Almost five decades on and Hinchcliffe has returned to the worlds of Doctor Who, collaborating with audio drama producers Big Finish to put out a new collection of stories under the \u201cPhilip Hinchcliffe Presents\u2026\u201d banner. The range kicked off back in 2014 and continues with its fourth volume, The God of Phantoms<\/a>, out today (19th August).<\/p>\n \u201cDavid Richardson [Big Finish senior producer] approached me and said \u2018Have you got any old stories from your era that we could do?\u2019 and I said, \u2018Well, no\u2026\u2019 \u2013 I mean, we didn\u2019t have any stories, Bob Holmes and I, lying in the drawer, ready to go for another season,\u201d he tells RadioTimes.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo what I\u2019ve tried to do, really, is to create new stories that wouldn\u2019t have followed on from my last season in the 1970s, but that kind of have the flavour of what we were doing in those three years.\u201d<\/span><\/p> The God of Phantoms is one such story, bringing the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) to a colony world in the distant future, a planet where the residents are seeing the ghosts of their lost friends and relatives. And the ghosts are stealing people\u2026<\/p>\n Hinchcliffe provides \u201cdetailed ideas and treatments\u201d for these new stories which are then adapted by writer Marc Platt (Ghost Light<\/a>), with the now-retired producer taking \u201ca sort of mental leap\u201d to transport himself back to that era of the television series.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of racked my memories for things that I had wanted to do, but never could get into the show, or they were half ideas or whatever, and so that that\u2019s how I came up with these new story ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI felt it wasn\u2019t just a jolly, because there\u2019s a sort of reputation to that period of the show now, and also the fans have a sense of what they will be getting. And so I felt, you know, these have got to be really good stories, and they\u2019ve got to really hit the spot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Back in 1974, having previously worked as script editor on children\u2019s adventure series The Jensen Code and as an associate producer on ITV\u2019s General Hospital, a young and fired-up Hinchcliffe came to Doctor Who with a \u201cclear vision\u201d of how he wanted to reinvent the series. He was keen to ditch the cosy \u201cUNIT Family\u201d set-up of the mostly Earth-based Jon Pertwee era and take the Fourth Doctor back out into the stars, but also to make significant changes to the mood and style of the show that he felt would help it survive into the 1970s.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a great admirer of the show with Jon Pertwee \u2013 the ones I saw anyway, I didn\u2019t see a lot of it. But I think Jon Pertwee and Barry Letts, the producer, created a version of the show that belonged, really, to the 1960s. You know, it was swinging London, it was James Bond, it was gadgets, and he [Pertwee] dressed a bit like we all dressed in that time, with velvet jackets and frilly shirts. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe combination of me and Tom [cast as Pertwee\u2019s replacement in February 1974] being put on the show together\u2026 we went back a bit to the idea of the \u2018cosmic hobo\u2019, which I think was a phrase coined by [Doctor Who co-creator] Sydney Newman, and made you think of a Doctor who could be a bit different, and a bit looser, and a bit more the Zeitgeist of the later \u201960s into the \u201970s.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With a number of stories for Doctor Who\u2019s 12th season having already been commissioned by his predecessor, Hinchcliffe admits that it initially \u201cwasn\u2019t easy\u201d to make his mark on the programme. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really get into our stride with the kind of stories we wanted to do from scratch until the end of that series.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hinchcliffe\u2019s tenure saw the show embrace a more gothic atmosphere influenced by Hammer Horror and he was also determined to \u201cramp up the cliffhangers\u201d that left the Doctor or his friends in peril each week \u2013 a shift which famously attracted the ire of conservative activist Mary Whitehouse, who criticised this new era\u2019s darker tone and on-screen violence.<\/p>\n\n \u201cI think that\u2019s where my age probably did come in,\u201d Hinchcliffe reflects. \u201cI was probably more in tune with what was happening in the wider world \u2013 movies, you know, and other TV channels \u2013 and things were moving very quickly. Within the boundaries of censorship, it\u2019s a very delicate producer\u2019s judgement what\u2019s acceptable for the audience that he knows he\u2019s serving. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was pushing the envelope,\u201d he accepts. \u201cBut not irresponsibly. I thought a lot about what we put on the screen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In 1977, Louise Jameson was cast on Doctor Who as new companion Leela, the Eliza Doolitle-esque alien \u201csavage\u201d partnered with Baker\u2019s all-knowing Time Lord. Jameson, who returns to the role in The God of Phantoms, remembers the young Hinchcliffe as \u201cdetermined and visionary\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think the thing about Philip is that he\u2019s not a compromiser,\u201d she says. \u201cHe has an incredibly clear vision and he just keeps whittling away until that vision is realised.\u201d <\/span>With a giggle, she adds: \u201cHe never had an eye on the budget like the other producers did. He wasn\u2019t, you know, \u2018a good boy\u2019. I mean, [Doctor Who\u2019s season 14 finale] Talons of Weng-Chiang<\/a> is a rather famous example of where he really overspent and then left the series! And then Graham [Williams] took over as producer and and wasn\u2019t left with much money at all for his stories\u2026 but the end result is Talons of Weng-Chiang is a classic that has really stood the test of time.\u201d<\/p>\n Tom Baker also admired Hinchcliffe during their time working together, though for different reasons. \u201cHe often found my ideas interesting and sometimes he adopted them,\u201d Baker says. \u201cAnd for that reason, of course, I thought he had marvellous taste and insights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Those his Big Finish output is comprised of original stories, Hinchcliffe\u2019s new productions are \u201cvery evocative of the era\u201d when he worked on the TV series, Jameson says, and \u201cfaithful to the beating heart of Doctor Who\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBig Finish, bless them, have given Leela all kinds of trajectories \u2013 some are parallel lives, some are her older and wiser and a bit more guru-like\u2026 different strands have taken her in different directions. But the Philip Hinchcliffe stories absolutely swept me right back to 1977.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Like the majority of Big Finish productions of late, The God of Phantoms was put together remotely, with its cast embracing home studio recording. \u201cI\u2019m 50 years in the business this year, and I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d be spending it in a cupboard,\u201d laughs Jameson. \u201cIt\u2019s taken me a bit by surprise. But what has happened during the pandemic is that the sound designers\u2019 status has risen enormously. I mean, they always did do an amazing job. But now they\u2019re having to correlate everybody\u2019s different sound qualities, and make it sound like they\u2019re all in the same room. It\u2019s a lot of extra hours. But they are amazing what they do. Absolutely amazing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Now working in a new medium, Hinchcliffe is no longer faced with the same budgetary constraints which might\u2019ve hampered him in the 1970s, but says that the nature of audio drama means his new Doctor Who stories will, like the TV classics, often featured a small cast and limited number of locations. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to pay for enormously expensive locations, or sets and things like that. But if you wander too much, the audience loses track of who\u2019s who, who\u2019s where, so there is a natural sort of extent to how far a story will move from one place or one group of characters \u2013 because the audience needs these pictures in their mind, they have to be able to construct the world that you\u2019re telling the story in and hold it in their own imagination.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When he left Doctor Who, Hinchcliffe produced the hard-hitting police drama Target \u2013 a show created by his successor as Doctor Who producer, Graham Williams \u2013 and in the late 1990s oversaw series including Taggart and Rebus as an executive producer. Though he retired in the early 2000s, he\u2019s happy to continue to be associated and involved with the series for which he remains best known.<\/p>\n \u201cDoctor Who kind of found a position in in the history of TV, or the canon or whatever. And then suddenly, when it came back again, there was this revived interest and this energy and all the rest of it. And I think it was then that I began to realise that maybe what I did all those years ago had more impact than I thought. I had no idea that Big Finish were churning out all these things for years without me, but I thought, yeah, it\u2019s a challenge, really, to go back. So I\u2019ve done it happily.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents Volume 04: The God of Phantoms is available now from bigfinish.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Visit our Sci-fi<\/a> hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with out TV Guide<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Hinchcliffe, who produced some of the BBC sci-fi’s best-loved stories, is back with a new set of adventures for Big Finish. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3290,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly.jpg",1080,719,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly-768x511.jpg",768,511,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly-1024x682.jpg",800,533,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly.jpg",1080,719,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/08\/philip-hinchcliffe-i-was-pushing-the-envelope-on-doctor-who-but-not-irresponsibly.jpg",1080,719,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Hinchcliffe, who produced some of the BBC sci-fi's best-loved stories, is back with a new set of adventures for Big Finish.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/3289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Tom\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2021\/03\/Tom-Baker-fd2706a.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"Tom\\"")
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