Doctor Who | Series 4 | Murray Gold & the Doctor Who prom concert, 2008
Picture this: you’re sitting in your favourite live peformance venue – whether that be the Royal Festival Hall or the Glasgow Barrowlands – waiting for the main event of an evening. Eventually the performers troop on to wild and enthusiastic applause from an audience covering a huge spectrum of ages, and an expectant hush settles over the room. The players tune up and loosen up and presently, and with portentous gusto, launch into… the incidental score from the Fifth Doctor adventure Warriors of the Deep.
Just not happening, is it? And DWM is writing as one for whom Warriors of the Deep is a much-loved favourite soundtrack. Which is why it’s rather marvellous that these days, it seems Doctor Who music can be big and bold and brash enough to fill a space the size of the Royal Albert Hall. And from where DWM ends up sitting – row J of the stalls, directly behind a kid and his dad who were sat opposite me on the tube on the way here, if you’re counting – everyone in the building must be more than satisfied.
The main stated aim of these Prom concerts, which run at the Royal Albert Hall every summer, is ‘to encourage an audience for concert hall music who, though not normally attending classical concerts, would be attracted by the low ticket prices and informal atmosphere’. Job done, it would appear. There were kids in ‘EXTERMINATE’ t-shirts swarming the streets outside as far back as South Kensington tube station and beyond - and given that this venue, though large, can still only hold so many people, a fair proportion of those families must have travelled more in hope than expectation. And if their love for Doctor Who is such that not only have they come all this way just to spend an hour or two listening to the music from the show, but that those lucky ones who’ve made it in to hear the show will happily also sit through a formal, experimental and rather abrasive piece of modern classical music and then enthusiastically applaud the delighted composer at the end… then all concerned can be happy with their day’s work.
Not that it’s just been one day’s work, of course – much like Doctor Who itself, this is the sort of event that requires a lot of behind-the-scenes toil and sweat. “It’s mad, isn’t it?,” acknowledges Russell T. Davies. “Don’t imagine that any of us takes an event like this for granted. We’ve all worked on dozens, if not hundreds of other dramas, and not one of us has seen anything on this scale. With most TV shows, the biggest associated event is a press launch with twenty tired journalists, with one sausage roll per head. So this is just mind-boggling. Many of the team in Cardiff have worked like dogs to make this show happen – but I’ve got to praise Julie Gardner, because she’s like a force of nature. When an idea like ‘a Doctor Who Prom’ gets suggested, there are an awful lot of reasons why it won’t happen. And she demolished each and every one of them!”
“We had loved doing the Cardiff concert for Children in Need a couple of years ago,” says Julie herself, “and wanted to do another one, but make it different – to move it on a bit. And so myself and the then head of music at BBC Wales, David Jackson, went to see Roger Wright, the head of the Proms. The Proms has a history of doing family concerts, and has done Blue Peter concerts in the past. He needed a little bit of persuasion - because at that point - he had never seen any Doctor Who! So we sent him lots of DVDs, and lots of CDs of Murray Gold’s music. I think it’s very important that there is space for concerts like Doctor Who within the Prom repertoire. The point of this show is absolutely about bringing a new audience into this great building – and we are interspersing a few classical pieces into the concert, and one new piece. So it’s about bringing new music to the audience that is coming here for Doctor Who.”
“I think people would take as read that if someone suggested a concert of Doctor Who music at the Albert Hall, I’d be up for it!” smiles composer Murray Gold, before the show. “It’s kind of a permanent floating suggestion. I didn’t play an enormous role in this show – I helped decide the programme and gave a few suggestions about what other classical pieces might be played, what ‘music by dead guys’. They have to balance the amount of ‘dead’ to ‘living’! So if I’d wanted more of my own music the only way of securing it would have been for me to have been a bit more dead.” And how dead do you feel at the moment? “Inside? Plenty…!”
“I think this was probably born out of the success of the big concert we did in 2006,” agrees the concert’s orchestrator and conductor Ben Foster. “That was a great model, because we had such a great audience, and the music played so well live, in combination with the visuals. But to be part of the Proms series is something else entirely - it’s a great honour. I’ve never conducted either at the Proms or at the Albert Hall, so it’s a huge excitement for me. It’s such an institution – I regularly go to the Proms. When I was a student I would go every night. It’s such a thrill, and it’s nice that the Proms are taking the music of Doctor Who, which is so popular with kids – it’s a nice ‘in’ for kids to see classical music live, hopefully it will bring kids in to more concerts. As a conductor and a classical musician, that’s my hope – that the kids will be enthused enough by it to come to see another one.”
The noise that greets Freema Agyeman - our MC for the day – as she walks on stage to introduce the first piece at around 11am on Sunday, July 27th, suggests that enthusiasm is something this audience is not short of. Is the poor woman frightened witless by the deafening, if high-pitched, roar? Not a bit of it – you’d think she’d been presenting shows like this all her life. As it turns out, she’s essentially been doing this job since about, ooh, this time yesterday…
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Dress Rehearsal, the previous day: Saturday July 26th, 10am: DWM is sitting alongside composer Murray Gold and executive producer Julie Gardner, watching the show’s final run-through. All seems to be going remarkably well – there’s the odd missed or delayed cue, but that’s not so much a problem as a reason for being here. Rough edges are a part of any show’s development and the two people on my left, notebooks and cameras at the ready, are here to spot these and make everyone aware of them, and thus duly get rid of them before tomorrow. And for all that this is an important function, it’s quite sweet that they – Julie in particular – seem to be giggling their way through most of the show. DWM senses that the inherent ridiculousness of sitting in a near-empty Royal Albert Hall listening to Doctor Who incidental music may be having an effect. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see people enjoying their work And anyway, as Julie admits, it’s nice to have the comparative luxury of a full, detailed run-through. “At the Cardiff concert in 2006,” she quietly confides, “we didn’t even get through the dress rehearsal – it happened on the day of the show itself, and we had to cut it off in the middle.” Well, that show didn’t seem to suffer too badly for it, so that bodes well…
Freema walks, cutely, on stage for a bash at her first link as presenter, back-announcing a piece by Aaron Copeland - and if she’s overawed by the huge, near-empty auditorium she manages not to show it. “Aw, she’s lovely,” Julie will be heard to say, apparently involuntarily, every time Freema emerges. There’s later to be a bit of discussion amongst various observers about precisely how one pronounces the composer’s first name, and whether Freema got it right. If that’s as rough as the edges are going to get, I don’t think anyone has much to worry about…
“It is such an honour to be here,” Freema tells DWM later. “When the music’s playing, I’m getting carried along on a journey too – but I mustn’t forget that I’m there to do a job, to take everyone through the story. I’m taking it really seriously, but I’m under no illusions about it – I’m not as important as the music. The orchestra, Murray’s compositions – these are the main focus of the concert, so the pressure’s off in that sense, it’s not about me. But I am there to move the pieces along, so I’ve got to do that clearly and confidently. This is why rehearsals are mandatory! We had a stagger-through on Friday, which was all very stop-start, and so you didn’t feel the flow of it. But today has been absolutely invaluable. You can have cue cards or autocue or whatever, but nothing beats familiarity with the material, because that means you can really engage with it. That’s my next stage – to prepare for the audience. When there’s an audience in it’s very different. So I feel really good, but I will feel brilliant tomorrow!” How does a big live event like this compare to a standard day at the studio? “It’s a world away. Presenting and acting are so, so different. It’s an art in itself, presenting, and it’s not my main craft. I can’t rival the people who do it all the time – it’s so difficult. I went on Blue Peter quite recently, and I was looking at the guys who present that. And they get scripts that they have to learn, and then when they come in they have to talk, and make things, construct things, while people are talking in their ear, telling them things on top of what they’ve already learnt from the script. It’s such an unbelievable skill – acting feels a lot simpler - though if you ask a presenter they’d probably say the opposite! So it’s great for me to have the opportunity to ‘have a go’, but I’m not in my comfort zone…”
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The Doctor Who segment of the concert proper begins with All The Strange, Strange Creatures, the first of the crowd-pleasing ‘fan favourites’ and the first emergence of some real, flesh and blood monsters wandering through the auditorium threatening children. Does it perhaps seem slightly odd to think of some aspects of the show as being ‘greatest hits’ when they’ve essentially only been played live once before? “Like you say,” Murray has already admitted to DWM, “there are those ‘crowd-pleasers’ – Doomsday, This Is Gallifrey and All The Strange, Strange Creatures. They’re all quite similar pieces, they’ve all got a similar kind of soft-rock, angsty-rock beat. They’re all quite driving and have quite a similar melodic rock’n’roll, dark-ish feel… God, I’ve been doing this such a long time now!”
“Remember when the programme was coming back, in 2004?” Russell reminds us. “We kept on saying it would be ‘full-blooded’. And I chose that phrase carefully, because it meant getting the strongest actors, the strongest visuals, the strongest scripts – and the strongest music too. Standard TV incidental music just warbles in the background, it’s a bed of atmosphere, rather then proper music. And we wanted better – music you can sing, music that makes you cry, and smile. Music that now gets a concert at the Albert Hall!”
“From Series 1 onwards,” agrees Julie, “Murray had the right sensibility for Doctor Who. If you look back at the music he’d written before Doctor Who, it’s very singable themes – I really remember the Queer As Folk theme, the Clocking Off music, the Shameless theme… there’s a ‘bigness’ to them, and also I think in spirit he absolutely matches what we’re doing on Doctor Who. It’s big emotion, big themes, big melodies. There’s a lot of drama in Murray’s scores, and I think at that moment at the start of Series 1 that was absolutely in sync with what we had to do with the show. His contribution is enormous. The music needed to be fearless, and that’s one of the qualities he brings to it.” And who decided what bits of music would be included? “It was Murray’s decision,” says Julie. “We did have to make some difficult cuts – the Cyberman theme, for example, had to be cut. It was running at six minutes long and we just had to make a sacrifice.”
That doesn’t seem to be deterring those Cybermen from invading the auditorium during All The Strange, Strange Creatures, leaving overawed children scrambling out of their way. Sweetly, although the audience enjoys the ‘participation’ element of the show, it never seems to get out of hand – everyone attending seems to understand that for the practicalities to work, the monsters need to be unimpeded as they wander around in menacing fashion; after all, it’s not as if the guys inside can particularly see where they’re going. Various Ood and Judoon and Sontarans mill around steps and stage while the Cybermen enter a little pen in the middle of the audience and descend ominously into the bowels of the building...
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Dress rehearsal, the previous day: Various contributors take a moment out to discuss the show’s programme of events. “In a series of Doctor Who, thirteen episodes, that’s getting on for ten hours of music,” Ben Foster points out. “So there’s a lot of new music composed for every episode. So it’s hard to choose - his themes are so strong, the moods we create with the orchestra are such fun, so you want them to be heard. And often in their role as ‘underscore’ in the show, you don’t hear some of the detail - so it’s really nice to be able to have this opportunity to hear it in undiluted form, as music.”
“I think Murray has now written enough ‘iconic’ pieces that you would never want to not have as part of the programme,” Julie points out. “For me Doomsday is one of those, the Gallifrey theme, Song Of Freedom from Journey’s End. We were also thinking about the concert in a more holistic way as well; the interactive elements like the monsters appearing live on stage. Their entrances have to hit particular cue points, and hopefully we’re matching those with the themes of the music.”
Julie is, in fact, getting a little worried about the timings of those entrances and exits, and those of the various on-stage soloists, announcers and conductors. Similarly, Murray – who is performing during the final three numbers - has just realised that he’s got to get on stage in the middle of the show, somehow or other. It looks as though he might have to edge his way carefully through the string section. We can’t quite work out where Freema is during her link into the Prokofiev piece, and it turns out she’s doing this link from the top of an unexpected staircase. All concerned duly note that the lighting for this link needs to be careful or the audience will merely hear a disembodied voice. ‘This is a piece I could learn from,’ notes Murray quietly, once Montagues and Capulets is underway. ‘Beautifully orchestrated.’
DWM has been wondering how familiar Freema is with the music she’s introducing here – after all, most of her work is done long before that music has even been composed. “The concert in Cardiff was the first time I started thinking about the music in the show,” Freema decides, “because it’s something that’s slightly taken for granted. You watch something and wonder why you’re being carried on this wave of emotion. Yes, it’s the acting, but the music plays a part in it, it’s so emotive. So that started getting me thinking about it – and then I got the Doctor Who soundtrack CDs. But even so, there are some surprises – I didn’t know the facts behind such-and-such a piece of music. So I’m learning! I actually got the name of one of them wrong in the rehearsal – and I’ve got an autocue there! I said ‘Song For Freedom’ and it’s ‘Song Of Freedom’! So there’s a lot that I’m learning as I go. But I am a little more savvy in terms of the music of the show now. And much as I think the words are necessary, to see something like that where you’ve got the VT running with the pictures but not the dialogue… the music’s taking you through the story, isn’t it? It really works with no words! So that proves how important the music is in the show.” Indeed, the specially-edited compilations of video footage playing alongside the music are jubilantly reinforcing for an audience that’s probably seen and heard this stuff a dozen times before the great and precise significance of the music they’re listening to. And Martha’s Theme itself is one of the most identifiable. Has Freema ever had her own ‘signature tune’ before? “No!” she giggles. “And I absolutely adore it – David Tennant sort of wound me up for the first few days, just making up some ridiculous funk-jazz, dated tune. But I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t quite know how it all works when you have a theme for a character… but I adored it! And I still do to this day, it does give me goose-bumps. I like how all of the companions’ themes are beautiful lyrical pieces of music – they have that in common – and they all suit the character in certain different ways. Rose’s has quiet, little bells and things, Martha’s has a kind of jazzy feel to it, and then I don’t even know to describe Donna’s theme, it has a ‘busybody’ kind of sound to it. It’s just so clever. As I said out there on stage, I’m slightly biased but I do prefer Martha’s Theme..!”
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Martha’s Theme – also a favourite of DWM – comes toward the end of the first act, which culminates in a specially written and filmed ‘mini-episode’ evoking the themes of the show, Music of the Spheres. “It was really done to give David, as the Doctor, a presence at the concert, because he wasn’t available to be here,” as Julie pointed out yesterday.
“The whole point of the Proms is to open up music, and make it an event,” Russell also insisted, “so I want that mini-episode to be something really special for those who are actually in the Hall. You can watch it later on the website, or on YouTube, or whatever, but frankly, you’ll never know what it was really like unless you are in the Albert Hall on that day. It can never be captured again. And that’s a reward for people who buy tickets and queue and travel.” A reward it certainly is, successfully fusing together all the disparate elements of this show: orchestra and conductor, VT footage, monsters – in this case, that pesky Graske again – roaming the stage, and adding on top both a well-judged performance from David Tennant and a timely tribute to the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in the form of the original Doctor Who theme, it’s one of the highlights of the day.
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Dress rehearsal, the previous day: There’s actually a little concern that the original version of the theme tune can’t be amplified loud enough to fill the hall in the same way as the orchestral pieces do. Eventually, all involved in the discussions realise that it probably doesn’t matter, as by that stage there is likely to be a chorus of screaming, applauding children rendered even louder and more excited by a previously unseen piece of Doctor Who, so it’s all something of a moot point. It’s interesting that even at the run-through, the moments in Music of the Spheres where the Doctor directly addresses the audience get an enthusiastic response from the few people randomly scattered around the arena…
Presenting duties in the second half are being shared around – first up are Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri, two people it seems Doctor Who couldn’t shake off even if it wanted to. “Oh, we love your magazine!” gushes Camille, on being introduced to DWM. “Especially that last one, with all of us in it!” Noel and Camille are here to introduce the Daleks, it seems. Conductor Ben Foster enters into the spirit of things, being chased on stage for the next piece by one of the metal monsters themselves. For a few seconds, nothing much seems to happen, but then it becomes obvious that something unpleasant is emerging from deep in the building, up through that hole in the floor the Cybermen already descended into…
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At the show itself, the minor timing problems involving the central platform have been sorted out and the screams-cum-cheers that herald the appearance of Davros and a Dalek in the middle of the hall probably even drown out those that greeted Freema at the top of the show. And amazingly for someone so softly-spoken, Julian Bleach’s performance pretty much fills the hall. This from a guy hidden under a mask and only able to move one hand. Remarkable. But in terms of deafening screams, the show is about to play a joker: at the end of the Dalek segment, on stage walks Catherine Tate to announce the next suite of music, and the noise is such that the building threatens to take off. But then, it seems from the event programme that it wasn’t announced upfront that Catherine was even present, and the room, as one, squeals in surprise and delight. For a fraction of a second one of the otherwise impeccably-behaved crowd forgets him-or-herself - the pitch of the voice makes it difficult to tell – long enough to squeal “DONNA ROCKS!!!” at full volume, which in turn means that when Catherine exits the stage she does so nearly doubled-over with laughter. One gets the sense that everyone in the building is having rather a good time…
The emotional feel of the show then changes regularly for the remainder of the show - while always remaining ‘full-blooded’ in pitch - with a slightly beefed-up version of Reinette’s Theme from The Girl In The Fireplace gaining in breadth and depth while losing nothing in sensitivity, and the perennial favourite Doomsday making everyone insist that no, there’s nothing wrong, they’ve just got something in their eye…
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Dress rehearsal, the previous day: Having already been heard lustily singing along with the impressive, confident run-through of the big Dalek theme, Julie Gardner is now quietly making small-ish blubbing noises to herself during a few pieces, the aforementioned Doomsday in particular. Does she still, after all this time and many, many viewings, find herself emotionally involved in the episodes? “Oh, was I weeping?” she chuckles. “Yes, absolutely. Real tears, every single time.”
Tim Phillips – the song’s original vocalist from The Christmas Invasion – meanders on stage to sing Song For Ten. He looks magnificently out of place, dressed in a pink t-shirt and khaki shorts with longish hair and a scruffy beard. He looks like he’s come direct from behind a stall in Camden Market, which provides one more element of marvellous ludicrousness to an event that still, when you say it out loud (‘a Proms concert… of Doctor Who incidental music?!’) sounds utterly, utterly bonkers…
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…and at the climax to the concert, the crowd joins in the singing of Song For Ten and claps along, though for the show itself Tim still manages to look like a displaced indie kid seeking refuge from The Good Mixer - despite now sporting a suit and tie. And the show ends with a rendition of the latest arrangement of the Doctor Who theme, of course. Ends? Well, no, obviously not – a standing ovation for Ben, Murray, Freema and the orchestra mean a quick huddled discussion and quick repeated blast of Song Of Freedom, and only then does everyone finally leave the room. It’s been a great show. Let’s do it again sometime. Of which, more in a moment.
Wandering out, DWM is waylaid by a worried Nick Briggs, who checks if the modulation problems on his Dalek voice contribution were audible – apparently there had been some unprecedented interference from some other equipment elsewhere in the room. He is assured that what with the room acoustics and all, absolutely no-one in the room can possibly have noticed what will only have been a minor problem anyway. Honestly, these perfectionists…
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Dress rehearsal, the previous day: Wandering out, DWM is waylaid by a worried Murray Gold, who wants to know if his piano contribution to Doomsday was audible to the listeners. He is assured that yes, he was cutting through quite nicely. “Good,” sighs a relieved composer. Honestly, these perfectionists… “I was giving it a good old thump, but I was sitting next to drum kit and couldn’t hear a thing. Did you hear the ‘Elvis Costello’ bit?” What, the Oliver’s Army kind of motif? Yes, I did, now you mention it, though I’d never have thought of that as the source of it. “There’s always that thing, when you go to gigs,” Murray ponders for a moment. “There are those who go, expecting a gig to be exactly what they’ve got on their album, and there are those who expect it so sound like a live gig. And I want it to sound like on the album!” He laughs. “It’s hard enough to mix the electronics and the orchestra together in a recording studio, let alone to do it all live. But I think we’re doing OK.”
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In the event, ‘OK’ is damning with faint praise; the enthusiasm of the crowd throughout the show - and in giving two unrestrained standing ovations at the end - tells its own story in terms of how well the show worked for the audience. Did it work for the people working on it? Murray’s ever-thoughtful smile suggests so, Julie Gardner gabbles excitedly, Russell T. Davies is to be seen enthusiastically kissing Nick Briggs on the top of the head – did anyone ever mention that Russell is quite tall? – and Ben Foster looks exhausted but pleased. DWM corners Doctor Who brand manager Edward Russell, who’s been co-ordinating a lot of the comings and goings at this event and who looked, this time yesterday, equally blessed and stressed. How did he think it all went? “I think the only thing that went wrong today,” he muses, “is that we over-ran by ten minutes.” Really? Hardly a problem as far as the audience is concerned, really, was it? Edward breaks into a grin. “I know. Great, isn’t it?”
With a second big success like this signed off, is there a future for live Doctor Who music events? Could this work as a regular show, or is part of the success of it that it’s an occasional, essentially ‘one-off’ event? Julie Gardner seems to think the former might be the case. “We’ve already started talking about it,” she says, “not for next year’s Proms, but maybe the year after.”
And what does Murray Gold, composer, think the future might hold? “Well, the first time you interviewed me was in my flat, second time was at BBC Wales and then in Air Studios, and now the third time is at the Albert Hall. Where will the fourth one be? Where can it go next?” Dunno. Wembley Stadium? “Oh. That’s a good idea, actually. You never know. It could happen…”
Last word to Julie Gardner, though, who’ll match Murray for preposterousness. “I’m dead keen,” she confidentially reveals, “to get us into Glastonbury next year!”. Glastonbury? The Glastonbury festival? Mud and indie-rock and hippies and stupid hats and mud and no toilets and mud? That Glastonbury festival? “Well, it’s true that at the moment no-one else seems to be campaigning on my behalf, I’m a solo voice on this one. But why not? The Saturday night headline slot, after Jay-Z – Glastonbury takes risks! And I like the idea of Daleks trundling across those muddy fields. I think it would be great!”.
To be honest, after the success of today, DWM wouldn’t want to be the one to rule out the possibility.