Philip Hinchcliffe
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Philip Hinchcliffe (born 1944) is a British television producer, who is probably best known for the overseeing of the "golden era" of British television series Doctor Who in the mid-1970s. He has worked extensively on productions since 1971, with Alexander the Greatest being his first major project as a script editor.
After an education at Slough Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, he joined the Doctor Who production team at the age of 29, trailing and then succeeding long-serving producer Barry Letts in 1974. Although he trailed Letts on Tom Baker's first story "Robot", he was first credited on "The Ark in Space". Throughout his first year he was mostly producing scripts that had been commissioned by the previous production team prior to their departure and it not until a year later that Hinchcliffe's full influence came to bear, with "Planet of Evil" in late 1975 — Tom Baker's second season in the title role of the Doctor.
Hinchcliffe, together with script editor Robert Holmes, ushered in a change in tone for the television series. The series became darker and more adult than previously, with a gothic atmosphere influenced by the horror films produced by Hammer Films. This is especially evident in serials like "Pyramids of Mars" and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang".
While the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era is frequently praised by fans as a highly successful one, the BBC received complaints from Mary Whitehouse, chairwoman of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, that the programme was unfit for children and could traumatise them. The NVLA had been critical of the series ever since the beginning of the 1970s, with the gun-wielding Auton mannikins and policemen of "Spearhead from Space" and "Terror of the Autons" causing an uproar amongst those who said that the negative portrayal of the police was a bad example to children. The complaints reached their height in the Hinchcliffe-produced "The Deadly Assassin", where Chancellor Goth was seen to attempt to drown the Doctor by forcing his head into a swamp. While the BBC publicly defended the programme, after three seasons Hinchcliffe was moved onto the adult police thriller series Target in 1977, and his replacement Graham Williams was specifically instructed to lighten the tone of the storylines.
Hinchcliffe also wrote several novelisations of Doctor Who serials for Target Books, adapting The Keys of Marinus, The Seeds of Doom, and The Masque of Mandragora.
After Doctor Who Hinchcliffe worked on numerous series, including Taggart, Private Schulz, The Last Musketeer and many others. His daughter, Celina Hinchcliffe, is a television presenter, who works on sporting events for the BBC.
