This year’s Record Store Day includes soundtrack releases of several classic stories, but long before this annual institution Doctor Who vinyl had a home at the fondly remembered BBC Records & Tapes…

Feature by TIM WORTHINGTON

Between 1967 and 1991, BBC Records & Tapes released the strangest assortment of music you’ve ever heard. In the days before home video, the label issued hundreds of albums and singles of theme tunes, radio shows, sound effects and much more besides, featuring everything from the cast of sitcom Hi-De-Hi! to the sound of someone hitting a telephone. Hardly any of them had any correlation to what came before or after, but that’s what makes the label so fascinating; it’s a snapshot of what was actually popular with – or at least inescapable for – viewers and listeners. Doctor Who played a huge part in its story, and a generation of fans still get nostalgic at the mention of its name.

Initially known as BBC Radio Enterprises – it became BBC Records & Tapes in 1972 – the label didn’t have much of an eye on commercial success at first. Frequently baffling, the earliest releases came in generic sleeves and included such toe-tappers as Railways in Aspic and Gandhi: Man on Trial. Although the very first album captured a Third Programme talk by Sir Bernard Lovell, pioneering astrophysicist and the inspiration for a certain Professor Quatermass, there was little in the early output that would appeal to Doctor Who fans – apart from 1968’s BBC Radiophonic Music (REC 25M – in those days the mysterious catalogue numbers simply related to the price tag of each record). This was a compilation of material by Delia Derbyshire, David Cain and John Baker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Delia’s tracks Blue Veils and Golden Sands and The Delian Mode would be reused in the 1970 Doctor Who story Inferno. Also featured was ZiwzihZiwzih OO-OO-OO, a ‘robot hymn’ by Delia from The Prophet, a 1967 episode of BBC2’s sci-fi anthology Out of the Unknown; the robot costumes would reappear in The Mind Robber (1968).

Roy Tempest took over running BBC Records & Tapes in 1973. He was recruited from Phillips, where he’d overseen the release of some BBC themes as singles. Roy was briefed to make the eccentric output more marketable, and within months of his arrival the theme from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? gave the label its first hit. The next single, RESL 11, was released later in 1973, and this was the Doctor Who theme. Although Delia Derbyshire’s original recording had been issued as a single by Decca in 1964, this new stereo mix incorporated the cliffhanger ‘sting’ and Brian Hodgson’s TARDIS effect, sounding closer to what was heard on screen at the time. Issued in a picture sleeve, it didn’t follow The Likely Lads into the hit parade, but it sold well; the single was repressed at least five times, ultimately appearing with a new sleeve – based on the latest opening titles – in 1976.

The compilation BBC Radiophonic Music was first released in 1968.

The label of RESL 13, the theme to Moonbase 3.

1973’s RESL 11 was a reissue of the Doctor Who theme.

RESL 13 featured the theme from Moonbase 3, a 1973 sci-fi drama created by Doctor Who’s Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks. The eerie and dramatic piece was created by two names well known to Doctor Who fans – composer Dudley Simpson and the Radiophonic Workshop’s Dick Mills. For the b-side, Dick raided the Workshop’s archive to create The World of Doctor Who, a sound collage built up from percussive loops, effects from Planet of the Daleks (1973) and Simpson’s music from The Mind of Evil (1971), including the celebrated ‘Master Theme’. This was the first time that incidental music from the series had been made available, and in many ways these two singles were the first proper Doctor Who records. Roy Tempest left in 1976 and was replaced by his colleague Alan Bilyard. Alan had to contend with interference from higher up in the BBC – which he wryly notes accounted for albums of bagpipe music and singing girl guides – but felt there was potential to reach a wider audience. Speaking to BBC Music in 2017, he recalled, “I thought there were lots of opportunities I could bring to the table, like releasing more music from kids’ programmes – mums would watch those, find out there was a record available and wham – that was it!” One of his ideas was a series of compilations including BBC Sporting Themes and BBC Detective Themes; proving his theory about parents as a captive audience, this began with Music from BBC Children’s Programmes (REH 214) in 1976. Arguments about labelling Doctor Who a children’s programme rage to this day, but Alan and his team had no such qualms when they placed the theme and The World of Doctor Who alongside the likes of The Magic Roundabout, Blue Peter and Moonbase 3, the latter of which was definitely a show for grown-ups. As well as such long-forgotten names as Ragtime and Rubovia, the album featured a number of contributions from recent Radiophonic Workshop recruit Paddy Kingsland, including music from near-future thriller The Changes (1975) and the radio show 4th Dimension (1972-75). This was the first time that the Doctor Who theme had appeared on any album; Paddy still keeps a framed copy on his studio wall.