The Doctor Who Theme

The Emotional View

When John Nathan-Turner took over as producer of Doctor Who in 1979, one of the many aspects of the series which he wanted to update was the theme tune. Whilst he decided to retain the familiar composition which audiences had known and loved for over 15 years (and let’s face it, he’d have been daft to do otherwise), his objective was to completely revamp and update the theme to bring it in line with the overall glossy feel which he intended to bring to the show for the new decade. Of course, we know that Peter Howell was eventually chosen for the job, and what a tremendous responsibility that must have been for him! (and, I imagine, a great honour). The result of his endeavours couldn’t have been more of a contrast to the original, but has now become almost as iconic in its own right. Where the original was stark and haunting, this new version was brash and glitzy and pulled no punches. From the opening ‘bree’ and the cliff-hanger scream (albeit now shortened and altered slightly) to the explosive ending, the new arrangement was unashamedly loud and flashy. In terms of personal nostalgia, I find the Howell version almost eclipses the original as its debut is my earliest conscious memory of a specific story, and the subsequent seasons are far more memorable for me from those days in terms of actual stories remembered as opposed to vague blurry images from the late 1970’s. By far the most nostalgic part of this version is the middle-eight section with its tingly crescendo build-up and crystal-clear melody. Part of its appeal is the fact that it was absent from the version I was used to prior to 1980, in fact until I watched The Seeds Of Death I had assumed that the middle-eight section was Peter Howell’s own invention! It’s this crescendo which inspires the most emotional response from me whenever I listen to the Howell theme; it’s such a forceful and climactic sound that it always gives me goose bumps when I hear it!

The Technical View

Peter Howell’s own brief to himself was "…..to create something which could not be reproduced on standard equipment which you might find in your own living room." As can be seen from the Synthesizing Starfields feature on the DVD release of The Leisure Hive, some of the methods used to create the new theme were far from orthodox, particularly his mouthing the ‘shapes’ of some sections of the melody. As mentioned above, the Howell arrangement is about as far removed from the original as possible; The biggest difference which I noticed when I first heard it was the contrast between the new bass line and the original. For some reason, I described it then (and still do to this day) as being very ‘masculine’ in sound. This heavier bass line also meant that the middle-eight section (now thankfully reintroduced into the closing theme after an absence of almost a decade) was far ‘meatier’ in sound than the original. The fact that this arrangement is in a different key (F# Minor this time) also makes a difference; the bass-line notes in the middle-eight are not as low as in the original version and thus don’t lose any of their impact. (Incidentally, I once watched a TV programme which explained that listening to exactly the same piece of music played in different keys can produce different emotional responses in the listener – a fascinating conjecture). Another striking difference with the new version was that the melody line was made up of several different ‘instruments’ (or more correctly, electronic sounds) used at various stages rather than the mostly singular sound of the original. This version also set a precedent for the layout and structure of the theme for the rest of the original series, i.e. one chorus for the opening plus a short extra sequence which fades into the episode, and then for the closing titles a ‘sting’ of some sort followed by two choruses, the middle eight section and then two repeats of the main theme with an explosion or some such sound effect at the end, although the Keff McCullogh version differed slightly from this arrangement but I’ll come to that later on in this series of articles.

As with the original, the Peter Howell arrangement owes some of its impact to the (then) new starfield title sequence; it just wouldn’t have worked with the time tunnel sequence and vice-versa.

For a detailed technical guide to the Radiophonic Workshop versions of the Doctor Who theme, please visit Mark Ayres’ website.