45 Years of the Doctor Who Theme

This time 45 years ago an institution was born. I've written at length about how much I love Doctor Who, so I won't go on about that again, well not all of it anyway.

Instead I'd like to celebrate one of the most iconic things about the show: the theme.

There are many TV themes. Some are really memorable, some are annoyingly hummable (I'm looking at you Van De Valk), some are terrible, and then there are the instantly recognisable ones that endure. Doctor Who is lucky enough to have the last of these, a theme you recognise right from the moment it starts. There's the dum-di-dum bass line and the ooo-wee-ooo melody line that combine to form something we all know and love. Great stuff.

But it's the way it was made originally that makes it for me. The original arrangement by Delia Derbyshire is still hard to beat. Even 45 years later it sounds like nothing else ever made, because there are very few other pieces of music assembled in quite the same way. And assembled is the right word, as it was painstakingly pieced together bit by bit by tape loops of recordings of noted generated by wave oscillators, white noise generators and the much loved Radiophonic Workshop wobbulator. The bass line was formed from a plucked string again looped along with a wave oscillation loop. These were all then run round the Radiophonic Workshop, at various speeds to create the right pitch and eventually when all the elements were right they were played together to build the theme up from nothing. There was no multi-track recording available so it really was a series of tapes played at the same to time to create the theme! It all sounds so primitive, but it created something truly timeless. Something that stand up well today and something that was entirely unlike anything heard on TV in 1963.

As I've mentioned before, I recently bought The Radiophonic Workshop retrospective. The first CD starts with some of the earliest work from the workshop, very bleepy, primitive sounding soundscapes and ticking sound checks to go with the BBC clocks. Then, we hit 1963 and the Doctor Who theme is one of the tracks and it's such a huge leap from the others. Light years ahead- taking all the things they've done so far and refining it to such a degree that it stands head and shoulders above the other tracks on the CD, even the much later ones. Not many TV themes do that.

The theme has been rearranged a number of times, with great and not so great success, but it still endures to this day. We all have our opinions on which arrangements have worked better than others, but I think most people agree it's very difficult to better that original arrangement.

So let's raise a toast to Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mills for realising one of the most iconic pieces of music ever heard on British TV.

Happy Anniversary!