Sir Charles Curran was the BBC Director General during most of the 1970’s, and this is his response to Mary Whitehouse’s criticism of ‘Doctor Who’ over its violent content during the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era.
“The television service was not totally satisfied with the way ‘The Deadly Assassin’ developed. With hindsight, the service does accept that one or two viewers may have imagined that Dr. Who’s dreams were reality. What actually happened was that the head of the department felt, before these episodes were transmitted, that some of the sequences were a little too realistic for a science-fiction series. Accordingly, several of them were edited out before transmission.
“The result was what you saw on the screen, and which I myself think was reasonably acceptable. However, with hindsight, the head of the department responsible would have liked to have cut just a few more frames of the action than he did.”
Doctor Who Interview Archive 