Dudley Simpson

Dudley Simpson
Born	Dudley George Simpson (1922-10-04) 4 October 1922 Melbourne, Australia
Occupation	Composer
Known for	Music for Doctor Who

Dudley Simpson (born 4 October 1922) is an Australian television composer who is best known for his work on Doctor Who. He was born in Melbourne.

Prior to leaving Australia, Simpson composed for the Borovansky Ballet Company, forerunner to the Australian Ballet. Among his early television work was the music for Moonstrike (1963). Simpson was also responsible for the memorable theme music for The Brothers (1972), The Tomorrow People (1973), Moonbase 3 (1973), The Ascent of Man (1973), Blake's 7 (1978) and the 1985 production of Titus Andronicus.

Blake's 7

Blake's 7 ran for 4 series of 13 episodes each, a total of 52 episodes. Simpson provided the incidental music for 50 of the 52 episodes that were broadcast from 1978 to 1981. The two exceptions are the episode entitled Duel (the eighth episode of Series 1) for which director Douglas Camfield chose to use stock music and Gambit (the eleventh episode of the second series) which was scored by the special sound creator of Series 2-4, Elizabeth Parker.

Doctor Who

Simpson's first work on Doctor Who was during William Hartnell's era as the First Doctor in Planet of Giants, in 1964, but he is primarily associated with the programme in the 1970s. He also appeared on screen as a music hall conductor in the 1977 story The Talons of Weng-Chiang at the invitation of Philip Hinchcliffe who was the show's producer at the time. Simpson had to be paid a special fee for this appearance, as he was a member of the Musicians' Union and not Equity.

When John Nathan-Turner became producer of Doctor Who in 1980, he decided that the music needed to be updated, and took Simpson out for a meal telling him how much he appreciated his work on Doctor Who but that it would no longer be required as he intended to have the BBC Radiophonic Workshop provide music from now on. Simpson's last broadcast work on Doctor Who was for The Horns of Nimon.

Between 1964 and 1980, Simpson composed the incidental music for the following Doctor Who serials:

• Planet of Giants
• The Crusade
• The Chase
• The Celestial Toymaker
• The Underwater Menace
• The Macra Terror
• The Evil of the Daleks
• The Ice Warriors
• Fury from the Deep
• The Seeds of Death
• The Space Pirates
• The War Games
• Spearhead from Space
• The Ambassadors of Death
• Terror of the Autons
• The Mind of Evil
• The Claws of Axos
• Colony in Space
• The Dæmons
• Day of the Daleks
• The Curse of Peladon
• The Time Monster
• The Three Doctors
• Carnival of Monsters
• Frontier in Space
• Planet of the Daleks
• The Green Death
• The Time Warrior
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs
• The Monster of Peladon
• Planet of the Spiders
• Robot
• The Ark in Space
• The Sontaran Experiment
• Genesis of the Daleks
• Planet of Evil
• Pyramids of Mars
• The Android Invasion
• The Brain of Morbius
• The Masque of Mandragora
• The Hand of Fear
• The Deadly Assassin
• The Face of Evil
• The Robots of Death
• The Talons of Weng-Chiang
• Horror of Fang Rock
• The Invisible Enemy
• Image of the Fendahl
• The Sun Makers
• Underworld
• The Invasion of Time
• The Ribos Operation
• The Pirate Planet
• The Stones of Blood
• The Androids of Tara
• The Power of Kroll
• The Armageddon Factor
• Destiny of the Daleks
• City of Death
• The Creature from the Pit
• Nightmare of Eden
• The Horns of Nimon

External links

• Dudley Simpson at the Internet Movie Database