Mark Ayres is an electronic musician, composer and audio engineer. Ayres studied music and electronics at

Keele University Keele University is a Public university#United Kingdom, public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, it was granted uni ...

. He also worked as a sound engineer at

TV-am TV-am was a TV company that broadcast the ITV franchise for breakfast television in the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 until 31 December 1992. The station was the UK's first national operator of a commercial breakfast television franchise ...

between 1982 and 1987. As a television composer, he became known for providing

incidental music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as th ...

on the original series of ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...

''. Ayres's work on broadcast ''Doctor Who'' was during

Sylvester McCoy Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith (born 20 August 1943), known professionally as Sylvester McCoy, is a Scottish actor. Gaining prominence as a physical comedian, he became best known for playing the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in the long ...

's era as the

Seventh Doctor The Seventh Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He is portrayed by Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy. Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-o ...

, comprising '' The Greatest Show in the Galaxy'', '' Ghost Light'' and '' The Curse of Fenric''. Ayres was hired after he sent producer

John Nathan-Turner John Turner (12 August 1947 – 1 May 2002), known professionally as John Nathan-Turner, was an English television producer. He was the ninth producer of the long-running BBC science fiction series ''Doctor Who'' and the final producer of the ...

a demonstration video containing music he had written to accompany '' Remembrance of the Daleks''. Like most ''Doctor Who'' incidental music composers during the 1980s, Ayres created the music electronically, principally using digital

synthesisers A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

and samplers. Ayres was also involved in the last days of the

BBC Radiophonic Workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce Incidental music, incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering ...

, cataloguing and archiving their recordings for future use. As part of the BBC's unofficial Doctor Who Restoration Team, Ayres has also done much of the audio restoration work for the later

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

''Doctor Who'' releases, as well as many of the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

releases, and all of the "Missing Soundtrack" CD releases since 1999. Additionally, he edited the "Special Edition" of ''The Curse of Fenric'', which restored much footage which was originally cut for time, along with some new special effects and a complete remix of the soundtrack. It is available along with the original on the BBC DVD release and the recent Season 26 blu-ray box set. Ayres compiled and produced the CD '' Who Is Dr Who'', released in 2000 by

Cherry Red Records Cherry Red Records is a British independent record label founded in Malvern, Worcestershire by Iain McNay in 1978. The label has released recordings by Dead Kennedys, Everything but the Girl, The Monochrome Set, and Felt, among others, as w ...

division RPM. He has also contributed to the DVD commentaries for several releases of the BBC's ''Doctor Who'' range ('' Planet of Giants'', '' Terror of the Zygons'', '' Paradise Towers'', '' Dragonfire'', ''The Greatest Show in the Galaxy'' and ''Ghost Light''). He also worked with composers such as Peter Howell and Dominic Glynn on a 5.1 surround sound version for the theme tunes that comes straight out from the original

multitrack recording Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive who ...

with altered variations on each theme, such as a harder "swoop" sound of the bassline for Howell and new sound effects for the opening sequenece and a new bassline for Glynn. Ayres composed a new musical score for the colourised "blockbuster edit" of

The Daleks ''The Daleks'' (also known as ''The Mutants'' and ''The Dead Planet'' is the second serial in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast on BBC TV in seven weekly parts from 21 December 1963 to ...

, released in 2023.

References

External links

* * * Alumni of Keele University BBC Radiophonic Workshop members English male composers English television composers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{DoctorWho-stub