Next weekend the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular – a live performance of music from the show – begins touring the UK.

CultBox recently caught up with Murray via Skype in New York to discuss the concerts, composing for Doctor Who, and just about everything else…

 

Thinking about the differences in some of the things you’ve done, from Doctor Who, to, say, Cucumber recently. There’s such a difference in what you need to do for each of those.

“Oh, yeah.”

 

Do you find your approach changes when you’re doing something sci-fi or something on a big scale like Doctor Who, versus something more contemporary?

“It’s interesting with sci-fi, because a lot of sci-fi doesn’t inspire music. I mean, yeah, you’re going to get your invasion-of-earth scene that gives you a chance to play all your sample collections and make a lot of noise with drums. But very few sci-fi shows have got such a strong human element to them, so very few have that charm and wit.

“I mean, I know they are there now, I’m probably a bit behind the times. I’m sure that Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and things like that are probably witty and fun. I’ve never seen it, but you know, ten years ago, when Doctor Who came out, for most of that time, it’s an anomaly in the sci-fi world. I almost don’t even see it as sci-fi.

“It’s got as much family saga in it, and melodrama or comedy sometimes, as any other thing. Yeah, it’s rooted in, of course, a very very sci-fi heavy concept, about time travel. But it’s just an anomaly, you know, so there’s just not much that I can even imagine that would be as fun to do as Doctor Who.”

 

I think that that speaks to probably a large reason why you’re still doing it after quite a few years; it hasn’t remained static since it came back in 2005, obviously, with four Doctors. So how have you found working with the Twelfth Doctor most recently, musically, in particular?

“It’s been really fun. You know, I kind of started thinking, you know, when you work with a director, in this case Ben Wheatley, who directed the first two episodes of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, he’s much less concerned with what Capaldi’s theme is, and he’s much more concerned with, ‘right, I just want some music that, you know, tells this episode’s story.’ But Ben’s shooting style is different, you know, from other directors, especially with ‘Into the Dalek’.”

 

Most definitely.

“That was a kind of standout episode for me, I really loved it. It felt very cold and weird and, you know, disconnected somehow. And it wasn’t easing you through the storytelling, it wasn’t, it didn’t give you all those reassuring two-shots of face and face in camera. It was a lot of drifting senses of things.

“Anyway, so the music for the two episodes kind of came about together, and the first one is a much more traditional kind of modern Doctor Who story, with the Doctor landing and recovering from his regeneration, but I just wanted to get something for Capaldi that was, you know, very on the front, was very thrusting and forceful, a bit scary, not necessarily as immediately likeable or warm, you know.

“And also I think Ben and I were both interested in, you know, just playing around a bit more with some electronics, electronic sounds. And I think after probably nine years of the electronic sounds being in the background – I mean, they were always there but they were in the background – they became a bit more foregrounded with Peter. So that was fun.”

 

Yeah, I really liked what you guys did with ‘Into the Dalek’. Weird is a really good word for Ben’s direction.

“He knew that, because just the idea of being miniaturised and injected is so 1970s. Like Fantastic Voyage, or just that whole thing, and he sort of did it like that, so it did actually feel like cult TV, where a lot of Doctor Who since 2005 has felt more like mainstream TV, you know, unsurprisingly, because that’s what it is.

“It’s not on BBC Two on Tuesday nights, it’s on Saturday night on BBC One. So it’s always, it’s knowingly mainstream. But I love that that one episode was allowed to be knowingly off. It’s edgy.”

 

So, you’ve got several dates of the Symphonic Spectacular coming up. Could you tell us a little about the show?

“Oh god, so the live show is really, I don’t want to sound, I mean, I am promoting it, but I don’t want that to take away from what I actually feel, which is that it’s quite awesome.

“There’s like 150 people on stage with massive sound, like a stadium, a huge sound in a room with a rock and roll kind of atmosphere, with the orchestra who play all of the soundtracks, who play every episode of Doctor Who and have played every album that’s been made.

“So it’s going to be our orchestra. And what I love about it is the sense of it being, like I mentioned, like a rock gig, in the sense that you suspend your personality, you abandon your individuality, and for a couple of hours just let the sheer love of Doctor Who and the sweep of the music kind of run over you.

“It’s kind of, it’s quite powerful. Like, people cry, quite quickly.”

 

Aww!

“It goes WHOOM – and you’ve got all your favourite moments being played on an absolutely gigantic screen in a big room of people who really love Doctor Who. It’s quite fun.”

 

It sounds wonderful.

“I remember I was in Sydney and I was with Caro [Skinner], who was then executive producer of Doctor Who, and we were upstairs somewhere in the balcony section, and the show was going on, and the people next to us were just jumping up and down and applauding and shouting stuff in Russian. And we were like, wow, they’re really into it.

“And at the end of it they turned round to us and they said, ‘What was it?’ and we said, ‘You don’t know? This is a show, it’s a British show called Doctor Who.’ and they said, ‘Oh, marvellous show! We’ve never heard of it, never seen it!’

“And we said, ‘How come you came here?’ They said, ‘Oh, we just got off the boat! We’re on a cruise and we wanted to see something, we wanted to see Sydney Opera House.’ So this entire Russian family had been cruising around the South Pacific and had just docked in Sydney and they all just bought tickets – and they were just celebrating it like mad, like it was the best thing they’d ever seen.

“They’d never heard of Doctor Who, they’d never seen it! They had no idea what they were watching. It was so funny.”

 

That’s amazing, genuinely. For all we know, they’ve since become die-hard Whovians. The music is the gateway drug, maybe.

“Oh, I’m sure, who knows? You know, anything to help.”