Keeping me occupied on the nights when winter is beginning to blissfully transform into spring is the wonderfully comprehensive Doctor Who: E-Space Trilogy DVD boxset. Yes, yes, it could be said I need to get out more but in these credit crunch times, a couple of nights being a homebody here and there doesn’t hurt.
The E-Space trilogy formed an arc in Tom Baker’s final series of Doctor Who that saw the TARDIS sucked into another universe (the upshot of which was a bit of green tinting on the screen - sophisticated times in 1981). It’s a funny little trilogy of stories that at once highlights what was great about Doctor Who in the 1980s and what was tedious about it. It all got a bit serious and made a stab at sophistication at odds with the show’s childrens’ drama roots.
I’ll be honest, at the time I was watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century on the other side. It had spaceships and rayguns, leggy princesses wearing very little and a cute robot. Sure, Doctor Who still had K9, but as the show tried to grow up, it became embarrassed by this hokey little thing and did everything it could to sideline the metal pooch.
God, I loved K9! Still do. But I’m digressing here. This isn’t a jumpers-for-goalpost type piece on what the nine- year-old me was watching in 1981.
One of the best things about Doctor Who in 1981 was the music. Incoming producer John-Nathan Turner decided to take the series back to its roots and tap the resources of the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop for Doctor Who’s incidental music needs. It was this august and now much-missed department of the BBC that two decades previously had created many of Doctor Who’s iconic sound effects, including the TARDIS and Dalek voices. Perhaps most famously, this is where Delia Derbyshire performed audio alchemy on Ron Grainer’s original composition to create that original haunting theme music.
So Doctor Who’s 18th season had a new look all round - new outfit for the Doctor, new opening titles and a new, more modern take on the theme music from Radiophonic Workshop composer Peter Howell. Howell’s distinctive take on the famous theme would be used until 1987 and he scored incidental music for many stories over that period. The Radiophonic Workshop would, during this period, create a sound that made Doctor Who as distinctive in the 1980s as it had been in the 1970s.
And the Radiophonic Workshop will be back this summer in a special one-off show as part of the Short Circuit series at the Roundhouse. On 17 May, Peter Howell, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, Dick Mills and Mark Ayres will perform a show that explores the use of electronica in music past, present and future.
For anybody who appreciates TV history, innovative music and the melody that accompanied K9 trundling around that boggy ground in Full Circle, this really is not to be missed.
And to see Peter Howell in action, check out the clip below:
