The Doctor Who Theme

The Technical View

The theme arrangement for the New Series of Doctor Who is based on the original Delia Derbyshire version from 1963. I know this is common knowledge amongst us hardcore fans of the Original Series, but it may not be apparent to anyone reading this who is new to Doctor Who and has only become a fan through watching the New Series. The arrangement itself makes no radical departures from any of the preceding versions, though there are slight differences such as the inclusion of the ‘scream’ at the start of the opening theme in order to give the now standard pre-credits sequences some gravitas, a repeat of the bass-line before the story title appears, and the familiar ‘fizzy-whizz’ sound as the episode begins. The absence of the middle eight in the first series was a bit of a disappointment to me (and I’m sure I wasn’t alone in my opinion), but at least it has now been reinstated since The Christmas Invasion.

The Emotional View

I must admit that I wasn’t over keen on the New Series theme when I first heard it. I was very pleased that it was mostly based on the original theme, but I didn’t like the other elements that had been used to augment it. However, having now had a year or so to get used to it, it’s grown on me and I would say my opinion has grown to ‘not minding it’, though I still don’t rate it amongst my favourite versions.

The main reason for this is still the orchestral side of the arrangement. Whilst I accept that it does give the piece an epic feel (I like Dominic Glynn’s ‘Terror’ version on the Variations On A Theme album and always thought that it would have been ideal for use on a Doctor Who film), I can’t help feeling that the essence of all the historic TV versions is that they were purely electronic pieces, and this ‘futuristic’ basis always enhanced the feeling that what I was watching was a science-fiction series. The orchestral overtones of the most recent version diminish that feeling quite considerably for me, and thus it dulls my appreciation of the excitement of what’s to come. I would also like the sample of the original main theme to be a bit more prominent as it’s actually quite difficult to hear. The inclusion of the iconic ‘scream’, however, brings the Murray Gold theme back up in my estimations, and takes me back to the ‘good old days’ of watching the series as a kid, even though these days it only augments the true cliff-hangers now and again in the rarer two-part stories.

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As an epilogue to these articles, I’d like to confirm that taking everything into account, I think the Peter Howell version is my absolute favourite version of this iconic theme tune, very closely followed by the original. As far as I’m concerned, the other versions fall some way short of these two and so aren’t really worth consideration amongst my favourites – so there!