Innes Lloyd

Innes Lloyd was producer for Doctor Who from the latter part of William Hartnell's tenure on the series through Patrick Troughton's stint as the Doctor. He was born in 1925 in Wales.

As a producer, Lloyd reached the front rank of BBC television drama. He began his television career working on popular series in the 1960s. He was the third producer on Doctor Who and his duration as producer ran for two seasons between "The Celestial Toymaker" and "The Enemy of the World" (excepting "The Tomb of the Cybermen"). His most important contribution to the programme was in developing the notion whereby the lead actor in the programme might be replaced. This arose following continuing difficulties with William Hartnell as the lead actor.

Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis came up with an intriguing way of writing the Doctor out - as he was an alien being, they decided that he would have the power to change his body when it became worn out or seriously injured, a process that would later become known within the mythology of the series as regeneration. 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 cast Patrick Troughton, having considered character actor Peter Jeffrey; and Troughton first appeared in November 1966 after the changeover from Hartnell had been seen at the end of the story "The Tenth Planet." That serial also introduced the popular Cybermen, villains who would return to face the Doctor on several subsequent occasions. Indeed, Lloyd oversaw something of a "Monster Era" on the programme, introducing durable and memorable monsters like the Ice Warriors and the Yeti.

Innes Lloyd also worked on Thirty-Minute Theatre, United! and Dead of Night, but he will perhaps best be remembered as the producer of more prestigious drama. His chosen projects were often biographical, and he was a frequent collaborator with Alan Bennett. Bennett's An Englishman Abroad told the remarkable true story of the chance meeting between actress Coral Browne (playing herself) and spy Guy Burgess (Alan Bates]) in Moscow in 1958, while A Question of Attribution (finished shortly before Lloyd's death) was a logical sequel, showing the radically different fate of Keeper of the Queen's Paintings and fellow traitor Anthony Blunt.

Innes Lloyd died on 23 August 1991.