When I'm researching Doctor Who, I often find people criticizing Philip Hinchcliffe, the producer from 1974-1977, and it really disturbs me. People call him and his episodes "dark", "violent", "terrifying for children", and occasionally even "evil". Now, I don't mind if a few people think that, but I've noticed it's a lot of people, and it's also on Wikipedia, where anyone reading it will be frightened out of letting their kids see it. It's not that I feel I need to correct them just because they're wrong, but to me, Philip Hinchcliffe's episodes are the best there are! Reading about him, I tend to find that, rather than raising violence, he toned it down. For instance, in "The Ark in Space" many scenes were deleted because he considered them too dramatic or upsetting or scary for children, and in the original script for "Planet of Evil", Sorenson was meant to die, but Philip Hinchcliffe thought this would be too upsetting for younger children, and believed that even though Sorenson was killing people, it was only because he had been taken over by the anti-matter. He even went so far as to say that "there was always a bit of devilment in Bob Holmes", who wrote and edited a lot of the episodes considered to be bad because of Philip Hinchcliffe. An episode that is often used as an example of his supposed "darkness" is "Genesis of the Daleks", particularly the beginning scene where two soldiers are shot. Here's a picture of the second one dying:
As you can see, he's rather overacting (the photo shows him throwing his arms into the air as he's shot). What the photo doesn't show, is that there's no blood at all, that the person shooting him is not shown doing it, and that sound-effects were used for the shooting, which sounded far away, fuzzy, and from nowhere in particular, so much so that I think even a seven or eight-year-old wouldn't be frightened. The same goes for the first soldier. Also, this scene wasn't even
in the original script, but was added by David Maloney, the director, during the making of the show.
That already clears Mr. Hinchcliffe's name, but there's even more to go with it. Here's a picture from the first scene of "Death to the Daleks", an episode produced by his predecessor, Barry Letts, which I've seen called much less scary-sounding things, like "goofy", "childish", and "silly":
This is the Captain of the Earth mission ship, who is first seen running frantically and falling, picking himself up again, and then pausing, only to be hit with an Exxilon arrow. The arrow is not shown at the same time as his face, which is the more important thing, as it shows how good an actor he is.
After being shot he staggers out of view, and over to this cliff, and then falls off.
I thought I should also add this one, because it shows that the arrow is still in his side.
He then lands with a splash in this muddy water, and the scene closes. I had to use this extra picture to show how far down the drop really is, because ion the last one it looks like his foot's touching the water.
Finally, this is a picture from Jon Pertwee's first episode, "Spearhead from Space", which I have never head many complaints about, and produced by Derrick Sherwin. It's of a UNIT soldier who was happily driving along, until one of the Autons stepped into the road and he swerved to the side, crashing into a tree. (The Auton's behind him.) I don't think I need to explain any more than that, because the picture tells why it's not the greatest moment for younger children.
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