Composing a Masterplan

Editor: Martin Johnson · Last update: 29 October 2007

When asked to provide the music for The Dalek Masterplan on stage, minutes after the final performance of Evil of the Daleks, I gave no hesitation in my answer, “Hell yeah”.

I loved every minute of producing the score for Evil and when sat in the audience watching the action a shiver went down my spine every time. Also, I was chatting to some of the fans after the shows and the comments I was getting really was encouraging and it seemed that everyone loved the score I put so much work into. As a big long term Doctor Who fan myself I felt accomplished and respected by other fans and you just cannot buy that!

 Martin JohnsonMartin Johnson

The music for Masterplan will be very different in contrast to Evil. The Evil score was quite creepy and gave the production the dark atmospheric mood that particular story needed. The music for Masterplan is going to be more like a cross between John Williams, Alan Silvestri and Bernard Hermann…imagine that! The music of Star Wars, Back to the Future and Vertigo all in one Doctor Who story!! Of course I am in no way trying to mimic the music of these great film composers. If I realise my music sounds too much like someone else’s work I’ll discard it. Like any film composer I feel there’s nothing worse than someone saying that my music is just like Murray Gold’s, for example.

After attending the first draft script read-through in February I knew exactly what was needed from the music and the style it would take on. As soon as I got back to the hotel I was humming crazy stuff into my little recorder, coming up with ideas and making notes on certain cues. Some of the first things I got down on paper were the different instruments I would be using. This score will require a lot of brass staccato and percussion and will be denser than Evil’s flowing strings and sustained brass. I will still use slow strings, etc for underscoring scenes with dialogue so it doesn’t distract the audience’s attention from what’s happening on stage. There may not be as many themes as there were in the Evil score when there were three, the Dalek theme, Maxtible’s theme and the Waterfield’s theme. I am toying with the idea of doing a variation on the Dalek theme for Masterplan but it will not be as dominant as it was in Evil. My two principal themes will represent the typical good vs. evil story, one theme for our group of heroes battling through an intergalactic war and the other for the evil forces that threaten the balance. The only part of composing that makes me sweat is the dense action music. It’s so time consuming especially for a score of this nature and every time I get to those cues I think things that are not for family ears! Although by the end of them, if it’s good stuff, I end up listening to it over and over and that surely can’t be healthy!

Well, I’m really looking forward too seeing the production come together on the week of the show and I can’t wait to meet everyone again…cast, crew and fans. Since this will be the last ever Doctor Who stage production all the people involved are dedicated to making this one an event to be remembered for a long time!

After the success of my score for Evil I have been asked to compose music for other Who related productions. The first is for the famous fan film Doctor Who: Devious, which Ashley Nealfuller asked me about during Evil and the other is for the documentary Fanz by Marq English. I’m also in the process of producing an audio drama called Dark Village. If you would like to find out more about my future work I have a MySpace page.

If you’re one of the lucky people to get tickets before they sell out then I’ll be hanging around the theatre during production week so don’t be afraid to come and say hi.

As a taster, you can download extracts of the score from Evil of the Daleks:

You can download more of the soundtrack from Evil of the Daleks from my Web site.