N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

Doctor Who was riding high in the summer of 2008.

Season finale Journey’s End had topped the UK’s weekly rating chart in early July — something the show had never done before — so why not follow that with an extravaganza of music at the BBC Proms!

Although I’ve watched Music and Monsters, the episode of Doctor Who Confidential included as a DVD extra with The Runaway Bride, I haven’t seen the concert it covered: 2006’s Doctor Who: A Celebration. (If Doctor Who: The Collection ever moves on to nu-Who once it’s done with the classic series, compilers please take note and include it!)

Thankfully, an edit of Doctor Who‘s first ever Prom – from July 2008 – is available and, as it also includes a special mini-episode, it warrants a blog post!

David Tennant appears on-screen in the fourth-wall-breaking Music of the Spheres to conduct the Ode to the Universe, which the kids, Mums and Dads in the audience all seemed to enjoy.

If, in episodes of nu-Who, there’s a tendency for the incidental music to be too high in the mix and occasionally drown out the dialogue, Doctor Who at the Proms shows that Murray Gold’s music is worth listening to in isolation – and where better to do that than the Royal Albert Hall!

While his arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune remains a bit too busy for my liking, many of his other themes and motifs are as memorable as the episodes themselves, even if, as I say, they are a bit too loud occasionally.

Come to think of it, perhaps that’s why the Tenth Doctor is so shouty – it’s so he can be heard over the BBC Orchestra of Wales!