How to Spot a Psychopath

Listening to 185 different versions of the Doctor Who theme, one after the other, does something to a man. It could be worse, I suppose.

After I downloaded the full Whomix archive, I of course had to listen to them all, so I could figure out which ones to keep. I'd downloaded a few of them individually in the past, but who knows what I might have been missing by not getting the lot of 'em?

That torrent file is not perfectly up to date; newer versions of a couple of the better mixes have come out since then, as have a couple of completely new worthwhile mixes. Most of the mixes lean on the BBC's downloadable samples quite heavily, as you'd expect, but not all of them do.

All official versions of the theme smoothly mixed together, ideal as the soundtrack for the movie in which all of the Doctors (including Rowan and Joanna!) and, what the hell, three Masters and both Romanas get together to prevent the destruction of the universe by, I don't know, 200 foot high Dalek-mecha: Regenerations 2006. A tad long for the normals to tolerate, though, and that mix also makes it even more perfectly obvious to me that the Who theme reached its apogee in the Third Doctor version of Delia's original, when the resonance-sweep start-of-credits cliffhanger screech debuted.

In this modern world, a stereo mix is permissible. But that's all you need.

The current version with Delia samples and orchestral accompaniment is better than the FM-synthesis 80s versions, but that's not saying much.

Version, given the above, that I still wouldn't have minded hearing as the theme for the current series: Positionhigh's remix.

Oh, For Pete's Sake winner: Scooby Who.

Syncopated Version That Doesn't Suck: Time Tunnel v3, which manages some real KLF swagger. It'll be a good soundtrack if the Doctor ever digs the Whomobile out of UNIT's basement and flies it to a nightclub in 1988.

The Alternative Time Mix has some balls on it, too, and also contains a sample of the one moment when Jon Pertwee actually said his famous line (see also).

On the subject of the deadly allure of speech samples, A Trip In Time has the least annoying use of them. You do still really need a little chemical enhancement to really enjoy it, though.

Most phat and buttery bassline: Trial of a Time Rat v2. Shame about the lead that comes along at 0:44.

Dubbiest: The 100% sample-free Jah Humphreys Dr Who Dub Explosion.

Best use of a sonic connection that hadn't previously occurred to you: Acid Wilhelm's Blue Whale Mix.

Most suitable for use in the Doctor Who/The Matrix crossover ("K-9 needs guns. Lots of guns."): Breakbeats in Time and Space. That version's got a bunch of unnecessary voice samples in it. The "12 inch" mix lacks them, but it's not separately listed on the Whomix site. It's in the torrent, though, as "Doctor Who - 12inchbreakbeats.mp3".

Non-Whomix options: Orbital's "Doctor?", Bill Bailey's Belgian jazz version ("Docteur Qui"!), and the downright startling version by "Dean Gray", "Dr Who On Holiday". That last is from the various-artists American Edit mashup album, which was available for direct download for a rather brief period. It is, of course, not hard to find elsewhere.