Isn't it a lovely thing in life when your interests take a natural conversion? Last year, there was an excellent documentary on the rise of electronic music, Synth Britannia, on BBC Four. It featured artists emerged in the 1970s, such as Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, The Human League and John Foxx - basically many of my own favourite artists - and quite bizarrely, after watching it, I really fancied watching some late 70s Tom Baker-era Doctor Who!!
As a lover of Science-Fiction, with obviously, the good Doctor topping the list, I've always found that certain styles of electronic music somehow connect me back to the show. I fondly recall as a child, watching Peter Davison's episodes and listening to Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene". For me that was just a perfect combination! Still is!
Clearly, the original Delia Derbyshire theme tune arrangement is an electronic masterpiece; way ahead of its time, and something that still sounds unique and distinctive today. If they were to re-instate it, I'm sure it would work better than ever, not sounding at all dated. It is as well known and as big as the show itself!
Watching some of the old Hartnell episodes recently, I was impressed with the incidental music - in "The Daleks" for example, where in place of incidental music, we have a low, menacing and totally mysterious, haunting drone. For me this is far superior to any dramatic orchestral score.
And there's also the incidental music of the 70s and early 80s from Malcolm Clarke, Roger Limb and Peter Howell. Granted some of those analogue warbles sound a little dated today, yet still very appropriate and identifiable with Doctor Who.
Speaking of Peter Howell - his version of the theme tune still sounds absolutely superb today. It's probably my personal favourite version, being the one I grew up with. Yet its use on the intros of BBC DVDs, over the choice of the original, certainly says something. It just works. Totally appropriate - and, like the original, it hardly sounds dated today.
So in that sense, while the show has been updated with current trends and a modern take, I do miss the atmosphere of an electronic score, as for me, the two will forever go hand in hand.
The Beast Below was an original and unusual story for Doctor Who; more of a message about humanity and looking after endangered species than your usual villain on the loose romp, which made a change.
However I felt that there was perhaps too many things happening at once. The "Smilers" were very creepy indeed, although sadly underused. They could have made much more of them.
Starship UK was brilliantly realised though, making for not only one of the most original ideas in the revived series' history, but also one of the most stunning CGI visuals.
Only the second episode and the days of David Tennant's tenth Doctor seem an unusually long time ago, with Matt Smith perfectly settling into the role. I find it somewhat interesting that for a somebody of his age who grew up without the show on TV, has brought so much "Doctorishness" to the role. Hints of Peter Davison's Doctor came through in a few pleasing moments.
Just two episodes in and already this season feels much closer to the original spirit of the show, which had gradually gone away over the last couple of years. Although I'm unsure it was a wise move to bring the Daleks back (again), or stick cute little Union Jack flags on their domes, but I'm sure next week's Mark Gatiss story is going to be a interesting one...
The Eleventh Hour was, in short, a triumph. The success of modern day Doctor Who had over the last few years, perhaps taken the show to a level that was too difficult to handle, with the quality of the storytelling ultimately suffering, with David Tennant's last two seasons being both predictable and repetitive.
Any debut story for a new Doctor (and in many cases production team) have to deliver on many levels. It has to introduce a new Doctor; introduce a new companion; tell a story; and all usually wrapped up in new music, with a new title sequence at either end. The Eleventh Hour managed to hit all of those targets, despite the new theme tune arrangement being a huge mistake. But more of that later.
Matt Smith's Doctor is going to be brilliant. I may have had my doubts at the casting of a Doctor younger than myself, but he pulled it off. Matt has an interesting face, he oozes charisma, as any great Doctor should, and just as he can look like a fresh-faced 20-something year old, he can also look mysteriously older. Smith clearly has both the madness and other-worldlyness about him that defined such great Doctors as Tom Baker's and Jon Pertwee's takes on the time lord.
The story itself, focussed on introducing new companion Amy Pond, combined with some rather large eyeballs paying a visit to Earth, in search of "Prisoner Zero"; a CGI snake-like monster that transformed itself into coma patients or anybody else (including Pam Batchelor from Look Around You).
There was probably as much emphasis on the grown-up Amy, played by Karen Gillan, as there was on Matt Smith's Doctor. I found the character of Amy to be instantly likeable and absolutely ideal for the Eleventh Doctor's companion.
With the Doctor's visits to Amy as a child and his typically Doctor-ish lateness in returning as promised, there was a hint of Girl in the Fireplace to that aspect of the story, but it worked well regardless. The rest of the adventure was well-paced, well acted and well directed, for all of it's engaging 63 minutes. It may not have been the most original debut story, but it was for me, the most thrilling new Doctor adventure in a long while - dare I say since "Rose" in 2005.
With all the RTD campness and overblown storylines now a thing of the past, this felt like really solid Doctor Who.
I was thrilled to see that the tired title sequence had finally been re-designed, but sadly, it was rather rubbish, with tacky lightning bolts firing the TARDIS down what looked like a close-up of somebody's naval. This felt like a missed opportunity to do something original and bring back the dark and mysterious kind of distinctive title sequence the show boasted in the 1960s and 1970s. As it stands, it's a lightening fast zoom, almost like they can't be bothered to do anything spectacular, in favour of getting into the action. Fair enough, but for me, the title sequence has always been every bit as important as the story itself, and the same goes for the theme tune.
Again a big hurrah when a new drone swirled in, heralding the start of a new arrangement... Unfortunately, it was barely recognisable as the all-important Doctor Who theme tune, with the famous bassline lost underneath the cheesy orchestrations of the previous version of the theme.
The Doctor Who theme music is one of the most, if not THE most famous UK television series theme music, with the original electronic Delia Derbyshire version still sounding exciting today. There have been, in recent years, some superb and highly underrated new interpretations of the theme music from the likes of Orbital and David Arnold - yet instead we are faced with this new version which has almost completely lost its identity. Given that Mr Moffatt (which I still can't spell) is a lifelong fan, I'm surprised this got past his ears.
The new series has a much more fantastical and almost fairytale approach in parts, and I felt the incidental music should have reflected that. Instead, Murray Gold's incidental music just sounded like a repeat of the repetitive and predictable score that has been used for the last five years.
The final missed opportunity was the new TARDIS interior. Again, kudos to the production team for keeping to the tradition of change and revamping the inside, but quite frankly, it looks like a junkyard, with the console being the central pile of junk. And with the lighting so similar to the previous set, at a glance, it barely looked like anything had changed.
Although this has much more of the home-made time machine look that we saw in the two Peter Cushing films of the 1960s (not unlike Smith's bowtie and tweed jacket...), it does feel a little twee, and I was hoping for something very different. Maybe something more futuristic to nicely contrast the beautiful exterior of the new TARDIS prop.
But I suppose those are minor gripes. After all I don't watch the show to see what the inside of the TARDIS looks like or how the titles have changed - although for me, it's all part of the overall picture.
But The Eleventh Hour itself was overall, a brilliant episode. It felt new and refreshing, and revitalised, thanks to the new team behind it. And going by the look of the "coming soon" trailer, things are just going to get bigger and better from here.
Welcome back, Doctor...
