My sister may disagree, but it was a good day for me the day she broke her wrist whilst using my roller-skates. For it was then my parents put their devious plan into action and sent me for piano lessons in her place. Doctor Who (and science-fiction generally) was already the guiding inspiration behind so much of my childhood creativity, so my parents should have realised that it was only a matter of time before I learned how to twist my new skills in the direction of my abiding interests.And so here I am, years later, still awe-struck when I realise that, thanks to Big Finish, I have finally managed to combine my passion for incidental music with my beloved Doctor Who.

This compilation represents the guts of my first three scores for Big Finish and the approaches I took: a strident bombast, a haunting melancholy and a sobering gothic chill. Really, the music is inseparable from the dialogue and situations that inspired it (for which my thanks to the writers, actors and directors), just as it is inseparable from the miraculous post-production and sound design (in these stories) by Alistair, Andy and Gareth. But I hope you will agree that the music is its own person too and that everything else is also inseparable from 'it'.

If listening to the CD makes you want to go back to the original stories and enjoy them all over again, then I will know I have hit the right note.

Russell Stone, June 2001