Talk:Peter Howell

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[edit] Alterations

The article until recently wasn't very encyclopedic in tone, and had a lot of information that was more about the Doctor Who theme and title sequence than about Howell per se. I've tried to pare it down to the relevant bits, but someone else might be able to reincorporate some of the old content. Here it is, for ease of access:

Although he became the writer for incidental music on Doctor Who in 1980, he had done a couple of episodes in the mid 70's. When John Nathan Turner became the producer of Doctor Who, he wanted to modernise the show. He thought that the stories on the show had become too silly, so he thought of ways to try and modernise the show. One of the things on his agenda was music, he thought that the titles were a bit dated and it was strange to see a younger Tom Baker in the titles and then go to an older Tom Baker in the show, so he wanted new titles. He decided upon the concept of traveling through space instead of time with the titles and decided upon zooming through the stars ( interestingly enough, no CGI was used for the titles but it looks so good that you think that some sort of computer imagery was used ), to go with the new titles he decided upon a new theme, Peter Howell then volunteered to make the new theme as well as writing the incidental music. He didn't rewrite the theme, he just recreated it. But his verion of the theme was very different to the original Delia Derbyshire and Ron Grainer theme, as this time he used a synthesiser. In a documentary he mentioned the theme being recreated before but was unsuccessful (this theme was the Delaware theme which was also realised by Delia Derbyshire), and said that when he considered it he said that if he were to do it he would take it from the bottom up and start from the very beginning with the theme, this was a wise choice.

Peter Howell slightly altered his version of the Doctor Who theme for Big Finish audio productions. His version of the theme was first heard in the story The Leisure Hive starring Tom Baker as the Doctor. Baker only had a year with this theme as he left in 1981, from here Peter Davison took on the role of the Doctor. Even though there was a big change there the theme remained the same except some minor alterations in the pitch. When Peter Davison, Colin Baker took the role of the Doctor, once again, the theme remained unchanged until his final story The Trial of a Time Lord where Dominic Glynn did a new version of the theme.

So, Peter Howells version of the theme was used for three Doctors . A lot of fans still define this as one of the definitive Doctor Who themes.

Some of the content about the theme might find a better home at Doctor Who theme music, and/or is already covered there. (I'm not sure whether Howell's comments about the Delaware theme are best placed here or there.) The title sequence isn't directly relevant to Howell; there's been some discussion about creating an article on the title sequences at the Doctor Who WikiProject, but nothing's come of it yet. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)