The latest series of the hit show is full of catchy tunes, with one episode specifically themed around the subject of music. But exactly what music does Doctor Who feature? Here is our detailed guide.
Who plays the new Doctor?
The 15th Doctor is played by the Rwandan-born Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa, who is the first black actor, and the first actor born outside the UK ever to lead the series.
What else has Ncuti Gatwa done?
You might have seen him playing Erif Effiong in the Netflix comedy-drama series Sex Education – a performance that has earned him three BAFTA nominations for Best Male Comedy Performance.
When did the new series of Doctor Who come out, and which episodes have aired so far?
The fourteenth series of Dr Who premiered on 11 May and will finish on 22 June. There have been three episodes so far: ‘Space Babies’; ‘The Devil’s Chord’; and ‘Boom’.
Which periods of history will the new Doctor visit?
The Tardis will be flying back millions of years this season to see dinosaurs roaming the Earth. But there will also be some relatively short-haul journeys, including visits to the Regency era of early 19th century England and – in the Devil’s Chord episode – to the 1960s.
Which Doctor Who episodes have featured music?
All of the Doctor Who episodes have featured music to a greater or lesser extent, but one in particular – The Devil’s Chord – was all about music.
By the way, Doctor Who featured strongly in our list of the the best TV theme tunes.
What happened in the Devil’s Chord episode?
When Ruby – a huge Beatles fan – asks the Doctor to guide the Tardis to 1960s, they land in Abbey Road Studios, during the recording of The Beatles’ first album. However, the pair quickly realise that something is wrong: humankind has mysteriously lost the ability to create soulful music, not least the Beatles, who sound horrendous.
The culprit behind all this is Maestro: a devil-like villain, who possesses the ability to literally suck the musical essence out of people and hoard it for himself, creating a world devoid of music.
What music was featured in this Doctor Who episode?
The episode opens with a discussion of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. At one point an old woman tries to distract Maestro by playing Debussy’s Clair de Lune on her piano and there are a few other snippets of classical music including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre – a piece that is itself centred around the Devil’s Chord.
There are also a few extracts from jazz and ragtime tunes. But despite the fact that characters from The Beatles – in particular Paul McCartney and John Lennon – feature heavily throughout the episode, we don’t hear a single track from the iconic band: the rights were too expensive. So instead, as Doctor and Ruby wander through 1963, we hear a song by the sixties duo Ashford and Simpson, called ‘California Soul’ by Ashford and Simpson.
Maestro briefly plays the theme song of “Doctor Who” on the piano. Later on in the episode, the Doctor and Ruby play “The Life of Sunday – Ruby’s Theme’ – a song by the composer Murray Gold, who wrote most of the music for Doctor Who from 2005 to 2017.
In between, there are a lot of bum notes, which makes sense given that this is an episode about music being used for the forces of evil. And, talking of evil, towards the end, Doctor and Ruby actually get trapped inside musical instruments, which, unlike the Tardis, are no more roomy on the inside than they appear to be on the outside.
But luckily, Lennon and McCartney are there to save the day, restoring peace, and good music, to the world, with a final chord.
And the Devil’s Chord? Where does that come into the story?
Right at the beginning of the episode, when a piano teacher tries to liven up a lesson by playing it to his bored pupil. As soon as he does, the piano lid suddenly drops; a knocking is heard from inside; and Maestro emerges from the lid. He calls the teacher a genius for unlocking “the lost chord” and proceeds to suck the music out of his soul.
What exactly is a Devil’s Chord? And what does it sound like?
It’s an evil-sounding chord in which the interval between two notes is a diminished fifth (six semitones, or, in other words, one semitone less than a perfect fifth.) It goes by many other names, including the tritone and the flattened fifth. It has been said that music featuring this interval was banned from churches because of its association with the devil. But, sensational as this sounds, there is no evidence that this ever happened.
Then why don’t you find it in medieval and Renaissance church music?
The reason is that tritones were considered to be unstable and difficult to resolve according to strict laws of counterpoint. Plus, they sound very strange.