I've Been Thinking A Lot About The Iconic Murray Gold Theme This Is Gallifrey, Our Childhood, Our Home.

I've been thinking a lot about the iconic Murray Gold theme This is Gallifrey, Our Childhood, Our Home. It's often referred to as "The Gallifrey Theme" or "The Time Lord Theme".

I don't think it is either of those things. In most scenes the theme is used in, it signifies either one or both of two things:

The Doctor's longing for home.

The Doctor and the Master's childhood friendship and their mutual longing for it.

The first time we hear This is Gallifrey, it is in Utopia when the Doctor is praising Professor Yana's scientific prowess. Of course, neither the Doctor, the audience, or Yana himself know that this is really the Master, but this theme underscoring the scene between the two men shows the immediate bond between them, and I think sets the tone of the Doctor/Master relationship for the rest of Murray's (first) era, the understanding that they are supposed to be friends, and if these two ancient beings had a clean slate from centuries of fighting and resentment and Time Wars, they would bond straight away.

The next major use is an episode later, in The Sound of Drums, when the Doctor is reminiscing about Gallifrey. However, I don't think the music is being used as a theme for Gallifrey itself, but rather the Doctor's memories of his childhood home. And the music continues playing when we see the flashback of the Master staring into the Untempered Schism. I think the use of This is Gallifrey is less about the place itself, but the Doctor missing home, and the Doctor remembering his childhood friend, and the moment his friend was cursed with the insanity that would ruin their friendship.

The theme is used once again, when the Master chooses to die to spite the Doctor. The Doctor breaks down sobbing while a heartbreaking rendition of This is Gallifrey plays. Once again, it is very much used as the Doctor and the Master's friendship theme, a sad variation as the Doctor loses his oldest friend once again.

The next time we hear This is Gallifrey, it is being used when the Doctor refuses to accept Jenny as his daughter or a Time Lord. We know that he is rejecting her because of his grief and regret over the family he lost on Gallifrey, and the theme is used again later in the episode when the Doctor admits this to Donna. This is Gallifrey is used to signify the Doctor's family, and all the painful memories of them that he feels when he looks at Jenny.

And then we're on to the End of Time. Simm's Master is far less open and vulnerable than either Missy or Dhawan's Master, but we get a rare moment when he and the Doctor are together in the landfill site. The Master remembering how he and the Doctor used to run through the fields as children. And sure enough, a very soft variation of This is Gallifrey can be heard, showing that the Master still misses their friendship.

A more militaristic variation of This is Gallifrey can be heard at the beginning of Part Two of The End of Time. I'd say this is one of the few times it can realistically be called a Gallifrey theme. However, I'd argue that it's less about the Time Lords themselves, and more about the Doctor's childhood home having become a warzone.

The theme is absent for most of Matt Smith's era, not returning until The Name of the Doctor. Once again, there's a credible argument that it's being used for Gallifrey/The Time Lords. However, it's important to note that the theme is being used for the flashback of an echo of Clara influencing the First Doctor to choose his TARDIS, and then showing Clara echoes helping the Doctor throughout his incarnations. I think this might come back to the theme of family, that while the Doctor mourns his family, there has been someone who has been with him from the very beginning on Gallifrey, even if he hasn't really met her yet.

One of the reasons I don't think This is Gallifrey is a Time Lord theme is that it is absent from The Day of the Doctor, despite Gallifrey and the Time Lords featuring heavily in that episode. Because Day doesn't really touch on the Doctor's grief or his longing for home. While those things undoubtedly factor in, the main drama in the episode is the Doctor's guilt for being forced to kill billions of innocent people, particularly the children, and how that came to define his future incarnations. This is Gallifrey was never really about that. That's what the excellent The Doctor's Theme represents.

This is Gallifrey is used when the Time Lords send the dying Doctor a new cycle of regenerations. It's quite an interesting use, when you consider Clara's dialogue immediately before:

CLARA: if you love him, and you should, help him.

In my opinion this is very much a "coming home" moment, a resolution to 7 seasons of storytelling. Yes, the Doctor doesn't physically reach Gallifrey, but the Time Lords have accepted him and saved him. He hasn't gotten home "the long way round" yet, but he's no longer the "Last of the Time Lords". He has somewhere to belong, at last.

Obviously, this doesn't last, and when the Doctor returns to Gallifrey in Hell Bent, it's not on pleasant terms. For this reason, This is Gallifrey never appears in the episode, because the episode isn't about the Doctor returning to his childhood home or reuniting with his loved ones. It's an episode about a man being driven to extremes by the loss of his love.

Series 10 heavily explores the Doctor/Master relationship, and This is Gallifrey underscores many of the Doctor and Missy's scenes together during the latter half of Series 10, most notably during the "Your version of good is not absolute" and "Every star in the universe" scenes. It's also used throughout the scene on the rooftop, when both Missy and Simm!Master are tormenting the Doctor, only for him to gain the upper hand. I think in this scene it is meant to show the cyclical relationship between them, how the Master's schemes inevitably fall apart at the Doctor's hands, and how normalised this game between them has become, to the extent that the Doctor takes apart the Master and Missy's scheme within the first ten minutes of the episode.

And then we get to what is in my view the defining use of This is Gallifrey: Missy killing her past self. To me, this is the moment the show had been building towards since that conversation between Ten and Yana in Utopia. The moment Missy chooses to reject her violent past in favour of rebuilding her friendship with the Doctor. And the music perfectly carries that story.

Or so we thought...

The next time we see the Master, Murray Gold has left the show and Segun Akinola is composing. Now, I'm not one of the people who thinks Akinola should've reused Gold's themes. Gold got to build his soundscape from the ground up, so it's only right Akinola got to do the same rather than riding Murray's coattails. While I don't think this is intentional, I think the absence of This is Gallifrey reinforces what is being made clear on screen, that the Doctor and the Master's friendship is over. There is now too much hurt on both sides. SpyDoc is a very different kind of relationship to either TenSimm or Twissy, with the Master's bitterness over the Timeless Child, and the Doctor's bitterness over Missy's seeming betrayal, leaving nothing but resentment between the two of them. Akinola speaks about the complexities of his theme for Dhawan!Master here , and how it reinforces the tragic nature of his character, and the thwarted potential for change in him.

Personally, I hope the Master gets a good long rest, but since RTD seems to be continuing the Timeless Child storyline, if Dhawan does return, and the possibility of reconciliation and healing after the revelation is considered, then I hope Murray does bring back This is Gallifrey as their friendship theme, possibly playing it against Akinola's Spy Master theme.