Murray Gold's Doctor Who: Series 5 score album lands in the "Assorted Fistful" block on A Fistful of Soundtracks

I enjoyed Steven Moffat's fifth-season revamp of Doctor Who and composer Murray Gold's new themes for the show, so I'm adding several standout Gold cues from the fifth-season score album to "Assorted Fistful" rotation. The two-disc album from Silva Screen came out in November in the U.K. and finally hit our shores just recently.

Gold's rousing "I Am The Doctor" theme for The 11th Doctor (Matt Smith, who's been a terrific Doctor, despite the Tucker Carlson bow tie) is my favorite theme he's written for any of The Doctor's post-Paul McGann incarnations so far. When I first heard it during the "Eleventh Hour" season premiere, I thought to myself, "Okay, I gotta cop that CD." I like how Gold takes the percussion during the "I Am The Doctor" motif and makes it simulate a ticking clock, like in the "Amy in the TARDIS" cue that concludes "The Eleventh Hour" as The Doctor activates the new TARDIS for the first time.

"I Am The Doctor" and "Amy in the TARDIS" are part of the "Assorted" playlist, along with the season finale cue "The Sad Man with a Box," which includes some nifty electronic effects that represent the "timey-wimey stuff" that goes down during the finale. When I first heard the CD sound as if it were being played back in reverse and then paused, I got worried and thought my CD was skipping, but then I remembered it was an electronic effect from the scene where River Song (Alex Kingston) gets trapped in a time loop.

I'm looking forward to season 6 (finally, an episode shot on location in America, with actual American actors for a change, instead of British actors mangling American accents!), and I'm wondering what Gold has up his sleeve for the theme that will represent "the silence that will fall" in the new season. I'm thinking Gold will take the Pootie Tang approach (no music).

AFOS: "Four-Star Playlist" tracks

Airing today at 10am and 3pm on A Fistful of Soundtracks is the Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Four-Star Playlist" (WEB83) from January 1-7, 2007. Each track during WEB83 received at one time or another a four-star rating or higher from Live365.com listeners. I had a bad cold when I recorded WEB83. I sounded like Peter Brady.

The instrumental bed during WEB83's opening segment is "Who Got Da Props" by Black Moon.

1. Duran Duran, "A View to a Kill," The Best of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
2. James Horner, "Main Title," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, GNP/Crescendo
3. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, "Vespertilio," Batman Begins, Warner Sunset/Warner Home Video
4. Ennio Morricone featuring Christy, "Deep Down" (from Danger: Diabolik), Canto Morricone: The Ennio Morricone Songbook, Vol. 1, Bear Family
5. 702, "Pootie Tangin'," Pootie Tang, Hollywood
6. Jerry Goldsmith, "Old Bagdad," The 13th Warrior, Varèse Sarabande
7. Bill Conti, "Going the Distance," Rocky, EMI
8. Michael Giacchino, "'Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall,'" Mission: Impossible III, Varèse Sarabande
9. Marilyn Manson, "Resident Evil Main Title Theme," Resident Evil, Roadrunner/UMG Soundtracks
10. Bear McCreary, "Battle on the Asteroid," Battlestar Galactica: Season One, La-La Land
11. Lyle Lanley & Cast, "The Monorail Song," The Simpsons: Songs in the Key of Springfield, Rhino
12. John Barry, "Gumbold's Safe," On Her Majesty's Secret Service, EMI/Capitol
13. Ennio Morricone, "Magic and Ecstasy" (from Exorcist II: The Heretic), A Fistful of Film Music: The Ennio Morricone Anthology, Rhino
14. BC Smith featuring Ulali, "Forgive Our Fathers Suite featuring Wahjeeleh-Yihm," Smoke Signals, TVT Soundtrax

Reruns of AFOS: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm. To listen to the station during either of those time slots (or right now), press the play icon on the blue widget below the "About me" mini-bio on this blog.