Graham Williams
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Graham Williams was a British television producer and script editor, whose best known work was on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.
He was the producer on the show between 1977 and 1980, during the Tom Baker era. Williams has been criticised for his "lack of respect" for the series, by introducing large amounts of parody and pastiche into the show. Despite this they were the most popular Dr. Who programs made, at their height recording more than 17.5million viewers. Williams's era suffered from the fact that he was following Philip Hinchcliffe, whose tenure as producer was and continues to be well-regarded by fans of the programme. He also wrote significant portions of the script for two stories beset by production/writing problems, City of Death and The Invasion of Time. These production problems plagued many television series in the late 1970s.
During his period on the programme, Williams worked closely with three script editors: the experienced Robert Holmes; Anthony Read; and Douglas Adams, who penned some of the most well-regarded stories of the Williams era and went on to write hugely popular novels and scripts like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In 1989 Williams wrote a novelisation of The Nightmare Fair (ISBN 0-426-20334-8), a serial which would have been made for Doctor Who's 1986 season but for the fact that the series was put on hiatus.
He was also the script editor for The View From Daniel Pike (1971), Sutherland's Law (1973), Z Cars (1975-1976) and Barlow at Large (1975).
He died in a shooting accident on 17 August 1990.
