Good NuWho music

I think I'm the only one here who likes Rings of Akhaten's score.

No, I quite like the Long Song. I have it on a compilation set.


I think Gold's best work was his score for Parting of the Ways. I really love the piece of music that starts at 10:11 and finishes at 10:46. 16:00-16:30 is also another piece I remember him using a few times in Series 1.

I like The Long Song as well. I’m also very keen on his score for Heaven Sent, which has a rather reflective and classical vibe to it. Whether it’s popular here or not is something I’m unaware of.

Commander Maxil Gale wrote:

Its funny I've found that a lot of the music for New Who when you listen to it on its own, its excellent. Like This is Gallifrey, that's an amazing piece of music. However when you put it to an episode then it comes off as being a bit too much.

The Journey of Martha theme is a classic example. In the show it sounded far too overblown and cheesy, but here its really nice to listen to.

I don't unlike a lot of people here think Murray Gold is untalented. Far from it, IMO he has a lot of talent, but I think he needed to reign it in, and I'm also not sure if he was right for the show.

Not to get off topic but I found this comment in the Martha video quite interesting.

Honest Who Fan wrote: This music is from the episodes that semented my love for doctor who I remember back in 2009 watching sound of drums and last of the time lords on bbc 3 I don't know about any of you but I miss when dr who was insanely popular and it wasn't considered weird liking it by your school mate's

But I thought it was a success again!

He’s far from untalented, and has composed some great scores which are good in isolation. As you say, he just might not have suited the programme (especially considering how little his music has in common with the likes of Derbyshire, Cary, Simpson and Howell), and his music does make particularly mawkish scenes seem all the more saccharine and overblown.

That comment brilliantly encapsulates the mindset of those who commissioned New Who in the first place.

Bernard Marx wrote:I like The Long Song as well. I’m also very keen on his score for Heaven Sent, which has a rather reflective and classical vibe to it. Whether it’s popular here or not is something I’m unaware of.

I quite like Abigail's Song (Silence Is All You Know) from the Christmas Carol, too. That was one of the better Christmas episodes.

I like that track quite a bit in isolation as well. I’ll agree that it was one of the less shit Christmas specials as well- it’s certainly more earnest than The End Of Time was (which also had some decent tracks which work in isolation- Four Knocks is a good track by itself, but plays during a staggeringly shit moment so as to be ruined).

It was overused and bastardised in the Moffat era, but the original version of This is Gallifrey was excellent.

1:01 onwards is absolutely brilliant. I vividly remember watching this episode back in 2006. I think it holds up quite well these days compared to a lot of other episodes from Series 2.



This is also very cool. I'm surprised this was never released on the soundtrack.

The Lone Dalek from Series 1 holds up very well on its own.

As stated above, most the music is good, it just isn't Who.

I recently watched Heaven Sent and forgot how sublime the music was for that story. I don't think that there could be a different music genre that could have been used to capture the feeling of the story.

I think that Murray Gold is a great composer on his own, I love the synthetic score in Series 1, and the bombastic score in Series 3, but the problem is that Murray reused a lot of his music pretty quickly, so there's less variety. I do think orchestra can work for Doctor Who (in fact, soundtracks like Star Wars and Super Mario Galaxy show that orchestra music is best suited for space music), but I got spoiled with the variety of 80s Who Music, and Murray had been going on autopilot in music after Series 5/6.

I quite like this. It does make me feel rather sad, though.

My main problem with Gold’s music is, as with New Who as a whole, how conservative it all is. There’s no variety or genuine influence behind his music beyond archetypal mainstream film score composers such as John Williams, who was himself inspired by Tchaikovsky. Except Tchaikovsky was a composer of the romantic period and thus concentrated on the manipulation of human emotion- he was superb, but ultimately mainstream during his time. Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson were primarily influenced by Musique Concréte, which as far as I’m concerned, is significantly more austere and impressive as an influence, and was much more contemporary and pioneering during Derbyshire’s time in the BBC:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète

Gold’s music might be well composed, but fuck me is it predictable. What I personally dislike about it outside of that is because of it, Doctor Who is now perceived as a ‘tear-jerking’ series akin to other teen dramas which apply the same conventions (let’s be honest- were it not for his musical insertions, allegedly ‘emotional’ scenes would lack their saying power amongst their fans, as the subtext behind many of them is too simplistic to carry them on their own, unlike emotional moments in the 60s such as Hartnell’s speech to Susan, his confrontation with Steven in The Massacre, Victoria’s final scenes and Jamie and Zoe’s departure, where music is minimalist and only underscores the scenes subtly). This is something Doctor Who should not be associated with, as it simply makes it all the more normalised and mundane within the mainstream.

Bernard Marx wrote:My main problem with Gold’s music is, as with New Who as a whole, how conservative it all is.  

Agreed - both Gold's music and the programme he was composing for were invariably safe and unadventurous.
However, I've seldom heard such overbearing and inappropriate incidental music in a television show before, and I think my (negative) opinions of any given NuWho tale were strongly influenced by how loud Gold's thunderous brass band happened to be for that particular episode.  That's one of the reasons I'm (relatively) more well-disposed to Series 1 (despite my dislike of Eccelston) - the music, whilst mostly awful, was generally more synthy/electronic and less 'Wallace and Gromit' soundtrack (...as much as I love W&G..).

I do agree with this to a point. I do think in Series 1 that Gold's music was mostly synthetic, and it did allow for variety. Likewise, Series 5's music added more whimsical elements compared to past Series music, so I think that it also gets away from this trope.
To be honest, I always thought that orchestral music works best for space, and an excellent example of how to utilize this was the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack. It has a wide variety of orchestral styles with synthetic pieces and was always how I wanted NewWho music to sound.

SomeCallMeEnglishGiraffe wrote:I do agree with this to a point. I do think in Series 1 that Gold's music was mostly synthetic, and it did allow for variety. Likewise, Series 5's music added more whimsical elements compared to past Series music, so I think that it also gets away from this trope.
To be honest, I always thought that orchestral music works best for space, and an excellent example of how to utilize this was the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack. It has a wide variety of orchestral styles with synthetic pieces and was always how I wanted NewWho music to sound.

Yeah- there were some variations to Gold’s music without a doubt, but I don’t know if they were strong or distinctive enough. I suppose they were in series 5.

That soundtrack you’ve linked in your above post wouldn’t have been too bad of an idea, and indeed preferable to Gold’s more conservative nature. I’ll say here that my preferred era of Doctor Who for music is definitely the 60s. The music which often features, whether it be stock or original, often conjured an atmosphere of otherness and mystery as to compliment the underlying presence of the unknown during this period, and so for me best represents the very essence of Doctor Who in terms of selected music. I especially love these pieces:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fewiHTKKpXo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SJjBRamMlgI

I’ll add the Inferno soundtrack too for the hell of it- it has much in common with the 60s scores:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig5QX9a3bQg&t=317s

Primitive, yet unique and atmospheric. New Who’s music (and the programme as a whole), in spite of its budget, bombast, sound and fury, is neither.

6:45-7:18 is always a piece of music I remember. He must have used it a few times.



I'm also quite fond of this piece:



Aliens of London/World War Three > Most of NuWho

You guys really should stop trying to defend the indefensible. New Who HAS NO VALUE. It is the definition of shit. Everything about it is shit. It serves no purpose. It has nothing worthwhile about it. It is just wrong, and deserves to be wiped form history.

To be honest, I think if pressed, the only New Who stuff I actually would erase would be Love & Monsters and Series 12.

The rest, I think I could live with.

Tanmann wrote:To be honest, I think if pressed, the only New Who stuff I actually would erase would be Love & Monsters and Series 12.

That would mean Elton's life-changing vlogs about getting head from a paving slab would be lost forever! The lads that go to my Perv club aren't going to appreciate that.

You know some weird friends, Maxil....

Most of them are imaginary