Close Analysis - Doctor Who (The Dead Planet)

Analyse the importance of Sound (including dialogue, music, sound effects); to how the episode
represents its themes or meaning or message. Focus on the following topics: The representation
and/or role of technology, The idea of television as planned flow.
The 1963 Doctor Who episode The Dead Planet is an exemplary case-study on sound design,
utilising an adept understanding of the active role that sound plays in televisual programming
flow to consolidate a thematic emphasis on technological progression. The inventive theme
music composed a manifesto of the uncanny, bringing experimental music technologies and
traditions to an uninitiated popular audience, and represented progressive new possibilities in
music prompted by the war paranoid zeitgeist. Furthermore, The Dead Planet amalgamated
sound effects and soundtrack to express alien atmosphere, switching between visually
explicable and inexplicable sound indiscernibly. All sound design on the episode was contrived
to ensure when the viewer no longer paid attention to the screen that it remained feasible to
comprehend all plot points through visually descriptive dialogue and musical preclusion of
dramatic action.
The titular theme that opens The Dead Planet was a fundamental element of Doctor Whos
innovative approach in sound design, a subversive and hugely influential piece of pre-
synthesiser electronic music. It descended from the musical tradition of musique concrete, an
experimental style fathered by the French radio engineer Pierre Schaeffer in the mid 1940s (All
Music, n.d).
...The question was to collect concrete sounds, wherever they came from, and to abstract the
musical values they were potentially containing (Reydellet, 1996)
Schaeffers techniques were performed by the use of recordings of natural or household

objects, speech, or instruments used in unfamiliar manners, and elaborated through tape
manipulation. The particular philosophical aspect most applicable to Doctor Who is that of the
term Acousmatic, meaning a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it" (All
Music, n.d). This is true of all sound practise within The Dead Planet, and particularly
significant within the laboured construction of the theme music.
The Doctor Who theme itself differs in its composition slightly, being initially notated by
composer Ron Grainer. Grainers score was very basic, consisting only of the bass line and the
notes of the swooping melody, choosing to deliberately provide obscure prompts such as
wind bubble and cloud to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to interpret. Dalia Derbyshire and
her team of technicians took this brief, and created the piece with a meticulous splicing, speed
altering, and cutting of analogue tape recording. Many of these recordings were of filtered white
noise, and test-tone oscillators, boths sound capacity being technological by-products. This
alien concept of electronic music draws on societally familiar elements however; Derbyshire
said that her interest in abstract sounds came from the air raid sirens still ringing in the blitzed
memory of British people (Weir, 2011). The theme music, for the period, was a firm example of
acousmatic music, and as such felt exhilaratingly futuristic, particularly to a mainstream
television audience who had no exposure to the musique concrete experimentation.
The acousmatic philosophy present in The Dead Planet manifests in incidental music and
sound effects to convey abnormality, blurring the lines between diegetic and non diegetic sound.
Diegetic sound refers to all whose source is either visible or implied within the action of a film,
while non-diegetic is the opposite, neither visible nor implied (Art of Film Sound, n.d). Because
The Dead Planet occurs in an otherworldly setting, amongst otherworldly technology,
acousmatic sound is used to suitably express this. For example, a constant of the sound design
throughout the episode is the the presence of the moaning celestial wind upon the surface of
the Dalek planet of Skaro. It is initially a diegetic sound becauses Ian refers to it in dialogue,
pointing out that the trees do not move with the wind. It is however at 1:04 supplemented by
dissonant brass intervals in increasing volume, thus becoming involved in the atmospheric non-
diegetic commentary on the tense strangeness of the planet. This melding of diegetic and non
diegetic sound solidifies the presence of acousmatic musical practise, and enhances the
programming flow by providing a continuity in the sound presented.
Programming flows competition with household flow is paramount to the dialogic element of
The Dead Planets sound design. Viewer attentiveness was known to be a fickle constant
because of this competition; a 1972 study later confirmed this, finding that during
commercialised serials, focus on the screen was given only fifty five percent of the time (Altman,
1986). Writer Terry Nation largely addresses the issue with heavily expository dialogue. In order
to ensure that the viewer is able to comprehend the story even when leaving the room,
characters speak of their environment very visually, often to a redundant and repetitious degree:
BARBARA: There's been a forest fire. Everything's sort of white and ashen.
IAN: Funny mist.
DOCTOR: The heat must have been indescribable. Look at this soil here. Look at it. It's all turn
to sand and ashes. Extraordinary. How can shrubs or trees grow in soil like that, hmm?
IAN: Something else that's strange. There's quite a breeze blowing.
SUSAN: Well?
IAN: Well, look at the branches and things.
SUSAN: They don't seem to be moving.
BARBARA: They're not. They're absolutely still.
(Ian touches a twig, and it breaks easily)
IAN: Huh. Like stone, look. Very brittle stone. It crumbles when you touch it. Look.
Plain and descriptive speech like this provided audio plot continuity even when the viewer had
broken visual attention, thus a promoting a large degree of harmonization with household flow.
The sound design of The Dead Planet also served to italicise upcoming dramatic moments,
allowing viewers to anticipate rising tension and turn back to the screen to witness them
(Altman, 1986). This is particularly present in the final five minutes of the episode when Barbara
is lost inside the Dalek complex. Oscillating tones echoing within the metal complex are
distinctly foreign, and are intensified by Barbaras gradually more desperate footsteps. This
signals commencement of foreign material and dramatic action to the household audience,
commanding their attention back to the television. Mediating this relationship with household
flow in both manners is conducive to Doctor Whos discursive pedigree: engaging the household
audience in dialogue and ensuring their understanding of everything that was occurring (Altman,
1986).
Doctor Who episode The Dead Planets avant-garde sound design typified the rising role of
technology both in its creation and its corresponding representation within the show while
presenting new possibility for its role in programming management. The theme tune was
integral to the audio aesthetic of the program in its use of concrete and untraditional sounds,
and presented an uncomfortable balance between the alien and the familiar tones of war.
Acousmatic philosophy defined all of its sound design, curating effects and scores both so
foreign that their differences were inappreciable. All dialogue has a purposeful visual function,
cemented by the soundtracks italicising role, so to continually mediate the competition between
household and programming flow. The Dead Planet succeeds so because of its awareness of
its visual shortcomings and household flow, knowing that its fantastical imagery is most strongly
transmitted by the vibrancy of its cutting edge sound design.
Bibliography:
Altman, Rick. Television/sound in Studies in Mass Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass

Culture, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1986, pp. 39-45.
All Music, n.d, Avant-Garde Modern Composition Musique Concrte,

http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/musique-concr%C3%A8te-ma0000012319, Accessed
20/08/17
Art of Film Sound, n.d, Diegetic sound, http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic.htm, Accessed

20/08/17
Misra, Risa, 2014, How The TARDIS Got Its Famous Dematerialization Sound,
http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-the-tardis-got-its-famous-dematerialization-sound-
1576542138?IR=T , Accessed 20/08/17
Reydellet, Jean de, 1996, "Pierre Schaeffer, 19101995: The Founder of 'Musique Concrete'",
Computer Music Journal 20, no. 2 (Summer): 1011, JSTOR
Weir, William, 2011, How the (Original) 'Doctor Who' Theme Changed Music,
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/how-the-original-doctor-who-theme-
changed-music/237938/ , Accessed 20/08/17

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Analyse the importance of Sound (including dialogue, music, sound effects); to how the episode

Schaeffers techniques were performed by the use of recordings of natural or household

Altman, Rick. Television/sound in Studies in Mass Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass

All Music, n.d, Avant-Garde Modern Composition Musique Concrte,

Art of Film Sound, n.d, Diegetic sound, http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic.htm, Accessed

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