Moral crusader wanted to exterminate Doctor
The 57th anniversary of the arrival on TV of one of the most loved and enduring characters, Doctor Who, was reached recently. The Time Lord will fight more battles against their arch enemies The Daleks on New Year’s Day, but probably faced a tougher adversary in Mary Whitehouse. ANDY RICHARDS reports
IT seems hard to believe now, but back in the early 1960s it wasn’t just the Daleks that were trying to exterminate Doctor Who.
No, the now much-loved TV series was in the firing line of morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse.
When the first series aired in November 1963, leaving hundreds of anxious youngsters hiding behind their settee, Mrs Whitehouse was still teaching at a Shropshire school.
But the following year, Midlandsborn Mrs Whitehouse launched her Clean Up TV campaign with a memorable meeting in Birmingham. And, despite the sci-fi show fast developing into a national institution in the UK, Mrs Whitehouse soon questioned its suitability for children.
She repeatedly campaigned over what she saw as the show’s violent, frightening and gory content.
According to Radio Times, the series “never had a more implacable foe than Mary Whitehouse”.
Doctor Who met with her heaviest disapproval during Philip Hinchcliffe’s tenure as producer between 1975 and 1977. She described the serial Genesis of the Daleks (1975) as consisting of “teatime brutality for tots”, said The Brain of Morbius (1976) “contained some of the sickest and most horrific material seen on children’s television”, and on The Seeds of Doom (1976), in which the Doctor (Tom Baker) survives an encounter with a giant carnivorous plant monster, she commented: “Strangulation – by hand, by claw, by obscene vegetable matter – is the latest gimmick, sufficiently close up so they get the point.”
Following her complaint about The Deadly Assassin (broadcast later in 1976), Whitehouse received an apology from the Director-General of the BBC, Sir Charles Curran.
A freeze-frame cliffhanger ending to the third episode, in which the Doctor appeared to drown, was altered for repeat showings.
The series’ next producer, Graham Williams, was told to lighten the tone and reduce the violence following Whitehouse’s complaints. Senior television executives commented that at this time her views were not disregarded lightly.
Philip Hinchcliffe later remarked: “I always felt that Mary Whitehouse thought of Doctor Who as a children’s programme, for little children, and it wasn’t... so she was really coming at the show from the