Biography

Brian Hodgson began his career on the stage after completing his national service in the Royal Air Force. He briefly trained as an actor and eventually joined the BBC drama department as a studio manager. This led to a position with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in early 1963, Hodgson being tasked with creating the futuristic sound effects for TV's iconic series Doctor Who (1963). One of his first jobs was to devise the distinctive TARDIS dematerialisation noise. He created this by using the frame of an upright household piano and grating a front-door key across the bass string, slowing it down and reversing it. This was then recorded and feedback added. Hodgson also famously collaborated with voice actors on creating the shrill, staccato voices of the Daleks through electronic processing techniques. He later explained "I'd done a voice for a robot butler in a children's radio series and used a ring modulation system. So we used that again and just had to make sure that [voice artist] Peter Hawkins gave a monotonous delivery. So it was a blend of my treatment and Peter's performance."

Hodgson created all of Doctor Who's special sounds between 1963 and 1972 (at which time he was succeeded by Dick Mills), covering anything from the energy bolt-firing wrist guns of the Autons to Cyberman invaders and the Yeti roar, purportedly derived from recording a flushing toilet. Any prop was fair game: in the absence of generators or computers, Hodgson would use the sound of his dogs barking, 'blowing bubbles through thick detergent, dropping scaffolding poles, banging empty water cylinders - anything that would make a noise.' From 1967, he also worked closely with composer Dudley Simpson on incidental electronic music, later saying "Dudley was a great composer and musician but he didn't have any technical side. He'd start with musicians in a studio session and sometimes we'd treat the recording later electronically on a multitrack."

Hodgson eventually left the BBC in 1972 and struck out on his own, setting up the recording company Electrophon, composing music for Ballet Rambert and for the motion picture The Legend of Hell House (1973). He returned as 'organiser' to the Radiophonic Workshop in the late 70s, replacing co-founder Desmond Briscoe. Hodgson retired in 1995, three years before the workshop ceased operation. He later reinvented himself as a hypnotherapist and counsellor and is now said to be residing in England's Norfolk Broads.
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis