Doctor Who soundtrack Q&As
I got, and responded to, an e-mail from a reader recently and asked him if it’d be cool for me to post his questions and the responses here, because I figured they’d be of interest to…well…someone. Maybe.
Has “Dr. Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop” folded? The last release of which I know is “Devil’s Planets” and that was what, four years ago? I am really eager to hear “State of Decay” which should logically be the next release in volume five.
The last anyone’s heard out of Mark Ayres, who tirelessly does the restoration of the Radiophonic Workshop material for CD release and for inclusion as isolated music tracks for the classic series DVDs, the Radiophonic Workshop CDs have been in limbo pending a larger reorganization of BBC Music (which is also supposedly why we haven’t gotten a Murray Gold soundtrack from the new series yet – something which it’s interesting to note isn’t available for pre-order yet). Another thing to consider is that the classic series DVDs are selling many, many more copies than the Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack CDs, so the market reality is that the BBC is going to have Mark directing all of his energy to restoring soundtracks for DVD; we might still get CDs out of it later as an ancillary thing, but with all of the isolated music soundtracks that we’re getting on DVDs, I wouldn’t be completely surprised if we’ve seen the last of the CDs.
Since “Survival” is a bootleg, chances are I’m not going to see it advertised for sale anywhere.
The Survival bootleg, like the other three “unofficial releases” I reviewed a while back, are nothing to write home about, in terms of either packaging or sound quality. The Survival CD is especially bad because it’s kinda like the soundtrack to part 3 only – not even the whole story. Given that Survival is (IMHO) one of the better Sylvester McCoy stories that hasn’t made it to DVD yet, I’d lay good odds that we’ll be seeing a Survival DVD, complete with a decently remastered isolated music track, in the next 18 months. I’d just wait for that.
Was “Delta and the Bannermen” ever released as a bootleg?
Bits of Delta And The Bannermen are on the 25th anniversary album, but if there’s a bootleg out there, I haven’t seen it. (That doesn’t mean that such a beast doesn’t exist, just means that I haven’t seen it!) Again, this score exists in its entirety, so it’ll wind up on DVD eventually.
Any other Doctor Who soundtrack questions? I’m not the expert, but I do play an expert on TV. (Well, kind of. It’s an unbilled guest appearance. As a voice-over.)… Read more
