2CDs: Doctor Who – Series 7 (2013)

January 6, 2014 | By Mark R. Hasan

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Rating: Excellent

Label: Silva Screen / Released:September 9, 2013

Tracks & Album Length: CD1: 37 tracks + CD2: 37 tracks (2 hrs 25 mins)

Special Notes: Digital and CD releases, plus limited gatefold packaging (5000 copies).

Composer: Murray Gold

Review:

Silva 2-disc set gathers another rich compendium of material in which Murray Gold exploits the might of an orchestra, with some fusion cues featuring electronic tones and kinetic pulses.

Among the stellar orchestral cuts, “Dalek Parliament” is an appropriately grim (and cheeky) riff on Khachaturian’s balletic writing with low and mid-strings delivering some wonderful spiraling figures. A jaunty, see-saw cascade of deep brass dominate the ridiculously fun “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” with Herrmannesque gliding notes on harp, and a humorous mood also dominates the brief “Brian,” with its quirky figures and accentuated pauses.

Most of the cues are strategically brief, often hovering around 2 minutes, but Gold’s orchestral writing in both more developed tracks and super-brief cues (“Upgrade in Progress”) is superb, with a large sonic scope really being the common thread. The brass throughout the score are especially bold and powerful, but even laments (“Your Orders Come From Me”) are just as affecting with clean harmonics making small nuances and orchestral details almost glide. The set’s sequencing and tight editing also ensure the album has a fluid motion, making the shorter cues seem like brief stabs and mini-fugues within a larger work.

The score’s synthetic enhancements are more rhythmic based, as with the brief pulses that enhance the gravitas of “The Emperor’s Wife,” a track that has harmonics in the brass oddly reminiscent of Ronald Stein’s writing. (It’s subtle, but fans of his main theme for Dinosaurus! will enjoy the similarities which convey a grandeur, and a little melancholy.)

Like Gold’s other winter 2013 release – Doctor Who: The Snowmen + The Doctor, the Widow, and the Snowmen – the engineering is first-rate, and the emphasis is on secondary material rather than Gold’s own Doctor Who theme (“To Save The Doctor”), and the more than 2 hours of music should keep fans satisfied until the next release.

External References:

IMDB — Soundtrack Album — Composer Filmography

Select Merchants:

Amazon.ca — Amazon.com — Amazon.co.uk — BSX — Intrada — SAE

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Tags: Doctor Who, Murray Gold