Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 2: New Beginnings 1970–1980 is the second in a series of compilations of BBC Radiophonic Workshop music from Doctor Who. The album collected various incidental music from the 1970s including, for the first time, the complete Malcolm Clarke score for the 1972 serial The Sea Devils, only the second scored completely by the Radiophonic Workshop. The compilation also featured a few of Dudley Simpson's compositions as realised by Brian Hodgson, some Delia Derbyshire music as featured in Inferno, two Peter Howell demos from 1979 and a selection of Dick Mills' sound effects from the era.

Track listing

Reception

In his review for Notes, Louis Niebur wrote that "the second volume, with the inclusion of Malcolm Clarke's The Sea Devils score, as well as selections from three other stories ... contrasted to Clarke's anarchic score, Dudley Simpson's music for The Mind of Evil and The Claws of Axos show what happens when the synthesizer is treated as just another orchestral instrument. Simpson was to become the primary composer for the program throughout the 1970s, but his decision in the early 1970s to 'perform' his music entirely on the EMS VCS3, leads on this recording to some hilariously dated sounds, a frequent problem with early analog synthesizer music, and his are among the least successful tracks on this CD. By 1972, Simpson had begun composing for traditional instruments in combination with electronics provided by Brian Hodgson and Dick Mills of the Radiophonic Workshop, an arrangement that lasted nearly seven years. At the end of the decade the Doctor Who production team was looking to change the sound of the program again and asked if the Radiophonic Workshop could start providing them with entirely electronic scores on a full time basis."