According to the liner notes, composer Edmund Butt was given one major instruction before embarking on the score for the 2013 one-off docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time: don’t let this piece about Doctor Who’s original star sound anything like Doctor Who. Oh, that simple, right?
Except that Doctor Who has run the gamut from electronic music to small chamber ensemble to electronic again and now orchestral-with-electronic. Anyone trying to avoid a category as broad as those will probably take off screaming for the hills. What the score for An Adventure In Space And Time does manage to do is land its musical style somewhere in an old-fashioned kind of timelessness, while occasionally trying on the more typical musical sci-fi trappings when the story calls for it. Starting things out with a waltz is not something that’s in the Doctor Who scoring playbook, providing the first signal that this isn’t “in universe”. (It’s also not entirely reality, but in a bit of a simplified uncanny valley in between the two, just enough to get some of the broad strokes of William Hartnell’s life across.)
You’re not too far into the album before the score does drop something that could easily fit into Doctor Who proper. “The Daleks” may accompany the first appearance of the Dalek props at the BBC, but it would work just as well in-universe, with a staccato synth bassline eerily hinting at the heartbeat-like signature sound associated with Dalek technology. Whether that was intentional or not, it’s a nice, subtle reference. (It’s also somewhat present in “JFK Assassinated”, a scene that appears adjacent to the Daleks’ first appearance in the movie; see notes below about the sequencing of the album.) The playful beginning of “What Dimension?” suddenly hangs a sharp left turn into a startlingly mysterious, almost foreboding passage accompanying the first glimpse of the TARDIS set transitioning from idea to a real place (existing on a soundstage), a theme also heard on its own in the track “The Tardis”.
But the heart of An Adventure In Space And Time, whether it’s the movie or just its score, is in sketching out a somewhat idealized version of Hartnell’s life. “Autograph Hunting” accompanies a montage of such scenes very effectively, just as “Piss & Vinegar” follows Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman’s thread through the story. Though there are some standouts that musically portend major developments in the mythology of Doctor Who, most of the score is concerned with the stories of the people making that mythology.
The one thing I really count any points off for with this otherwise wonderful release is that the tracks are wildly out of order with regard to how and where they appear in the show itself – the first piece of music heard in the show is literally the last track on the album. Only toward the end of the album do things start to appear in anything reasonably resembling their sequence as aired, with a loose suite of cues clustered around the theme of Hartnell’s decline and eventual departure from the role (“I’m So Sorry, Bill”, “My Successor”); the real stunner of this almost-a-suite at the end is “The New Doctor”, which includes the scene of Hartnell shooting his last scene, and the in-universe-or-maybe-not glimpse of Matt Smith that follows. I can’t fault any of the music, but the sequencing is a bit baffling.
- Main Title – An Adventure in Space and Time (00:36)
- The Right Man (01:15)
- The First Woman Producer (01:18)
- I’ve Got an Idea… (01:32)
- The Daleks (02:49)
- Kill Dr. Who (01:49)
- What Dimension? (01:23)
- This is My Show (01:49)
- Autograph Hunting (02:28)
- Sydney Newman (01:02)
- Scarlett O’Hara (01:02)
- Piss & Vinegar (01:23)
- Dressing Room (01:19)
- JFK Assassinated (01:48)
- The TARDIS (00:51)
- Goodbye Susan (02:29)
- 10 Million Viewers (00:56)
- The Fans (00:36)
- I’m So Sorry, Bill (02:39)
- Kiss Goodbye (01:05)
- My Successor (01:06)
- ISOP Galaxy (00:50)
- Irreplaceable (01:20)
- The New Doctor (03:54)
- Time’s Up… (01:16)
Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: March 3, 2014
Total running time: 38:23