George Innes Llewelyn Lloyd (24 December 1925 – 23 August 1991) was a Welsh television producer and actor. He had a long career as a producer in BBC drama, which included series such as Doctor Who and Talking Heads.
Early life and career
George Innes Llewelyn Lloyd was born on Christmas Eve in the town of Penmaenmawr, Wales. Lloyd received his education from Ellesmere College in Shropshire, England. His ambition was to join the Royal Navy, but was denied entry to Dartmouth Naval College due to his poor eyesight. The outbreak of World War II finally allowed Lloyd to volunteer in the Navy.
Acting career
Following his naval service, Lloyd decided to pursue acting. He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1949. That Christmas, he played the role of the Chinese Emperor in a version of Aladdin produced in Ashford, Kent. The following year, Lloyd joined a repertory company called the Palace Players, based at the Gaiety Theatre in Douglas, on the Isle of Mann. Throughout 1950, he performed twice every night in a variety of shows, including The Light of Heart by Emlyn Williams and See How They Run by Phillip King. As an outside broadcast producer he supervised live coverage of many important sporting events such as the 1959 Wimbledon Championships, the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest, a World Cup qualifying match between England and Luxembourg, and Winston Churchill's state funeral. He also produced several series of Top of the Form, an inter-school quiz championship.
Lloyd believed Outside Broadcast was becoming overly specialised and was no longer offering the variety he desired, and after producing coverage of the 1965 Wimbledon Championships, he requested a move into drama. He started by directing two episodes each of The Flying Swan, the football drama United!, and the soap opera The Newcomers. while the latter was a historical set around the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881. Newman complained to Lloyd that The Gunfighters was "awful," prompting Lloyd to give more consideration to the quality of future scripts.
Lloyd wished to imbue future serials with a greater sense of realism and modernity, planting "everything as much as possible in the present day", and hiring Kit Pedler as an unofficial scientific advisor. He also oversaw the replacement of astronaut Steven Taylor and orphan Dodo Chaplet as the companions of the Doctor, introducing contemporary Ben Jackson and Polly Wright in their place. He aimed to make the series more action-orientated and less whimsical than it had been previously: this included the introduction of recurring monsters the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors and the Yeti, and the termination of the purely historical stories prominent in the show's first three seasons.
During Lloyd's tenure as producer the concept of regeneration was introduced, whereby the lead actor in the programme might be replaced. This arose following continuing health difficulties with William Hartnell as the lead actor. Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis decided the Doctor would have the power to change his body when it became worn out or seriously injured. Whereas John Wiles, the previous producer to Lloyd, had intended to replace Hartnell with another actor but playing the same character, Lloyd and Davis elected to change the entire personality and appearance of the Doctor. They eventually cast character actor Patrick Troughton, having previously considered another actor, Peter Jeffrey, as well as Peter Cushing, who had played Dr. Who in two films. Troughton first appeared in November 1966 after the changeover from Hartnell had been seen at the end of the story The Tenth Planet.
Lloyd intended to stay on Doctor Who for only a year, but despite his initial misgivings he found it offered exactly the variety he could no longer get in Outside Broadcast. Ultimately he stayed for two years, handing over to Peter Bryant after The Enemy of the World. (Bryant had already produced the earlier serial The Tomb of the Cybermen as a test piece to show he was capable of taking over as producer.)
Thirty Minute Theatre and anthology series
At the start of 1968, Innes Lloyd departed Doctor Who to take over on BBC2's short plays strand, Thirty-Minute Theatre, which had been created by Sydney Newman principally as a vehicle for new writing, and was then in the middle of its third series. Lloyd used the strand to experiment with bringing Outside Broadcast techniques to drama, shooting several plays on location using OB cameras: previously the location work in BBC dramas had been shot on film. Notable entries produced by Lloyd included 1969's Conversation at Night, starring John Gielgud and Alec Guinness and directed by Rudolph Cartier. Lloyd produced 119 plays for Thirty Minute Theatre before departing in 1971. In 1973 Lloyd produced Sporting Scenes, an anthology of six plays themed around sport, from writers including Andrew Davies and Alan Plater, and he produced the entire spring 1976 run of BBC2 Playhouse, as well as several subsequent plays for the strand.
Collaborations with Alan Bennett
In 1972 Lloyd produced the poignant comedy A Day Out, Alan Bennett's first play for television. Bennett had written full-length pieces for theatre, but in television he was known as a writer and performer of sketches. He later recalled Lloyd telling him A Day Out had wound up "in a pool of scripts... because the head of script had said it was no good."