The Music of Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who

You may have already read Tom's review (in which was my first appearance on this blog) on what could quite possibly be one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who ever made; Orphan 55. Overall, Chris Chibnall's era as showrunner for Doctor Who has been considerably weaker than those of Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies in New Who. I consider a large reason for this to be its score, composed by Segun Akinola.

The score of seasons 1-10 of New Who was written by Murray Gold, and I consider it to be one of best scores ever written for a television series, (maybe I'll review it one day). Anyhow, because of that I consider the score for seasons 11 and 12 to be a big letdown, as there is a considerable drop in quality.

Before I start to unpack this score, one thing I want to clear up is that I will be reviewing this score with the fact that it is for a TV series in mind. This is because TV composers have one of the hardest music jobs out there, you have very little time to write the score, and therefore it would not be as high quality as a film score, for example.

I also apologise, this score uses many electronic elements, and I am not very well-versed in electronic music so this review will be far less thorough than my other ones.

The man himself - Segun Akinola

Let's start by analysing some episodes. No, I am not reviewing all 13 episodes of series 12. Luckily for me, 12 of them sound basically the exact same, and then 1 of them is a bit different.

First of all, we will be looking at Spyfall: Part 1. Most of the soundtracks for this season are very similar to this one, in quality and content.

It does have some standout moments.

Firstly, the music when Yaz (is that how you spell it) travels to that green dimension thing (I'm really sorry I don't know my Doctor Who lore), the music that plays is rather fitting. It makes it seem quite eery and at times even scary.

Next, the music that plays when the Kasaavin attack the Australian police people (rip) in the outback. Now this, Third Ear Band lovers, is how to do aleatoric music (chance music, where part of the music is left up to chance) CORRECTLY. It actually does add to the chaotic atmosphere and doesn't sound absolutely shocking.

Finally, the music when they are walking to a birthday party, spy music that is very reminiscent of the James Bond movies, is actually really cool. I wish the whole episode was that consistent. However, I think that they aren't really doing any spying in this section. I think this music would have been cooler in, say, the section where they are chasing the villain on motorbikes? I don't know, that's up to you.

The first thing that confuses me in terms of score choice is the loud hits that occur towards the beginning of the episode whenever the shot changes to a different location. It makes the change of scenery seems oddly lethal and final, when it isn't.

This episode also includes some really weird tone setters. What I mean by that is that the music doesn't really communicate what's actually going on in the scene, or the mood that is going on. The first is the Doctor's first appearance when she is repairing the TARDIS. I don't think music was even required here, but still it sounds really hopeful and kinda sad but she's fiddling around and talking on the phone. I'll say it before and I'll say it again, music in films is supposed to convey how we are supposed to feel and help us to do so. What am I supposed to feel when I listen to this? I mean it's probably not helped by the awful comedy.

Am I the only one who finds Whittaker's Doctor kind of annoying? I'm sure Whittaker is a lovely person but I find her characterisation, being a know-it-all to be a bit of an annoyance.

What about when Yaz and Ryan are doing some spy work on Barton and stealing data from his computer? You'd think this moment should be really tense, supported by the music. But, unfortunately, it's unfitting, electronic, ambient crap that sounds like it was ripped from the Spore soundtrack. It doesn't make me feel engaged at all.

There's this other really emotional moment when Yaz is trying to describe her experience in the green universe thing to Ryan. What should either have a really emotional score or none at all has some really unfitting ambient shit that holds no value at all, and doesn't help me to feel anything.

One thing I think fight music (for those who haven't read one of my reviews before, this is what I call music that plays in action scenes) should communicate is who is winning the battle. Techniques like this have been used even in Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, in which the French and Russian anthems differ in their dominance in the texture throughout, correlating with the actual historical event. So when I hear triumphant sounding spy music (through use of brass and major-ish sound) playing when the Doctor is chasing after Barton, clearly not winning, we've got to start asking questions. And then, the fight music continues for a bit while they are just staring at an airport building.

Also, throughout the episode, I can't help feeling like the music is so low in the mix. For example, at the end when the airplane is falling down, I can't hear the music at all.

I couldn't think of any other image to include so here's me when I watched this season of Who.

One thing that I think this episode's score does shockingly is make basic decisions. One of the most important decisions a composer, producers and director will make when writing a score is deciding when music should play, and when it shouldn't. When I say that this episode always has music, I mean it, and it's always the same. It doesn't matter if someone is being killed by a car, they are talking about random stuff in the TARDIS, when something is meant to be funny, when it is supposed to be light hearted, when it is heart-wrenching, it's always this really bad ambient stuff, it doesn't matter what happens!

For example, when some important plot details are revealed in mi6, there is unnecessary ambient music is draw your attention away from the screen. When they have just been attacked by aliens and they are talking in the TARDIS, there is ambient music which makes the last moment a lot less impactful (it would be a lot more impactful if it were just silence). When Barton says that he has learnt that you 'can't trust everyone' we are supposed to be shocked, because that implies he knows that Yaz and Ryan are spies, yet there is no change in the music to tell us this. The reason I put this in this part of the review is that I think there should have been no music for the rest of the conversation to make this moment more impactful.

Now, let's move on to the cream of the crap, Orphan 55.

A real furry?

The music is just about as high quality as the rubber Dregs. My analysis won't take very long because while the score of this episode is different, it offers quite a few similarities to Spyfall, the fact that most of the music is just not fitting.

When they are teleporting to Tranquility Spa, the music sounds, dare I say it, sharp and on edge, which makes it seem so sinister. We've just been told we're going on a holiday?!

The music at the spa itself as the tranquil atmosphere that it needs, but when we enter the security room we need a contrasting mood in order to build tension.

BENNI!

When, god forbid, BENNI asks to marry the other lady, we hear non-emotional ambient music. Is anyone beginning to see a pattern? Not only is this moment really hard to watch but the music doesn't make it any better.

When the dramatic reveal that Orphan-55 is Earth rolls around, it's just got this same ambient stuff. How are we supposed to feel engaged, surprised, or anything when we hear this?

Finally, when the Doctor gives her final speech about climate change and facing facts and all that nonsense, we still have, guess what, ambient music. This speech would be a lot more impactful, what it is supposed to be (since the Doctor is now a SJW basically), if there was no music at all.

The reason I put Orphan 55 separately from all of the other episodes is the interesting ways it experiments with sound. What I mean by this, is that for some parts when the Dregs are killing people, we can hear someone using a bow (that would be used for a violin) on a guitar. The result sounds quite scary and striking. These interesting timbres are quite intriguing in my opinion and are actually rather fitting. It makes sense to me, as since this is a distorted version of Earth, it makes sense that what we think we know as music is also distorted. Doctor Who has always been a show that has experimented with sound, and Akinola carrying on this legacy is good to see.

Delia Derbyshire realising the original Doctor Who theme.

There's something that I think both of these episodes do poorly that I think is one of the worst things about this score, and it's really simple too. It's boring. I think you may have been able to figure out through my lack of real, thorough analysis that this score didn't leave me with much to go off of. It’s very, very low effort.

While fight scenes seem almost imitative of the Hans Zimmer style, they rely simply on rhythmic ostinati (repeating patterns) which play the exact same notes. Case and point, the car chase at the beginning of Spyfall, which just alternates from one note to another and back again hundreds of times. It’s not bad, but I feel like the score could be much more engaging if it was more detailed. Then for some reason something that sounds like the Master's theme plays (it might not be), but that doesn't make any sense because we haven't even established the Master's theme yet, or his character.

A lot of the time, music that plays is just one long held note. This happens to be something I mentioned in my Macbeth score review. If I were to mention every time this happens, I would basically be telling you every single episode of this season, but some bits include the conversation with Barton at his birthday party, the escape from MI6 and all of the fight music in Orphan 55. It really lacks that sparkle it needs to entrance the audience, and convince us, even for a moment, that what we are seeing is real.

To be fair, I don't know how this could seem real…

Even the ambient stuff is just reeks of laziness. It seems like something I could make in like 5 minutes, with no experience and no program to do so.

It tries to be Hans Zimmer, but it fails because it's uncreative, low effort and unfitting whenever music plays.

Why is my music that is amateur, at best, more complicated than that of an expert?

As I did when I reviewed The Rise of Skywalker, let's go through some thematic additions, though they are not very numerous.

Obviously, the most famous theme is the Doctor Who Theme itself, which seems to get a new arrangement every time we meet a new doctor. The one that Akinola arranged for this series is quite interesting in my opinion, it's alright. The weird electronic sound that is used to play the melody sounds super eerie and very 'alien' just like Doctor Who. However, I think it sounds pretty terrible in my opinion. The way the tone is manipulated just doesn't sit well with me. It also doesn't have the same rhythmic drive that the other Doctor Who openings have. The other openings use the rhythmic ostinato (repeating pattern) in the lower parts to drive the opening part forward, intending to draw us in and make the opening feel more tense. Also, I think that the melody sounds so weird, and it lacks almost any accompaniment that the theme almost loses its musical identity.

What I mean by that is that by attempting to sound really alien and creepy, the theme doesn't sound very musical anymore, and puts the weird sounding melody above actually sounding like a musical piece. I think that the music on its own, with its large intervals and very sinister, minor feel already sets the tone, and I think Akinola should have relied on that a bit more.

Also, Murray Gold's Doctor Who title sequences are far cooler and more complicated than this one (and still include both orchestral and electronic aspects). I'm not saying that Akinola's is the worst title sequence, I think that the titles for the Seventh Doctor have the worst music, but all of the other intros maintain the theme's musical integrity.

The next theme I want to talk about is the theme for the 13th Doctor specifically, sorry if that's difficult to get your head around. It's actually pretty cool, just I think not the most fitting. It's got a lot of ambient sound, which you will have to get used to, because Akinola loves it. It's rather simple but that's not incredibly important. At least it has a melody at all..

My problem with this theme comes from the fact that when I think of the 13th Doctor this isn't really what I think of. To be fair Akinola doesn't really have any character development to go off of here, but still this Doctor seems like someone who is light-hearted, quirky at times, and perhaps a little bit annoying even, I'm not sure. But if you could find a way that this theme represents any of these things then I'm listening. My first impressions were that it sounds quite dark, and very dreary, empty and barren, and then the main theme sounds kind of hopeful (which is good and fitting) but still not entirely light-hearted. The addition of the female voice towards the end make her theme sound like something from a different culture almost, I'm not sure if that’s just me.

All the Doctors who have good thematic material. Who is missing?

Now let's compare this to Murray Gold's theme for Peter Capaldi's doctor, who was asking himself the question of whether he was really a good man. What the beginning of this piece represents for me is shifts between a light-hearted glockenspiel-type instrument playing a nice melody, intertwined with darker sounding accompaniment, as if it is the bad and good parts of the character. Through this, Gold represents the character directly through the score, and we can get lots of insight into the character. Other bits of the theme sound very heroic and almost triumphant, leading us to view the protagonist with awe.

The final theme I want to look at is the new theme for the Master. First of all, was this theme really necessary? I'm sure, if you have seen Doctor Who before, you would probably be familiar with the 5 note motif for the Master - recall the episode The Sound of Drums if you don't know what I am talking about - which Gold used amazingly by integrating the story detail of the constant drum beat into his score as a theme for the Master. If you remember back to the episode Utopia, the Master's reveal uses these awesome cluster chords with that 5 note motif to represent him. I recommend this video here in which someone rescored the Master reveal with Gold's score and it's so much better, oh my goodness. It actually feels like it's the same character! Am I getting sidetracked?

A horror movie gone wrong..

Anyhow, I think we can all agree that somehow, the Master, while having changed their outlook on the Doctor with Missy, has somehow basically become the same person to Simm's portrayal of the Master. So why don't we just use the same theme?

The theme we got is a theme that sounds like a mix between Kylo Ren's theme from Star Wars and some solemn strings. Sure, it sounds sinister, dastardly and somewhat creepy but past that, I don't think it suits this character at all. What about the fact that he 'has fun' doing his evil plans, or that he is really powerful? Akinola said that his choice of the Master's theme was to represent, and I quote 'a life that could have been slightly different'. To do so, he says that 'in the main melody, if the notes were slightly different, it would create something that would be nice to hear', as the real theme almost sounds 'wrong' (which I don't actually agree with). But anyway, let me ask you this. How is a regular viewer of the show who probably has little to no musical knowledge going to pick this up? It's one of the most subtle techniques I think I have ever seen anyone use in a film score. If I hadn't watched the featurette in which he says this there is no way I would have known this. This makes the whole purpose of the Master's theme worthless.

I also want to clear one thing up. I've seen some people saying that there is a Cybermen theme for this season which is not true. While they seem to have a percussion sound that plays when they are around this isn't an actual theme. Gold's theme for the Cybermen is an actual theme/motif, and I feel like to maintain continuity with other seasons it wouldn't have hurt to include it.

Overall, the biggest problem that I have with this score is, honestly, its lack of thematic material. There isn't really a lot that I have to explain here. The recurring melodies that Murray Gold wrote for the other seasons of New Who elevate so many moments, making moments more emotional (such as when Rose 'reunites' with the Doctor in Season 4 Episode 12), and gives us insight into the character's thoughts, especially when they are thinking of a certain someone. My favourite might be Clara's theme, especially when the 12th doctor plays it on the guitar for her. (You can tell Moffat liked Gold's score enough that he included it in the plot)

Instead, in this score, we're left with music that sounds like it comes from a 3 hour deep focus study music video, electronic, ambient sh*t that lacks all emotional impact whatsoever. It's atmospheric, sure, but I still think there is so much more potential, and it's always the same, no matter the context.

Look! I found the score on YouTube!

I don't even know if I would call Thirteen's theme and the Master's theme actual themes. Google tells me that a theme is 'a prominent or frequently recurring melody or group of notes in a composition', and yet both of these themes don't really reoccur.

There are no themes, no recurring melodies, no emotion, no nothing!

And I haven't even gotten into the maximum pain-inducing pop music.

I think we've come to the conclusion that above all, the score for Doctor Who written by Segun Akinola is above all just lazy. You can't try to cut corners when you are composing with the legacy of Murray Gold's score. It's uncreative, boring, unfitting, lacklustre at best, and subpar overall. If this was a film score I would probably give it a 3-4/10, but since it is a TV score, I will give it a 5/10. Still, it's absolutely nothing compared to Murray Gold's score. Akinola said in an interview that he wanted to help Chibnall support the new direction of the show through the music, a change in direction with a change in sound. Well, I think now their work's quality seems to be directly related in that sense.

What a legend. Wouldn't go as far to say that he has destroyed Doctor Who, but sheesh it's bad.

Hope you enjoyed this review that was just about as messy as the score. I've been quite busy (and lazy) recently, and I think this score didn't really give that good analysis, but let me know what you think below in the comments. I have realised that the first 3 reviews I have done on this blog have been on scores that I don't really like, so I'm switching it up next time to a score I absolutely adore, so be on the lookout for that. Catch you next time!