Latest / Half the Picture / #25 - MURRAY GOLD

Transcript

#25 - MURRAY GOLD · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  Well, you kind of want me that we're doing this today.
• 0:02
  We're doing the bloody interview now.
• 0:03
  But like you did that in a...
• 0:05
  Don't, don't, don't.
• 0:06
  Hold.
• 0:07
  Oh, okay.
• 0:08
  Everything good, interesting I've ever had to say is all I've been said.
• 0:11
  It's at the can.
• 0:12
  Really?
• 0:12
  We don't know if we've just been chained.
• 0:14
  That's how it should be.
• 0:15
  I mean, you can't just say, can you turn this interest off
• 0:18
  until the camera's rolling?
• 0:20
  Just let it flow, you know.
• 0:21
  Don't rather than...
• 0:23
  Oh, I've been laying it flow for many, many years.
• 0:26
  Wait, that sounds disgusting.
• 0:28
  Okay.
• 0:29
  Let's backtrack through all of that phrasing.
• 0:31
  Like, keep it.
• 0:32
  I was very happy when I got an email that just said,
• 0:35
  Dear Murray should have asked before,
• 0:36
  we're bringing back dots who would you like to see the music?
• 0:39
  Immediately we're back and said,
• 0:40
  Yeah, I'd love to.
• 0:41
  Thank you.
• 0:41
  I think I rang my dad straight after and said,
• 0:44
  He got in touch, dad.
• 0:46
  So that's good.
• 0:47
  But we were standing next to him.
• 0:48
  And I just turned around to him and said,
• 0:50
  I knew this would happen.
• 0:52
  I don't just go up to people.
• 0:53
  Only you, because you've meant so much to me.
• 0:56
  And I left.
• 0:57
  I was the one who left.
• 0:59
  I was like, goodbye, David Bowie.
• 1:01
  I don't have any more time, I'm afraid.
• 1:03
  How mad is it that we talk about your songs for Doctor Who?
• 1:07
  If anyone had said it,
• 1:08
  they would come a point where characters in Doctor Who
• 1:11
  break into song in the way that every now and again
• 1:14
  looks like it could be an episode of Glee.
• 1:16
  At one point, Matt gets up onto the top of building
• 1:19
  and screams at a bunch of aliens.
• 1:22
  I am the Doctor.
• 1:23
  When he says that, something has to happen musically
• 1:27
  that is going to be really memorable and identify Matt.
• 1:31
  So definitely the lovely series to do.
• 1:42
  Hey, everyone.
• 1:43
  I'm Billy, and welcome back to Half the Picture.
• 1:45
  I'm so stoked to say that I guess this episode
• 1:48
  is none other than composer Murray Gold.
• 1:50
  Now, you may have heard of some of Murray's music before.
• 1:52
  If you know this, or if you've heard this,
• 2:03
  or if you've heard this,
• 2:07
  you know exactly who he is
• 2:09
  and why I was so excited to have him on the show.
• 2:11
  Now, I've been a Founder Murray Gold's work for years
• 2:13
  since I was a child.
• 2:14
  I mean, he basically soundtracked my childhood
• 2:16
  with his music for Doctor Who.
• 2:17
  And I know many people can say the same,
• 2:19
  but also his broader career.
• 2:20
  Working on shows like The Second Coming and Years and Years
• 2:23
  and Query's Folk, of course,
• 2:24
  we really dived into his work in process
• 2:26
  as a composer in his broader career,
• 2:28
  and I think he can love it.
• 2:29
  Also, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast
• 2:31
  as it really helps us get more amazing guests on the show.
• 2:34
  So without further ado,
• 2:35
  let's roll on my conversation with Murray Gold.
• 2:38
  Enjoy.
• 2:39
  So Murray, welcome to Half the Picture.
• 2:41
  How are you doing today, sir?
• 2:43
  I'm quite good.
• 2:44
  I'm a bit stressed because I'm selling my house right now
• 2:47
  and there's literally waiting for a solicitor to call me
• 2:49
  and for me to authorize it,
• 2:50
  but I've turned my phone off, so I can't.
• 2:52
  So this is more important.
• 2:54
  Well, I mean, it's such a pleasure to have you on the pod
• 2:58
  because I've been a fan of yours since I was,
• 3:00
  I mean, we were saying before we started,
• 3:02
  but like I've been a fan of yours since I was, you know,
• 3:04
  yay high, you know, whether consciously,
• 3:06
  I mean, unconsciously, and then once I realized
• 3:08
  someone was actually posing the music for my favorite show,
• 3:11
  Doctor Who, I was like, this is amazing,
• 3:13
  you know, this guy's work is incredible.
• 3:15
  And I think probably most of us here in this room,
• 3:17
  you know, shooting this for Cornice,
• 3:19
  you could probably say the same thing,
• 3:20
  that you sound trapped, a good portion of our childhoods
• 3:23
  and even beyond that, you know, even into adulthood,
• 3:27
  I mean, you know, all of your work going back
• 3:29
  to where his phone could second coming
• 3:30
  and, you know, vanity fair and death at funeral
• 3:33
  and up till now, obviously with like stuff like
• 3:35
  it's a sin and dead ringers and, you know,
• 3:38
  and of course, Doctor Who, you know,
• 3:40
  running through a lot of that,
• 3:41
  it's such a pleasure to have you on.
• 3:42
  So, yeah, no problem.
• 3:43
  It's my total pleasure to be here
• 3:45
  and I feel just really privileged, you know,
• 3:48
  to sit with, you've had a lot of people
• 3:51
  I really admire on this show
• 3:52
  and it feels quite nice to be sat there beside them
• 3:58
  in the same environment, you know.
• 4:00
  That's a very nice piece to say, mate,
• 4:01
  because like I say for us, it's a genuine pleasure.
• 4:03
  And having listened to a lot of your music
• 4:06
  in the run up to this chat, you know,
• 4:07
  like going back and revisiting stuff
• 4:09
  that I had listened to many times over the years
• 4:11
  and also rediscovering stuff that I was less familiar with
• 4:14
  like some of your early work.
• 4:15
  It feels to me like for all of your body work,
• 4:17
  there's been this constant sense of exuberance to it,
• 4:20
  but there's so much sort of energy and vitality to it,
• 4:22
  you know, of course for a lot of people
• 4:24
  that a lot of those tracks will be stuff like Doctor Who
• 4:27
  that people already gravitate towards,
• 4:28
  but even going back to the beginning
• 4:29
  and stuff like Query's Folk and Vanity Fair,
• 4:31
  which did the music for, you know, the factory adaptation.
• 4:34
  There's such a sort of great sense
• 4:36
  of sort of rollicking spirit to it.
• 4:38
  And I guess I just wanted to ask as a kickoff,
• 4:40
  like where does that sense of exuberance come from?
• 4:43
  Because it's like no matter how dark a piece of music
• 4:45
  is that you compose, like whether it's for dead ringers
• 4:47
  or like, or even stuff like Midnight,
• 4:49
  an Epsom Doctor Who or Heavenscent,
• 4:50
  there's always that kind of sense of passion to it.
• 4:53
  And I guess where does that come from for you,
• 4:54
  that sense of exuberance?
• 4:55
  I mean, that is such a brilliant question
• 4:58
  because it crosses over with so many different things.
• 5:02
  My personal history and, you know,
• 5:04
  just notions of what human beings are,
• 5:08
  ideas of what tone is in art and how important that is.
• 5:11
  What is tone, you know, is it that goes through you like DNA
• 5:15
  that you couldn't get rid of even if you wanted to,
• 5:17
  which I suspect is something of the truth with me?
• 5:21
  I mean, and there's also like philosophy.
• 5:24
  What is your philosophy, you know,
• 5:25
  when you think about an artist, what are they?
• 5:29
  What do they represent?
• 5:30
  What is there?
• 5:31
  I don't want to say brand, but what is their thing?
• 5:33
  Who are they?
• 5:34
  And can you see that?
• 5:37
  Can you hear that?
• 5:40
  And I mean, in terms of personal history,
• 5:43
  I would also, when I was quite young,
• 5:45
  I lost my brother and he was 25.
• 5:49
  So just going in on a really big thing that happened to me.
• 5:54
  And I feel like I inherited all of this kind of what it,
• 6:00
  I started looking at life in a completely different way
• 6:03
  and it was just at the same time as I started writing music
• 6:06
  professionally.
• 6:07
  It sort of almost gave me a direction to celebrate life
• 6:10
  in his absence.
• 6:12
  So let's just kick off with that.
• 6:15
  You know, I just, it's such a big deal.
• 6:20
  We're not here for very long.
• 6:23
  We never figure out why we're here.
• 6:26
  We have a mini-school amount of time.
• 6:29
  It's like, I always think of it as,
• 6:31
  we're in this book, which is the history of our planet
• 6:34
  and we arrive in sort of chapter 107
• 6:37
  and we maybe get to see how things turn out by chapter 109
• 6:42
  and then there's another thousand chapters
• 6:44
  or so that you never get to read.
• 6:46
  And you just do your best in this weird sci-fi kind of thing
• 6:54
  that we call life.
• 6:57
  You know, you just wake up in the morning,
• 6:59
  don't know if you're going to.
• 7:00
  Anyway, so just my tone of approach to everything,
• 7:05
  is like, we're all weird, we're all stuck on this planet.
• 7:08
  I've got to be kind to as many people as possible
• 7:11
  because no one can get out of this easily.
• 7:13
  Everyone's a struggle, you know.
• 7:15
  We were a middling form of human life,
• 7:18
  the homo sapien who went and destroyed almost everything
• 7:23
  that and became the top apex predator.
• 7:26
  This is a big answer, isn't it, too?
• 7:28
  Didn't expect this to do.
• 7:29
  I certainly did not.
• 7:30
  No, you know, I mean, we weren't,
• 7:32
  the homo sapien creature was not expecting
• 7:35
  to end up the apex predator
• 7:37
  and it didn't have the sort of nobility and dignity
• 7:40
  of other creatures like lions and tigers
• 7:42
  who were the previous apex predators.
• 7:44
  We found ourselves at the top.
• 7:45
  We are still neurotic, uncertain, scared
• 7:50
  from our genetic DNA background as, you know,
• 7:55
  middling creatures.
• 7:57
  And here we are with all this power,
• 7:59
  but still with all these nerves and grief
• 8:01
  and not able to figure stuff out.
• 8:03
  And I just want to, in my tiny, tiny, tiny,
• 8:08
  miniscule patch of Earth of life,
• 8:11
  just recognize that there's something to celebrate
• 8:15
  and to just, you know, be joyful about and be curious about,
• 8:21
  you know, so there you go.
• 8:22
  Goodbye, that's you.
• 8:24
  That was the end of the episode.
• 8:25
  And that was it.
• 8:26
  I mean, see now I totally understand why,
• 8:28
  you know, you're a composer of Doctor.
• 8:30
  Right.
• 8:31
  I'm not sure that, you know, could have just come from
• 8:33
  the Doctor's work.
• 8:34
  Yeah, but it would have been much better written.
• 8:36
  Well, you said this thing actually wants about Doctor,
• 8:41
  which I think links quite nicely to what you said,
• 8:43
  which is that like Doctor who should brim with life,
• 8:45
  which is a show, as a story, it should be brimming with life.
• 8:48
  And I feel like your music has always done that.
• 8:51
  It's always brimmed of life and everything
• 8:52
  what you've just said there about how, you know,
• 8:53
  we're only here for a short amount of time.
• 8:55
  You've kind of got to grab every moment and live in it
• 8:58
  while you can and save it, I guess.
• 9:01
  I hear that in all of the music that you've composed.
• 9:03
  Like I say, no matter how sort of somber or dark
• 9:06
  or melancholic cue, it's always there's that sense of life to it.
• 9:10
  Because I mean, going back to the early days,
• 9:12
  I mean, before you were, when you mentioned like,
• 9:13
  when you composed, like opposing music professionally,
• 9:15
  for a long time, you did, I want to say you studied drama,
• 9:18
  you know, drama was originally what you were thinking
• 9:20
  of doing and music was a hobby.
• 9:21
  And then you decided to switch it at some point
• 9:23
  and go into music full time.
• 9:25
  And I wanted to ask like, what was it that brought
• 9:27
  about that switch and what is the thing
• 9:29
  that made you just fall in love with music?
• 9:31
  You know, was it a particular piece of music
• 9:33
  or a composer or a film or was there something
• 9:36
  that just galvanized you to be like,
• 9:37
  this is what I want to do?
• 9:38
  I mean, I was always in love with music.
• 9:41
  I grew up on a, you know, in Portsmouth.
• 9:44
  On, we lived on the top of a hill and it was a bit remote
• 9:47
  and we got broken into twice and it was a bit scary.
• 9:52
  And I, you know, like a lot of kids just spent a lot of time
• 9:58
  in my bedroom listening to music.
• 10:01
  I wasn't unhappy, I was quite a cheerful kid.
• 10:04
  So I was about, you know, and, but, you know, music is a magical,
• 10:11
  it's a magical thing.
• 10:13
  It just, in some ways it's like food, you know,
• 10:16
  that you can enjoy it totally on your own
• 10:19
  and nobody can tell you that what you've just eaten,
• 10:22
  you shouldn't have eaten and you shouldn't have enjoyed it
• 10:26
  because it tasted disgusting.
• 10:28
  Because you know what it tasted like
• 10:30
  and it did really great things to you as you tasted it.
• 10:33
  And music's like that.
• 10:35
  I will always just, I didn't really care if anybody else liked
• 10:39
  what I was listening to or I liked it.
• 10:41
  I didn't need to convince anybody else.
• 10:44
  I didn't need to proselytise on behalf of the artist.
• 10:48
  I didn't go into school telling people Bowie was amazing.
• 10:51
  I mean, they probably didn't even know I loved David Bowie.
• 10:54
  But I just discovered him because an uncle
• 10:55
  had lots of his records in his collection.
• 10:58
  We had a babysitter once as well.
• 11:00
  Got me into punk and Adam, Adam in the ants
• 11:02
  when they were punk and so there was lots of little things
• 11:07
  that he picked up on, but it's just about feeling, isn't it?
• 11:10
  Which I suppose is a form of pleasure in being alive,
• 11:15
  you know, that's what feeling, good feeling anyway.
• 11:18
  That's what it is.
• 11:19
  It's the ability to just, you know, experience
• 11:24
  what being alive is.
• 11:25
  I mean, speaking of Bowie, I mean, I remember reading
• 11:27
  that you once met Bowie, right?
• 11:29
  In New York, because you lived in New York for a long stretch
• 11:31
  and then you moved back to London.
• 11:33
  I mean, what was that like?
• 11:33
  I mean, Bowie being one of your heroes musically,
• 11:36
  I'm assuming.
• 11:37
  Yeah, I mean, I've met a lot of my heroes.
• 11:39
  I met Lou Reed.
• 11:40
  I met David Byrne.
• 11:41
  I'm huge fan of Lou Reed.
• 11:43
  And Byrne obviously as well.
• 11:44
  It was great.
• 11:45
  David Byrne was adorable.
• 11:47
  I mean, the other two are impenetrable and, you know,
• 11:49
  quite hard, exteriors, you know.
• 11:54
  Bowie and Reed.
• 11:55
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:56
  I mean, because neither of them should be gone.
• 11:58
  You know, they should both be here.
• 12:00
  They could easily have both been here.
• 12:02
  And then I would still be thinking,
• 12:04
  I'd love to meet them again, you know, and just chat.
• 12:08
  But no, I was just one of just a procession of freaks
• 12:14
  that Bowie had met in, you know, just some weird guy
• 12:18
  just goes up and says, how much he meant to him
• 12:20
  in an ice cream shop in Rhinebeck, New York.
• 12:24
  I mean, he was just standing there next to me
• 12:27
  while I wasn't paying attention and I turned round
• 12:31
  and, you know, the whole place had gone ice cold.
• 12:34
  My girlfriend at the time was tugging on my hand
• 12:38
  and I didn't know why and Bowie was standing next to me.
• 12:42
  And I just turned around to him and said,
• 12:44
  I knew this would happen.
• 12:50
  And that was when he was like, oh, looking for the exit.
• 12:52
  Yeah, three.
• 12:53
  Okay, that's another one.
• 12:54
  Oh, my God, you know, how did he react to that?
• 12:57
  Really?
• 12:57
  In that sort of slight 60s South London accent
• 13:01
  that he still had.
• 13:02
  And then I had to just carry on as if I wasn't the person
• 13:07
  being the person I was telling him I wasn't.
• 13:09
  I don't do this.
• 13:11
  I wouldn't, I don't just go up to people.
• 13:13
  I just, I wouldn't, unless, only you,
• 13:17
  because you've meant so much to me.
• 13:19
  And I just wouldn't, he's like, looking like,
• 13:21
  I've just dude, I've heard this so many,
• 13:24
  I've had this so many times.
• 13:26
  And I just saw I just looked down
• 13:28
  and his daughter was just, you know, choosing some ice cream.
• 13:31
  I just thought I've got to leave him alone.
• 13:33
  I carried on, though.
• 13:33
  Yeah.
• 13:35
  Well, I want to say, didn't you mention,
• 13:37
  you talked to the other guy,
• 13:38
  I don't know who you're talking to.
• 13:39
  I said, he wanted to know what I did musically.
• 13:41
  I said, I write music, and I write and write and
• 13:43
  I've been writing the music for Doctor Who.
• 13:45
  And he said, and he just, I've said this before
• 13:47
  and everyone's like, what did he mean?
• 13:49
  Like, he's turned around and said, I'm not doing it.
• 13:53
  And I said, what, what do you mean?
• 13:55
  He said, Doctor Who, they asked me to do it.
• 13:57
  And I said, well, I would never, ever think you would.
• 14:01
  And then I don't know what happened after that.
• 14:03
  So it's something else to say.
• 14:05
  But actually, a nurse at New York Presbyterian Hospital
• 14:11
  had told me that Bowie had been in,
• 14:13
  not long before I actually met him.
• 14:15
  They have a VIP wing there and she had rather indiscreetly
• 14:19
  told me that Bowie had been in and wasn't doing well.
• 14:23
  Well, hadn't been doing well with.
• 14:25
  So I actually just had fun and said, anyway,
• 14:28
  it's great to see you looking so well.
• 14:30
  You look fantastic.
• 14:31
  And I left.
• 14:32
  I was the one who left.
• 14:34
  I was like, goodbye.
• 14:36
  Goodbye, David Bowie.
• 14:38
  I don't have any more time, I'm afraid.
• 14:40
  I just thought I have to preserve my dignity and not
• 14:43
  be that person who just like crowds him out.
• 14:46
  I just saw I left.
• 14:47
  And then my girlfriend followed me and she gave me this photo.
• 14:51
  She said, look, I got you with him.
• 14:53
  I got the two of you talking.
• 14:55
  So that's been hanging on our wall of everywhere.
• 15:00
  I've lived ever since and I'm sitting there with my hand
• 15:04
  with my heart.
• 15:05
  And he with his one good eye is looking straight down
• 15:09
  the lens at the camera thinking, I didn't authorise this.
• 15:14
  And that looks really pissed off.
• 15:16
  So that would have been what?
• 15:17
  Thousand in the Mid-North East, 2006?
• 15:19
  No, that's much later.
• 15:20
  This is like 2009, I think.
• 15:24
  Yeah, so yeah, not much later, but yeah, around 2009.
• 15:27
  So slightly sort of wilderness years before the next day
• 15:30
  when he was sort of, I guess, sort of living in New York.
• 15:32
  We got back together with Visconti and everything magically
• 15:36
  became good again before horrendously
• 15:41
  becoming bad again.
• 15:43
  But those last two albums are absolutely fantastic.
• 15:46
  I was going to ask, do you have like a favorite bow?
• 15:48
  I mean, everyone has their favorite sort of version of Bowie.
• 15:50
  You're like, era, album tune.
• 15:52
  Do you have a favorite bow tune or album that is like your go-to?
• 15:54
  Well, the last album is just, I mean, is the hardest listening.
• 15:59
  It's almost, you could say, the deepest.
• 16:03
  Lazarus, is he called Lazarus the album?
• 16:06
  Was that the single?
• 16:07
  Blackstar.
• 16:08
  Blackstar.
• 16:09
  But then it's a song and then the album, yeah.
• 16:10
  So Hunky Dory would be my favorite just historically
• 16:16
  because first of all, it's genuinely heat
• 16:21
  after, heat after, heat and just beautiful.
• 16:23
  And his bowie is most optimistic, his most before the cocaine
• 16:28
  and the stardom really maybe darkened.
• 16:32
  I mean, he always had a very access to that, to a dark sign.
• 16:37
  There are still some tracks on that on Hunky Dory even.
• 16:40
  But it's just full of joy and hope for children
• 16:46
  for young like songs like Cooke's.
• 16:49
  Yeah, I was just thinking about Cooke's for that, specifically.
• 16:51
  Yeah.
• 16:52
  And I'll optimism.
• 16:53
  And just, I really do think that optimism
• 16:58
  has to be the starting point for any work of art, anything.
• 17:03
  No matter how horrific, no matter how dark it is,
• 17:08
  the very fact that you bother to do it
• 17:10
  and put something out there to the humanity
• 17:12
  has to be a vote of confidence in humanity to some degree,
• 17:18
  even if you're telling them how awful they are,
• 17:21
  even if you're saying how violent and irredeemable
• 17:25
  the human race is, you're still bothering to say.
• 17:30
  But anyway, yeah, but that's, it's just got a lovely, lovely feel.
• 17:34
  You'll notice, I mean, I just get so sidetracked by all the time
• 17:39
  by philosophical things, like the way, just the stuff of,
• 17:43
  I know I sound really pretentious, but it's a genuine thing.
• 17:47
  Like, I do think about death every single day.
• 17:51
  I mean, maybe that's a bad thing.
• 17:54
  Well, I mean, that sort of, I don't know if the word is weight,
• 17:57
  but that really comes through, I mean,
• 17:58
  the sense you get with composers, I mean, I get, anyway,
• 18:00
  is it like everything they can't say they put into the music?
• 18:03
  And I feel like with you, I mean, I hear you, like, saying all this
• 18:05
  and then I can also hear it in the music as well,
• 18:07
  like, you know, you just pour all of that.
• 18:08
  So the person you're talking to now sounds like there's an overlap
• 18:13
  like with that music?
• 18:14
  Well, I guess like, because you think about these great, sort of,
• 18:16
  grand themes, I guess, like you say, you think about like,
• 18:19
  death is kind of like Bowie going to Blackstile,
• 18:20
  like that, you can't get a bigger theme than death.
• 18:23
  Like love and death are the two big ones, aren't they?
• 18:25
  And that is like one of the, the death is like the mother of all musers,
• 18:28
  right? I mean, like Bowie had the mother of all musers on that album
• 18:30
  to his own death to sort of inspire him.
• 18:33
  And I guess like, those themes have always inspired great music
• 18:36
  or art or poetry.
• 18:37
  Totally. Yeah.
• 18:39
  I mean, Velasquez, all of, you know, you, you weren't allowed
• 18:42
  to do a painting without putting either a reference to a clock
• 18:45
  and a skull in your painting, just so that you actually told the gods
• 18:52
  that you weren't committing the scene of hubris
• 18:56
  by creating, trying to outdo God
• 19:00
  by creating something that lasts forever.
• 19:03
  So as a, you know, like creating a painting that lasted forever,
• 19:07
  I might, you know, I hope I've got this right.
• 19:09
  A lot of the grandmasters would include a skull
• 19:14
  as a sign of humility to represent that,
• 19:17
  and also an hourglass of the phrase, the word.
• 19:21
  It's really lovely that you said that.
• 19:23
  I mean, about the music and that you can hear that.
• 19:27
  But I think, you know, it's quite simple music
• 19:31
  and I've just tried to consistently sort of create a sound
• 19:37
  that, you know, makes, just makes people feel
• 19:42
  that, you know, aware of things life
• 19:46
  and happy joyful things.
• 19:49
  Well, I mean, linking that then to the stuff you've done,
• 19:52
  I mean, like the shows you've worked on,
• 19:53
  they're sort of multitude.
• 19:54
  I mean, and focusing in, I guess,
• 19:56
  of, guess on one of your key creative relationships,
• 19:59
  which is with Russell T. Davis, you know, writer,
• 20:01
  showrunner of stuff like Doctor Who,
• 20:02
  but also, as I say, queer as folk, you know,
• 20:04
  the first thing you guys did together, the second coming,
• 20:07
  which, by the way, I must say, like, I'm a big fan
• 20:08
  of that show, there's the stuff you guys did on it.
• 20:10
  It feels in many ways like a kind of warm-up
• 20:12
  for the stuff that you go on to do in Doctor Who,
• 20:14
  because it's you, it's Russell,
• 20:15
  and it's Christopher Acuston playing this guy
• 20:17
  who basically claims to be the son of God, you know,
• 20:20
  this born again in the 21st century.
• 20:22
  And so much of that, that sort of territory
• 20:24
  that you cover in that show musically
• 20:26
  feels like a kind of warm-up for what you would do
• 20:28
  then two years later with Doctor Who.
• 20:29
  And I guess when Doctor Who came around with Russell,
• 20:32
  was it just sort of part of the course
• 20:33
  that he would sort of phone you up and say,
• 20:34
  hey, I'm doing Doctor Who, I want you to do the music,
• 20:36
  because you'd already done these two big projects together,
• 20:38
  was it just like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be doing that next.
• 20:41
  No, I never took it for granted, and I still don't.
• 20:43
  And, you know, it's not been the case
• 20:45
  that Russell has always called me for everything,
• 20:49
  especially at that time, you know,
• 20:51
  it was quite an inexperienced, relatively, well,
• 20:54
  I'd done shameless as well.
• 20:57
  And like you said, Vanity Fair and a few things
• 21:01
  for Red Production Company.
• 21:02
  And, you know, I just didn't really know
• 21:04
  that it was out there as a job to do.
• 21:06
  It was being remade, I heard that it was being remade, I think.
• 21:10
  I think my mum and dad had told me, actually.
• 21:13
  And they said, oh, it's Russell,
• 21:15
  and you should, you should say something,
• 21:17
  but I never say something.
• 21:18
  I never go and ask or prompt or say anything
• 21:23
  like, oh, I'd love to do this or anything like that.
• 21:27
  I don't like to be a pest.
• 21:29
  I was very happy when I got an email that just said,
• 21:33
  dear, dear Murray, should have asked before,
• 21:36
  we don't know if you've heard, we're bringing back dots
• 21:38
  who would you like to do the music?
• 21:40
  And it was like, and I just wrote back immediately,
• 21:44
  like I did when you invited me on the show.
• 21:47
  Immediately wrote back and said, yeah, I'd love to.
• 21:48
  Thank you.
• 21:50
  And then I think I rang my dad straight after and said,
• 21:54
  yeah, he got in touch, dad.
• 21:57
  So that's good.
• 21:59
  I'm doing the show.
• 22:00
  Well, I probably didn't say that, but I mean,
• 22:02
  he'd like me to do the show, yeah, I mean,
• 22:04
  and always anticipate some disaster
• 22:06
  or not working out or something, getting in the way,
• 22:10
  but never say it will definitely happen.
• 22:13
  Because you were a fan of Dot2,
• 22:14
  growing up, I want to say, right?
• 22:15
  Tom Baker was your, as you'll go to guy,
• 22:17
  he was your dot, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love Dot2.
• 22:20
  I mean, there's loads of shows.
• 22:22
  I mean, I mean, yeah, yeah, I definitely love Dot2,
• 22:25
  especially from probably about the age of four
• 22:29
  to probably 11, something like that.
• 22:32
  So it was a long time in childhood.
• 22:37
  And then things started to get complicated
• 22:40
  towards the end of Tom Baker's time.
• 22:44
  And it started to get a little bit stuck.
• 22:48
  I think, I'm not sure something happened anyway.
• 22:53
  And I didn't see much of Peter Davidson.
• 22:58
  He was still a tristum in all creatures
• 23:01
  great and small for me, which would be on after Dot2.
• 23:05
  So that was confusing.
• 23:06
  He sort of migrated an hour earlier in terms of scheduling time.
• 23:12
  It's untraveled, yeah, in a sex, yeah.
• 23:15
  And then as you say, you know,
• 23:16
  you were listening to music from such an early age.
• 23:18
  Were you listening to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop music
• 23:22
  for the show and like, and Mark Heirs
• 23:23
  and all those great composers who worked on it?
• 23:25
  And thinking, this is interesting.
• 23:26
  Was that registering for you?
• 23:28
  Yeah, I definitely thought it was an opportunity
• 23:30
  to get some analog synthesizer stuff in
• 23:34
  and adapt it for Russell's taste.
• 23:39
  I mean, maybe Stranger Things did that in the end.
• 23:42
  But I think I was probably anticipating more
• 23:46
  like what's the soundtrack for Stranger Things is
• 23:49
  than what the music for Dot2 eventually became,
• 23:52
  which was much more sort of acoustic instruments
• 23:56
  and eventually orchestral instruments.
• 24:00
  But I definitely listened to a lot of that
• 24:02
  before being told that's not what we want.
• 24:07
  Hey, Russell, and the top brass we would tell you that.
• 24:11
  Oh, just from the, well, I sent a 15 minute tape in
• 24:15
  of sort of what I was thinking for the show
• 24:20
  and Russell and Julie Gardner listened to it.
• 24:22
  And I think the last minute of it
• 24:24
  had these sort of emotive strings.
• 24:27
  And they just wrote back and said,
• 24:29
  that's it, the last minute, that's what we want.
• 24:33
  It was 15 minute tape.
• 24:35
  And what was it about that was it just the,
• 24:38
  it was just such a different quality from everything else
• 24:39
  was sort of, everything else was definitely.
• 24:42
  Yeah, when even the strings were synthetic,
• 24:44
  but they were like, it was a version of an orchestral sound.
• 24:50
  And the rest of it was sort of synths.
• 24:52
  Because that first series of Doctor When It Came Back
• 24:54
  was the music for that series when you go back
• 24:56
  and listen to it is such, is of a piece.
• 24:58
  And it's also kind of, of a certain kind of time.
• 25:01
  Yeah, because obviously as the show got bigger and bigger
• 25:03
  and more successful and more people watched it.
• 25:05
  And I guess there was more money to throw at the show
• 25:07
  to like, we could be getting orchestra on that
• 25:09
  rather than use samples.
• 25:11
  But the music on that first series is very sort of strange
• 25:14
  and kind of like, as you say, kind of a theory all
• 25:15
  and when I first watched the show when it came back
• 25:17
  and I had no reference point for Doctor Atall,
• 25:19
  I guess it kind of skipped a generation a bit for like,
• 25:22
  people like my age and younger were like,
• 25:24
  I didn't know what the TARDIS was.
• 25:26
  I didn't know what a Dalek was.
• 25:27
  Those sort of iconic sort of pop cultural images
• 25:30
  that we know very well now.
• 25:31
  I didn't know reference point for that.
• 25:33
  And same with the music.
• 25:34
  So when I watched the first episode when it came back,
• 25:36
  it was the main feeling I got was,
• 25:38
  this is just so strange and weird.
• 25:40
  And the music and even going to the theme,
• 25:42
  like the new theme that you rearranged for the show
• 25:45
  and it came back, taps into that.
• 25:46
  That real sort of sense of like, it's adventurous
• 25:48
  but also incredibly just odd.
• 25:50
  And kind of, and you don't know at first when you first hear
• 25:53
  it quite how you feel when you,
• 25:55
  when you, as you're listening to it,
• 25:56
  that first time you hear it,
• 25:57
  I can remember very clearly watching it in Cuba.
• 25:59
  I have no idea what to make of this.
• 26:01
  This is just so different.
• 26:02
  Yeah, and I don't think it's necessarily
• 26:04
  it's just straightforward either
• 26:06
  because I think cults things, you know,
• 26:09
  what you're describing sounds like,
• 26:11
  how things used to be with cult shows
• 26:15
  and they kind of infect you with their tone.
• 26:17
  And you're not sure if you like them
• 26:19
  but they're so single, such a distinct tone.
• 26:25
  I think, you know, you just wanna go back and look again
• 26:29
  because you're not sure what is it.
• 26:32
  That's just you starting a relationship with something.
• 26:35
  Again, like I said about music, it's just,
• 26:38
  you know, you're just making you feel something
• 26:41
  and you'll just find yourself going back to the TV
• 26:46
  to find out what is it all this about?
• 26:49
  I mean, it definitely was a different tone
• 26:51
  to when I first, so what you would have seen in 2005,
• 26:54
  it was a very different tone to what I first saw in 1973
• 26:57
  which was the Green Death.
• 27:00
  And that had a much colder sort of atmosphere.
• 27:05
  But I think I liked Weird.
• 27:07
  I mean, I think generally there was other culty shows on
• 27:10
  at the same time like the Avengers
• 27:12
  and then the New Avengers, which was really seemed really weird.
• 27:16
  I didn't really know who they were or what it was about.
• 27:19
  And then Sapphire and Steel was very strange.
• 27:22
  I really loved that because I loved David McCallum
• 27:25
  and he'd been in the invisible man, which I also loved
• 27:28
  because my superpower would always be to be invisible.
• 27:31
  Like no doubt whatsoever, nothing else.
• 27:34
  You can keep strength, you can certainly keep flying
• 27:37
  because frankly, I don't want that.
• 27:39
  I won't even fly in a plane, never mind
• 27:44
  my arms out, stretch on my own.
• 27:48
  But yeah, like kids are weird, aren't they?
• 27:50
  As well, you know.
• 27:51
  Kids don't know anything about how the world worked.
• 27:53
  My children for quite a long time thought there was,
• 27:57
  when I asked them how many people do you think they're in the world,
• 28:00
  they said 400.
• 28:01
  And I said, okay, so how do you figure that?
• 28:03
  And she said, she said, well, there's seven others,
• 28:07
  you know, there's 12 others in my class now.
• 28:11
  And then there's three other classes.
• 28:12
  So that's about 40.
• 28:14
  And then there's a few other houses on our street.
• 28:17
  So that's probably 100.
• 28:19
  And then there's the street we go to for our music lessons.
• 28:25
  So probably that makes 400.
• 28:27
  And I was like, what about, you know.
• 28:30
  Can't stop that logic.
• 28:32
  Other, if you consider, you know,
• 28:34
  I just love how mad that is.
• 28:37
  But there is a kind of logic to it.
• 28:38
  Yeah, I mean you can tell it's all over.
• 28:40
  She showed her working.
• 28:42
  I mean, this wasn't just some random figure
• 28:44
  plucked out of the sky.
• 28:47
  Also, you don't know that those things can't happen.
• 28:51
  You don't know that autons can't, you know,
• 28:53
  that shop dummies can't come and no one's to,
• 28:55
  I mean, like, how weird is everybody
• 28:58
  when you're new, when you're just new in the world?
• 29:01
  And you see just stuff and people are going on
• 29:04
  about Santa Claus, which, you know,
• 29:06
  so there's this guy who comes down the chimney
• 29:08
  and just then lets himself out with some rainders.
• 29:11
  And they do believe in that,
• 29:12
  because we've told them that's true.
• 29:14
  So, you know, like, why wouldn't shop dummies?
• 29:17
  I've seen, you know, there's real robots.
• 29:19
  Now, why wouldn't they just come to life?
• 29:21
  Why wouldn't there be Daleks?
• 29:22
  I mean, actually, to be honest, they're almost are now
• 29:25
  because they're, you know, we're about to have like
• 29:27
  automated war anyway, aren't we?
• 29:29
  So, yeah, tell me about it.
• 29:30
  Yeah, it's the web of fear.
• 29:32
  But that state of childhood is just incredible.
• 29:35
  And sci-fi shows or cult shows,
• 29:37
  they just follow an alternative logic, which is basically
• 29:41
  just not a grown-up logic,
• 29:43
  where things happen in an ordered sequence logical progression,
• 29:48
  which is also not necessarily any truth to that.
• 29:51
  That's just the truth of about 30 or 40 years of our lives
• 29:55
  during which we're not either in the shadow
• 29:58
  of non-existence, I would call it,
• 30:00
  which is when we're really young,
• 30:01
  when my children still say,
• 30:04
  but where was I when I wasn't born?
• 30:06
  Where was I?
• 30:07
  I wanna know, why won't you tell me?
• 30:10
  And then, you know, later on in life, you're similar
• 30:13
  that you can return to that, you know,
• 30:15
  you're closer to infinity.
• 30:17
  It's just our work here is when we're just sort of like
• 30:20
  on a wage, people in those age groups tend to dismiss,
• 30:25
  so you know, a lot of fancy sci-fi,
• 30:27
  whatever stuff like that, as non-s, as a load of nonsense.
• 30:30
  Well, you just don't know anything though.
• 30:34
  You know, you're dismissing things as nonsense,
• 30:37
  but you don't have any real foundational grounding
• 30:42
  in what reality is none of us do.
• 30:45
  Well, I think that was what was so great about the show
• 30:47
  when you guys brought it back,
• 30:48
  was that you were treating it with sincerity,
• 30:51
  the whole thing for all ages.
• 30:54
  And I think you, Russell, did that and you did that
• 30:56
  with the music.
• 30:56
  And I remember you saying once when you did shameless,
• 30:59
  it was a very working class, you know, a state in Manchester,
• 31:02
  quite a different background, you know,
• 31:03
  you grew up in a portion of, you know,
• 31:04
  very northern working class background
• 31:07
  presented in the show and it was quite different to yours,
• 31:09
  but you still, when you approach that you were like,
• 31:11
  these characters, you know, you have to take them seriously,
• 31:13
  you have to treat all their hopes and dreams and fears
• 31:16
  with total sincerity.
• 31:18
  And it's the same with Doctor Who, I mean,
• 31:19
  and with Russell, I think Russell was doing the same thing.
• 31:21
  I mean, with, and you, as I say, you know,
• 31:24
  I said at the start, you guys have worked
• 31:25
  on so many projects together.
• 31:27
  Like, what is it about Russell that keeps you bringing back,
• 31:30
  coming back to work with him?
• 31:31
  What is it, what is it that makes him so special?
• 31:33
  It's funny.
• 31:34
  And he loves humanity.
• 31:36
  So there's two things.
• 31:37
  Neither of those things are true of lots of writers, you know.
• 31:42
  Lots of writers don't love humanity,
• 31:46
  but they, you know, find humanity interesting.
• 31:48
  Or I think Russell's really fascinated by humanity.
• 31:52
  And he's, you know, he's grounded in social realities as well.
• 31:56
  I do like that.
• 31:57
  I mean, I started off like you just said,
• 32:00
  writing scores for sort of drama set in working class.
• 32:04
  Communities mainly and giving,
• 32:08
  trying to find a bit of poetry for it.
• 32:11
  And yeah, I think you take everybody's testament
• 32:14
  for who they are seriously.
• 32:16
  You know, otherwise you just, you know,
• 32:18
  anyone who says anything about who they are
• 32:20
  and how they got there, it's, you know, you can't,
• 32:25
  you can't laugh at that.
• 32:28
  That's everybody's, everybody's stories,
• 32:31
  like basically some form of struggle
• 32:35
  of how they got to be who they are still be alive, whatever.
• 32:39
  And Russell has that same quality too.
• 32:40
  And I guess like, as I said, you guys have worked
• 32:43
  together for so many years now,
• 32:44
  like what is it that makes that relationship so special?
• 32:46
  He's tremendously mischievous and fun.
• 32:49
  I mean, I think, you know, you could say more so
• 32:53
  at the beginning of Doctor Who than towards the end of it.
• 32:57
  I think if I had one thing I would say, you know,
• 33:01
  I would want Russell to do next is just
• 33:05
  throw caution to the wind and regain.
• 33:09
  You know, I think we're in a very tricky political moment
• 33:13
  and I think some of that probably got him down
• 33:18
  with every reason.
• 33:20
  I think that mischief and sense of fun
• 33:23
  are also two wonderful characteristics of Russell
• 33:28
  and the man and his writing.
• 33:31
  Again, these things are not, you can't separate them.
• 33:34
  You can't separate Russell's personality.
• 33:37
  It doesn't pretend to be a funny philanthropic,
• 33:46
  generous parted person.
• 33:47
  He doesn't pretend that.
• 33:48
  He doesn't just, that's not just something
• 33:51
  he puts in his writing.
• 33:52
  He's not throwing his voice.
• 33:53
  I mean, you get a lot in television
• 33:55
  when showrunners like Paul Abba or Russell,
• 34:01
  you know, they can't go on writing every episode of every series
• 34:04
  so they need people who have a similar voice
• 34:05
  and then they have to sort of slightly mimic
• 34:09
  the tone that they're in.
• 34:11
  And that's really hard for them, but anyway,
• 34:14
  so Russell's got, yeah, he's got a good voice.
• 34:17
  Yeah, no, I would agree.
• 34:18
  I mean, you mentioned something there, which is like,
• 34:20
  so at the start, let's talk about that voice.
• 34:21
  I mean, like you say at the start,
• 34:23
  where I guess there was everything to play for
• 34:25
  because we're bringing about .2
• 34:26
  because it had been off the air for so many years.
• 34:28
  And like the sense I get when I revisit those early series
• 34:32
  that you guys did is that you were all playing for keeps
• 34:34
  with the show.
• 34:35
  It was like, we were the best chance we could give it to succeed
• 34:37
  and to stick around in the TV schedules.
• 34:40
  You know, we're going to take it and do that as best we can
• 34:42
  and you did.
• 34:42
  And then, and now, I guess, now that
• 34:44
  .2 has sort of become more cemented in the culture
• 34:46
  and it's more of a more, it's, it's, it's places now assured,
• 34:50
  I guess, in many ways, I mean, because it's been,
• 34:52
  it's still around and it has been now for, you know, 20 years now.
• 34:55
  I mean, would you say that Russell is playing a bit more cautiously?
• 34:58
  You mentioned that, like there's a little bit that sense of mischief
• 35:01
  is a little bit less, you know?
• 35:02
  I think he has to just play at how he feels.
• 35:04
  I don't think he's feeling that sense of mischief
• 35:07
  or necessarily in the same way.
• 35:10
  I mean, there was a lot of knock about humor in 2005
• 35:14
  and fun and sort of like what you might call
• 35:17
  from 20 years later, sort of irresponsible fun
• 35:21
  and I don't mean that in a bad way.
• 35:23
  I mean, I enjoy that.
• 35:25
  I enjoy that.
• 35:25
  And I think maybe the burden of, you know,
• 35:30
  Doctor Who's, you know, outsize influence on young people
• 35:35
  in this, at this time, maybe is inhibiting.
• 35:38
  It could, it would have to be, you know,
• 35:41
  we're at a point where we're trying to define what young men are
• 35:45
  at a point of, you know, trying to define what our society should be
• 35:49
  and technologically where, you know,
• 35:52
  we're accelerating faster in the next five years
• 35:55
  and we have in my entire lifetime.
• 35:58
  So, you know, in some ways, Doctor Who's very well positioned
• 36:01
  to come back and deal with that
• 36:03
  because it's the original technology show in some ways, you know?
• 36:08
  But, yeah, we'll see.
• 36:09
  I mean, I don't, you know, I think we're at a precarious point
• 36:14
  for Doctor Who.
• 36:15
  I am hopeful that it's all going to be
• 36:18
  at the start of a wonderful new era.
• 36:21
  So, I really, I really hope that that's what happens.
• 36:25
  On that subject, have they got you yet working on the music
• 36:27
  for the next, I mean, it's the next Christmas,
• 36:28
  the Christmas special is the next episode
• 36:30
  and then they'll presumably be more.
• 36:32
  I mean, have they got you working on that yet or is it?
• 36:34
  No, I haven't heard really anything.
• 36:38
  I know that the Christmas, I know Russell's written,
• 36:41
  I think multiple versions, depending on certain outcomes.
• 36:45
  So, that's all I really know
• 36:47
  and I'm not sure I'm even supposed to know that.
• 36:50
  I normally do a very good job of not finding things out.
• 36:54
  So, I make my job of keeping secrets very easy
• 36:58
  by never finding out in the first place.
• 37:00
  Well, Peter said something when he came on peak-a-powdery
• 37:03
  where we had on a little while ago,
• 37:04
  he says something interesting about Doctor Who
• 37:06
  in its current state because you mentioned that,
• 37:09
  that he kind of felt that maybe over the years
• 37:12
  as the show has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger
• 37:13
  and now it is, you know, a veritable phenomenon.
• 37:15
  Then maybe it's become a little bit of a victim
• 37:17
  of his own success perhaps
• 37:18
  because when he grew up watching the show,
• 37:21
  you know, it was a much smaller scale.
• 37:23
  It was just, you know, it was on at six o'clock on a Saturday
• 37:26
  or, you know, it was Tom Baker playing the part
• 37:28
  of Peter Davidson and the responsibilities
• 37:30
  of making the show and starring in it,
• 37:32
  producing it, creating it were a bit fewer,
• 37:34
  where it was smaller.
• 37:35
  And now that it's this, you know, it has, you know,
• 37:38
  its own conventions, it has, well, it's always had its own
• 37:39
  conventions for, you know, it's only got bigger and scale.
• 37:44
  And he was wondering maybe whether that is,
• 37:46
  whether that, obviously that's a very good thing,
• 37:49
  you know, in many ways,
• 37:49
  but also it's become this sort of money-making machine
• 37:53
  in a lot of ways.
• 37:53
  And he was just thinking about where it sits
• 37:55
  and the current sort of landscape in that respect.
• 37:57
  I mean, what do you all kind of feel?
• 37:58
  I mean, I think it would like to be even more powerful.
• 38:01
  I mean, that would, I mean, that would be great.
• 38:03
  I think, you know, you've got to remember
• 38:06
  that Mary Whitehouse had quite a lot to say about Doctor Who
• 38:09
  in the 70s, in what respects.
• 38:11
  It might be corrupting the youth or, I guess that would have
• 38:15
  met, and it was, you know, expected to conform,
• 38:19
  probably, I don't really know, but to some kind of
• 38:22
  educational brief, you know, that it was continuing
• 38:26
  in some capacity to inform and educate.
• 38:29
  Now, you definitely, you know, well,
• 38:33
  last few series, apparently more money has been spent.
• 38:36
  We keep, I keep hearing this.
• 38:38
  I'm no, I don't really know.
• 38:42
  From where it is, it could easily have a golden age again.
• 38:46
  It just needs, it needs the, it needs it for,
• 38:51
  Russell just needs to think about, he is thinking about,
• 38:54
  no doubt, how do you position yourself
• 38:58
  in this culture right now?
• 39:01
  When everyone seems to have an opinion about exactly that,
• 39:04
  I guess, like, there are so many opinions,
• 39:05
  not just about Doctor Who, but I guess in general,
• 39:07
  like, yeah, how do you navigate that, I guess?
• 39:09
  Yeah, I think making this kind of family show is,
• 39:11
  especially difficult because Gen Z feels quite alienated
• 39:16
  from, you know, cut off from the rump of the rest
• 39:21
  of the living population.
• 39:24
  And so asking Gen Z to sit down and watch with their parents
• 39:31
  is a big ask because it almost like maybe like the 1960s
• 39:36
  might be the last time that there might have been
• 39:39
  such a sort of golf between generations.
• 39:44
  It's interesting because when I was watching Doctor Who
• 39:46
  and it came back as a kid, it was a family affair.
• 39:48
  I mean, that was the great one, the great successes
• 39:50
  that of the show that you guys put together was,
• 39:52
  it felt like a genuine family event.
• 39:55
  And getting everyone would sit down with their, you know,
• 39:57
  dinner on their laps and watch Doctor Who
• 39:59
  and be, you know, shit scared or, or, you know, or elated
• 40:03
  because it, you know, it was a blast.
• 40:04
  And I guess now I hear what you're saying is that it is a challenge
• 40:07
  to get people just to sit down and watch one screen
• 40:10
  all together, you know, generations.
• 40:12
  I mean, Russell always writes about that, you know,
• 40:13
  years and years in some ways is about that.
• 40:15
  We've shown that you did the music for as well.
• 40:16
  It is a challenge, I want to say, more and more these days.
• 40:20
  Yeah, and linear TV generally is just sort of disappearing.
• 40:24
  Although it is quite marvellous when it happens.
• 40:27
  Like, I'm not a huge fan of the traitors
• 40:30
  because it really, I find it uncomfortable to watch.
• 40:38
  And, you know, people keep telling me it's just a game.
• 40:42
  So the fact that it rewards deceit
• 40:46
  and just dishonesty is not a problem
• 40:49
  because you're just playing a game.
• 40:50
  And I sort of, yeah, but it's real.
• 40:53
  It's actually dishon, it's active.
• 40:55
  I have a problem with it, but at the same time,
• 40:57
  it's rather marvellous that everyone, you know,
• 41:02
  there's something that everybody talks about
• 41:04
  and it does seem to cross generations
• 41:07
  and, you know, people talk about it all at the same time
• 41:10
  the next day and, you know, and that's a really great thing.
• 41:13
  It's just a nice experience to have.
• 41:16
  It's just the shame that the worst of humanity
• 41:18
  has to go on display to get everyone around the waterfall
• 41:20
  to chat about it.
• 41:22
  Yeah, it's so sad watching people who presumably,
• 41:25
  you know, who just could really use the cash.
• 41:27
  And the celebrity ones, I just, yeah, I mean,
• 41:31
  I, my families seem to really, really love it.
• 41:35
  So I am occasionally there.
• 41:38
  I just, I'm just writhing around in discomfort.
• 41:43
  But anyway, I love to hear what a Murray Gold live score
• 41:46
  for the, in episode of The Traders would be like,
• 41:48
  if he has had like, just like composing to the,
• 41:50
  to the pitch and be like, you know, jagged strings
• 41:52
  and just heartburned Herman.
• 41:54
  Give away the lies every time.
• 41:56
  Yeah, I mean, yeah.
• 41:58
  Well, going into then the music you did do for Doctor Who
• 42:01
  with Russell and then later on with, with Steven,
• 42:03
  Steven Moffat who took on the show after Russell left in 2010.
• 42:07
  I mean, your themes for all of the show,
• 42:10
  I mean, going back to the beginning and then up till now
• 42:12
  have always been so memorable and so distinctive.
• 42:14
  I mean, and you're so, you have such a great knack
• 42:17
  for composing so many themes for so many different characters
• 42:20
  and making each one distinctive and memorable.
• 42:22
  And, you know, an episode on its television,
• 42:24
  as far as I understand, from a composing standpoint,
• 42:26
  is a tough gig because you're covered to compose
• 42:28
  so much music under quite a short time for time
• 42:31
  to, you know, for 13 episodes or more or, you know,
• 42:34
  and, you know, you're all your themes
• 42:35
  for the different companions and the different doctors,
• 42:37
  of course, I feel like some of them are your most beloved
• 42:39
  songs that you've written for the doctors.
• 42:41
  I mean, like, I am the doctor is, is eternally associated
• 42:44
  with Matt Smith, you know, am I a good man
• 42:47
  is associated with Pete Capaldi?
• 42:49
  What is your process for devising those themes?
• 42:52
  And I guess do you have a personal favorite
• 42:53
  of the themes you've done for those doctors,
• 42:56
  those five doctors you've done now, including Shooting?
• 42:58
  So the process would be just to try and encapsulate
• 43:03
  something of what I'm seeing or reading
• 43:06
  in something that sounds suitable for the character
• 43:10
  of the doctor.
• 43:12
  And they are in some ways all related,
• 43:15
  all of them from the beginning, you know,
• 43:17
  they almost always tend to are in the sort of harmonic
• 43:21
  minor key.
• 43:23
  I really loved how I and the doctor took off
• 43:27
  and that was, it was really fun.
• 43:29
  I kind of like, I always get really,
• 43:33
  I really love I am a good man as well, you know,
• 43:36
  I just sort of just really like how badass it sounds.
• 43:41
  And maybe that's just because that's how I felt about,
• 43:45
  about Peter, you know, he was more uncompromising
• 43:51
  and he needed something a bit more, a bit harder.
• 43:55
  But anyway, yeah, I mean, I love the,
• 43:57
  I love, I really like the shooty theme.
• 44:00
  Yeah, I love that.
• 44:01
  Just tried to do something different,
• 44:03
  but again, different, but the same, you know?
• 44:06
  Well, for me, I remember when I first heard that theme,
• 44:09
  I think when they debuted, it was what, it was a live gig.
• 44:11
  Oh, I've BBC concert that they did there.
• 44:13
  Yeah, yeah, first played it.
• 44:14
  And I remember hearing it and thinking,
• 44:15
  this sounds like a sort of,
• 44:17
  if John Barry wrote us to get you Western theme,
• 44:19
  this is what it sounds like to me.
• 44:20
  That's all that big brass,
• 44:21
  but then it's got that roller-king kind of pace to it.
• 44:23
  And I just love that sort of vibe.
• 44:25
  And every time you hear it in that show,
• 44:26
  in those two seasons that shooty did,
• 44:28
  it's like, woof, you know, it's like,
• 44:30
  it's like nothing else.
• 44:31
  And again, so distinctive from the others,
• 44:33
  from, you know, peers and maths and David's, you know?
• 44:37
  I think because that concert that you saw it as,
• 44:39
  we just, because I don't think we had any footage
• 44:42
  of the Christmas battle, we didn't have anything
• 44:44
  to show the fans.
• 44:46
  So we thought it would be a good idea
• 44:48
  to just preview a couple of pieces of music
• 44:50
  from the new series just to give it a taste
• 44:52
  of what everyone was going to be getting
• 44:54
  without actually, you know, spoiling Disney's, like,
• 44:57
  release schedule or anything like that.
• 44:59
  I made a sort of decision to bring the bass clarinet
• 45:03
  and we got in a baritone saxophone into the orchestra
• 45:07
  because that's not a regular instrument
• 45:09
  for the National Orchestra world.
• 45:11
  So somebody was hired to come in.
• 45:12
  And while I was thinking of it visually,
• 45:15
  so I put these two instruments on either side
• 45:18
  of the podium, the conductor's podium.
• 45:21
  And as soon as we did that, it made that driving rhythm
• 45:25
  much more obvious to everyone who was watching.
• 45:28
  And it sort of, and that then subsequently fed into how
• 45:32
  I felt about the theme and the importance
• 45:36
  of that pumping woodwind, ostinato,
• 45:40
  and how important that was.
• 45:43
  And it was like a visual thing.
• 45:44
  So it's quite interesting,
• 45:45
  is there no other theme ever had any visual element to it
• 45:49
  about how it looked when you watched an orchestra play it?
• 45:53
  Well, I was lucky enough to go see the, in 2013,
• 45:56
  I went to the 50th anniversary prom
• 45:57
  was at the Albert Hall, which had all this incredible music
• 46:01
  on stage being conducted by Ben Foster,
• 46:03
  who I know was like one of your key collaborators
• 46:05
  on music and then it was being played
• 46:07
  by the National Orchestra.
• 46:08
  And it was just fantastic.
• 46:09
  Here in that big music, in that huge space,
• 46:11
  the acoustics, everything, it was incredible.
• 46:13
  You said there about Capaldi's theme.
• 46:15
  I mean, with me it's so interesting
• 46:17
  about the themes that you do for those characters,
• 46:19
  that you've managed to lay in all these sort of textual
• 46:21
  elements of the characters so well,
• 46:24
  but in a very sort of implicit way,
• 46:26
  like with Peter's theme.
• 46:28
  And I kind of taught Peter a little bit about this
• 46:30
  when he came on, I think a little bit,
• 46:32
  when we were talking about how he designed the costume
• 46:34
  of his doctor, because you've got a very sort of
• 46:36
  austere sort of navy coat and the dot-minds
• 46:39
  and everything, the bros and the buttoned up sort of
• 46:41
  David Lynch sort of shirt.
• 46:42
  But then underneath all of that,
• 46:43
  he always had this sort of red inner lining of his coat,
• 46:46
  which was this sort of warmth.
• 46:48
  There was all underneath all that sort of bristle
• 46:49
  there was warmth in his doctor.
• 46:52
  That it's all, his whole character's there
• 46:54
  in like one outfit.
• 46:55
  And in his theme, like you have that sort of very brooding
• 46:57
  kind of like, you know, like that kind of badass guitar
• 47:00
  on there, and then you have that sort of that middle posture
• 47:02
  where it's kind of twinkly fairy tale.
• 47:04
  And it's all, and that's like the twinkle,
• 47:06
  that's sort of almost heart and a less kind of twinkle
• 47:08
  is there, secreted away, but it's always there.
• 47:11
  And then you have that big, that last section
• 47:13
  where it just builds and builds and builds, you know,
• 47:16
  there was sort of textural elements.
• 47:17
  Is that something that you're conscious of
• 47:18
  when you're composing it like,
• 47:20
  you're layering in those elements?
• 47:22
  Yeah, definitely.
• 47:23
  I mean, it was, it was always like the rebirth thing
• 47:25
  that the twinkly thing.
• 47:27
  I mean, we didn't use that enough, I think.
• 47:30
  There maybe weren't enough opportunities for it.
• 47:33
  It's quite subtle.
• 47:36
  By the way, was that red lining?
• 47:37
  Does that just make you think of John Pertwy?
• 47:39
  Did he have, yeah, okay.
• 47:41
  Yeah, yeah, because I think he was quite capable.
• 47:43
  Didn't he, John Pertwy, some time?
• 47:45
  He did, he came, and they had that velvet jacket,
• 47:47
  which I know Peter had later.
• 47:48
  He brought in the red velvet jacket
• 47:50
  on stuff like heaven sent here.
• 47:51
  So it didn't have a, that cape didn't have a green
• 47:53
  or red lining or something.
• 47:55
  It was like a black cape of red, red in the lining.
• 47:57
  Oh, that's what I was saying.
• 47:58
  Yeah, so it wasn't a cap, really.
• 47:59
  To me, that's, you know, that's Peter's overcoat.
• 48:03
  Oh, you know, that's, yeah, I get that line.
• 48:05
  That seemed to be referring to that.
• 48:07
  I mean, on that sort of note, I guess,
• 48:09
  of like composing those themes, I mean,
• 48:11
  do you have like a favorite sort of piece of music,
• 48:13
  Q or an episode that you've done the music for and up to,
• 48:16
  or like even broader like a whole series?
• 48:19
  Like is there a particular series of up to
• 48:20
  that you've composed for that you thought that's the one?
• 48:23
  That's the one I sort of, I guess the most closest to
• 48:25
  or the most proud of or an episode.
• 48:27
  Like do you have one of those?
• 48:29
  I mean, the Pandora could double was with the Stephen Moffat one.
• 48:33
  I loved that.
• 48:36
  There was just something about it.
• 48:37
  It was really, really well directed
• 48:40
  and I really had fun with the music.
• 48:44
  I tend to just love the smaller episodes,
• 48:47
  you know, the slightly theatrical one space ones
• 48:51
  or just generally just the creepy smaller things.
• 48:56
  So right the way through, you know,
• 48:58
  obviously midnight and turn left and this lot
• 49:03
  from the last season, the well and the one with the,
• 49:08
  when they stand on the fairies sign
• 49:11
  and go to the weird Welsh part.
• 49:14
  73 years. 73 years, yeah.
• 49:15
  That one, like just because it's,
• 49:17
  I just like that it's so weird.
• 49:21
  I just wanna know, and then what happens, you know,
• 49:25
  and then what happens and because it's Doctor Who and it's creepy,
• 49:27
  you know, it's gonna end in a monster of some sort
• 49:31
  and it's just, and that's, you know,
• 49:33
  I think the music tends to have more of a chance
• 49:37
  to sort of say something substantial in the small episodes
• 49:42
  because there's fewer special effects.
• 49:45
  There's fewer spaceships crashing or whatever it is around
• 49:50
  and you just have a chance to do something
• 49:53
  in some of the silences that are available.
• 49:56
  So, I mean, obviously I also loved,
• 50:01
  God, my memory, I'm telling you,
• 50:03
  it's just runs and pauses.
• 50:05
  Have it, heaven's send.
• 50:06
  Is that all you're gonna do?
• 50:07
  Did you know?
• 50:08
  Well, you were saying kind of small contained spaces,
• 50:10
  not many aliens or special effects,
• 50:11
  quite contained spaces for the music to breathe.
• 50:14
  I'm gonna take this out of because you're reading my mind.
• 50:17
  I now, so yeah, so I hope this doesn't destroy the continuity
• 50:21
  or make all of your viewers just recoil
• 50:25
  with the sudden glare emanating from my head.
• 50:30
  Do you remember a band called Half-Man, Half-Biscuit?
• 50:33
  No.
• 50:34
  No.
• 50:36
  Great name.
• 50:36
  They used to have this song which started
• 50:38
  with these chopping indie chords
• 50:41
  and it just went, Brian Moore's head looks uncannily
• 50:44
  like London Planetarium.
• 50:48
  Brian Moore was a famous bald sports commentator
• 50:50
  from the 70s and I used to sing along.
• 50:54
  Never, never dreaming that 30 years from then
• 51:00
  I would look exactly the same.
• 51:02
  I know that name, Brian Moore,
• 51:03
  because he's mentioned that Superhands
• 51:04
  and Peep Show references him at one point.
• 51:05
  I don't know.
• 51:06
  Brian Moore used to do the football on ITV.
• 51:08
  I get a packet in Sun, Mugs Game.
• 51:10
  That's why he said that's my one reference point
• 51:12
  for Brian Moore, so I appreciate your friendship
• 51:14
  with another one.
• 51:15
  Well, yeah.
• 51:16
  I've got a few decades of additional pop culture.
• 51:21
  First-hand experience to reference.
• 51:24
  Yours is like, you're getting it via Peep Show.
• 51:27
  Yeah, exactly.
• 51:28
  It's like second, third-hand.
• 51:30
  But you mentioned Heaven sent there,
• 51:31
  I mean, because I was gonna say that one,
• 51:33
  if I had to pick a single episode,
• 51:34
  I mean, it's caught his heart,
• 51:36
  because you've done it,
• 51:37
  and also because you've done so many of them.
• 51:38
  You've composed, I think you composed more music
• 51:40
  for Doctor Who than anyone who has ever worked
• 51:41
  on the show going back to the beginning.
• 51:43
  But Heaven, if I had to pick a single episode
• 51:45
  that is my personal favourite work of yours,
• 51:47
  I would say Heaven sent,
• 51:48
  because I said this to Peter when he came on,
• 51:50
  but it feels like that episode is made
• 51:51
  with all the time in the world,
• 51:53
  to the best of everyone's ability,
• 51:54
  who made it, just trying to do their best work
• 51:56
  in some ways, feels to me as a viewer.
• 51:58
  And I'm not, and I'm sure that's what every episode is like,
• 52:00
  but with that episode in particular, it's so special.
• 52:03
  And the music is such an,
• 52:04
  I don't know if there's many other episodes of Doctor Who
• 52:07
  where the music is so integral,
• 52:09
  it's so integral to how that episode comes off emotionally,
• 52:12
  and the interplay between the music you're putting
• 52:15
  to the screen and what Rachel,
• 52:16
  that Galileo, the director, is directing
• 52:18
  and Peter's performing its magic.
• 52:20
  And I wanted to ask specifically about that episode,
• 52:22
  like, what was the process for composing the music for that one?
• 52:26
  And what are your, I guess now that it's been 10 years,
• 52:29
  because as I, you know, the best episode
• 52:31
  has sort of become one and most beloved of the whole show.
• 52:34
  And what's your relationship to it now after 10 years?
• 52:37
  No, it's interesting,
• 52:37
  because like if I had to do a live show,
• 52:39
  like in, like a gig, in a gig type environment,
• 52:44
  that's one of the episodes I would happily just play
• 52:48
  on a screen and do the score along to, you know, gathering.
• 52:53
  Weirdly, the other two are,
• 52:54
  well, Blue Yonder, I would probably do the same,
• 52:58
  and into the Dalek as well,
• 53:01
  which I mean, I'm not sure if that score got the sort of attention,
• 53:07
  not that it deserved, but like anyone really noticed it,
• 53:10
  but it was at the time I was doing,
• 53:12
  I used to remember we were mixing it at air,
• 53:14
  and I just had everyone, because I was paying for the studios,
• 53:18
  essentially, turn off all the dialogue,
• 53:20
  just sit back and just watch this whole thing unfold.
• 53:24
  And it was like, yeah, it was just a,
• 53:28
  it was just a sort of analogue,
• 53:30
  weird synthesizer odyssey type thing.
• 53:33
  It was a little bit vangelicy,
• 53:34
  but heaven sent you,
• 53:38
  it's just a one off,
• 53:39
  I knew it was going to be a one off.
• 53:41
  You always know from the way that people talk about something
• 53:44
  in hushed tones before it arrives at my desk,
• 53:48
  I'm sure Rachel didn't get any extra time to do it.
• 53:51
  I'm sure it was on the schedule and marked up
• 53:54
  with just the same ridiculously short amount of time
• 53:58
  to finish it and complete it as any of the other episodes.
• 54:02
  But I think it was, it's just a little bit,
• 54:05
  I mean, I like sort of that kind of mode of sort of cyberpunky kind of,
• 54:10
  sort of cyberpunky kind of,
• 54:14
  there's that online video game called The Room,
• 54:18
  where you, have you heard of it?
• 54:20
  It's an app, it's an app game,
• 54:22
  and there were about three things and it's about,
• 54:24
  you have to go through to these different rooms
• 54:27
  which have got all these great sound scapes in them
• 54:31
  of clocks and things,
• 54:33
  and they've all been furnished a particular way.
• 54:35
  And a bunch of clues have been left
• 54:38
  by somebody who's steadily gone insane
• 54:41
  and you have to find your way to the secret of The Room
• 54:46
  and it's weirdly creepy.
• 54:47
  I mean, I think this is maybe early noughties or something
• 54:50
  or something like that,
• 54:51
  just before I started playing plants versus zombies instead.
• 54:57
  But yeah, there was something about that.
• 55:00
  You're just sort of going room to room
• 55:02
  in this maze designed by a lunatic,
• 55:06
  which are really, really light.
• 55:08
  Or, you know, what's the resident evils
• 55:10
  got a bit of that about it,
• 55:13
  but obviously very different tone.
• 55:15
  I do quite like the resident evil movies.
• 55:19
  They're quite like the scores for them as well.
• 55:20
  They've got this like,
• 55:21
  thundering like acid,
• 55:24
  technology stuff,
• 55:25
  which is really,
• 55:26
  was really groundbreaking at the time I thought.
• 55:29
  And so the episode we've having sent,
• 55:30
  you kind of applied some of those same approaches
• 55:33
  to do in the music,
• 55:34
  because when you mentioned sort of woodwind
• 55:35
  with shooting steam,
• 55:37
  the thing that I,
• 55:38
  because there is that synthetic element,
• 55:39
  but there's also this element of like,
• 55:40
  there are parts of that score,
• 55:42
  which feel like almost like a Viking dirge.
• 55:44
  It's like, you know,
• 55:45
  there's sort of funeral or funeral of heaven set.
• 55:47
  I've heaven sent.
• 55:48
  Yeah, because it's obviously it's an episode about death.
• 55:49
  So you have that layered in there.
• 55:51
  It's sort of dirge like feel, which I love.
• 55:54
  Stephen's a huge fan of Beethoven's seventh.
• 55:57
  And there's the influence of Beethoven's seventh
• 56:00
  is in there as well.
• 56:03
  There's a lot of slow down.
• 56:05
  I recorded a lot of percussive instruments
• 56:08
  like these bells and just slowed them down a lot.
• 56:14
  It's quite interesting as well,
• 56:15
  because as well as having the slightly sort of romantic,
• 56:21
  sort of classical stuff,
• 56:25
  there's just quite a few of other bits and pieces,
• 56:27
  just little sounds in it,
• 56:30
  which make it all of a piece.
• 56:33
  And then there's the shepherd's boy at the end,
• 56:37
  which really rounds it off.
• 56:40
  Well, I was going to mention that,
• 56:41
  because that's one of the cues,
• 56:43
  I guess, from your work and not to there,
• 56:44
  is kind of taking on a bit of a life of its own.
• 56:46
  People really love that track,
• 56:47
  and like even when we were sort of preparing for this,
• 56:49
  I mean, like some of the guys in the office
• 56:51
  were like, you know, the shepherd's boy,
• 56:52
  you know, like really talking about that track,
• 56:53
  and it is an incredible piece.
• 56:55
  And it's also set like one of the most brilliant pieces
• 56:58
  of editing that the show has ever had,
• 57:00
  that montage of Peter dying and being reborn
• 57:02
  and punching the wall and dying and reborn,
• 57:04
  and going that cycle for billions of years,
• 57:06
  and you've got this music underneath it.
• 57:08
  And I wanted to ask about that,
• 57:09
  because like where did that piece come from for you emotionally,
• 57:11
  and like was it, were you composing to the picture?
• 57:14
  Like that montage was there,
• 57:15
  that really rapid fire montage of were you composing,
• 57:18
  and then they were re-editing.
• 57:19
  They were editing that.
• 57:20
  No, I think I composed to the cut version of it.
• 57:24
  So I had to make my changes come
• 57:27
  where the significant moments in the visuals happen.
• 57:33
  Which is, you know, to be fair, what my job is.
• 57:36
  But Rachel had tempted with something,
• 57:40
  and there was some tonally, tonally similarities,
• 57:44
  but I just took my cue from,
• 57:46
  there was a sort of approach that she wanted,
• 57:49
  and you know, this sense of,
• 57:51
  there's just a low simmering, desperation,
• 57:57
  endurance becoming heroic,
• 58:02
  celebration, and I did dig that tune out
• 58:07
  from the 50th anniversary special.
• 58:12
  So, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh,
• 58:17
  and I was like, God, I love that tune so much.
• 58:20
  And I was like, wait, that could be something more meaningful
• 58:25
  and meta than, you know, than it's where it sits in the 50th,
• 58:31
  and it's got a very different musical rhythmic setting.
• 58:35
  I just really loved that tune,
• 58:36
  and I wanted to make it the centerpiece,
• 58:38
  so that's where we're going to get to
• 58:40
  when he gets through after 50 billion years,
• 58:43
  because presumably if he's occupied 50 billion years
• 58:47
  one way or another, then, you know, in the special,
• 58:49
  which they've all the doctors have been through this,
• 58:52
  or something, I don't really know, the answer to that,
• 58:55
  but I didn't want to just make up a piece of music
• 59:01
  a tune, a melody for that moment, which was totally new.
• 59:06
  I wanted it to have been referred to before.
• 59:10
  You know, most of the two fans go back to it immediately
• 59:14
  and they go, yeah, I know where that's from,
• 59:16
  much more than I do.
• 59:17
  I never remember anything.
• 59:19
  I mean, it's just a sequence that's just so good.
• 59:23
  Like, to write music for,
• 59:24
  I had to remember when I recorded it,
• 59:28
  and when we finally mixed it,
• 59:30
  it was like one of those ones that I really loved
• 59:32
  and wanted to play over and over to people.
• 59:34
  And again, like, if I felt that,
• 59:37
  I knew that there were other people who would feel that,
• 59:39
  but it wasn't, I remember my agent coming in,
• 59:42
  and I said, you've got to listen to this,
• 59:44
  and bear in mind that all he does all day forever
• 59:47
  is listen to film music,
• 59:49
  and most of his clients are in Hollywood
• 59:50
  and stuff like that.
• 59:52
  And here I am doing a show I love,
• 59:54
  but he, you know, he's fair enough, it's decent,
• 59:57
  but it's not, you know, in the upper restaurants
• 59:59
  of his client's work.
• 1:00:01
  And he just sort of listened,
• 1:00:02
  and I saw him just sort of nod off
• 1:00:03
  and start attending to something else.
• 1:00:06
  And I just thought, oh, God,
• 1:00:09
  it hasn't got as much magic as I thought,
• 1:00:11
  and I was like, no, no, no, just bear with it.
• 1:00:13
  Just trust yourself, he's okay.
• 1:00:15
  So, yeah.
• 1:00:16
  And you were right.
• 1:00:17
  Well, there are things that have like, yeah,
• 1:00:21
  they've stood the test of time.
• 1:00:22
  I mean, people, you know,
• 1:00:24
  some of the, yeah, I mean,
• 1:00:25
  I know this happens to all musicians,
• 1:00:27
  so I'm not going to take it too much into my heart.
• 1:00:30
  It does still mean something,
• 1:00:32
  but people say, you know,
• 1:00:33
  I've got married to this piece of music
• 1:00:35
  or I've got married to the Ood, or, you know.
• 1:00:38
  As long as I'm married to the Ood.
• 1:00:39
  Yeah, or just like we had a real tragedy
• 1:00:41
  and this helped us out or something,
• 1:00:43
  anything like all those things are real,
• 1:00:46
  those are real things, you know, so.
• 1:00:48
  Yeah.
• 1:00:49
  Well, in a way that kind of happened to me,
• 1:00:50
  because I said, and I said this to Peter when he came on,
• 1:00:52
  but like, heaven said that I also came out
• 1:00:54
  sort of around the time that both my grandparents died.
• 1:00:56
  And obviously it's an episode about death and grief.
• 1:00:59
  So watch, I remember coming back to the episode a lot,
• 1:01:01
  not to sort of go on about it too much,
• 1:01:02
  but like, yeah, I did come back to the episode a lot
• 1:01:04
  in that period.
• 1:01:05
  And the music was a really key part of that for me.
• 1:01:07
  The beauty of it, but also the fact that it,
• 1:01:09
  like I say, it's so integral to that,
• 1:01:11
  the atmosphere of that episode.
• 1:01:13
  So yeah, it means a lot to me as well, personally.
• 1:01:14
  And as is the, you know,
• 1:01:16
  all the music you've done on the show,
• 1:01:18
  and with Rachel, you mentioned Rachel Taddley there,
• 1:01:20
  like, because I remember once,
• 1:01:22
  like a few years after heaven sent him out,
• 1:01:23
  she was talking with some fans
• 1:01:25
  of the show on Twitter enough,
• 1:01:27
  and so on asked her about the music,
• 1:01:29
  and like the conversations that you guys had
• 1:01:30
  and paraphrasing it,
• 1:01:31
  but like, she said something like,
• 1:01:33
  Murray, you know, he phoned me about the episode
• 1:01:35
  and that very rarely happens, she said,
• 1:01:36
  because like Murray, quote unquote, never,
• 1:01:38
  doesn't call direct as much on Doctor Who,
• 1:01:41
  but he phoned and we had like a great conversation about it.
• 1:01:44
  And I want to ask, like, is that the case?
• 1:01:46
  Like, I mean, and what conversations
• 1:01:47
  did you have with Rachel about the episode?
• 1:01:48
  And do you often talk to directors on Doctor Who?
• 1:01:51
  So the second part of that's easy to answer,
• 1:01:54
  the answer's no, and the first part,
• 1:01:58
  yeah, I'm sure I must have called Rachel,
• 1:02:00
  if she remembers it.
• 1:02:02
  I mean, I must have just been read it
• 1:02:04
  and just sort of like, oh my God,
• 1:02:06
  this is amazing what we're gonna do,
• 1:02:08
  what we do with this, what's the deal?
• 1:02:10
  What do you want?
• 1:02:11
  What do you want from me?
• 1:02:12
  I mean, generally, there's not a lot of time.
• 1:02:15
  It, you know, the time spent talking about something
• 1:02:18
  is time that is taken away from doing something,
• 1:02:22
  and referring to music that I've done is easier
• 1:02:25
  than trying to discuss what might be there.
• 1:02:28
  I don't know, I think what they call the spotting session
• 1:02:32
  where you discuss moment by moment,
• 1:02:35
  what you're trying to do,
• 1:02:37
  what your objective is as a director.
• 1:02:38
  I think that's a really overrated part of the process.
• 1:02:43
  Directors love that because they think it's that, you know,
• 1:02:47
  that they want to be in control of what they're,
• 1:02:52
  directing.
• 1:02:53
  I'm not convinced that television is a director's medium,
• 1:02:58
  exactly, you know, it's maybe more so with Netflix
• 1:03:03
  and where we are in things.
• 1:03:06
  I think on series one, I spoke to every director,
• 1:03:09
  and by that time, you've got, I've got 13
• 1:03:13
  or maybe nine different people here
• 1:03:16
  that I've got to start new relationships with,
• 1:03:19
  who aren't coming back next year, necessarily,
• 1:03:22
  who all want to take me out and go have a dinner
• 1:03:25
  and just discuss this and then hang out,
• 1:03:28
  and you multiply those days by, you know, three
• 1:03:32
  or whatever, however much time we have.
• 1:03:36
  This is all pulling out of the vital time
• 1:03:40
  we have to write to do stuff.
• 1:03:42
  So just thought, yeah, after series one,
• 1:03:45
  it was really hard to keep up with.
• 1:03:49
  Just to, you know, get the work done and delivered on time.
• 1:03:53
  So the director line of communication faded out.
• 1:03:58
  But with Rachel, it was like when you saw the episode
• 1:04:00
  or the rushes, you were like,
• 1:04:02
  I mean, this deserves a conversation.
• 1:04:04
  I think every now and again,
• 1:04:05
  there's been repeat directors who then, you know,
• 1:04:09
  I start a relationship with, you know,
• 1:04:11
  because they, they earned it.
• 1:04:15
  Well, there's something with that episode.
• 1:04:17
  Like Rachel has such a strong vision with that episode.
• 1:04:20
  And like it's such a formal episode
• 1:04:21
  and the way it's shot on the way it's lit
• 1:04:23
  and the way it's composed is very formal
• 1:04:25
  and kind of almost kind of,
• 1:04:26
  I can say it almost kind of like an art house episode
• 1:04:28
  in some ways, about that it's a one-hander.
• 1:04:30
  And I said, the music is so important to that.
• 1:04:32
  So I can understand why I guess,
• 1:04:33
  wanting to be on the same page, I guess,
• 1:04:34
  in terms of like this is this music
• 1:04:36
  is working with these images and in harmony
• 1:04:38
  and to the best of the account, which to me it does.
• 1:04:40
  It really does those sort of sing together, those two.
• 1:04:43
  Yeah, it's weird.
• 1:04:44
  It does feel quite 19th century.
• 1:04:46
  And I'm not sure if there's any reason,
• 1:04:48
  there's no, it's not set in any particular time, is it?
• 1:04:51
  No.
• 1:04:52
  And the building is way before the 19th century.
• 1:04:54
  It's something gothic.
• 1:04:56
  Yes, definitely.
• 1:04:57
  It's a fun watch.
• 1:04:58
  It's great, isn't it?
• 1:04:59
  Yeah, and with the suit people that you've worked with,
• 1:05:01
  because you said,
• 1:05:02
  because just because of the set up of the show,
• 1:05:03
  you don't often have talk to directors
• 1:05:05
  about it as individual episodes.
• 1:05:07
  I mean, do you often just, with the music,
• 1:05:09
  are you given more or less for your reign
• 1:05:11
  to do what you want to do?
• 1:05:11
  Yeah, more or less.
• 1:05:12
  Yeah, and then the execs come back with notes,
• 1:05:15
  sometimes directors have fed notes into the execs,
• 1:05:18
  so that's how they get it across.
• 1:05:21
  And when I say the execs,
• 1:05:22
  I usually just mean Russell or Stephen.
• 1:05:24
  I mean, they are definitely the ones that count.
• 1:05:28
  So if I want to push back,
• 1:05:31
  which I don't do often because it's easy
• 1:05:33
  to just make the changes,
• 1:05:34
  but if I want to push back about something,
• 1:05:37
  I'd just do it directly.
• 1:05:38
  When you're making something,
• 1:05:41
  I'm essentially a hired artist or an artisan,
• 1:05:45
  you have to be answerable to the person who's hired you,
• 1:05:50
  and that's it really.
• 1:05:52
  Mm.
• 1:05:53
  Well, the music does have that feel to it.
• 1:05:56
  As I say, it's that exuberance,
• 1:05:57
  but also it does feel kind of unchained.
• 1:05:59
  I can just feel like it's being composed with full throttle,
• 1:06:02
  just like you're just sort of expressing yourself.
• 1:06:04
  And it's like,
• 1:06:05
  it's not be mediated by any particular person.
• 1:06:07
  It just feels organic,
• 1:06:09
  which is one of the great qualities about it.
• 1:06:11
  And you mentioned Stephen,
• 1:06:12
  I did want to ask,
• 1:06:13
  because obviously we've talked a lot about you and Russell
• 1:06:14
  and your relationship and all the different shows
• 1:06:16
  you guys have done.
• 1:06:17
  But when Russell left in 2009
• 1:06:19
  and Stephen and Moff had took over,
• 1:06:21
  like what was your working relationship like with Stephen?
• 1:06:24
  How is he different to Russell on the show?
• 1:06:26
  Stephen's is just a very, you know, affectionate
• 1:06:31
  can be at least in appearance,
• 1:06:34
  irassable, highly intelligent,
• 1:06:37
  scarierly intelligent human being.
• 1:06:41
  Just generally just,
• 1:06:42
  it says a few things that might have some notes.
• 1:06:45
  And it's just like,
• 1:06:47
  just told me to go get on with it, you know?
• 1:06:49
  He's lovely, just pretty much a dream.
• 1:06:54
  So yeah, I think it was a lot of continuity really.
• 1:06:57
  It was a change in the tone with Matt coming into the show.
• 1:07:02
  And, you know, the type of plotting that there was.
• 1:07:05
  And I think Stephen loves humanity,
• 1:07:08
  but not in the same,
• 1:07:10
  infatuated way that Russell does.
• 1:07:13
  Which is interesting,
• 1:07:14
  because I've always thought of Russell and Stephen
• 1:07:16
  comparing them, I guess, as writers.
• 1:07:17
  Is that, like, Russell loves humanity,
• 1:07:19
  but he's also quite very honest about it.
• 1:07:21
  And I think his tastes kind of gravitate towards,
• 1:07:24
  I guess, more conventional,
• 1:07:26
  I guess, I mean, this is a very sort of big simplification,
• 1:07:29
  but I guess, you know, the dramas he's done, you know,
• 1:07:31
  he's like, our episodes like Midnight,
• 1:07:33
  he's quite unflinching about how
• 1:07:35
  what humanity can be like as well,
• 1:07:37
  the best and the worst.
• 1:07:38
  And I know, and Stephen over the years,
• 1:07:40
  obviously has given us so many brilliant,
• 1:07:41
  you know, like, stuff like coupling, you know, his comedies,
• 1:07:44
  you know, and he's so funny.
• 1:07:45
  He's very funny.
• 1:07:47
  Very funny.
• 1:07:48
  I mean, I had to follow him in making a speech once.
• 1:07:51
  It's the worst possible thing.
• 1:07:53
  It was for a May of Us Oscar nomination party.
• 1:07:58
  And we went round the room and Stephen just stood up,
• 1:08:02
  had the room just rolling in the aisles
• 1:08:05
  with off the cuff completely unprepared remarks.
• 1:08:09
  I mean, I've seen him do that to like a group of people
• 1:08:12
  in the National History Museum
• 1:08:14
  with a huge number of MPs present.
• 1:08:17
  And he would just rib them and have them like,
• 1:08:20
  and then anyway, he did his speech.
• 1:08:22
  And then, Murray, if you'd like to speak now,
• 1:08:24
  I was like, oh, just stood up and said,
• 1:08:26
  good luck and sat down.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah, short and sweet.
• 1:08:30
  Yeah, simple.
• 1:08:31
  Yeah, I mean, he's just, and he's so funny and intelligent
• 1:08:34
  and I feel like a lot of his, in a lot of the work he's done,
• 1:08:37
  the tenor seems to be predominantly comic,
• 1:08:39
  like, you know, like, say, stuff like coupling
• 1:08:41
  and going away before that, like, you know, joking apart
• 1:08:43
  and all those sitcoms he did.
• 1:08:44
  And then moving into Doctor Who and Sherlock, you know,
• 1:08:46
  but obviously you have that tempered with that steel,
• 1:08:49
  like you see in like Heaven's Scent,
• 1:08:50
  like Heaven's Scent is not a light episode, you know,
• 1:08:52
  which he wrote.
• 1:08:53
  And when he came on board, I remember the feeling
• 1:08:55
  that fairy tale quality that Matt brought and Stephen Paul.
• 1:08:58
  And it was so sort of intoxicating to someone like me,
• 1:09:01
  you know, I fell in love with that.
• 1:09:02
  And season five is probably,
• 1:09:04
  if I had to pick a season of music that you've done,
• 1:09:07
  I love the soundtrack to season five
• 1:09:08
  for that sort of fairy tale quality.
• 1:09:10
  And you've always had that sense of mischief
• 1:09:12
  in your work as well, I think, and playfulness,
• 1:09:14
  which seems to just perfectly marry with Matt and his take
• 1:09:17
  and Stephen's take.
• 1:09:18
  And is that how it kind of felt when that series came through
• 1:09:21
  when you were composing for that?
• 1:09:22
  Like, oh, this feels right.
• 1:09:23
  Yeah, it was a bit of a flexion point there as well
• 1:09:26
  because it was all new everyone.
• 1:09:29
  There was a bit of a clear out.
• 1:09:31
  There was, you know, potentially the possibility
• 1:09:34
  for some distrust about anyone who was a, you know,
• 1:09:39
  a hangar on from the previous series
• 1:09:41
  and would they go with the vision?
• 1:09:43
  And so that was a potentially a moment of,
• 1:09:48
  of where it could have been the problem.
• 1:09:50
  You know, the opening shot of that long track down
• 1:09:54
  to that front door of that house was, you know,
• 1:09:58
  it was just a, it was a fairy tale.
• 1:10:00
  It looked like a gothic horror and it was really nicely done.
• 1:10:06
  I think in the same episode, at one point,
• 1:10:09
  Matt gets up onto the top of the building
• 1:10:12
  and screams at a bunch of aliens, you know, go away.
• 1:10:16
  I am the doctor.
• 1:10:18
  And that was that kind of clutch moment where you like,
• 1:10:21
  okay, when he says that, something has to happen musically
• 1:10:26
  that is going to be really memorable and identify Matt.
• 1:10:31
  So definitely was a lovely series to do.
• 1:10:35
  And there are so many wonderful cues in it.
• 1:10:36
  And that sort of, the whole show seemed to have suddenly
• 1:10:39
  get the sense of like, yeah, like a shakeup
• 1:10:40
  and this is a new doctor, this is a new sort of take
• 1:10:42
  on the show.
• 1:10:43
  And it's just sort of throw the, this terrible book
• 1:10:45
  up and just throw it in the air.
• 1:10:47
  It was kind of, to me, it seemed like watching it.
• 1:10:49
  That seemed like to be the ethos.
• 1:10:50
  And going right from the top scripts to the acting to the music,
• 1:10:54
  you were reinventing yourself.
• 1:10:56
  I mean, obviously that comes through in the main theme,
• 1:10:57
  the most obviously, like you have the main theme
• 1:10:59
  and you suddenly, it goes from being that sort of orchestral
• 1:11:02
  but synthetic, weirdness that we talked about.
• 1:11:04
  So suddenly you got this big brass kind of riff up front
• 1:11:07
  and it feels really reckless.
• 1:11:09
  And I remember like from that moment,
• 1:11:11
  oh, this is something completely different.
• 1:11:12
  Yeah.
• 1:11:13
  And was that a conscious thing?
• 1:11:14
  Like, let's just, let's just go nuts.
• 1:11:16
  Yeah, let's say the real book up.
• 1:11:17
  No, it's weird because we were doing that in 2009,
• 1:11:21
  at the same time as we were basically doing,
• 1:11:23
  I think, probably Valley Decim.
• 1:11:26
  Did we follow Strayon?
• 1:11:27
  We had the specials in 2009.
• 1:11:29
  And I think David Tenon, but I don't want to go,
• 1:11:34
  was it Christmas day 2009?
• 1:11:37
  New Year's Day 2010, yeah.
• 1:11:38
  New Year's Day 2010 and then March 2010.
• 1:11:41
  So I wrote, I am the doctor in October 2009
• 1:11:47
  and I think recorded it at that recording session.
• 1:11:51
  Before we'd actually even said by Tenon.
• 1:11:55
  So it's like, I think maybe the only time
• 1:11:57
  I was simultaneously working on two doctors at the same time.
• 1:12:04
  Maybe there was, was there any overlap
• 1:12:06
  between shooties, Christmas special and shooting,
• 1:12:11
  David Tenon coming out of the same body?
• 1:12:13
  Not sure.
• 1:12:15
  Anyway, so it was quite weird though
• 1:12:17
  because we were still in grief from Aeros Lins,
• 1:12:24
  he was a director, I would always speak to, and Joe Hurn.
• 1:12:28
  You know, for me, it was still like,
• 1:12:29
  we were very much in the grief of saying goodbye.
• 1:12:33
  And, you know, what, but we were all about new energy
• 1:12:37
  though, we need, we want, this is like the show,
• 1:12:40
  we want, don't worry about goodbye.
• 1:12:43
  Did the TARDIS crash down to space on,
• 1:12:46
  on 1st of January, 2000, the end of the year?
• 1:12:50
  Yeah, so there was, in that episode,
• 1:12:53
  there was already a new cue with hints of Matt Smith's music
• 1:12:57
  in it, you know, within seconds of possibly
• 1:13:01
  the most heart-rending moment in Doctor Who history.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, it's the biggest turn of whiplash.
• 1:13:05
  I think the show is ever accomplished.
• 1:13:07
  It's awful.
• 1:13:08
  No, it's, it's amazing.
• 1:13:09
  No, it's so wrong.
• 1:13:11
  No, but it works because, like, you have,
• 1:13:13
  I was watching it the other day,
• 1:13:14
  like, you have this incredibly heart-rending moment.
• 1:13:16
  As you say, like, Valideshem, kind of like,
• 1:13:18
  yeah, the 10th Doctor's my way.
• 1:13:19
  You know, this is like, you know, I did it my way and regenerates.
• 1:13:22
  And then suddenly, I mean, like, you get this new guy,
• 1:13:25
  and it changes completely on a dime
• 1:13:27
  from being like the most heart-breaking moment you've ever seen.
• 1:13:28
  I remember watching it and being like,
• 1:13:29
  this is so moving and then boom,
• 1:13:31
  you suddenly get Matt coming in,
• 1:13:32
  and the complete turn of whiplash from that.
• 1:13:34
  Only really a show like Doctor Who can do that, attempt that,
• 1:13:38
  and then get away with it.
• 1:13:39
  And I think the music is so important to that
• 1:13:41
  because you're suddenly into the next thing.
• 1:13:42
  You're suddenly just crashing headlong into,
• 1:13:44
  literally, into the next series and like,
• 1:13:47
  and musically, that's how that works, I think,
• 1:13:49
  is that you get that next cue.
• 1:13:51
  And like, in a way, I don't mean, sorry, David,
• 1:13:53
  but you've almost kind of already forgotten
• 1:13:54
  about what just happened.
• 1:13:56
  The first comments online would likely be,
• 1:13:59
  oh my god, did you see what's coming?
• 1:14:01
  And as if we hadn't just sat through,
• 1:14:04
  the 10th Doctor's saying goodbye to Will,
• 1:14:05
  for all going around saying goodbye to all his friends.
• 1:14:12
  And but nope, here it is.
• 1:14:14
  There's funny old Matt Smith plunging to earth.
• 1:14:18
  I mean, it is, man, I do miss the digestion
• 1:14:22
  that I'd like to have after saying goodbye to someone I loved.
• 1:14:28
  At least give me like five seconds to recover.
• 1:14:33
  Just give me something, but yeah.
• 1:14:35
  It doesn't make sense, because that's the show it is.
• 1:14:37
  And speaking of goodbyes, I mean,
• 1:14:39
  I was thinking about this when I rewatched
• 1:14:40
  twice upon a time, which was that,
• 1:14:42
  which is obviously not only Peter's last episode,
• 1:14:44
  it was Steven's last episode of show and it was your last episode
• 1:14:46
  at the time, as I say, at the time,
• 1:14:48
  and then you came back.
• 1:14:49
  The episode ends, we're after Peter regenerates
• 1:14:51
  into J.D. Whitaker with like, there's a little call back
• 1:14:53
  to the Doctor's theme, right back,
• 1:14:55
  there's like a little drop of that from,
• 1:14:58
  which I think was one of the first cues
• 1:14:59
  you ever composed for the show in 2005.
• 1:15:01
  And like, you just hear that classic sort of,
• 1:15:03
  I guess, Murray Gold, Doctor Who, for you,
• 1:15:05
  make a little bit, and then that's it,
• 1:15:06
  and then Jody's coming in, and it's a new composer.
• 1:15:08
  It's Seagun, and then Chris Chibnall.
• 1:15:10
  Like, was that a deliberate part on your part?
• 1:15:12
  Like, I want to get a little bit of my original.
• 1:15:14
  No, I had nothing to do with it.
• 1:15:16
  Chris decided to put it in.
• 1:15:17
  Oh, right.
• 1:15:18
  Yeah, at that point, they hadn't hired a new composer yet.
• 1:15:23
  Right.
• 1:15:24
  So, you know, they couldn't ask anybody else
• 1:15:26
  to do anything for it.
• 1:15:27
  And in a way, it made sense,
• 1:15:29
  because that was the first piece of music
• 1:15:32
  for when the show had returned,
• 1:15:34
  might also be the only piece of music
• 1:15:36
  that other than the Doctor Who theme itself
• 1:15:38
  that's been in every incarnation,
• 1:15:42
  generation of the Doctor since Chris Equiston.
• 1:15:46
  But that wasn't the order.
• 1:15:47
  He just layered that in, because I didn't know it was there.
• 1:15:50
  Because it feels like such a wonderful closing
• 1:15:51
  of a loop in a sense, musically.
• 1:15:53
  Yeah.
• 1:15:54
  And tying back it back to the very beginning
• 1:15:56
  of your time on the show, and then, you know,
• 1:15:59
  I think it's sort of ceased to be
• 1:16:01
  Christopher Equiston's theme now,
• 1:16:02
  and that's become a sort of general Doctor's theme.
• 1:16:06
  The timeless character of the Doctor is that theme.
• 1:16:10
  So, whenever it's used now, it tends to be
• 1:16:13
  for something that's going very Doctor-y.
• 1:16:16
  Yeah.
• 1:16:17
  But then, of course, you came back, you know,
• 1:16:19
  with Russell came back in 2023,
• 1:16:20
  and then you came back to do the music for shooty seasons.
• 1:16:23
  I mean, was it a hard sell to get you back?
• 1:16:25
  Did Russell have to fight to finale to convince you to come back?
• 1:16:28
  Or was it just like a, yeah, now I'd love to do this again.
• 1:16:30
  Oh, yeah, I mean, I didn't,
• 1:16:32
  they knew I'd say agree to do it.
• 1:16:35
  I mean, I'd done a few things in the interim,
• 1:16:37
  so we'd done a very English scandal,
• 1:16:39
  it's a scene, and years and years.
• 1:16:42
  So, Russell would been prolific since leaving Doctor Who.
• 1:16:48
  I'd done all of those as well, plus other things.
• 1:16:52
  I went to bed one night, and I saw an email from Julie,
• 1:16:55
  saying, can we call you?
• 1:16:57
  And then, I didn't reply, because I was going to sleep,
• 1:16:59
  and then my phone rang, and I just didn't pick up,
• 1:17:02
  because I don't know, I was scared.
• 1:17:05
  I was late at night, you know, somebody from America,
• 1:17:09
  it was living in America cause you,
• 1:17:11
  and it's like, COVID-ee time, I don't know.
• 1:17:13
  I didn't know what it was going to be, you know,
• 1:17:16
  what are they going to say, you know?
• 1:17:20
  So, I didn't reply.
• 1:17:24
  And then I think they wanted to get to me
• 1:17:26
  before it was announced that Russell and Julie were coming back.
• 1:17:30
  So, the next day, that was announced,
• 1:17:31
  but I still didn't know,
• 1:17:32
  cause I don't use social media or follow it.
• 1:17:35
  So, I never know what's going on,
• 1:17:38
  and then Julie was on the phone, saying,
• 1:17:41
  well, you've probably heard by now,
• 1:17:42
  and I said, just heard what?
• 1:17:44
  And again, fearing the worst, like, who's died,
• 1:17:48
  or something, immediately,
• 1:17:50
  and then I just looked online to see,
• 1:17:53
  to make sure everyone was all right.
• 1:17:56
  To make sure no one was dead.
• 1:18:00
  And, you know, I saw Russell and Julie
• 1:18:03
  surprisingly return to Doctor Who,
• 1:18:06
  and I was like, I put two and two together,
• 1:18:09
  and then they rang, and I said, yes.
• 1:18:11
  That was it.
• 1:18:13
  Yeah, and I said, this isn't even my brain.
• 1:18:16
  This didn't even pass through my brain.
• 1:18:18
  This was just like, this went,
• 1:18:20
  that my spine made the decision.
• 1:18:22
  It is a reflexive.
• 1:18:23
  Yeah.
• 1:18:24
  The hypothalamus, you know.
• 1:18:27
  So, I mean, Russell and Julie are great.
• 1:18:29
  So, and, you know, I would,
• 1:18:32
  like I said, I would never, I would never
• 1:18:36
  turn down Doctor Who, so, you know.
• 1:18:38
  And like I say, we've got Chris was special
• 1:18:40
  coming this year, and then Russell's,
• 1:18:42
  you know, developing plans for where it will go next.
• 1:18:44
  I mean, are you keen to, like, say, like,
• 1:18:46
  stay on that train and keep on inventing new themes
• 1:18:48
  and new music, you're just like,
• 1:18:49
  I mean, if people are, if someone asks me,
• 1:18:52
  and says, would you, do you want to do it?
• 1:18:54
  Of course, I would always say yes.
• 1:18:56
  I don't think I'd ever say no to Russell anyway.
• 1:18:59
  It's fun, even when it's hard,
• 1:19:01
  it's, even when it's categorically,
• 1:19:04
  the opposite of fun.
• 1:19:06
  It's still fun.
• 1:19:08
  That reminds me of where, I remember you said once
• 1:19:10
  that Catherine Jenkins, the Abigail song
• 1:19:12
  that she sings in the Christmas special,
• 1:19:14
  Cat Christmas Carol, which is one of,
• 1:19:15
  I think one of the almost beloved songs on the show,
• 1:19:18
  that was written in two days.
• 1:19:20
  I want to say, like, they told you two days before recording,
• 1:19:22
  and you read the script.
• 1:19:24
  By the way, you've read, and I, yeah.
• 1:19:26
  And I said, yeah.
• 1:19:28
  And they said, so you will be aware of the big song
• 1:19:32
  that clinches the end and that is sung in vision.
• 1:19:37
  And I said, oh, yes.
• 1:19:40
  Oh, it's going to be fantastic.
• 1:19:42
  Let me just go and check.
• 1:19:43
  And they said, so is there any chance we can hear it?
• 1:19:46
  Oh, yes, I'm just putting my finishing touches to it.
• 1:19:51
  But by the way, how mad is it that we talk about the song,
• 1:19:55
  your songs for Doctor Who or songs?
• 1:19:58
  I mean, if anyone had said in the 90s or in the early 2000s,
• 1:20:03
  or even in 2005, there will come a point
• 1:20:06
  where it's quite normal for characters in Doctor Who
• 1:20:11
  to break into song, or for there to be,
• 1:20:15
  especially composed songs, for characters to sing
• 1:20:18
  or reflecting the journey of a character, whatever it is.
• 1:20:22
  And now it's, you know, that's how much has changed.
• 1:20:27
  That's one of the most incredible changes that this,
• 1:20:30
  I mean, wonderful, but quite dry, dry in tone,
• 1:20:34
  you know, quite scientific, quite, you know, just...
• 1:20:39
  Anyway, we all know what Doctor Who was.
• 1:20:42
  It certainly wasn't one where people came out singing.
• 1:20:45
  No.
• 1:20:46
  There is something in gunsling, as I think, maybe a song in a bar,
• 1:20:50
  but anyway, it's just like probably our few songs here and there,
• 1:20:53
  in the way that this, every now and again, looks like it could be an episode of Glee.
• 1:20:58
  Yeah, yeah, and it's just operatic kind of thing.
• 1:21:01
  Yeah, no, it's, it's incredible.
• 1:21:03
  And the fact that you had to do that, you have to do stuff like that in like two days
• 1:21:06
  and still pull that out of the magic hat.
• 1:21:08
  Well, sometimes that sharpens the mind.
• 1:21:11
  It's conducive to creativity.
• 1:21:12
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Speed is good.
• 1:21:15
  Something, one last question,
• 1:21:16
  because often we have a lot of, you know, filmmakers, actors, writers,
• 1:21:19
  and, you know, composers, DPs on the show, film workers,
• 1:21:22
  like if, and who are passionate about film and TV and music and what they do in the industry,
• 1:21:27
  I mean, is there someone out there right now working in film or television
• 1:21:30
  or even beyond that theater who you haven't worked with before?
• 1:21:33
  If you had the chance, you would absolutely love to work with,
• 1:21:36
  whether like a director or like a writer,
• 1:21:38
  like you saw in here, you think, oh, I could music to their images,
• 1:21:42
  I could do that. That will be great fun, you know, to explore.
• 1:21:44
  Is there anyone out there that you would love to work with if you have the chance?
• 1:21:47
  I love Ari Aster, his horror movies.
• 1:21:50
  Yeah.
• 1:21:51
  And I also love Zack, the guy who just directed Weapons.
• 1:21:56
  I've gone his name, but...
• 1:21:57
  Is it Craig? Craig?
• 1:21:58
  Yeah, yeah, is it?
• 1:21:59
  Mike White, who did, you know,
• 1:22:04
  School of Rock.
• 1:22:05
  No, no, no.
• 1:22:06
  White Lotus.
• 1:22:07
  Oh, White Lotus? Oh, yeah, same guy.
• 1:22:09
  Yeah. Oh, is it?
• 1:22:09
  Yeah, same guy.
• 1:22:10
  You wrote School of Rock and I've quite a few of the songs on it,
• 1:22:14
  I want to say, and then did White Lotus, late, you know.
• 1:22:17
  But I wouldn't do that because anyways,
• 1:22:19
  just got such a fantastic soundtrack already.
• 1:22:22
  I did read this conversation about the relationship between a composer and my wife
• 1:22:29
  in the New York Times, and it was quite a good read.
• 1:22:32
  You should read it, it's really interesting for me to have read
• 1:22:38
  because it's the most wonderful soundtrack.
• 1:22:40
  Interesting.
• 1:22:41
  And of the composers working today,
• 1:22:43
  are there any that you think are doing particularly great work or your fans?
• 1:22:45
  Oh God, there's loads.
• 1:22:47
  I mean, I know this is the end,
• 1:22:48
  but the way that music is written and the type of music people want these days is
• 1:22:55
  these days, it's quite different.
• 1:22:56
  I mean, a show like DOT2, which has lots of different tunes and light motifs
• 1:23:00
  for different characters, is quite unusual now.
• 1:23:05
  It's much more stripped back and I'm not sure the melody is such a big,
• 1:23:12
  desirable quality in a soundtrack.
• 1:23:16
  You know, people can be sometimes worried that I like that melody,
• 1:23:20
  but some people might not like that melody, so play it safe.
• 1:23:23
  I'm not saying everyone plays it safe, but there's a lot of really,
• 1:23:25
  there's a lot of really great composers out there.
• 1:23:28
  Yeah, but I hear what you're saying though, I feel like there is,
• 1:23:30
  I remember Danny Elfman, he once said that something he comes up against
• 1:23:32
  quite a lot, is the idea from, I guess, producers or higher ups,
• 1:23:35
  is that the music, oh, it shouldn't be noticed.
• 1:23:37
  It should just sort of blend into the background of the picture and play it
• 1:23:41
  in a quite a safe way.
• 1:23:42
  It just sort of fills the vacuum.
• 1:23:44
  And then he obviously, being Danny Elfman, reacts against that
• 1:23:46
  because his music is so memorable and it takes risks.
• 1:23:49
  And I feel like your music does the same.
• 1:23:50
  And I was, I was curious whether you'd ever had to deal with that,
• 1:23:53
  whether like there is an idea that music melody is not priced.
• 1:23:57
  Yeah, sorry.
• 1:23:58
  It's highly as it used to be.
• 1:23:59
  Yeah, no, it's everywhere.
• 1:24:00
  It's everywhere.
• 1:24:01
  It's, I mean, I was watching over Christmas, I was watching Die Hard
• 1:24:04
  and I think it's Michael Cayman who scored it.
• 1:24:07
  And the amount of work that is involved, wait, was it that or was it home alone?
• 1:24:12
  Anyway, I'm getting, but anyway, it doesn't really matter
• 1:24:14
  because either of those scores are just huge amounts of orchestration
• 1:24:19
  and just tonal complexity and, you know, the big orchestral scores
• 1:24:26
  that make really interesting, they're so sophisticated.
• 1:24:30
  I'm not sure that we have that level of sophistication around now.
• 1:24:36
  We have a lot of, you know, wonderful music.
• 1:24:39
  And especially in the sort of Disney Pixar realm of things
• 1:24:43
  where you're constantly finding new ways to enchant children
• 1:24:48
  and lock a new story into their imaginations forever and ever.
• 1:24:54
  You know, so there's just some really great stuff out there.
• 1:24:56
  But it has changed.
• 1:24:58
  It does feel like, sometimes it does feel quite safe and quite muted.
• 1:25:03
  But yeah, you know, what do you expect?
• 1:25:05
  I mean, I've been doing it for 30 years.
• 1:25:08
  And doing it exceptionally, if I may say so.
• 1:25:10
  And yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the great things,
• 1:25:12
  one of the things I love about your music, just, I guess, just to finish on that.
• 1:25:15
  Like, your music has always been so memorable and melody is such a huge part of it
• 1:25:19
  and it demands to be heard.
• 1:25:21
  You know, you hear those songs like The Shepherd's Boy or I'm the Doctor
• 1:25:24
  and you instantly tune in and you keep listening and you don't stop.
• 1:25:28
  And that's, you know, one of the things I love about your music, Murray.
• 1:25:30
  And what can I say, you know, I'm so happy that you've been happy to chat to us
• 1:25:34
  about it on half the picture.
• 1:25:35
  It's been great.
• 1:25:36
  You know, as a fan, it's been, you know, it's a bit of a dream come true.
• 1:25:39
  Well, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:25:41
  I'm so sorry if I wandered off into philosophical terrain too much.
• 1:25:46
  But that's who I am.
• 1:25:47
  I'm just a pretentious twat.
• 1:25:50
  And on that note, we shall draw a veil.
• 1:25:55
  Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Murray Gold.
• 1:26:05
  Remember to like and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode
• 1:26:08
  and stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests coming soon on half the picture.
• 1:26:24
  You