"Song for Fifty" was a piece of music composed by Murray Gold to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who. Described by Gold as "a love song to a television series", it premièred on 13 July 2013 at that year's Doctor Who at the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London, and was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The piece was conducted by Ben Foster and performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the London Philharmonic Choir with soloists Elin Manahan Thomas and Alan Clayton.
Its lyrics are:
- As I stand here waiting for my time to come, I follow in your footsteps, I follow when you run
- From the jaws of disaster, from a planet besieged by deadly ancient foes
- And you still make me smile when you stop and turn and say: "This is a creature we can understand, a living being, it is just being. If we could find what's on its mind then perhaps
- We might survive."
- And as we stumble down our slow road I can't but wonder what would it be like. To run away with you through time, where would we go who might we find. But on we go, cutting our paths, only one way, one day at a time, while you embrace the universe, spinning your way on the fast road, limitless endless.
- So my dear friend you're getting kinda old now (or maybe we are). And now our children watch you do the deeds we marvelled at wondered at. From the jaws of disaster, from a planet besieged by deadly ancient foes.
- It's not the end yet there is no end.
- Fumbling and bumbling while all around is crumbling and stumbling through time like you're a mad man still it's humbling to watch you reconcile divergent creeds without succumbing to the lure of weapons, force or freed you only use intelligence and jokes and charm.