones on the Pertwee disc.

Up first is a 9 minute suite from "The Android Invasion" Parts 3 & 4, which offers many suspense and action cues that were typical of this period. Considering that this is the only season 13 score by Simpson that hadn't been tackled by Heathcliff Blair's cover recordings, we now have music from each season 13 story available on CD somewhere. Good stuff.

Of course, the most definitive and entertaining Simpson score from Tom Baker's era would have to be "The Invasion of Time", and we now have a five-and-a-half-minute suite of music featuring just about every cue you could want from Parts Three and Four, and this suite is available in full on all versions of the 50th Anniversary album. Sweet! These include a lot of fun variations on Simpson's fourth Doctor theme, happy-go-lucky K9 motifs, some triumphant fanfares for Leela's gang of rebels, variations on the Vardan theme for their solidification, plus the unforgettable cliffhanger reveal of the real villains. It's mostly all presented in chronological sequence, except that the earliest Vardan cue should come a couple of cues earlier. Too bad we don't have material from the rest of the story, as parts one and five in particular had some truly iconic cues as well, but even within just these two middle episodes, the wide variety of the full score is in evidence.

One of the biggest draws for the 11 disc version is the huge suite of music unearthed here from
"The Sun Makers" - totaling 11 minutes 22 seconds, this is a beautiful and welcome treat for Doctor Who music aficionados. The range here includes humour, light delicate pieces, suspense, action, sultriness, and a tax-oppressed dirge to open the show. Most cues from Part One are here, up until the Doctor's party meets the rebels. For those wishing to orient themselves within this huge track, it also includes the first and last cues from Part Two, as well as the first cue from Part Four, and everything appears to be in chronological order. Identify those, and you'll at least know which episode you are in as you go. My absolute favourite bit of this score has for a long time been the rendition of the fourth Doctor's theme from Part Four, which I thought I'd never be able to extract cleanly from the finished program. But here it is, pure and awesome, about 9 minutes into the track - a real gem stating the theme in one of its most beautiful forms ever. Glorious! And if these 11 and a half minutes are not enough, check out the photo gallery montage on the story's DVD - the music there contains no overlapping content with this suite, giving you one more long cue at the beginning and 4 short ones at the end. These include Cordo's approach to the roof edge, two cues leading up to and including Part Three's cliffhanger, a bit of corridor action from the middle of Part Two, and the final snip of the cue as the Doctor first falls into Mandrel's lair in Part One - in that order. Based on all this, I suspected that this entire score existed somewhere, and would yet see another release in full... Oh, and look what turned up several years later: "The Sun Makers: Music by Dudley Simpson"

In addition to the above three Dudley Simpson suites, we've got an excellent and large selection of music from Carey Blyton for "Revenge of the Cybermen". Unlike Blyton's two Jon Pertwee scores, the DVD for this story didn't come with an isolated music track, so this is a new batch of original music, featuring the most iconic cues from the story. As this is probably the Blyton score that was realized most satisfyingly and creatively out of the three he did, it's a real treat to finally have it in clean form. The suite on the 11-disc version is longer than that of the 4-disc and 2-disc versions, but even then a few of the more creatively realized deeper sounding cues didn't quite make the cut unfortunately. Not to worry though, because many of the more complex, interesting cues are here, particularly surrounding the concluding action.

Those would be my top four tracks from this disc - four lengthy suites of good new music, totaling about 33 minutes. That's a minor coup, really, and one of the big reasons why I decided I had to put up the big bucks for the 11-disc version and not settle for the 4-disc to protest the all-too-plentiful re-run content. My 5th favourite track from this disc may be a surprising choice though.... it would have to be track 35, the TARDIS interior sound montage. Why? These are the proper background sound loops for the TARDIS interior from "my era" - the 1980's, which I have been looking for in vain since... the 1980's. It has been surprising how often the loops from the 1960's have been chucked at us, including those that were rejected in the 1960's, yet for the ones that did get used in the 80's, CD after CD, DVD photo gallery montage after montage, all have ignored it. Until now. (Okay, there was a vinyl record that put out the stationary TARDIS interior sound before, coupled with an outdated season-fourteenish in-flight loop, but vinyl just crackles and pops too much to be very useful to me.) Now finally in digital form, we have here both the in-flight and the truly rare stationary sounds, linked by the landing bell and closing off with the cloister. This track is a first as far as I know, and it's a very welcome one. What we still don't have here is a third TARDIS interior loop for "hover mode". Hopefully that might soon appear somewhere too.


There's Dudley Simpson music from Tom's debut story "Robot" here as well, but this missed its potential terribly I think. Firstly, it's a re-recording of the music, and by my reckoning not a very impressive one. I say this after having made a re-recording of the Robot theme myself based mostly on the first cue from the story, plus the first two cliffhangers, and I could swear there's a 3/4 time signature between each lumbering beat. It's particularly pronounced in part two's cliffhanger. This new re-recording here has a 4/4 or 2/4 thing going on instead, and doesn't follow the embellishments and crescendos of the first cue like mine did, nor does it develop as effectively. Perhaps it more closely follows a different cue from the story that I have yet to identify? Topping it off, why would it be labeled plural when the story featured only one robot? At any rate, the track is at least recognizable. One of its biggest boosts is in having the actual sound effects of the robot layered on top, which makes it feel far more authentic than it actually is. Sadly the electronics that made the original robot sound effects contain a repeated pop, inaudible on the analog TV soundtrack but very noticeable in digital form, which artificially sound like crude edits or mastering mistakes. I know they're not, but all the same they tug at my senses begging to be smoothed out. I suppose this is a good attempt to give us something we should all have in our music collections, but it missed the mark with me; I prefer my own version.

We also get samplings of Geoffrey Burgon's two scores for the program - logical, but not quite so exciting, since they had already come out both on a special CD album, plus are also available as isolated music tracks on the respective DVD releases. The selections for "Terror of the Zygons" include some important favourites like "A Landing in Scotland" and "The Zygons Attack". While my other two picks would have been "The Secret of Forgill Castle" and "The Monster Goes Home", the inclusion of "Monster on the Moor" is a fairly decent alternate choice as well, although it only appears on the 11-disc version. I'm far less impressed "The Destruction of Charlie Rig", which is not one of the good cues of the story. It definitely should have been left out; instead it's on all versions of the 50th collection. Go figure.

Selections from "The Seeds of Doom" are even stranger. The one I agree with most is "Get Dunbar! / Krynoid on the Loose", although I would have just used the first 1:49 of the track. The other selections are a bit mediocre at best. For my own abbreviated sampling of music from the CD, I preferred "The Second Pod Bursts", "It's Growing", "Amelia Ducat's Theme" (gotta have that iconic one), and about a minute and a half montage of excerpts from "The Final Assault". Instead we see the repeat playing value of the 11-disc version drop through the floor with the inclusion of "The Hymn of the Plants" - okay, it worked in the story and as an idea, but who really wants to listen to it after the fact? Not a good pick.

Many other stories from Tom's first six years are represented by sound effects only, many of which have been released before. Most background loops from Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 2 CD are repeated here, although sometimes at greater length. A vinyl record had previously put out "Inside the Doctor's Mind", but this CD gives us a dose of it that is twice as long. About half of the effects tracks are brand new. One of my favourites is "Pretty Planet" from "Nightmare of Eden" - a very beautiful, ethereal, atmospheric track, sadly a bit on the short side.

Of Tom's seven years in the role, there is nothing at all on the disc from my favourite year - season sixteen: The Key to Time. A very sad oversight. Equally weird is the inclusion of a version of the closing theme that was never used on the program, which isn't new since it concluded the Radiophonic Workshop Volume 1 CD many years ago. I would've thought they'd have preferred to give us the actual closing theme used most often in Tom Baker's time, which featured two full verses - and there actually is enough extra space on the disc to accommodate it.

Tom's final season sees Dudley Simpson replaced by a rotation of members of the Radiophonic Workshop, whose scores are fully available in DVD isolated music tracks, and have also seen various CD releases as well over the years. Nothing is really new here. The first three stories of the season have selections taken from their respective CD releases, while subsequent stories' tracks are by and large plundered from the old "Earthshock" CD.

The most unique presentation from this season is the last track, "It's the End...", which is a fresh montage of the final cues of the story, covering the "Cable of Doom" sequence, the flashbacks, and the regeneration. Very nicely done, and a thoroughly appropriate way to end the Tom Baker disc.

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 4 of 11
Tom Baker 1974-1981


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who opening 1973-1979 (Grainer/Derbyshire) (0:44)
2. Mysterious Robots (re-recording of Dudley Simpson) (1:15)
3. Nerva Beacon and T-Mat Couch (Dick Mills) (1:42)
4. Sontaran Scouting Machine (Dick Mills) (1:04)
5. "Revenge of the Cybermen" extended music suite (6:54)

from "Terror of the Zygons" (Geoffrey Burgon):
6. The Destruction of Charlie Rig (0:41)
7. A Landing in Scotland (1:22)
8. The Zygons Attack (0:49)
9. Monster on the Moor (3:27)

10. "The Android Invasion" Parts 3 & 4 (Dudley Simpson) (9:04)
11. The Planet Karn (Dick Mills) (1:48)

from "The Seeds of Doom" (Geoffrey Burgon):
12. Antarctica: The First Pod (2:19)
13. Harrison Chase (0:40)
14. The Hymn of the Plants (0:49)
15. Get Dunbar! / Krynoid On The Loose (2:53)

16. The Mandragora Helix (Dick Mills) (1:26)
17. Inside the Doctor's Mind (Dick Mills) (1:52)
18. "The Sun Makers" music suite (Dudley Simpson) (11:22)
19. "The Invasion of Time" Parts 3 & 4 (Dudley Simpson) (5:37)
20. Movellan Runs Down (Dick Mills) (2:01)
21. Nova Device Countdown and Explosion (Dick Mills) (0:28)
22. Pretty Planet (Dick Mills) (0:33)
23. Doctor Who [unused closing] (Grainer/Derbyshire) (0:41)
24. Doctor Who 1980 opening (Grainer/Howell) (2:23)
25. Into Argolis (Peter Howell) (1:44)
26. Earth Shuttle Arrives (Peter Howell) (1:21)
27. The Deons (Paddy Kingsland) (1:27)
28. Meglos (Peter Howell) (1:31)
29. Summons to Gallifrey (Paddy Kingsland) (1:21)
30. K9 on a Mission (Paddy Kingsland) (0:35)
31. Banqueting Music (1:21)
32. Nyssa's Theme (Roger Limb) (0:42)
33. Kassia's Wedding Music (Roger Limb) (0:48)
34. The Threat of Melkur (Roger Limb) (0:54)
35. TARDIS Interior (1:29)
36. It's The End... (Paddy Kingsland) (3:18)
37. Doctor Who 1980 Closing (Grainer/Howell) (1:17)

Disc Total: 78:32

As you can see, the suites for "Revenge of the Cybermen" and "The Android Invasion" are significantly longer here, while the mammoth suite for "The Sun Makers" does not appear at all on the smaller albums. As for sound effect tracks, the smaller albums feature ONLY re-runs for Tom Baker's era - all the new stuff is exclusive to the 11-disc version.

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 2 of 4
(Tom Baker, Peter Davison)


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who opening (Grainer/Derbyshire) (0:44)

2. Nerva Beacon Infrastructure and T-Mat Couch (1:42)

3. "Revenge of the Cybermen" music (Carey Blyton) (5:28)


4. The Destruction of Charlie Rig (0:42)
5. A Landing in Scotland (1:22)
6. The Zygons Attack (0:51)


7. "The Android Invasion" Parts 3 & 4 (Dudley Simpson) (6:32)
8. The Planet Karn (Dick Mills) (1:50)


9. Antarctica - The First Pod (Geoffrey Burgon) (2:17)


10. Get Dunbar! / Krynoid On the Loose (2:55)

11. The Mandragora Helix (Dick Mills) (1:26)


12. "The Invasion of Time" Parts 3 & 4 (Simpson) (5:36)



13. Doctor Who closing (Grainer / Derbyshire)
14. Doctor Who 1980 opening (Grainer / Howell) (0:38)
15. Into Argolis (Peter Howell) (1:44)




16. K9 On a Mission (Paddy Kingsland) (0:35)

17. Nyssa's Theme (Roger Limb) (0:41)



18. It's the End... (Paddy Kingsland) (3:18)
19. Doctor Who 1980 closing (Grainer / Howell) (1:16)




Underlined cues also appear
on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 05
Peter Davison (1981-1984)

Original music tracks
composed by
Paddy Kingsland
Roger Limb
Peter Howell
Malcolm Clarke
Jonathan Gibbs

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:25



Disc 5 of 11 - Music from the Peter Davison Era

Now we come to my favourite Doctor. It has to be said that Peter Davison's era has always been particularly well-served in terms of making its music commercially available to the public over the years. From the mid 1980's to the early 1990's, collections of music from Davison's era have cropped up on vinyl LP albums, and were quickly re-released digitally on CD as the compact disc format first became popular. In more recent years, no other Doctor has had as many of his stories covered by isolated music tracks on the DVD releases as Davison has had.

So, with over 85% of the music of the Davison era being previously available, this disc has a hard time presenting anything new. Sadly, not much effort has gone into making the presentation here particularly fresh or definitive either.


A lot of what we get here is simply a collection of re-runs from previous CD albums. "The Five Doctors" was a CD that contained some hefty suites from eight stories from the later end of Davison's era... which for the most part were all pretty good and for the most part represented each story fairly well. These have pretty much all been copied verbatim over to this new Davison disc, making up a good half of its running time or more. Ho hum.

The only significant difference is that an extra 50 seconds of music from "The Caves of Androzani" has been squeezed in - not consisting of any new cues, but rather more of the same cues wherever they had had bits trimmed off of them for the older CD's suite. Meh. For this score, it hardly seems worth the effort.

The suite that should have had an extra 50 seconds or so crammed in is definitely "Enlightenment". As good as it already is at 8 minutes long, it did the unthinkable by leaving out the themes for the Black and White Guardians, particularly the bookending cues that counterpoint the two themes. An opportunity for an easy fix, wasted.

Many of Davison's earlier stories were represented by a track or two on an album called "Earthshock", which also featured cues from Tom Baker's final season and some experimental music from the Jon Pertwee era. Pretty much every Davison track from that CD has been ported over to this one (and finally placed in chronological order), with the exception that only the best of the three tracks representing the story "Earthshock" made the cut. "March of the Cybermen" easily takes the cake as the best Davison track on that CD, and contains most of the interesting music from that story anyway.

But these re-runs are a bit of a tragedy considering that many of the Davison tracks from this CD don't really represent the scores of their respective stories at their best. Both of Peter Howell's excellent scores for the Mara stories get lousy coverage. Both "TSS Machine Attacked" and "Janissary Band" backed crude distractions in their respective adventures and, though effective in the story, are a bit too simple to withstand full attention from the listener on their own. Missing are the wonderful cues that backed the spiritual heart of each story, not to mention the common theme for the Mara itself.

We also wind up with the exact same three cues for "Arc of Infinity" that we had before, despite the fact that these three really helped cement into place my low opinion of the music for that story. Surely there are more interesting cues somewhere in that story, out of which a new and decent suite could be constructed. I may have to brave the isolated music track on the DVD one day to find out....

The "Four to Doomsday" cues are good ones, but this is a lost opportunity to bring out something new from one of the few Davison stories that didn't get isolated music on the DVD. Ditto for "Time-Flight", which is not represented here at all.


The one Davison-era composer that hadn't been represented on any of these albums previously was Paddy Kingsland, whose Doctor Who scores have since been represented in full on DVD isolated music tracks. Whether the suites on this CD for "Castrovalva" and "Mawdryn Undead" are identical to versions previously floating around on audio cassette, I cannot say. It is nice that we get the pre-title hook recapping the regeneration from "Castrovalva" with a tidy finish, instead of cutting into the Doctor Who theme right away. The main suite for Castrovalva then continues with some of the better bits from the story's opening skirmish, the main theme for the story excerpted from the 5-and-a-half minute cue concluding part two, and some of the Escher-esque running around music from part four. The suite is capped off by a cue backing the fifth Doctor's admiration of his new costume from part one.

"Mawdryn Undead" kicks off with Turlough's up-beat jaunt in the Brigadier's car, followed by the near-collision of the TARDIS with the spacecraft and some of the subsequent exploration cues, before getting a bit lost with odd wandering cues.

"Frontios" is a new and fresh suite, strangely opening with quite a bit of music for the Plantagenet and Brazen before moving on to the iconic bits introducing the main Frontios theme from part one and "The Boulder" action cue from early part three. The suite finishes off with the last lengthy cue of the story as Tegan is backed into a surprisingly familiar corner, before restating the main theme from the departure coda of the story.

All three of the above suites feel fresh and represent their respective stories fairly well. Conspicuous by its absence is any music from Kingsland's other Davison-era score "The Visitation". A strange omission, since the story seemed to have been generally well-received by fans, and one would think they would want to reminisce musically.


It is with some surprise to myself, though, that I am nominating a Roger Limb track as the most worthwhile of the disc.
"Black Orchid" is represented by a suite lasting 3:17, which is pretty much the only new and unique bit of music on this disc, as this short 2-part story did not get an isolated music score on its DVD. Cues for the grisly opening and tension-filled cliffhanger are presented nice and clean, while we also get two of the more interesting cues from part one. Part two's selections sound much more random and ill-defined, but do feature the climax defusing the main danger. Some of the more interesting and memorable bits from part two didn't make it, but the suite didn't do too badly overall.


Well, this is a fair disc overall for buyers who are new to any of this music, and it does represent the era fairly well, but it falls a considerable distance short of the definitive disc that it so easily could have been.

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 5 of 11
Peter Davison 1981-1984


Track Listing:

1. "The Moment Has Been Prepared For" (Paddy Kingsland) (1:03)
2. Doctor Who 1980 full stereo version (Grainer/Howell) (2:41)
3. Castrovalva suite (Paddy Kingsland) (3:18)
4. Exploring the Lab (Roger Limb) (1:48)
5. Nyssa is Hypnotised (Roger Limb) (0:59)
6. Kinda - TSS Machine Attacked (Peter Howell) (1:03)
7. Black Orchid (Roger Limb) (3:17)
8. Earthshock - March of the Cybermen (Malcolm Clarke) (5:13)
9. Omega Force Field (Roger Limb) (1:54)
10. Ergon Threat (Roger Limb) (1:03)
11. The Termination of the Doctor (Roger Limb) (2:08)
12. Janissary Band (Peter Howell) (0:48)

13. Mawdryn Undead suite (Paddy Kingsland) (4:17)
14. Enlightenment (Malcolm Clarke) (7:56)
15. The King's Demons (Jonathan Gibbs) (5:23)
16. The Five Doctors (Peter Howell) (8:44)

17. Warriors of the Deep (Jonathan Gibbs) (3:54)
18. The Awakening (Peter Howell) (3:26)
19. Frontios suite (Paddy Kingsland) (4:21)
20. Resurrection of the Daleks (Malcolm Clarke) (5:01)
21. Planet of Fire (Peter Howell) (3:55)
22. The Caves of Androzani - extended suite (Roger Limb) (6:57)

Disc Total: 79:25

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 2 of 4
(Tom Baker, Peter Davison)


Track Listing:


28. Doctor Who 1980 (stereo full) (Grainer/Howell) (2:42)
20. Castrovalva suite (Paddy Kingsland) (3:18)
21. Exploring the Lab (Roger Limb) (1:46)



22. March of the Cybermen (Malcolm Clarke) (5:13)





23. Mawdryn Undead suite (Paddy Kingsland) (4:19)


24. The Five Doctors (Peter Howell) (5:29)

25. Warriors of the Deep (Jonathan Gibbs) (3:53)


26. Resurrection of the Daleks (Malcolm Clarke) (5:01)

27. The Caves of Androzani (Roger Limb) (6:07)



Note that this version of "The Caves of Androzani" matches the one released years ago on the CD entitled "The Five Doctors", not the new extended suite found on the 11-disc set.


Underlined cues
also appear on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 06
Colin Baker (1984-1986)

Original music tracks
composed by
Malcolm Clarke
Jonathan Gibbs
Dominic Glynn
Peter Howell
Liz Parker
Roger Limb
Dick Mills

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:16



Disc 6 of 11 - Music from the Colin Baker Era

I've long said that the excellent music of the Colin Baker era never seemed to get the recognition, presentation, and marketing that it truly deserved. With that in mind, disc 6 of this 50th Anniversary collection is like a breath of fresh air. Finally, a whole disc full of unearthed Colin-era gems, most of which have either never escaped in clean form before, or, unlike most tracks from disc 5, have been presented in an entirely new montage. Kudos. I think I'm going to have to declare this my favourite disc of the entire set, as it best embodies the way that the concept of an eleven-Doctors-eleven-discs Anniversary set should be executed in my opinion, and seems to offer the best value for money.


"The Twin Dilemma" (7:19) - This is one of those stories that came out on DVD without the isolated music track that should have been easily possible - a problem shared by about half of Colin Baker's era. Thankfully this suite now makes up for that shortcoming somewhat, and good thing too as this was one of the best scores from that time of the program. The suite smartly begins with full airings of the definitive "Equations" theme for the twins, and features a lot of nice cues, but seems to be missing out on both "Jaconda the Beautiful", and Azmail's final scene, which were the other two definitive highlights I'd been looking forward to. Oh well. Better luck next time.

"Attack of the Cybermen" (8:12) - The bulk of this track concerns the lead up to and the reveal of the Cybermen from the first half-hour of the story, and includes most of the atmospheric beats, the initial harsh rendition of Lytton's Theme, and the theme for Halley's comet and an appropriate short snippet of March of the Cybermen. NOT featured is the Totter's Lane junkyard cue, or any of the bits of Bach's Toccata in D. Only right near the end do we get a bit of Cryon music from the second half of the story. Overall, not a bad track at all.

"Vengeance on Varos" (6:53) - I have to admit to being a bit disappointed with the cues chosen to represent this story here. Most of the ones on this disc are slower, quieter ones backing the Doctor's televised challenges in the dome, and we're not getting enough of the distinctive twangy double-pulse tension builders that I found particularly iconic. However, we do get the cue backing Quillam's one scene from the story's first half, which I always liked, plus a lively action cue from some of the business with the guards and the car. There's good stuff here, but only the Special Edition DVD's isolated music track will truly satisfy my taste for the score's highlights.

"The Mark of the Rani" (6:47) - Now this story is covered fairly nicely here. The lengthy opening cue lays out the main theme with a nice leisurely, pastoral atmosphere, and is included here at full length, and then after some nice moody cues that perhaps remain leisurely for a bit too long, we get to the main cliffhanger action, which was always amongst my favourite bits from this score. I could have done with even more from the cliffhanger, but the score moves on, and concludes by restoring the world to the pastoral serenity in which we first found it. Overall, quite nice.

"The Two Doctors" (6:31) - While aficionados can satiate their appetites for Peter Howell's excellent score for this story from the DVD's isolated music track, (and like me, probably already have), this suite is a very good sampling of the story. My favourite three bits are all here - "The Sontaran Anthem", "The Doña Arana", and "Shockeye Chases Peri", plus the final cue and a smattering of Sontaran variations and Spanish guitar music. I might have tried to squeeze one more Sontaran track in, but this is one of the best compressions of a full score into a short suite that you will find on these discs. Salud!

"Timelash" (5:51) - Again, this somewhat makes up for the lack of an isolated music track on the DVD, but not by much this time. This suite of music was previously released on a CD that was about 90-95% sound effects, namely "30 Years at the Radiophonic Workshop", and it missed out on what I felt was a definitive cue for the android, so I'm a bit unimpressed with this track. On the plus side, the track benefits from Mark Ayres' mastering techniques this time, featuring better volume levels that more fully use the range, and it seems better placement into stereo than in its previous presentation.

The Funeral Parlour (2:19) - Very nice to finally get one of Dick Mills' more atmospheric pieces actually recognized as proper music, as this track deserves.

"Revelation of the Daleks" (6:15) - Roger Limb expresses his greatest level of sound creativity in his final score for the program here. This excellent montage features the story's distinctively lonely creepy atmosphere, features the "sting of a thousand Daleks" at many points, and opens with a good full rendition of the story's main melodic theme. Quite a good representative track.

"The Mysterious Planet" (7:39) - Story specific music from the DVD release was limited to a montage played over the photo gallery, so a suite of music from this story is very welcome. What's really great here is that there is very little overlap between the music in this suite and the music from the photo gallery, meaning that with both considered together, aficionados now have a really hefty chunk of the score. Awesome. Music from the opening sequence of "The Trial of a Time Lord" Part One features on both, but this new presentation continues to include the low quiet bits under the dialogue, although it has been somewhat edited to cut down on the repeated bongs, while still including all the highlights. Four more cues feature here, one as the Doctor and Peri first go underground which includes much of Glitz and Dibber's shiftiness, the nicely emotional one anchoring later portions of the "Nothing can be Eternal" speech (YES!), the long chase cue leading up to Part Two's cliffhanger (sounds great in stereo!), and a surprisingly beautiful one backing Merdeen's speech from the beginning of Part Four. Some very nice picks indeed.

"Mindwarp" sound effects (3:59) - Apparently, we're still only getting sound effects here because the music tapes no longer exist. This montage is mostly just dull background loops at first like the DVD's photo gallery, only without the distinctive tide control this time. However, this track moves on to tackle some very story-event-specific sounds from the powerful final episode. "Force Beam and TARDIS" is a bit of a disappointment, as it leaves out the beginning of the force beam (the true signature portion of the sound) and instead fades up during the middle of it - and also the TARDIS makes no sound whatsoever in the story, so the warbling version of materialization is out of place here. One is better off sampling this moment from the finished soundtrack on the story, which includes music and is largely free of dialogue and foley anyway. However, this track really comes up trumps with the last two sounds "Time Bubble" and "Unfreeze". Very nice to finally have these without Brian Blessed screaming all over them, and as with much of Brian Hodgson's work on the early years of the show, these bits from Dick Mills very nearly are the musical score when they are used. Two thumbs way up.

"Terror of the Vervoids" (8:26) - This is a bit of a mixed bag, covering more new material than you might think at first glance when comparing with the DVD's Photo Gallery montage. (Again, with no isolated music track on the DVD, the photo gallery was the only other source of major clean music cues from this story to date.) But even when it sounds like there is repeated music, there are often slight variations because we are listening to themes used at very different points of the story. For example, there's a piece I will arbitrarily label as "Twisting the Evidence", which always begins over a courtroom scene before continuing under the action on the ship. The photo gallery gives its rendition from late in part nine of the story, while the new presentation on this Colin Baker disc gives you the cue as heard in the middle of part eleven, and continues on to include the Vervoid action immediately after.

A good study of this score reveals that many of the most creatively realized bits consist of about 4 or 5 basic loops, which were then patched together into cues with unique bits of melody played over top. This 50th Anniversary montage gives you many of the completed cues, which get a bit repetitive and crazy, but I think I might have preferred to get those basic loops individually in a fresh and clean state. My favourite cue of the story, from late episode 10 surrounding Mr. Kimber's warm drink, appears to be constructed out of the two loops that debut the earliest in the story, each loop being used twice in alternation. Here we get the last of these loops as it appears at the end of the cue, but not the entire cue itself - a trick has been missed there. Not to worry, I've been able to sample an almost clean version of the other loop from elsewhere, boost its volume, and reconstruct a good approximation of my favourite cue at last... which shouldn't have required all that work. For those wondering, the extensive crazy-sounding action at the end of this track comes mainly from two finished sequences, one where the mystery's culprit is arrested, and the full final cue for the Vervoid action.

All in all, "Vervoids" here is a good track, but perhaps not all it could have been. The cheesy Dancercise Muzak did not have to be included both here and in the DVD photo gallery, and I have to say I think the photo gallery actually offered a better variety of music from the story than what we got here, even while this one tackled some of the more iconic bits.

"The Ultimate Foe" (6:49) - As with the earliest story of the "Trial" season, there is very little overlap between the music in this suite and the music from the DVD's photo gallery, so we're getting a lot of good new stuff here, including "Carrot Juice" and the final few cues of the Colin Baker era clean and in their entirety. I'd have tried to squeeze in a few more cues, but on the whole, this short classic story was covered really well for a box set abridging 50 years of music.

Also included are the title and end credit themes from Season 23 - "The Trial of a Time Lord", renditions of Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme that are unique to Colin Baker's era.

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 6 of 11
Colin Baker 1984-1986


Track Listing:

1. The Twin Dilemma (Malcolm Clarke) (7:19)
2. Attack of the Cybermen (Malcolm Clarke) (8:12)
3. Vengeance on Varos (Jonathan Gibbs) (6:53)
4. The Mark of the Rani (Jonathan Gibbs) (6:47)
5. The Two Doctors (Peter Howell) (6:31)
6. Timelash (Elizabeth Parker) (5:51)
7. The Funeral Parlour (Dick Mills) (2:19)
8. Revelation of the Daleks (Roger Limb) (6:15)

9. Doctor Who Titles - The Trial of a Time Lord (0:45)
10. The Mysterious Planet (Dominic Glynn) (7:39)
11. Mindwarp sound effects montage (Dick Mills) (3:59)
12. Terror of the Vervoids (Malcolm Clarke) (8:26)
13. The Ultimate Foe (Dominic Glynn) (6:49)
14. Doctor Who credits (Ron Grainer/Dominic Glynn) (1:20)

Disc Total: 79:16

As you can see, with the exception of the "Timelash" suite which was a re-run anyway, all the story suites on the 11-disc version are considerably longer than their counterparts on the 4-disc version... in fact double on average.

Don't worry about missing out on the 3 minute Doctor Who 1986 version of Grainer's Theme by Dominic Glynn. On the 11-disc sets, it's one of the bonuses on the Christopher Eccleston disc...

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 3 of 4
(Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann)


Track Listing:

1. The Twin Dilemma Suite - Malcolm Clarke (4:04)


2. The Mark of the Rani Suite - Jonathan Gibbs (3:45)
3. The Two Doctors Suite - Peter Howell (3:15)
4. Timelash Suite - Elizabeth Parker (5:52)

5. Revelation of the Daleks Suite - Roger Limb (3:53)
6. Doctor Who 1986 - Grainer / Glynn (2:53)

7. The Mysterious Planet - Dominic Glynn (3:21)

8. Terror of the Vervoids - Malcolm Clarke (2:44)
9. The Ultimate Foe - Dominic Glynn (3:16)








Underlined cues, along with a combination
of The Mysterious Planet and The Ultimate Foe into one track:
The Trial of a Time Lord (Dominic Glynn) (4:19)
also appear on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 07
Sylvester McCoy (1987-1989)

Original music tracks
composed by
Keff McCulloch
Dominic Glynn
Mark Ayres

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:18



Disc 7 of 11 - Music from the Sylvester McCoy Era

Considering what this collection has done on discs for other eras, one might expect early Sylvester McCoy stories to be represented simply by pulling previously released tracks from "The Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album" by Keff McCulloch (pictured at right), which in actual fact featured much more music from the program's 24th season than its 25th. Though some of this recycling did happen, I'm happy to say that the temptation was at least resisted enough to bring us significant new material from many of those stories that didn't feature isolated music tracks on their DVD's. In the end, the McCoy disc rated quite highly with me, placing fourth after the discs for Colin Baker, Tom Baker, and Jon Pertwee.


"Time and the Rani" (5:17 total) - This is the story that benefitted most on this disc. Only two tracks of music from this story had appeared on McCulloch's 24th/25th Anniversary CD, and while they had provided nice atmosphere and rhythm to several sequences in the story, neither of them held up quite as well under closer digital scrutiny on CD. Thankfully, no disc space was wasted repeating them again here. All new material was given to us, and was especially precious considering the DVD had no isolated music track. Here, we get the story's pre-title sequence leading into the debut of McCulloch's version of the Doctor Who theme tune, plus a lot of the better cues from early portions of the story, nice and clean. Many of these pay homage to Grainer's theme, and while this sometimes seemed out of place in the story, it is much more appropriate heard on its own on this disc. Excellent. The one extra bit I would have liked would be the march of the Tetraps from Part Four, but as this can be sampled fairly cleanly from the finished story, it isn't a terrible loss. The most important stuff has been taken care of. Two thumbs way up.

"Paradise Towers" (4:21 total) - This story also starts off in a refreshing manner with a track called "Taken to the Cleaners" containing two cues we hadn't had before... perhaps not the best ones from the story, but definitely recognizable as I believe at least one of them saw some re-use as the story went along. After that, the next two tracks have been scraped from the 24th/25th Anniversary disc. "Drinksmat Dawning" is a nice piece, while "The Making of Pex" is a loud harsh cue for the action climax of the story that later gives way to a nice gentle melody which you may not hear after the harsh bit has you reaching to turn down your volume control. Not quite the two picks I would have chosen from the older CD. "Towers El Paradiso" was probably the best track we got before, but it features so sparingly in the story that it isn't truly representative. "Guards of Silence" probably would have been the optimum essential choice, as it features the theme for the cleaners, plus a nice mellow humorous variation on the main Doctor Who theme, with some very different chord patterns.

Music from "Delta and the Bannermen" (3:38) - This track is a medley of cues from the story, only one of which had not previously appeared on Keff McCulloch's earlier CD. The re-runs include "Gavrok's Search" and "Burton's Escape" (whose running times have been halved by removing pointless repetition), and the better later portions of "The Sting". Hold on though, the second of the four cues presented here is a new release, and it's a gem - the one piece of the score I had wanted most. I called it "Keillor's Deal" when I attempted to make a cover version of it myself. It's the penultimate cue from episode one, when the man with the big sideburns makes a phone call and then discovers something more.

Also repeating from the 24th/25th CD is "Here's to the Future", which likely remained a separate track due to the extra credit for the vocals by The Lorells.


After this point, all McCoy DVD's feature isolated music tracks, so technically none of the music is new. But we still wind up with all new montages from each story, giving us a nice sampling of the musical score, or in a few cases a selection of individual cues with official titles on them. Nice.

Music from "Remembrance of the Daleks" (8:21) - This is an extensive suite from one of the most popular stories of the McCoy era. Both of the two tracks from the 24th/25th CD are incorporated into it (and let's face it; they were both amongst the most iconic and effective pieces in the story). "Cemetery Chase" has had its repetitive center section smartly halved, and is much the better for it, while "A Child's Return" appears at full length to conclude the suite.

It is also nice to have the final cue of the story "Time Will Tell" as a completely clean, full length track on its own, without going directly into the end credit music for once. Excellent.

Music from "Battlefield" (5:24) - This remains an interesting and tasteful sampling of music from the story. The earlier cues used here were amongst the more memorable ones from the story for me. One bit I had always liked that did NOT appear here backed the Brigadier's first walk into town leading up to his encounter with Jean Marsh's character.

Rounding out this disc's collection of music from Keff McCulloch is a collection of three tracks from "Silver Nemesis", which perhaps demonstrate that this was the least interesting of his six scores for McCoy's Doctor. "Fourth Reich" comes across as a slightly militarized variation on his usual muzak, and while "Landing of the Cybermen" starts well, excessive repetition of certain riffs soon wears out its welcome. "Shooting at Us" doesn't have an impressive start, but soon turns out to be the most creative and emotive of the three tracks here.


The three scores by Mark Ayres, while amongst the last to be created for the classic program, were also amongst the first to be marketed on CD in the early 1990's with a whole disc devoted to each. Yes, these are very familiar re-runs, but good ones. The three suites here manage to capture and present most of the important themes and provide a nice, brief flavour of each score. "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" remains my favourite for its melodic qualities, while the more creepy, action-oriented score from "The Curse of Fenric" is a close second.


Finally, we have three more scores from Dominic Glynn, which are all quite different. "Dragonfire" encapsulates all the important themes from that story - and as the last Doctor Who story to have its audio mastered in mono, this disc now improves on the DVD isolated score by presenting the music in stereo and with increased brilliance and dynamic range. A notable difference. "The Happiness Patrol" covers its bases well also, giving us the blues, suspense, the candy waltz, and the emotional climax. The main "Survival" suite focuses on music for the wilder side of nature fairly well, but misses out on some of the lighter happy-go-lucky sneaky cues. Nicely, the very memorable farewell cue of the classic series is highlighted in its very own stand-alone track.


Ultimately, this is a very good disc, having enough space to do justice to all twelve of McCoy's stories and succeeding fairly well with each. Nice.

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 7 of 11
Sylvester McCoy 1987-1989


Track Listing:

1. "It's the Man I Want" (Keff McCulloch) (0:22)
2. Doctor Who 1987 opening (Grainer/McCulloch) (0:53)
3. Music from "Time and the Rani" (Keff McCulloch) (4:02)
4. Taken to the Cleaners (Keff McCulloch) (1:31)
5. Drinksmat Dawning (Keff McCulloch) (1:28)
6. The Making of Pex (Keff McCulloch) (1:22)
7. Music from "Delta and the Bannermen" (Keff McCulloch) (3:38)
8. "Here's to the Future" (Keff McCulloch w. the Lorells) (1:56)
9. Music from "Dragonfire" (Dominic Glynn) (7:11)

10. "Remembrance of the Daleks" (Keff McCulloch) (8:21)
11. Time Will Tell (Keff McCulloch) (1:00)
12. Music from "The Happiness Patrol" (Dominic Glynn) (7:11)
13. Fourth Reich (Keff McCulloch) (1:21)
14. Landing of the Cybermen (Keff McCulloch) (2:47)
15. Shooting at Us (Keff McCulloch) (1:26)
16. "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" (Mark Ayres) (7:07)

17. Music from "Battlefield" (Keff McCulloch) (5:24)
18. Music from "Ghost Light" (Mark Ayres) (4:32)
19. Music from "The Curse of Fenric" (Mark Ayres) (7:30)
20. Music from "Survival" (Dominic Glynn) (8:25)
21. "...and somewhere else, the tea's getting cold" (Glynn) (0:23)
22. Doctor Who 1987-1989 closing (Grainer/McCulloch) (1:14)

Disc Total: 79:18

As you can see, most of the story suites on the 11-disc version are considerably longer than their counterparts on the 4-disc version... often double in fact.

Don't worry about missing out on the longer Doctor Who 1987 version of Grainer's Theme by Keff McCulloch. On the 11-disc sets, it's one of the bonuses on the Christopher Eccleston disc...

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 3 of 4
(Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann)


Track Listing:


10. Doctor Who 1987 (full) (Grainer/McCulloch) (2:38)
11. Time and the Rani suite (Keff McCulloch) (1:38)




12. "Here's to the Future" (Keff McCulloch w. the Lorells) (1:57)
13. Dragonfire suite (Dominic Glynn) (3:02)

14. Remembrance of the Daleks suite (Keff McCulloch) (5:32)





15. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy suite (Mark Ayres) (3:23)

16. Battlefield suite (Keff McCulloch) (4:41)

17. The Curse of Fenric suite (Mark Ayres) (6:35)
18. Survival suite (Dominic Glynn) (5:28)
19. ..and somewhere else, the tea's getting cold (Glynn) (0:25)




Underlined cues
also appear on the 2-disc cutdown version:
(where Survival and its cold tea coda have been
combined into a single track)



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 08
Paul McGann (1996)

Original music tracks
composed by
John Debney
Louis Febre
John Sponsler

Audio CD
Total Time: 62:45



Disc 8 of 11 - Music from the Paul McGann Movie

The one-disc-per-Doctor concept of this version of the 50th Anniversary CD set really falls down when it comes to Paul McGann - whose Doctor really has only 3/4 of one movie to his credit.

Additionally, most of the music for that one movie became available on CD long ago, and was also taken care of with an isolated music track on the more recent DVD release, along with a bonus feature of full-length source music tracks as well. It was pretty much impossible to give us anything truly new, or to fill the disc up to capacity, unless one dove into McGann adventures in other mediums such as audio-only radio dramas, which didn't happen.

So, with no way to follow the concept of the set and come up with anything truly exciting, this isn't one of the greater discs of the collection. That said, the music here is good, and does evoke memories of McGann's short-lived Doctor. The improvements over the original CD are worthwhile. The opening track is a highlight, as it has been extended and better reflects the music as it appeared in the film. We also get the regeneration itself in "Seven to Eight", which is quite a memorable scene, and a unique musical moment. Most of the story's best bits had been previously released however, so the bulk of new material is really just random action/scares from the earliest portions of the movie. I've attempted to highlight below in bold text the tracks that weren't on the original CD.

Old favourites include "Night Walk" which debuts the love theme for Grace, plus the theme's rise to a triumphant action cue in "Slimed".

Individual track credits continue to suggest that Louis Febre and John Sponsler did the bulk of the work on this movie, scoring some cues by themselves, and some in collaboration with John Debney. I still don't see any cues credited to Debney alone, which is bizarre considering that he alone got a big highlighted title credit for the music on the film.


11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 8 of 11
Paul McGann 1996


Track Listing:

1. Prologue: Skaro / Doctor Who /
The Casket (2:19)
2. Breakout (2:36)
3. Wimps / Doctor #7 is Shot (1:49)
4. Aftermath (1:04)
5. Mr. Smith and the Ambulance (1:51)
6. "I Am Not Human" (1:13)
7. Flatline (1:01)
8. X-Ray / Snake in the Bathroom (1:37)
9. The Taking of Bruce (1:03)
10. Seven to Eight (2:20)
11. "Who Am I?" (1:55)
12. City Scape (1:51)
13. Bad Morning (0:33)
14. Time (0:57)
15. "I Quit" (1:01)
16. Primitive Wiring / The UnBruce (1:43)
17. Two Hearts (1:12)
18. The TARDIS / True Identity (2:15)
19. Night Walk (1:45)
20. The Eye of Harmony / Half Human (4:35)
21. Until Midnight / Atomic Clock (2:01)
22. Green Eyes (0:49)
23. The Chase (3:17)
24. Beryllium Clock / Bragg's Key (1:12)
25. Jelly Baby (0:12)
26. Slimed (2:06)
27. Under the Influence (0:47)
28. Crown of Nails (1:13)
29. Lee's Last Chance (2:09)
30. "Open the Eye" (2:26)
31. "Reroute Power!" / Temporal Orbit (6:17)
32. To Hold Death Back (1:55)
33. Farewell (1:37)
34. End Credits - Doctor Who (0:49)

Disc Total: 62:45

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 3 of 4
(Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann)


Track Listing:

20. Prologue: Skaro / Doctor Who (1:34)










21. Who Am I? (1:55)











22. The Chase (2:20)






23. "Open the Eye" (2:25)


24. Farewell (1:35)
25. End Credits - Doctor Who (0:49)



As you can see, the tracks on this CD are taken more
from the old 1996 CD for the movie, and are not
the new extended tracks from the 11-disc set.

Approximately 75% of the above music has been
combined into a single track
on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 09
Christopher Eccleston (2005)
Bonus Tracks

Original music tracks
composed by
Murray Gold
Mark Ayres
Dominic Glynn
Keff McCulloch

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:06



Disc 9 of 11 - Music from the Christopher Eccleston Era

These 50th Anniversary Collections become truly redundant once we enter the New Millennium sections of the show, where composer Murray Gold reigns supreme in his total monopoly over the soundtracks. Although excellent music abounds, the 50th Collections plow hard into re-run status, and give the long term collector almost nothing that she hadn't had before, or couldn't still get from the more affordable albums still widely available for sale today. The opportunity to bring out some extra gems that hadn't been released before has mostly gone to waste here.

Christopher Eccleston's Era is represented by basically looking to Murray Gold's first Doctor Who release (which covered two seasons on one disc, pictured at right), and scraping from it every cue that was originally composed for an Eccleston episode, then placing them chronologically on disc 9 of the 50th Collection. In Eccleston's case, it's a bit of a cheat, since these aren't the actual sampler/synthesizer-based recordings used during his one year of stories. These are the re-recordings by a full orchestra that were used the following year with David Tennant. Track 1, the Doctor Who opening theme, is likely the only honest Eccleston Era recording on the CD.

Sadly, this is a wasted opportunity to bring out some cues that deserve to be released. The rendition of "The Doctor's [Dark Past] Theme" with a piano march underneath it, as heard in "Rose" when he first walks back to the TARDIS, as well as the simpler version of the "Doomsday" melody when Rose first walks into the TARDIS, both deserved to be here. Also, there's a sweet little theme used both for one of Rose's first chats with Adam, and again with one of the more endearing conversations between the Doctor and Lynda with a "y", which deserved to be released. No idea if or when the powers that be will create an opportunity to celebrate cues like these, but it didn't happen here. And still nothing from "The Empty Child" two-parter. What's up with that?

With Eccleston's entire era represented solely by bits from one other CD, "his" cues amount to only half a disc. But it's now the other half of that disc that makes it the most worthwhile of the three New Millennium discs to the long term collector, because here we get tons of BONUS TRACKS. Awesome! Now things get interesting....

First off are some extra classic era cues.... Quite a few of these are from the "30 Years in the TARDIS" documentaries, scored by Mark Ayres, and are enjoyable as ever. As part of their presentation, the final cue from the last story of the classic era is mixed in here as well. Also up are some extended renditions of the main Doctor Who theme. Dominic Glynn's 1986 version associated with "The Trial of a Time Lord" is here in a rendition that has been released before, but I will say this isn't my favourite version of his take on the title music, since the bassline somehow seems mistimed. To get Glynn's theme at its best, check out the original opening and closing used on the TV episodes (see disc 6), or for a really good full length version, check out the 2008 stereo remix on the music videos from the DVD box set, which rocks. In what appears to be a brand new track, Keff McCulloch's version of the theme tune from 1987 is now expanded to a more full rendition as well, with some transitional sounds old and new rising more boldly to the fore than previously. This is a unique track, and I like it.

Next up are some David Tennant era "bonus" tracks. "The Doctor Forever" is a great and absolutely iconic track for his Doctor... so why is it a bonus track buried here instead of a main feature on the disc for his era? At any rate, it is a re-run from the season 29 album. Ditto for "My Angel Put the Devil in Me", one of my least favourite tracks of that album which I really didn't need to hear again. Also containing vocals I'd rather forget is the "Song for Ten" re-recording with Neil Hannon that so many people didn't like. It's high time we got the instrumental version heard in "School Reunion" and elsewhere. Didn't happen here.

But finally, we get some New Millennium tracks that didn't appear on previous CD albums. Too bad it didn't happen until we hit the season 30 specials, which were no longer starved for disc space when their scores hit CD. We start off with some good rousing ones. From "The Next Doctor" we get "The Cyber Leader Runs Amok", and from Tennant's Finale "The End of Time", we get "Never Too Old to Shoot and Fly". Excellent! Now this is what a 50th Anniversary Collection should be doing for Tennant's era in the first place.

The Matt Smith era also only goes beyond Murray Gold's regular CD releases in this bonus section on Eccleton's disc. From season 31's "Victory of the Daleks", we get "Emotions Get the Better of Him" and from "The Beast Below" we get "Impossible Choice". "Impossible Choice" isn't as lively as its three predecessors, nor is the story particularly great, so I'm not sure how they arrived at selecting it. Also from the season 33 finale "The Name of the Doctor" we get two previously unreleased tracks: "Glasgow" and "Whisper Men", both of which are nicely atmospheric... but they tend to send you off at the end of the disc with an unresolved sensation, as though the music just spontaneously decided to quit.

At any rate, this bonus section is by far the most worthwhile part of the three discs devoted to New Millennium Doctors. This makes Eccleston's disc the best of the bunch, even though all three have missed the mark in many ways, considering what they could and should have been.

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 9 of 11
Christopher Eccleston 2005


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who 2005 opening (Grainer/Gold) (0:42)
2. Westminster Bridge (Murray Gold) (2:08)
3. Seeking the Doctor (Murray Gold) (0:41)
4. The Doctor's [Dark Past] Theme (Murray Gold) (1:13)
5. Clockwork TARDIS (Murray Gold) (1:17)
6. Cassandra's Waltz (Murray Gold) (3:07)
7. Rose's Theme (Murray Gold) (2:13)
8. Slitheen (Murray Gold) (1:20)
9. Harriet Jones, Prime Minister (Murray Gold) (2:13)
10. The Lone Dalek (Murray Gold) (4:59)
11. Father's Day (Murray Gold) (1:53)
12. Boom Town Suite (Murray Gold) (3:00)
13. Monster Bossa (Murray Gold) (1:37)
14. Rose in Peril (Murray Gold) (1:31)
15. The Daleks (Murray Gold) (3:00)
16. I'm Coming to Get You (Murray Gold) (1:11)
17. Finding Jackie (Murray Gold) (0:53)
18. Rose Defeats the Daleks (Murray Gold) (2:29)
19. Hologram (Murray Gold) (2:14)
20. New Adventures (Murray Gold) (2:18)
21. Doctor Who 2005 Album version (Grainer/Gold) (2:33)

Bonus Tracks - Classic Era:
22. Behind the Sofa (Mark Ayres) (2:25)
23. Doctor Who 1986 (Ron Grainer / Dominic Glynn) (2:54)
24. Doctor Who 1987 (Ron Grainer / Keff McCulloch) (2:37)
25. Back to the TARDIS version 1 (Mark Ayres) (1:04)
26. "...somewhere else, the tea's cold" (Dominic Glynn) (0:21)
27. Back to the TARDIS version 2 (Mark Ayres) (0:54)

Bonus Tracks - David Tennant:
28. The Doctor Forever (Murray Gold) (4:18)
29. Song for Ten (Murray Gold / Neil Hannon) (3:27)
30. My Angel Put the Devil in Me (Gold / Yamit Mamo) (3:08)
31. The Cyberleader Runs Amok (Murray Gold) (1:56)
32. Never Too Old to Shoot and Fly (Murray Gold) (2:15)

Bonus Tracks - Matt Smith:
33. Emotions Get the Better of Him (Murray Gold) (4:34)
34. Impossible Choice (Murray Gold) (3:33)
35. Glasgow (Murray Gold) (0:58)
36. Whisper Men (Murray Gold) (1:32)

Disc Total: 79:06

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 4 of 4
(Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith)


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who 2005 opening (Grainer/Gold) (0:42)





2. Rose's Theme (Murray Gold) (2:15)

















(see disc 3, track 6 in the 4-disc album)
(see disc 3, track 10 in the 4-disc album)





5. The Doctor Forever (Murray Gold) (4:19)











Underlined cues
also appear on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 10
David Tennant (2005-2009)

Original music tracks
composed by
Murray Gold

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:27



Disc 10 of 11 - Music from the David Tennant Era

Moving on, we come to the disc for David Tennant's era. For those who have bought all of Murray Gold's music albums from this era, as I have, there is absolutely nothing new here. As such, this was the last disc out of the 11 that I listened to when the box set first arrived.

Now, credit where credit is due, most of the music here is really, really good. A handful of the tracks have been edited for time as well, to focus on highlights before moving on quickly, which is fair, and gives us new variations on old material. All that is well and good.

But this still won't wind up becoming my one-disc-musical-tour of choice for Tennant's era, due to a number of really bad choices being included, while really important, essential cues were left off. The worst offender is the first half of "Evolution of the Daleks", which contains super-cheesy in-your-face vocals. I'm reaching for the "skip" button each time it comes up. Also unnecessary is "The Futurekind", which is just a harsh over-hyped action frenzy with little emotional impact. "The Runaway Bride" also isn't interesting enough to have made the cut under my watch.

What's missing are two absolutely essential pieces. The first is pretty much THE defining theme for David Tennant's Doctor, officially titled "The Doctor Forever". Yes, it's buried on the Christopher Eccleston disc as a bonus, but really... what the hell? You want that front and center on the Tennant disc. It belongs here so obviously. Arggh! The other important piece you want here is "Boe", from the Season 29 disc. Yes, I know we have "The Face of Boe" from the previous year's opening story, but as I said in my review of the Season 29 finale, "Boe" was probably the best track I'd ever heard Murray Gold create up to that point, and "Every human should listen to this piece at least once per day to help promote wisdom, longevity, and their own inner peace." If you want to make a David Tennant disc with maximum repeat-listening value, "Boe" is absolutely essential.

Curiously, the 4-disc version of the 50th Collection may just be the smarter set where Tennant's era is concerned, as it covers these two essentials, and has left out some of the irritants.


Well, this isn't a bad disc if any or all of the music is new to you, but it kind of missed the mark as a truly definitive collection of highlights, and only receives a lukewarm, shoulder-shrugging "meh" from this long-term collector.


11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 10 of 11
David Tennant (2005-2009)


Track Listing:

1. Sycorax Encounter (Murray Gold) (1:12)
2. The Face of Boe (Murray Gold) (1:14)
3. Tooth and Claw (Murray Gold) (3:19)
4. Madame de Pompadour (Murray Gold) (2:11)
5. The Cybermen (Murray Gold) (3:48)
6. Doomsday (Murray Gold) (5:07)
7. The Runaway Bride (Murray Gold) (4:18)


8. Martha's Theme (Murray Gold) (2:34)
9. Gridlocked Cassinis (Murray Gold) (1:13)
10. All the Strange, Strange Creatures (Murray Gold) (3:47)
11. Evolution of the Daleks (Murray Gold) (1:53)
12. Mr. Smith and Joan (Murray Gold) (1:54)
13. Just Scarecrows to War (Murray Gold) (1:29)
14. Blink suite (Murray Gold) (2:54)
15. The Futurekind (Murray Gold) (1:43)

16. This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood & Home (Murray Gold) (3:16)

17. Doctor Who - Season 30 opening (Murray Gold) (0:45)
18. Voyage of the Damned (Murray Gold) (4:56)
19. A Noble Girl About Town (Murray Gold) (2:12)
20. Songs of Captivity and Freedom (Murray Gold) (4:01)
21. UNIT Rocks (Murray Gold) (1:10)
22. The Doctor's Daughter (Murray Gold) (1:36)
23. Silence in the Library (Murray Gold) (2:56)
24. Midnight (Murray Gold) (3:07)
25. Turn Left (Murray Gold) (2:19)
26. Song of Freedom (Murray Gold) (2:51)

27. Not the Doctor (Murray Gold) (3:19)
28. A Special Sort of Bus (Murray Gold) (2:19)
29. By Water Borne (Murray Gold) (2:23)
30. Vale Decem (Murray Gold) (3:20)


Disc Total: 79:27

As we can see, a lot of the selections for the 11-disc version are completely different from those for the 4- and 2-disc versions.
But getting all the tracks is actually easy... just buy the regular Murray Gold releases for each season and/or collection of specials, and you're done.

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 4 of 4
(Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith)


Track Listing:






3. Doomsday (5:08)

4. Donna's Theme (3:16)
5. The Doctor Forever (4:19)
6. Martha's Theme (3:42)

7. All the Strange, Strange Creatures (4:07)





8. Boe (3:44)
9. This is Gallifrey: Our Home, Our Childhood (3:18)
11. The Master Suite (4:33)









10. Song of Freedom (2:51)
12. Four Knocks (3:58)



13. Vale Decem (3:20)






Underlined cues
also appear on the 2-disc cutdown version:



Doctor Who 11-disc
50th Anniversary
Music CD Collection
Disc 11
Matt Smith (2010-2013)

Original music tracks
composed by
Murray Gold

Audio CD
Total Time: 79:11



Disc 11 of 11 - Music from the Matt Smith Era

Technically, this final disc in the 50th Collection is made up of 100% reruns from Murray Gold's previously released Matt-Smith-Era albums, and as such contributed not one tiny bit to my desire to purchase this mammoth set. That said, a lot of the tracks here are a little bit different - having been edited down into shorter tracks to facilitate squeezing more variety onto one disc.

This disc still managed to be one that I looked forward to more than most, for the simple reason that I haven't yet gotten around to collecting all of the available Matt Smith era CD's yet, so some of these tracks ended up being new to me anyway.

I often wonder if Murray Gold's compositional efforts peaked with Smith's debut "The Eleventh Hour", because after coming out with some cracking themes for that story, most of the music I really remember afterwards consists of variations on those same themes in one permutation after another. It isn't until Clara debuts in the middle of season 33 that something new and really important crops up. Indeed, anytime this disc gets truly lively, it's probably yet another version of his eleventh Doctor theme "I Am the Doctor" that we're listening to. Great stuff, but it does get a bit too repetitive before it's all over.


Some of the selections could have been better. The first track I would have dropped would be "The Long Song", which was my least favourite of the previously released tracks from "The Rings of Akhaten". Also, even though "Abigail's Song" may be the best track from its particular score, I'm not sure I would have chosen anything from "A Christmas Carol" at all. Ultimately, I think it is really challenging to get a selection of Matt Smith era cues that cover the entire emotional spectrum well without repeating too many variations on themes from "The Eleventh Hour". Somehow this collection of music felt skewed a little too heavily towards sadness, which I found a bit overwhelming on my first listen.

Still, this isn't too bad at all, and has many good highlights. Unfortunately, there's nothing here from "The Day of the Doctor" or Matt Smith's finale, and for any truly new pieces, one might have better luck with the bonus tracks on the Christopher Eccleston disc. But one can't deny that Murray Gold's music is really very good and does make enjoyable repeat listening, and this disc still satisfies on many levels.

11-CD Box Set for 2014:

or
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 11 of 11
Matt Smith (2010-2013)


Track Listing:

1. Doctor Who XI (Ron Grainer / Murray Gold) (1:01)
2. Little Amy (Murray Gold) (1:41)
3. I Am the Doctor (Murray Gold) (4:02)
4. The Mad Man With a Box (Murray Gold) (2:08)
5. The Beast Below (Murray Gold) (1:21)

6. Battle in the Sky (Murray Gold) (3:23)
7. The Time of Angels (Murray Gold) (3:56)
8. This is the Dream (Murray Gold) (1:39)
9. The Silurians (Murray Gold) (1:02)
10. A Troubled Man (Murray Gold) (2:18)
11. Words Win Wars (Murray Gold) (1:47)
12. The Life and Death of Amy Pond (Murray Gold) (2:54)
13. The Sad Man With a Box (Murray Gold) (3:18)

14. Abigail's Song (Murray Gold, vocal: Katherine Jenkins) (4:41)

15. The Impossible Astronaut (Murray Gold) (3:11)
16. Deadly Siren (Murray Gold) (4:51)
17. Run, Sexy (Murray Gold) (1:56)
18. Which One Is the Flesh? (Murray Gold) (1:39)

19. The Enigma of River Song (Murray Gold) (3:57)
20. Lost in the Wrong Stream (Murray Gold) (3:23)



21. Make Peace (Murray Gold) (0:52)
22. Together or Not At All (Murray Gold) (3:16)
23. Clara in the TARDIS (Murray Gold) (2:53)
24. Up the Shard (Murray Gold) (3:00)
25. The Long Song (Murray Gold) (3:35)
26. A Machine That Makes Machines (Murray Gold) (3:00)
27. What Is His Name? (Murray Gold) (1:58)
28. Remember Me (Murray Gold) (3:00)
29. The Majestic Tale [of a Madman in a Box] (M. Gold) (3:09)

Disc Total: 79:11

As we can see, a lot of the selections for the 11-disc version are completely different from those for the 4- and 2-disc versions.
But getting all the tracks is actually easy... just buy the regular Murray Gold releases for each season and/or collection of specials, and you're done.

4-CD Edition for 2013:

Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection - Disc 4 of 4
(Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith)


Track Listing:



14. I Am the Doctor (4:03)
15. The Mad Man With a Box (2:09)

16. Amy's Theme (2:08)









17. Abigail's Song (4:43)





18. Melody Pond (2:36)


19. The Wedding of River Song (5:33)

20. Towards the Asylum (2:25)

21. Together Or Not at All (3:17)

22. Up the Shard (3:02)
23. The Long Song (3:39)












Underlined cues
plus a track called "Infinite Potential" (2:06)
also appear on the 2-disc cutdown version:





"What have I missed now?"

While I am now able to give a first-hand account of what's actually in this 11-disc collection from the set I purchased, it's too late for you to use my words to make an informed purchase yourself. The ordering window was in April-May of 2014, with delivery of the product occurring over September and October - some 5 months later. The makers and exclusive sellers of this product bypassed Amazon and most other retailers, and have now declared the product "sold out" and washed their hands of it. Donna Noble's mantra "What have I missed now?" may be an appropriate epitaph for their marketing tactics.

What's sad about this is that we can't now say that music from "The Sun Makers" or "Planet of the Spiders" continues to be available to any member of the public that wishes to purchase it. Eager buyers who came late to this party will have to hunt down someone willing to sell their copy second hand on eBay or something.

The economics of the music industry are partly to blame - sales of physical media like audio CD's and DVD's are down across the board, and it certainly didn't help that the computer brand Apple ceased to incorporate disc players in their computers, forcing many onto the internet download route. For an 11-disc set like this, perhaps only this high-pressured take-away marketing tactic could ensure that its makers turned a profit, and weren't sitting on unsold copies for years waiting to recoup their investment. Also, very often music libraries will only offer to license their assets for commercial release if one guarantees that it will be an edition limited to a few copies, so that may have been an additional factor.

What bothers me particularly is that for those of us who would like to ensure that composers and performers receive reimbursement for the musical enjoyment they have provided us, we no longer have an easy valid way of doing so when the product discontinues its way into obscurity. The music industry has yet to find ways to keep channels of reimbursement open, and has a tendency to invest instead in restricting its legally available output. It really is siding with a form of secrecy or control, instead of the counterpart fourth density principles of honesty, trust, and allowingness, which to be fair also require the consuming public to develop our desire to compensate artists and their distributors for the work they perform that we enjoy. The more the music industry makes that an easy and accessible thing for us to do, the faster the public may develop that into a strong habit. My rant for the day. ...Main point being that the marketing on the 11-disc versions of this set is designed to make the best of the sad 3rd density rut that the music industry is struggling with, rather than a new 4th density solution.

Anyway, it's just the 4-disc version and its 2-disc cutdown that remain available today. Not as exciting by any means, but there's still some really good stuff there nonetheless....



Doctor Who -
The 50th Anniversary Collection

Original Music soundtracks
4-disc and 2-disc versions
Audio CD set
new for 2013 Dec 9

4-CD Box Set for 2013:

U.S.

Canada

U.K.

Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection Music Soundtrack
Audio CD set - 4 disc version

Track Listing:

Disc: 1
1. Doctor Who (Original Theme) - (2:20)
2. Three Guitars Mood 2 - The Arthur Nelson Group (2:03)
3. TARDIS Takeoff - BBC Radiophonic Workshop (0:49)
4. Forest Atmosphere - Tristram Cary (1:08)
5. Forest With Creature - Tristram Cary (0:54)
6. City Music 1 and 2 - Tristram Cary (0:56)
7. The Daleks - Tristram Cary (0:32)
8. Dalek Control Room - Brian Hodgson (0:34)
9. The Ambush - Tristram Cary (2:00)
10. Capsule Oscillation - Brian Hodgson (0:19)
11. Explosion, TARDIS Stops - Brian Hodgson (1:10)
12. Sleeping Machine - Brian Hodgson (0:52)
13. Dalek Spaceship Lands - Brian Hodgson (0:17)
14. TARDIS Lands - Brian Hodgson (0:11)
15. Chumbley (Constant Run) - Brian Hodgson (0:27)
16. Chumbley at Rest - Brian Hodgson (0:28)
17. Marche - Les Structures Sonores (2:40)
18. A Strange Sickness - Tristram Cary (0:44)
19. Growing Menace - Tristram Cary (2:08)
20. The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon (3:51)
21. Space Adventure Part 2 - Martin Slavin (1:22)
22. Heartbeat Chase - Brian Hodgson (1:57)
23. Chromophone Band - Dudley Simpson (1:56)
24. Propaganda Sleep Machine - Brian Hodgson (1:08)
25. Sideral Universe - Paul Bonneau and his Orchestra (2:26)
26. Space Time Music, Pt. 1 - Westway Studio Orchestra (1:21)
27. Space Time Music, Pt. 2 - Westway Studio Orchestra (1:19)
28. Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill - Dudley Simpson (0:39)
29. Cyberman Stab & Music - Brian Hodgson (1:32)
30. Birth of Cybermats - Brian Hodgson (0:44)
31. Interior Rocket - Brian Hodgson (1:55)
32. Galaxy Atmosphere - Brian Hodgson (1:04)
33. Zoe's Theme - Brian Hodgson (1:20)
34. The Dark Side of the Moon - Don Harper (0:31)
35. The Company - Don Harper (1:31)
36. Machine and City Theme - Brian Hodgson (1:49)
37. Kroton Theme - Brian Hodgson (2:14)
38. The Seeds of Death Titles - Dudley Simpson (0:35)
39. Ice Warriors Music - Dudley Simpson (0:26)
40. Time Lord Court - Brian Hodgson (1:32)
41. Doctor Who (New Opening Theme, 1967) (2:20)
42. The Master's Theme - Dudley Simpson (0:43)
43. Hypnosis Music - Dudley Simpson (0:36)
44. Dover Castle - Dudley Simpson (0:29)
45. Keller Machine sound effects - Brian Hodgson (0:22)
46. Keller Machine Theme - Dudley Simpson (0:43)
47. Copy Machine Tickover - Brian Hodgson (0:16)
48. The Axons Approach - Brian Hodgson (1:45)
49. The Sea Devils - Malcolm Clarke (5:24)
50. The Mutants - Tristram Cary (7:12)
51. Frontier in Space, Ep 1 - Dudley Simpson (1:46)
52. Death to the Daleks - London Saxophone Quartet (3:50)
53. Metebelis III Atmosphere - Dick Mills (1:53)

Disc: 2

1. Doctor Who Opening Title - Grainer / Derbyshire (0:44)
2. Nerva Beacon Infrastructure and T-Mat Couch (1:42)
3. Revenge of the Cybermen - Carey Blyton (5:28)
4. The Destruction of Charlie Rig - Geoffrey Burgon (0:42)
5. A Landing in Scotland - Geoffrey Burgon (1:22)
6. The Zygons Attack - Geoffrey Burgon (0:51)
7. The Android Invasion, Ep 3 & 4 - Dudley Simpson (6:32)
8. The Planet Karn - Dick Mills (1:50)
9. Antarctica - The First Pod - Geoffrey Burgon (2:17)
10. Get Dunbar!/Krynoid On the Loose - Geoffrey Burgon (2:55)
11. The Mandragora Helix - Dick Mills (1:26)
12. The Invasion of Time, Ep 3 & 4 - Dudley Simpson (5:36)
13. Doctor Who Closing Titles (40" Version) (1:15)??
14. Doctor Who 1980 (Opening Titles) - Grainer / Howell (0:38)
15. Into Argolis - Peter Howell (1:44)
16. K9 On a Mission - Paddy Kingsland (0:35)
17. Nyssa's Theme - Roger Limb (0:41)
18. It's the End... - Paddy Kingsland (3:18)
19. Doctor Who 1980 (Closing Titles) - Grainer / Howell (1:16)
20. Castrovalva Suite - Paddy Kingsland (3:18)
21. Exploring the Lab - Roger Limb (1:46)
22. March of the Cybermen - Malcolm Clarke (5:13)
23. Mawdryn Undead Suite - Paddy Kingsland (4:19)
24. The Five Doctors Suite - Peter Howell (5:29)
25. Warriors of the Deep Suite - Jonathan Gibbs (3:53)
26. Resurrection of the Daleks Suite - Malcolm Clarke (5:01)
27. The Caves of Androzani (Alt. Suite) - Roger Limb (6:07)
28. Doctor Who Theme (1980 - Full Version) (2:42)

Disc: 3

1. The Twin Dilemma Suite - Malcolm Clarke (4:04)
2. The Mark of the Rani Suite - Jonathan Gibbs (3:45)
3. The Two Doctors Suite - Peter Howell (3:15)
4. Timelash Suite - Elizabeth Parker (5:52)
5. Revelation of the Daleks Suite - Roger Limb (3:53)
6. Doctor Who 1986 - Grainer / Glynn (2:53)
7. The Mysterious Planet - Dominic Glynn (3:21)

8. Terror of the Vervoids - Malcolm Clarke (2:44)
9. The Ultimate Foe - Dominic Glynn (3:16)
10. Doctor Who 1987 - Grainer / McCulloch (2:38)
11. Time and the Rani Suite - Keff McCulloch (1:38)
12. Here's to the Future - Keff McCulloch / The Lorells (1:57)
13. Dragonfire Suite - Dominic Glynn (3:02)
14. Remembrance of the Daleks Suite - Keff McCulloch (5:32)
15. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Suite - Mark Ayres (3:23)
16. Battlefield Suite - Keff McCulloch (4:41)
17. The Curse of Fenric Suite - Mark Ayres (6:35)
18. Survival Suite - Dominic Glynn (5:28)
19. ...and Somewhere Else, the Tea's Getting Cold (0:25)

20. Prologue: Skaro/Doctor Who Theme (1:34)
21. Who Am I? - Louis Febre (1:55)
22. The Chase - John Debney & John Sponsler (2:20)
23. Open the Eye - Debney & Sponsler (2:25)
24. Farewell - Debney & Febre (1:35)
25. End Credits/Doctor Who Theme - Grainer / Debney (0:49)

Disc: 4

1. Doctor Who Theme - Grainer / Gold (0:42)
2. Rose's Theme - Murray Gold (2:15)
3. Doomsday - Murray Gold (5:08)
4. Donna's Theme - Murray Gold (3:16)
5. The Doctor Forever - Murray Gold (4:19)
6. Martha's Theme - Murray Gold (3:42)
7. All the Strange, Strange Creatures - Murray Gold (4:07)
8. Boe - Murray Gold (3:44)
9. This Is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home (3:18)
10. Song of Freedom - Murray Gold (2:51)
11. The Master Suite - Murray Gold (4:33)
12. Four Knocks - Murray Gold (3:58)
13. Vale Decem - Murray Gold (3:20)
14. I Am the Doctor - Murray Gold (4:03)
15. The Mad Man With a Box - Murray Gold (2:09)
16. Amy's Theme - Murray Gold (2:08)
17. Abigail's Song (Silence Is All You Know) (4:43)
18. Melody Pond - Murray Gold (2:36)
19. The Wedding of River Song - Murray Gold (5:33)
20. Towards the Asylum - Murray Gold (2:25)
21. Together Or Not at All - The Song of Amy and Rory (3:17)
22. Up the Shard - Murray Gold (3:02)
23. The Long Song - Murray Gold (3:39)

2-CD Cutdown Edition:

U.S.

Canada

Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection Music Soundtrack
Audio CD set - 2 disc cutdown version

Track Listing:

Disc 1:
1. Doctor Who (Original Theme) Grainer / Derbyshire (2:20)
2. Three Guitars Mood 2 (From "An Unearthly Child") (2:03)
3. Tardis Takeoff - Brian Hodgson (0:50)

4. The Daleks (From "The Daleks") Tristram Cary (3:24)















5. Space Adventure Pt. 2 (from "The Tenth Planet") (1:22)

6. Chromophone Band (From "The Macra Terror") (1:56)




7. Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill (From "Fury from the Deep") (0:39)




8. Zoe's Theme (From "The Mind Robber") Brian Hodgson (1:20)

9. The Company (From "The Invasion") Don Harper (1:33)













10. The Sea Devils - Malcolm Clarke (5:24)
11. The Mutants - Tristram Cary (7:12)








12. Revenge of the Cybermen suite by Carey Blyton (5:28)
13. Terror of the Zygons Suite by Geoffrey Burgon (2:57)







14. The Invasion of Time Episodes 3 and 4 (5:39)





15. It's the End? (From "Logopolis") Paddy Kingsland (3:18)
16. Doctor Who Theme (1980 - Full Version) (2:41)
17. Castrovalva Suite - Paddy Kingsland (3:20)

18. March of the Cybermen - Malcolm Clarke (5:13)

19. The Five Doctors Suite by Peter Howell (5:31)








20. The Mark of the Rani Suite by Jonathan Gibbs (3:45)

21. Timelash Suite (From "Timelash") Elizabeth Parker (5:53)
22. Revelation of the Daleks Suite by Roger Limb (3:52)
23. Doctor Who 1986 Ron Grainer / Dominic Glynn (2:55)

Disc 2:

1. The Trial of a Time Lord Suite by Dominic Glynn (4:19)
2. Doctor Who 1987 Ron Grainer / Keff McCulloch (2:38)
3. Time and the Rani Suite by Keff McCulloch (1:38)
4. Here's to the Future ("Delta and the Bannermen") (1:57)
5. Dragonfire Suite by Dominic Glynn (3:02)
6. Remembrance of the Daleks Suite by Keff McCulloch (5:32)
7. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Suite by Mark Ayres (3:26)

8. The Curse of Fenric Suite by Mark Ayres (6:35)
9. Survival suite by Dominic Glynn (5:49)

10. Back To The Tardis (Version 2) Mark Ayres (0:56)
11. The 1996 McGann TV Movie Suite (7:54)








12. Doctor Who Theme - by Ron Grainer / Murray Gold (0:41)
13. Rose's Theme by Murray Gold (2:15)
14. Doomsday (From Season 28) (5:08)

15. The Doctor Forever (From Season 29) (4:18)

16. All the Strange, Strange Creatures (4:07)

17. This Is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home (3:17)



18. Vale Decem (From Season 30 specials) Murray Gold (3:20)
19. I Am the Doctor (From Season 31) Murray Gold (4:04)

20. Amy's Theme (From Season 31) Murray Gold (2:06)






21. The Long Song (From Season 33) Murray Gold (3:36)
22. Infinite Potential (From Season 33) Murray Gold (2:06)





Article written by Martin Izsak. Comments on this article are welcome.
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