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A lot of fans feel that everything changed when Hinchcliffe left in 1977. Many complain that after that point, under new producer Graham Williams, the show's production values went down and got pretty shambolic, and there became too much emphasis on comedy, and not enough on the drama and threat of the early Tom Baker era.
But would it really have been different if Hinchcliffe had stayed on.
Obviously if Hinchcliffe had not faced the wrath of Mary Whitehouse, and had stayed on as producer without the concerned BBC sticking its oar in to keep it all clean, then we probably would’ve seen a very different Season 15 that had a lot more in common with the horror tone of Seasons 12-14.
Reports of what he might’ve been planning for that season are very sketchy. Some have suggested he was planning on creating a new enemy to completely supersede the Daleks, or to gravitate the Doctor more in the vein of the pioneer adventurers seen in the Matrix sequences of The Deadly Assassin.
But let’s say that Mary Whitehouse still got taken seriously, and the BBC decided to put the show under stricter guidelines, but the difference is that Hinchcliffe is kept on rather than booted and replaced by Graham Williams.
I used to believe that it was down to Hinchcliffe’s overspending on Talons of Weng Chiang that the Williams era after suffered such severe budget cuts, but stengos argued that it was probably unlikely to have made a difference to the show’s allocated budget in seasons after, and was probably done by Hinchcliffe simply because he no longer had to think of what designs to invest in with potential reuse value, and so just invested in ending with a bang. That the budget cuts after were probably more down to inflation than down to Talons.
If that's true, I think it’s very possible that had Hinchcliffe stayed on, Season 15 would’ve been very much the same. Terrance Dicks would’ve still been called on to have to replace State of Decay with something like Horror of Fang Rock. If Holmes was staying on, then it would’ve probably meant still getting The Sunmakers (which is where the Fourth Doctor really began to become overly powerful with sudden abilities of instant hypnosis) and leftover commissions like Image of the Fendahl. Inflation might’ve meant they’d have the idea of keeping on K9 to get more bang from the buck.
Likewise, I've always seen The Invasion of Time's mess as the biggest casualty of the enforced changeover and Whitehouse putting a spanner in the plans.
But whilst the storyline of The Invasion of Time might’ve been very different if Williams was not involved in penning it, we would probably have gotten the same kind of story under these inflation conditions. Namely a story in which to save money, they had to reuse the old Deadly Assassin sets and the story would have to be at the behest of doing something with those available sets for six episodes, rather than the sets being at the behest of the story.
So it probably would’ve had the same problem and been the same kind of restricted, dry, lethargic affair without enough spark of animation.
Season 16 probably would’ve been different, as the Key to Time arc was much more Williams’ personal baby, so what we would’ve gotten was probably an unknown quantity. We might’ve still gotten The Pirate Planet and Power of Kroll however if Adams and Holmes were still sending in submissions. They just would’ve been sans the Key to Time elements.
Romana seemed to be Holmes’ idea however, and might’ve still become the new companion.
Season 17, I think the big difference is we might not have gotten the return of the Daleks under Hinchcliffe who wasn’t so keen on them as monsters. Indeed, in that case, if not for a chance meeting between Nation and JNT at a stateside convention, we might never have seen the Daleks again in the Classic Series.
But it might be that we’d have gotten none of the stories we did that season. At best, City of Death might’ve remained A Gamble With Time set in Monte Carlo.
The budget problems probably would’ve been the same, the revolving door of script-editors and companions deciding they didn’t want to stick around longer than a year.
Under the influence of Mary Whitehouse, Hinchliffe’s team might’ve come to the same decision that humour probably had to be the better route to entertainment than horror now. It seemed something of a logical progression, given the more comedic moments in Robots of Death and Talons, that if the show was faced with a blocker on horror content, it would pursue more of its humour direction under Tom Baker.
The only thing that might’ve been different is that maybe with Hinchcliffe still there, there would've been more pragmatic forward planning for when Lousie Jameson or Mary Tamm were going to depart, whereas Williams was probably more likely to focus his vain efforts on trying to sentimentally croon Mary into staying, and then having to do a rush-job departure.
(that said, if there's one thing I'm glad of Hinchcliffe's replacement for, it's that Hinchcliffe would've likely decided to kill Leela off, and that just wouldn't have felt right to me)
Hinchcliffe also might've had more authority to keep Tom Baker under control and kerb him from running as wild as he did. Graham Williams was sadly too easy for him to overwhelm.
But even then, that’s no guarantee. Tom Baker might still have gotten too big for his boots for even Hinchcliffe to control.
In conclusion, it strikes me that if Hinchcliffe had had to stay on, under Whitehouse’s guidelines, and the devastating inflation the show was suffering, the problems would’ve been the same as what we got under Williams, only possibly without the same kind of redeeming gems like Ribos Operation, Androids of Tara or City of Death. And in that sense, maybe Graham Williams deserves something of an exoneration.
That as great as Hinchcliffe had been for his first three years, even he would’ve found it impossible to keep his golden age going under those kind of conditions. That just like Williams, he probably would've just been a fall guy and could’ve only done his best against impossible odds, and that likely might not have been enough.
But would it really have been different if Hinchcliffe had stayed on.
Obviously if Hinchcliffe had not faced the wrath of Mary Whitehouse, and had stayed on as producer without the concerned BBC sticking its oar in to keep it all clean, then we probably would’ve seen a very different Season 15 that had a lot more in common with the horror tone of Seasons 12-14.
Reports of what he might’ve been planning for that season are very sketchy. Some have suggested he was planning on creating a new enemy to completely supersede the Daleks, or to gravitate the Doctor more in the vein of the pioneer adventurers seen in the Matrix sequences of The Deadly Assassin.
But let’s say that Mary Whitehouse still got taken seriously, and the BBC decided to put the show under stricter guidelines, but the difference is that Hinchcliffe is kept on rather than booted and replaced by Graham Williams.
I used to believe that it was down to Hinchcliffe’s overspending on Talons of Weng Chiang that the Williams era after suffered such severe budget cuts, but stengos argued that it was probably unlikely to have made a difference to the show’s allocated budget in seasons after, and was probably done by Hinchcliffe simply because he no longer had to think of what designs to invest in with potential reuse value, and so just invested in ending with a bang. That the budget cuts after were probably more down to inflation than down to Talons.
If that's true, I think it’s very possible that had Hinchcliffe stayed on, Season 15 would’ve been very much the same. Terrance Dicks would’ve still been called on to have to replace State of Decay with something like Horror of Fang Rock. If Holmes was staying on, then it would’ve probably meant still getting The Sunmakers (which is where the Fourth Doctor really began to become overly powerful with sudden abilities of instant hypnosis) and leftover commissions like Image of the Fendahl. Inflation might’ve meant they’d have the idea of keeping on K9 to get more bang from the buck.
Likewise, I've always seen The Invasion of Time's mess as the biggest casualty of the enforced changeover and Whitehouse putting a spanner in the plans.
But whilst the storyline of The Invasion of Time might’ve been very different if Williams was not involved in penning it, we would probably have gotten the same kind of story under these inflation conditions. Namely a story in which to save money, they had to reuse the old Deadly Assassin sets and the story would have to be at the behest of doing something with those available sets for six episodes, rather than the sets being at the behest of the story.
So it probably would’ve had the same problem and been the same kind of restricted, dry, lethargic affair without enough spark of animation.
Season 16 probably would’ve been different, as the Key to Time arc was much more Williams’ personal baby, so what we would’ve gotten was probably an unknown quantity. We might’ve still gotten The Pirate Planet and Power of Kroll however if Adams and Holmes were still sending in submissions. They just would’ve been sans the Key to Time elements.
Romana seemed to be Holmes’ idea however, and might’ve still become the new companion.
Season 17, I think the big difference is we might not have gotten the return of the Daleks under Hinchcliffe who wasn’t so keen on them as monsters. Indeed, in that case, if not for a chance meeting between Nation and JNT at a stateside convention, we might never have seen the Daleks again in the Classic Series.
But it might be that we’d have gotten none of the stories we did that season. At best, City of Death might’ve remained A Gamble With Time set in Monte Carlo.
The budget problems probably would’ve been the same, the revolving door of script-editors and companions deciding they didn’t want to stick around longer than a year.
Under the influence of Mary Whitehouse, Hinchliffe’s team might’ve come to the same decision that humour probably had to be the better route to entertainment than horror now. It seemed something of a logical progression, given the more comedic moments in Robots of Death and Talons, that if the show was faced with a blocker on horror content, it would pursue more of its humour direction under Tom Baker.
The only thing that might’ve been different is that maybe with Hinchcliffe still there, there would've been more pragmatic forward planning for when Lousie Jameson or Mary Tamm were going to depart, whereas Williams was probably more likely to focus his vain efforts on trying to sentimentally croon Mary into staying, and then having to do a rush-job departure.
(that said, if there's one thing I'm glad of Hinchcliffe's replacement for, it's that Hinchcliffe would've likely decided to kill Leela off, and that just wouldn't have felt right to me)
Hinchcliffe also might've had more authority to keep Tom Baker under control and kerb him from running as wild as he did. Graham Williams was sadly too easy for him to overwhelm.
But even then, that’s no guarantee. Tom Baker might still have gotten too big for his boots for even Hinchcliffe to control.
In conclusion, it strikes me that if Hinchcliffe had had to stay on, under Whitehouse’s guidelines, and the devastating inflation the show was suffering, the problems would’ve been the same as what we got under Williams, only possibly without the same kind of redeeming gems like Ribos Operation, Androids of Tara or City of Death. And in that sense, maybe Graham Williams deserves something of an exoneration.
That as great as Hinchcliffe had been for his first three years, even he would’ve found it impossible to keep his golden age going under those kind of conditions. That just like Williams, he probably would've just been a fall guy and could’ve only done his best against impossible odds, and that likely might not have been enough.
