Peter Howell

Biography

Peter Howell (born 1949) is a musician and composer. He is best known for his work on Doctor Who as a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Howell's musical career began in the late 1960s working with John Ferdinando in various psychedelic folk bands including Agincourt and Ithaca. Howell and Ferdinando recorded five albums before Howell became a member of the Radiophonic Workshop, with which he would remain associated until 1997. His work on Doctor Who began in 1975 when he provided some accompanying incidental music for Revenge of the Cybermen and special sound for Planet of Evil. When John Nathan-Turner became producer of Doctor Who in 1980, he decided that the music needed to be updated and commissioned Howell to provide a new arrangement of the Doctor Who theme to accompany a new title sequence. Howell's new arrangement first appeared in 1980 on The Leisure Hive, for which Howell had also recorded the incidental score, and was used throughout Tom Baker's final season on the programme as well as Peter Davison's tenure as the Doctor and Colin Baker's first season. Between 1980 and 1985 Howell also provided incidental music for ten stories of Doctor Who. In 1986, Nathan-Turner commissioned a new theme arrangement by Dominic Glynn, ending Howell's association with Doctor Who on television. Since 2013 he has been part of the Radiophonic Workshop Band, touring the UK and abroad with Radiophonic archivist Mark Ayres and other former members of the Workshop. In 2021, Howell published his autobiography Radiophonic Times via Obverse Books.