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There is a lot of talk about the storylines on Doctor Who, the characters, the plot twists and the great quotes, but I don’t think there is enough attention paid to the music of Doctor Who. Doctor Who fans all rightfully know that the show’s composer Murray Gold is a genius but the mainstream seems to be in the dark.

Music in TV shows can heighten tensions, add suspense and inject some much needed emotion, but can anyone name another TV show whose music is so damn good on its own that is can sustain a night at the Proms all on its very own?  I can’t.  Doctor Who is unique in this regard and it is all thanks to the genius of Murray Gold.

Even if you are not a fan of Doctor Who, listen to the track below and I dare you not to get your emotions all stirred up by it.

‘Trust me, I’m the Doctor’.

DISC ONE

The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon

*1.  I Am The Doctor In Utah*

2.  1969

3.  The Impossible Astronaut

*4.  Trust Me*

5.  Help Is On Its Way

6.  Another Perfect Prison

7.  Greystark Hall

8.  Apollo 11

9. Day Of The Moon

*10. I See You Silence*

The Curse of the Black Spot

*11. You’re A Dead Man*

*12. Deadly Siren*

13. Perfect Reflection

14. All For One

*15. The Curse Of The Black Spot*

*The Doctor’s Wife

16. I’ve Got Mail

17. My TARDIS

18. Run, Sexy

19. Locked On*

(Yes ALL of them!)

The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People

*20. The Chemical Castle*

*21. Which One Is The Flesh?*

22. Scanning Me

23. Ransacked

*24. Always With The Rory*

*25. Double Doctor*

*26. Tell Me The Truth*

*27. Loving Isn’t Knowing (The Almost People Suite)*

*A Good Man Goes to War

28. River’s Waltz

29. Pop

30. Tell Me Who You Are

31. Melody Pond*

(Again, all of them)

DISC TWO

Let’s Kill Hitler

*1.  Growing Up Fast*

2.  The Blush Of Love

3.  Terror Of The Reich

4.  The British Are Coming

5.  A Very Unusual Melody

*6.  When A River Forms*

*7.  Pay Attention Grown Ups*

*8.  The Enigma Of River Song*

Night Terrors

9.  Bedtime For George

*10. Tick Tock Round The Clock*

11. A Malevolent Estate

*12. Night Terrors*

*The Girl Who Waited

13. Apalapucia

14. 36 Years

15. Lost In The Wrong Stream*

(I say all of them, I’m mainly interested to see- hear which pieces there are. I know most of the pieces are rearrangements of previous themes, but I’d buy that! I want it all!)

The God Complex

*16. The Hotel Prison*

17. Room Of Your Dreams

18. Fear Enough

19. What’s Left To Be Scared Of?

*20. Rita Praises*

(If ‘Rita Praises’ is the one I’m thinking of, it’s quite beautiful!)

Closing Time

21. Stormageddon, Dark Lord Of All

*22. Definitely Going*

23. Over Your Shoulder

24. Ladieswear

*25. Fragrance*

*26. My Time Is Running Out*

The Wedding of River Song

27. Tick Tock (Vocal Track)

*28. 5:02 PM*

29. The Head Of An Enemy

30. My Silence

***31. Brigadier Lethbridge – Stewart***

32. Forgiven

*33. Time Is Moving*

*34. The Wedding Of River Song*

Day of the Moon

*35. The Majestic Tale (Of A Madman In A Box)*

(That last one must be the one that plays when they burn him, and that is the best part/piece of the episode!)

Expect a few more Who music related posts from me. and maybe a couple of sections on the podcast.

It’s seven years since this was made, which make it the difference between An Unearthly Child and Spearhead From Space – or Planet of the Spiders and Castrovalva. Or Survival and the TVM. Or… well, you get the idea.

It doesn’t seem that long ago, but Doctor Who has clearly changed enormously since then. As it was on telly I thought I’d watch it and makes some notes.

What’s extraordinary is just how much the last two seasons have cast off so many RTD-era tropes – it feels like a radically different series now; much more assured; much more certain about its own identity and tone.

Whether that’s a good thing is debatable, but Aliens of London seems extremely uneven. Its tone jumps about quite a lot – broad farce, almost pantomime, on minute and drama the next and sci-fi the next.

Ecclestone suffers the most here. His Doctor is not merely eccentric or weird or even childish. He actually seems simple. It undermines the character and just makes the whole seem bizarre.

Tennant and Smith seemed to nail their Doctor immediately, as did McGann. Only McCoy seemed as out of sort – in this first series as the Doctor – as Eccles does here.

Overall, this is a story that’s unrecognisable from the last two or three series of Who – certainly the Moffat/SMith era. There are a lot of things about the latest series that I didn’t like, but I’m grateful that the series moved away from how low rent the likes of Aliens of London is.

Eccleston seems to be spend most of this episode behaving as if the Doctor is actually a bit retarded. The collision of the script, the direction and Eccleston’s clear discomfort doing ‘whacky’ acting make for a grisly spectacle.

Mickey = Mickey is just a gibbering moron in this episode – and in the majority of the series. He falls over; he mugs; he squeals. And then we’re meant to feel sorry for him when he complains about Rose leaving. It doesn’t work because Mickey is less believable than a cartoon character.

Jackie – Jackie is worse drawn and less realistic than a Carry On film character. See above.

Murray Gold cannot do any action music whatsoever. Any scenes that involve running, guns, spaceships or fighting seem to conjure up music that would seem out of place in the pilot of The Sarah-Jane Adventures.

Chav culture – It’s incredible how rooted all of this is in a very mid-noughties idiom. It’s like Doctor Who set within Little Britain or Gavin & Stacey. It feels incredibly dated and also very cheap; Doctor Wo done on a BBC3 budget.

Farting aliens – Occasionally this is funny; occasionally it’s even a little sinister. Mainly it’s just annoying.

Stupid – It’s remarkable just how stupid the whole thing is. Downing Street has banks of computers that have RED ALERT flashing on them? The army follow The Doctor because he says ‘Defence Pattern Delta’ to them (which seems to involve running quite slowly down a corridor)? Harriet Jones is actually still banging on about her local hospital even after a UFO has crashed in the Thames.

The cliffhanger – it just seems to go on for ages. On and on and on with three separate scenes convening in almost exactly the same way. There’s almost a moment of dramatic tension here with the various reveals, but it drags on for long it doesn’t really work.

I have to say this sort of things is what will keep the show alive forever!

@ GoTeamSeth delighed us with a guest post! We love you, TS! And she’s getting hitched this weekend, let’s wish her all the best for a long and happy life together w/ Mr. Seth. Eat, drink and be married!

Who dat?!

Team Seth writes:

As your Doctor Who delegate and lover of Murray Gold, I have produced the attached interview for you.  Here is the introduction:

Since we always only get lame red carpet or “behind-the-scenes” interviews with our favorite cast and crew members, asking inane and repetitive questions that yield nothing of interest to us viewers, I decided to take matters into my own hands. No need to know “What projects are you working on now?” or “What inspiration did you draw on for the pregnancy scenes?”.  We don’t care! We care about sex, drugs, and rock n roll… and if we’re being honest, mostly just sex. Come on, Ian Smoulderholder’s animal rights tweets? Not why we love him.

So, as the apparently appointed Doctor Who expert for TalkSupe, I took it upon myself to interview Murray Gold via twitter. You are likely asking, “Who the hell is he, TeamSeth?” Murray Gold is self-proclaimed on his twitter account a “Curious Sisyphean New York music/lit/aimless gym bunny type. Also weatherman.”  Some people call him a genius, others call him God. I call him “the man I want to come and break up my wedding this Saturday.”  Mr. Seth has even OKed this (see, Murray, all will be fine–you just have to fly down and rent a car).

But, the mainstream media will claim Murray as the four time BAFTA nominated composer of Doctor Who (among other notable things).  Hence his Supe interviewee status. So, without further ado, here is the interview…

iTunes has the Doctor Who Series 5 OST available for download!!! So, as soon as I got paid (which was yesterday) I downloaded the massive two-disc, 66 track album for twenty bucks. Now, I know twenty dollars is a lot to spend on a soundtrack – and a television soundtrack at that! – but it was absolutely worth every penny. It has every single piece of music that was featured in each episode, and there is not a single track that is less than amazing (I’m actually listening to it right now)!

Composed by Murray Gold, who has been doing Who’s music since the show’s return in 2005, this is, in my opinion, the best Doctor Who music to date. It has lingering traces of the Tennant/Davies era in terms of sound, but Gold has created something on an entirely different level for Smith and Moffat. His music brings each episode to life, augmenting the fantastic performances of The Doctor and Amy Pond, and each of their respecitve themes captures the essence of their characters and the actors portraying them.

But don’t just take my word for it, have yourself a listen!

This is the Eleventh Doctor’s main theme, which played in the very first episode when he proclaimed, “I Am The Doctor!” It’s the kind of theme that gets you ready for action, and it fits Smith’s Doctor pefectly; The Doctor is an ancient Time Lord who’s traveled the universe for hundreds of years, and Smith’s version in particular is, as he himself says, a “Madman with a box.” And both of those aspects are very apparent in this theme.

Together, these two tracks make up what is considered “Little Amy’s Theme”. I prefer it over the actual track titled “Amy’s Theme,” because it captures the wonder and awe that she experienced meeting the Doctor as a child, which she still feels as an adult when she actually travels with the Doctor. It’s the music of her inner-child, so to speak.

And here’s Amy Pond’s actual theme, introduced in the second episode of the series. It echoes her child-theme, but you can feel that she’s grown up through this music. She’s not the innocent child she once was, and Gold does a fantastic job conveying that.

Even if you’re not a fan of the show, I hope you at least appreciate this music; it adds an entirely new layer to the show and changes it completely. Very rarely do you find such quality on television these days, in terms of music and story.

And hopefully I’ve planted the seeds for future Doctor Who lovers. ;)

Virtually everything – I loved all the performances; I loved the setting and set-up; I though the regulars did brilliantly; I liked the side to the Doctor in lying to Rory and then shutting out the older Amy.

Twins

I thought Rory’s character devolved into the slightly feckless character he started off as – and there was some trademark Murray Gold cod-emotional indulgence – the musical equivalent of a crywank.

All told very good stuff. Among a very, very uneven season in which only the regulars have been consistently good The Girl Who Waited along with The Doctor’s Wife have really delivered a template for how DOctor Who can shine in its current incarnation.

Let’s hope someone at Upper Boat is making notes.

• Caves and Twins? What are you dribbling on about?

Go here: Caves and Twins

Jilly Kitzinger; the only woman who can face-off in a gunfight with a mobile phone and still look threatening.

Dan Martin, Torchwood: Miracle Day – episode 10

OK, most of you love Doctor Who, so do I, but recently I’ve been feeling pretty down about it. There are quite a few reasons for this, number 1 being Steven Moffat is a good writer but everything is about him! Let’s Kill Hitler was great but it;s not just his writing that makes it good. I can (and have) rant about this, there is SO much that makes an episode, the cast, the music, the directing, the set design, even lighting (I’ve done light and sound for a few plays and there is so much that can be done with lighting, it’s quite amazing!) and editing. I don’t see why, to all fans (not true, I know, but it just seems it), Steven Moffat scripted episodes are the best thing to happen to/in Doctor Who until his next one, it seems to be an instant thing for them! I mean, he’s a fantastic writer, but so if Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies, Paul Cornell and just about every writer they’ve hired! I’m a very happy Doctor Who fan, I love every episode, there are some that are worse than others, and there are some that are superb! I’m the same with all writers for Who, I love them all and all their work.

But point 2 being I was quite cynical about the Doctor Who team (or maybe the BBC) trying to get more viewers in the US with the opening two parter at the beginning of the year. So I went in there watching the episodes with that cynical eye but THEN we got the whole DWM spoiling the whole ‘shock’ Death Of The Doctor scene in The Impossible Astronaut. I wont go into how I feel about spoilers, or just that event, I’ll just say that I won’t like them at all and I feel exactly the same way as my good internet friend and fellow Who fan and Podcaster, Adam J Purcell – you may not know who he is, if so he’s one of the hosts of the brilliant Staggering Stories podcast, and if you want just how he feels look up Tom Spilsbury’s tweeter feed about the time of the DWM spoilers, you’ll see a ‘Twttier battle’ as we called between the two – and so I had the anger I’d been spoiled and the cynical feeling going into the episodes.

Also, apart from Neil Gaimen’s brilliant The Doctor’s Wife, the very fun, Curse Of The Black Spot and the fantastic  A Good Man Goes To War I was pretty disappointed with the first half of the season. In fact, I was disappointed with having just half a season, and I had that feeling TOO the opening two parter also. But, BUT, with all that horribly/horrible negative stuff said, I was so happy to find that Let’s Kill Hitler was a fantastic episode. This is where the purge begins, quite emotionally too it must be said, IF this had been a bad episode (and that would just be my opinion, of cause) I would’ve been angry! If it hadn’t answered any of the many questions left over from the first half of the season (hear my thoughts on that at: http://whoisthemancast.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/who-is-the-man-pdocast-episode-29)  I would’ve probably treated the next episodes with the same anger I had with the first two episodes, but that hasn’t happened, and wont – or most likely wont – happen.

As the name of the post says, I’ve had my faith restored with this season. I think that in the season break I remembered the disappointment, anger, and frustration I felt about many parts of the first part of the season and it built up to the point where I was kinda worried about this half, but all that’s gone  now! After seeing the superb Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvil and Alex Kingston back in action, heard some wonderful music from Murray Gold, had some some fantastic writing from both Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss I am very enthusiastic about what’s coming up! For those of you who know me online, you’ll know that Matt Smith is an absolute inspiration to me! I know a lot of people say that but I mean it, literally, his acting just helps me with things I’m learning/working on at Drama School, I see him do something, maybe a certain style of acting – very subtle, for instance – and I try and find ways to bring that into what I’m doing, it’s amazing! HE’s amazing! Also, Murray Gold too, not for acting – obviously – is an inspiration! If you don’t know about me and my love for Murray and his work, in short he is one of the top three parts of Doctor Who, no, correction, New Who. If you want to know more, read this: http://rhysparton.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/my-thoughts-on-the-music-of-new-doctor-who/. I will say, I don’t like that someone, somewhere down the line feels it’s OK to take some pieces that were specifically composed for specific scenes from last season and just dumping them into a scene this season! Come on Steven you’ve got a genius on your hands, let him make his magic! He does some, outstanding original pieces for this season but come on, Steven!

Alex Kingston was another thing that made me so happy about the episode, she is her gorgeous, extremely flirty, sexy (oh, gorgeous covered that), talented, flirty, wonderful, flirty (I’m noticing a theme) self! I say flirty because Steven Moffat and Alex herself know that she is an extremely sexy woman, and they so went to town to bring that out, with some of the costume and even River/Melody/Mels’/ reaction to her new body. It was probably a bit too far for the time slot, with the revealing clothes, the rather sexy posses but I’m a perverted sixteen year old boy and quite attracted to her so I’m not complaining! She’s got it!

Overall the I am extremely excited for the next episode, The Girl Who Waited, because it’s going to be an Amy episode! Karen is an amazing actress, and stunning! Yes, I am in love (as is Adam Purcell), have been since season 5, and it’s not just in…a…lusting way, it isn’t with Alex either, but anyway, I can say that so far this season they haven’t used her well this season, they’ve pretty much forgotten her really, so much so that, heartbreakingly (given how amazing she is and how in love with her wonderfully gorgeousness I am) that I nearly forgot about her! And that’s horrible! But from what I’ve heard the next episode is going to be a good episode, in it’s own rights, but bcause they’re going to bring back the brilliance of Amy from season 5, so I am very much looking forward to it!

So is you stuck with me through that, thank you for reading and I’ll post soon, probably some more Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston love.

P.S. My love for Karen has been refreshed because I’ve ‘remembered’ her so to speak, and I just wanted to spread her beauty:

So, would we have another installment in this tiresome story arc, or would we have a lovely little self-contained frightener? Would it be the Gatiss of Nightshade or the Gatiss of, well, virtually anything he’s acted in?

Caves

I really liked the dolls and the way they made people into dolls – and the dolls house conceit, although none were particularly well used.

Twins

I don’t know where to start with this – I’m not sure I’ve seen one Doctor Who episode in the current run that I’d actually describe as ‘inept’. As a plot this felt like a rerun of Fear Her. The script was leaden and crashingly unfunny. The pacing was terrible; virtually nothing happened in the first half, then a deluge of action and plot points. The direction and editing seemed very off; especially notable during the climactic stairway scene that just looked amateurish. We also had the worst emotional manipulation courtesy of another saccharine Murray Gold score and Gatiss lines that were almost shameful.

And while Arthur Darvill does the self-aware acting really well, I found it vaguely insulting that the fact that a character basically dies every week with no ramifications was basically referred to and laughed off.

There’s been a kitchen sink element to a couple of Gatiss scripts now that just seem out-of-place and heavy-handed. What’s more, what is it with dysfunctional relationships between boys and their fathers? Is Doctor Who therapy for him?

I take no pleasure from saying it, but Gatiss’ last three attempts to write a Doctor Who episode have been a complete mess, with Night Terrors as the worst of the lot.

His work on the League of Gentlemen was frequently brilliant; some of his NAs among the best; his work on Sherlock appears to be bearing fruit but Mark Gatiss just doesn’t seem able to write Doctor Who any more.

That’s a worrying track record for a man generally assumed to be the show-runner in waiting, assuming a new show-runner will ever be required.

• Caves and Twins? What are you dribbling on about?

Go here: Caves and Twins

(photo by R. Ecclestone for Sound on Sound)

Okay, you know you’re a giant nerd when you get excited about a new interview with a TV soundtrack composer but I’ve loved Murray Gold right from the moment in 1999 when I first heard his weird but wonderful theme for Queer as Folk. It had a kind of tribal, lunatic joy to it that matched perfectly with the tone of the series and, of course, when its creator Russell T. Davies went on to revamp Doctor Who, he brought Gold along, resulting in a run of some truly gorgeous work for seven years now.

I interviewed Gold for a brief piece in fab in 2007 and he was utterly charming. To this day, I still regret that a later computer hard drive failure wiped out the recording. I only used a few comments from Gold for the fab piece but our half-hour conversation went something like this new interview with Silva Sound:

Nice to hear in there too that some of my favourite pieces from the show are his as well. Take a listen to the QaF theme and three great bits from Who and see if you don’t agree:

Take my experience with it, I started off watching it because I love Sci-Fi, (pretty much Star Wars at that point in time. I want to see Attack Of The Clones in a cloak holding a Green lightsaber at the age of 10, & found Who the same year) and because Mum and Dad used to watch (Dad saw Hartnell) when they were even younger than me. Try to put the into perceptive, I was ten, they were however old they were then and they’re telling me they watched when they were younger than me, it seemed a big leap for my mind back then. So I watched it – Tom Baker repeats on the ABC – and when I  heard the theme I somehow (don’t ask me how) remembered it. It’s like I’d heard it before, but this was the first time. Also when I started off watching it I had the typical “Doctor Who… is that the one the guy with the wild hair and eyes and the long scarf travelling through with a little Tin Dog?” view of the show. But I’d never been told about it, so that was a shook.

Moving forward (I’m supposed to be talking about the music), in the past few years I’ve really begun to find the styles of music I like, and most of it seems to of the older verity (Queen, ABBA, The Beatles, John Lennon…) or Jazz and Classical. As I say on my page about music (http://whoisthemancast.wordpress.com/music/) I really loved things like John William’s work on Star Wars, I mean who doesn’t love the Star Wars theme? I also really started noticing ‘music like that’ (as I used to say, I meant Scores) after that and when it came to about season 4 of New Who I knew I had an ear for it. I think that Film and Television scores are the best, most real and most powerful music being produced today! I’m also sad that people don’t notice it much, because, in all truth, Films and TV would be nothing without them! I mean you can have some amazing actors such as Johnny Depp and Patrick Stewart and they could be playing a really sad scene and it would be amazing acting, but if you add music you cry, or cry more.

So by season 4 I knew that I had my ‘ear’ for the music so I kept noticing it. Season 4 has some utterly marvellous music, The Strange Strange Creatures being a stand out piece (although it was composed for season 3 but used a lot in 4, it’s the first one I kept identifying when it played in a scene.) then we have the superb Doctor’s theme for season 4, just for example. After that I got my hands on the soundtracks. I listen to at least one track from one of them a day.

So to finish up, three tracks (that all have a version of The Eleventh Doctor’s theme) from the season 5 soundtrack that I can listen to for years:

1. I Am The Doctor.

4. Amy In The T.A.R.D.I.S.

5. Words Win Wars.

I have no skill for explaining music; most of the time I’m hardly listening at all. I’m feeling. Drowning. Living. And so there’ll be no technical terms, no appreciation expressed for single notes, runs, or riffs. It’ll just be me saying I like this sound, these words; it touches a part of me, reminds me that I can be more, that I can be someone wise or enchanting, or lost, tucked in dreams no one can touch. It’ll just be me saying you might like it too. Musical Interlude is an every-now-and-then feature on Tempting Persephone.

The entire soundtrack for series 5 of Doctor Who is exceptional. Hard to pick a favorite among all of Murray Golds’ jewels. But. “I Am the Doctor” is like a diamond in sunlight; it casts prisms of color against the wall of my imagination, and there’s no denying I love every stirring note.  I also love that it was followed by “The Madman With A Box”, and that by “Amy in the Tardis” – a trifecta of awesome proportions.

Amy Across the Pond

Broadcast merely hours after the UK showings and co-produced by BBC America, the series was heavily previewed and publicised both on the channel (including a daylong marathon of the previous season) and throughout cable on-demand services. Special efforts were made to provide American-English translations for British-English nouns, suggesting a sycophancy about attracting US audiences (who I would argue like the show precisely because it’s not indigenous to America) not seen since the Sting-song superficial US crossover Doctor Who movie in 1996. Rather than find common ground through a mean or median word, as is usually done (the ‘marrow’ dilemma facing Wallace & Gromit, for instance) certain lines were re-played in American-English (e.g. ‘Where’s the toilet?’/‘For God’s sake take her to the restroom’), further weighing down and stalling an already leaden and repetitive script. There also seemed to be concern about US viewers coming into the show for the first time (not that long-time UK viewers are able to follow this season any better!) and each opening credits sequence was prefixed by a voiceover by Karen Gillan as Amy Pond orienting new viewers in the world of the show since Matt Smith’s first episode. While this has the feel and tone of Moffat’s Doctor Who, and is consistent with the themes of fairytale and prophecy he rams into the show like a sleeping bag into a holder, this recalls the hated Howard Da Silva voiceovers that American purchasers TimeLife tacked on to the beginning of episodes in the ’70 US airings that fans of the show protested against vigorously as a too dry overspoonfeeding jarring with the mysterious pleasures of the programme.

The BBC America Voiceover recalls this meeting

Documentary guides to the show’s history were also broadcast on BBC America in the few days prior to the premiere. A tremendously good idea, I thought. This was until I realised the BBC were trying to create the impression that the show began in 2005, which was previously a producer-institutional policy (related to increasing the market for DVD sales, I suspect) synonymous with the tenure of executive producer Russell T Davies to wipe knowledge and information about past programmes (and, crucially, how good they were) from viewer’s memories or desires. I thought we’d got over this as Moffat and the BBC started to gradually acknowledge the show’s colossal backcatalogue of actors and serials. But apparently this was deemed to be the most easy and convenient way to market this two-part special to new US audiences which not only impoverishes the memory of this hugely significant piece of our art, culture and entertainment but also insults the plethora of US viewers who remember and treasure the show from their youths. An unignorable difference between watching Doctor Who on UK TV and on BBC America is the commercial breaks. The show airs on non-commercial channel BBC One in the UK and therefore runs without interruption whereas BBC America has the regulation set of commercial interludes (although seemingly less than on a network channel). While I thought BBC America did admirably with placing these breaks in moments of high suspense the cut-away to commercial from shock moments of danger reduced the show’s effectiveness as a piece of horror, in episodes that already, despite their tantalising combination of creepy elements, didn’t add up to much in the scare stakes. It was a shame also that the over-complicated and now routinely unfathomable story arc somewhat compromised the show’s portrayal of a pre-Watergate Nixon. There was a fascinating debate to be had about his legacy condensed irritatingly into a few (now signature) clipped Moffat-written exchanges.

Turn over to my previous post on Doctor Who here.

“When I was visualizing my approach to this film,” said Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil’s director/co-writer Mike Disa, “I knew it had to be a tongue-in-cheek action comedy. Something as smart and exciting as any big budget action film, but funny and accessible to kids. That made me instantly think of Murray [Gold]‘s work; dramatic and bold but still playful and surprising.”

Murray Gold was born in the British naval city of Portsmouth but soon drifted away on a long, circuitous voyage around the world. He currently lives in New York City. He has been nominated for four BAFTAS and five Royal Television Society Awards in his native UK.

Gold is perhaps best known for his work on the television series Doctor Who. He has, to date, released six albums from that series, all of them reaching the number one position in the British soundtrack charts. His music from that series has been performed widely at concert venues and stadia around the world. His 2010 concert at the Royal Albert Hall was broadcast on BBC America and BBC One on Christmas Day in USA, Australia and the UK. He also composed music for the BBC/Starz series Torchwood and for the current Royal National Theatre production of Rocket to the Moon (2011) as well as working with Frank Oz as composer on the movie Death at a Funeral.

“Hearing Mike talk about his work…he’s a passionate guy…he draws stuff while he’s on the phone…I mean, he DREW this movie! You listen to a guy who DREW a movie,” said Gold.

From the team that brought you Hoodwinked, the hilarious retelling of the classic Little Red Riding Hood fable which grossed over $110 million worldwide, comes the side-splitting follow-up Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil. The sequel catches up with our heroine, Little Red, training with a covert group called the Sisters of the Hood. Finishing her training, Little Red is sent out on her first mission by the returning Nicky Flippers—head of the Happily Ever After Agency – to investigate the disappearance of Hansel and Gretel. Of course, what is a sequel without guest stars from the original? Thankfully, Granny, and the rest of the Hoodwinked gang, including the intrepid reporter, the Wolf, also return to help solve the forest’s latest caper.

“The audience for this need to feel the fun. I think they will,” explained Gold. “This is all 100% organic. No overdubs, or stems or clever patching things together. This is just a great bunch of musicians in one room. That’s how I like to record.”

“His [Murray’s] complex characters themes are introduced and then grow through the film mirroring the character’s emotional growth. The action scenes are played with gusto and passion while the tender moments are reserved and subtle adding depth and color to each shot,” described Disa.

Gold’s ensemble featured several notable players (including the late Maurice Williams lead trumpet), with music conducted and orchestrated by Ben Foster. Gold said, “All I can tell you about the music is it was made with a lot of care and love and played by a fine body of players…they’re the best.”

The Weinstein Company presents Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, in theaters on April 29, 2011. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil – Original Motion Picture Score on Lakeshore Records will be released digitally on April 26th and in stores on May 17, 2011.

I’ll try my best not to go in depth. Basically, The Impossible Astronaut made me laugh, cry, and blew my mind, all in the space of 60 minutes. And that’s the beauty of Doctor Who. Steve Moffat, you are a bloody genius. Oh and can I just say, those aliens things were reeeaaally creepy. For those who didn’t watch it, this is what I’m talking about: 

I think they’re called the Silence, but I’m not really sure. But they’re rather scary. But that’s just another integral part of Doctor Who- the creepy monsters. Ahhhhh I love this show so much. Like for real.

At the beginning of the fifth series, I didn’t like Matt Smith. But neither did I dislike him. He was simply… I dunno. He was the Doctor to some, but not to me. Not until the end of the series, at least. By then, I really started liking him. But I didn’t love him until tonight’s episode. Matt Smith gave an absolutely brilliant performance, as did the rest of the cast. Oh and the music was awesome! Murray Gold is the mind behind the amazing soundtracks. Here’s one of my favorite tracks. It’s called This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home:

That particular song is from Series 4 (my favorite, btw). And I just realized that my last couple of posts have been kinda picture/video heavy. Sorry about that. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words Anyway, I’m off to watch more Doctor Who. I hope everyone has a great weekend and Happy Easter! Until tomorrow!

Song of the Day: An Awful Lot of Running by Chameleon Circuit (Time-Lord rock)

Currently Reading: The Krillitane Storm by Chris Cooper (Yeah, it was very Doctor Who-filled day)