Guest contributors Isaac Bowen and Yossi Pinkus investigate.



There are many things we take for granted when it comes to Doctor Who, but quite often we forget the power of music. Notes that can make us outraged with the Master’s latest evil scheme, or cry at the loss of our favourite Doctor; it is the score of the episode that reigns supreme time and time again. It is due to the likes of Murray Gold, Dudley Simpson, Mark Ayres, Dominic Glynn and many many more, that monsters in Doctor Who can be made either scary or just plain silly.

The classically hair-raising story everyone looks to of course is B​link. ​This episode introduced us to the Weeping Angels, considered by most to be one of Doctor Who’s most fearsome creations. But what made them so petrifying? For us, it was the music. At first, use of atmospheric sounds established the dark tone. But when it came to Sally facing off with the stone horrors, it was those harrowing strings that sent shivers down your spine.

In contrast, The Angels Take Manhattan ​was nowhere near as frightening. There is a reason for this: the tone of the music. While B​link ​contained a distressing tone, A​ngels ​takes a more sombre, melancholy one, to compliment the more emotional plot of the Ponds’ exit(s). And when the soundtrack was not making you want to shed some tears, the tone was similar to that of an action movie; fast paced and urgent. These two episodes, while both featuring the same monster, are very different in terms of fear factor, leading us to point our fingers at the score.

A lack of music can also create a sense of unease and tension. L​isten,​ is the prime example. Although it may provoke controversy over many points, most will agree that it is a terrifying episode. What is unique about L​isten i​s that one of its single most frightening images is that of a red blanket. Naturally, then, it was not the potential monster that was scary, but the distinctive and often subtle soundtrack. Its elusive undertones create the perfect setting to transform any object, however mundane, into the perfect Doctor Who monster to have the whole family shaking in terror.

Now, take the episode​ Night Terrors.​ The concept behind peg dolls that shamble toward you and turn you into one of them purely by touch is a positively scary idea. The tension mounting to the reveal in the doll­house should leave you on the edge of the seat, or even behind it. But once the score kicks in, all tension is lost. Its whimsical tone, with nursery rhyme style leitmotifs, dull the menace of the dolls right down into figures of mild amusement; watch them clumsily stumble past a door or get jabbed with comically over­sized objects. We can’t help but wonder how much better the story would have been with some haunting strings, or perhaps no score at all, letting the eerie, diegetic atmosphere shape these dolls into the stuff of nightmares. Mark Gatiss has recently said that his new script for Series 9 is his most scary yet. Hopefully it’s backed by a score that reflects this.