Doctor Who Themes, original and remixes

[elfs]

Awesome! Every Doctor Who theme ever made, all strung together for comparison's sake:

A couple of observations. First, I could have sworn that the first season of Tom Baker as Doctor Who had the swarm of stars tunnel and diamond logo, but they show Jon Pertwee as having that particular visual.

The Sylvester McCoy theme's visuals (and also the music, but not to such a great extent) illustrate everything that was wrong with 1980s television science fiction, and television logos in general. (See DVNO's Justice video for a brief and clever refresher of the horror that was 80s television logos.) What I find interesting about the McCoy and McGann era is how they took the second part of Ron Grainer's soundtrack, bits he wrote but were only available on the original BBC album (of which I own a copy).

If you listen closely during the Christopher Eccleston theme, you can hear an additional underlying violin theme that's become a staple of action/adventure movies, a "hurry, hurry" cliche that can be found in every soundtrack from the video game Halo to the movies 2012 and the Clash of the Titans remake. It's there in the Tennant theme as well, along with a driving heartbeat bassline.

Matt Smith's theme steals shamelessly from the X-Files, and is almost unrecognizable for several seconds as you wait to get into it.

If you want to waste your entire freakin' day, head over to WhoMix and enjoy hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of pro-am remixes of the Doctor Who theme song.

Comments

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

I grew up watching Dr Who on various public television stations around NYC, and one of them actually showed each episode separately - the other three strung every portion together to get one full show, meaning the end credits were only shown for the last part. That one station meant I got to see the start and end credits a LOT, so I can confirm that yes, there was overlap in the title music and video changing. I think it was only the last year of Pertwee having the Tom Baker theme, and you'll note the one you remember for Peter Davison also had Tom Baker.

I miss seeing a lot of the older doctor's stuff. I've heard the recordings are mostly trashed now, which makes me very sad if true. Some of the classics were just wonderful shows.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's Justice's DVNO video.

[(Anonymous)]

I can only speak for the UK but most of the older Who stuff has been released on DVD here. Given the age of the show it's no surprise that some of the older recordings have been lost. The BBC archives (the BBC being the group responsible for the production of Who) are truly huge with everything from Doctor Who to natural history documentaries, news footage, soaps (yuck)...