Will the missing soundtrack be released anytime soon? Here’s everything we know so far.
There are plenty of mysteries from Doctor Who‘s past which keep fans up at night, but few that provoke quite as many question as the so-called ‘series 10 soundtrack mystery’.
The 10th season of Doctor Who, which first aired in 2017 and starred Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor, alongside Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts, Matt Lucas as Nardole and Michelle Gomez as Missy, is the only season of the revived show not to have its soundtrack released in any format for purchase or streaming.
The music for the season was composed by Murray Gold, who left the series after 2017’s Christmas special Twice Upon a Time. However, he recently returned to the show alongside showrunner Russell T Davies, and composed the music for all four of last year’s specials.
But does Gold’s return mean we are likely to see the Doctor Who season 10 soundtrack being released anytime soon, and why has it not been released thus far? Read on for everything you need to know.
When could the Doctor Who season 10 soundtrack be released?
It’s difficult to tell exactly when the Doctor Who season 10 soundtrack will be released, particularly given that it has now been seven years since the episodes first aired.
There had come a time where many fans assumed that the soundtrack would simply never be released. However, Murray Gold’s return to composing on the show did hold some hope for fans, and he has recently expressed that he still has a desire to release the soundtrack, once he finds the time to do so.
Speaking in April 2023, Gold told Doctor Who Magazine of the soundtrack: “Look, it will come out. That’s an exclusive. The Series 10 album will see the light of day. By hook or by crook.”
He since repeated his desire to release it in November 2023, so it seems for fans it is still simply a matter of continuing to wait patiently until Gold or the BBC provides any update.
Could it be released in 2024 or 2025? Fingers crossed, but we’ll have to wait and see…
Why hasn’t the Doctor Who season 10 soundtrack been released yet?
Season 10 is currently the only season of the modern show for which a soundtrack hasn’t been released, with all seasons prior and subsequent all getting a release shortly after their broadcast.
Composer Murray Gold, who worked on seasons 1-10 and has recently returned for Russell T Davies’s second era as showrunner, previously explained why this occurred in an interview with BBC Radio Solent in November 2023.
Gold explained: “There isn’t a particular mystery. I will say this – when I did the series 9 album, before it was released it was sitting on my agency’s server, and it was stolen from the server by hackers. And it then was distributed before we’d had a chance to put the album out.
“And it did knock me back a bit because we I just thought, ‘Well, we go to quite a lot of additional effort to put out these records’. It sounds like I’m moaning on but it wasn’t just the people who stole it, it was everybody who gleefully passed it on. And fine, it was enthusiastic and blah blah blah. And it sort of just made me question, ‘what is the value of releasing an album?’.
“Around the same time I had a kid, I ran straight into a show with Stephen Frears called A Very English Scandal – in order to do the album you need a couple of months spare to get it done. I just didn’t have a couple of months. I kept thinking ‘I will get a couple of months to do it’.
“I mean, I know people think all you do is pull the music out, but the music has been edited to fit in with the episodes, and it’s crossfaded in, there’s things that happen to it that mean it’s not ready for stereo release, it needs mastering, all these processes that need to be done.
“It just takes a while, there’s all of these things that you need time to do. And those two months really never came along. But I keep hoping that they are coming along. But it’s quite hard to find that two months spare.”
So there we have it – it seems it is now simply a matter of time until fans will be able to listen to the season 10 soundtrack to their heart’s content.
Which episodes can we expect music from?
We would expect the Doctor Who season 10 soundtrack to feature music from all twelve episodes of the season, as well as the 2016 and 2017 Christmas specials.
Here’s a full list of the episodes from season 10:
- The Return of Doctor Mysterio
- The Pilot
- Smile
- Thin Ice
- Knock Knock
- Oxygen
- Extremis
- The Pyramid at the End of the World
- The Lie of the Land
- Empress of Mars
- The Eaters of Light
- World Enough and Time
- The Doctor Falls
- Twice Upon a Time
Doctor Who will return in May 2024. Doctor Who is available to watch on BBC iPlayer and on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here.
Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.