Tag: William Hartnell

The Green Pill Podcast: Finding Your Tribe

TimeHorse April 17, 2024 No Comments

Those who know about me know that I have many, many interests. Indeed, that’s why I have so many different categories on this blog, where I focus on one, particular tribe I feel a close part of.

A couple of those tribes I share with my co-host Cat Smith, one being our shared love of just jamming on our instruments, but also we became acquainted because of Doctor Who fandom. We met at the convention which shall not be named and became good friends over our shared passions.

My regular readers no doubt remember, I’m rewatching the entire series—at the time of this episode’s premier, I’m watching William Hartnell‘s The Ark part 2, The Plague. (Yeah, plague, haven’t we had enough of that—predicting SARS-CoV-13, I think I called it on last watch).

All that said, Cat and I decided to show some of our other passions in this one. Cat is a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a wonderful show about a young warrior learning of his amazing powers, though that certainly doesn’t do this engaging tale justice.

Meanwhile, lacking proper wig tape, I attempted to cosplay Greg Universe, Steven’s dad from Steven Universe. I quite enjoyed this series and was lucky enough some years ago to meet the creator, Rebecca Sugar where I got this cherished selfie at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda. Unfortunately, as you can see in the video, my unsecured wig kept slipping, so I kept having to readjust it.

Please enjoy our latest episode and please tell us about your tribes!

https://youtu.be/XcDiUUtQHeU

The Music of Tristram Cary

TimeHorse March 16, 2020 1 Comment

For once, I wish to channel my musical esthetics and talk about one of the absolute most sought-after albums I have ever pined for. Which is to say, when it was released I was just starting a new job and on a tight budget, but by the time I’d established myself, it was already grossly out of print.


To be sure, as a musician, I don’t know if I could ever play any of Tristram Cary‘s music, but like Delia Derbyshire, I find the kind of organic sound they used in the mid 1960s was unique and something I’d love to try. I would love to have high-fidelity digital tape loops of ordinary, everyday sounds.

Cary’s music was itself bombastic and brutal in a fresh, naturally bassal way. I was reminded of this, but didn’t have a chance to cover it, during my discussion of Doctor Who: The Ark. The Ark is filled with the classic themes and tones from Cary’s earlier work on The Daleks. Cary actually contributed music to a number of Doctor Who stories during the Hartnell era of the show, as well as in the early 1970s with the Pertwee story, The Mutants.

The album is so rare, it often goes for, from $80–$130, which is well beyond my price range. Especially considering it originally retailed for about a quarter of that. It’s not that I don’t think it’s worth it, but it’s not the media I care about, it’s the music and surely if it was just a digital copy of the music, it could be re-released as streaming for little to no cost, and thus all profit to the Cary estate.

Tristram Cary died in 2008, so he was around when the album was released. I can only assume he was happy with it. I hope he would want more people to hear it, but I am hesitant to look into the grey recesses of the Internet to procure his music. I want so badly to buy a legal copy. I just wish I could get it for a fair price.

But that music, it’s just, so, good!

Doctor Who: Devils' Planets: The Music of Tristram Cary
This is the long sought after, albeit maybe only by me, album of the amazing Tristram Cary’s music. Cary was one of the major incidental musicians of the Hartnell era, from The Daleks to the Ark and even the Pertwee story, The Mutants. © 2020, BBC Music