Doctor Who Prop Hunt

I didn’t think I be back on this topic so soon. But following my last post both Bob Johns (@whilom_music on Instagram) and Zoe’s Feather Boa (@zoesfeatherboa.bsky.social) reached out with more information on those grey computer panels I have been looking at. It turns out that what I thought was just a prop, a bit of wood with few lights and switches, is actually a real computer! Created in 1962, the ICT1301 was a British made business computer from International Computers and Tabulators. As you can see from the image above, the grey panels from Doctor Who were just a small part of a very large machine. Very few of these computers still exist. The most famous example can be found at  The National Museum of Computing and is fondly referred to as Flossie. You can read all about the restoration of Flossie here . Zoe’s Feather Boa also made me aware of a few Doctor Who appearances of the ICT1301 panels that I had missed. So here they are.  MEGLOS, 1980 WARRIORS OF THE DEEP, 1984 TH...

Last week I posted about this group of grey computer panel props that crop up in a number of stories, particularly during the Third Doctor era. You can see my findings here . But in the time honoured tradition of the Prop Hunt blog, I missed a few. So here are my new finds THE MIND OF EVIL, 1971 As noted in my last post, sometimes the panels are wall mounted and sometimes they are built into consoles like this one. This prop is found in the Process Theatre and actually features pretty prominently. Switches and buttons get pressed and everything! THE CLAWS OF AXOS, 1971 In the Nuton Complex, the TARDIS dematerialises to reveal the panel on the wall. THE MONSTER OF PELADON, 1974 Unusually the panel is vertically oriented for inclusion in the Communications Room set of this story.

So, with this post we are still hanging around in the computer room of Global Chemicals. I previously looked at those props that had been inherited from Gerry Anderson’s early Seventies live action drama UFO . Now, I’m looking at a prop that was already a familiar item from the beginning of the Pertwee era. In the images below are three grey rectangular panels attached to the walls of The Green Death set. I’ve numbered them 1, 2, and 3 so you can see what I’m talking about. Here they are side by side for direct comparsion. The basic layout of the switches and lights are consistent across all three panels. The only really clear difference between them is the colour of the darker third of the panel, on the right hand side. Also panel 2 seems to have only one small white square in that darker section compared to two in the others. However I’m too not worried about Panel 2 as it’s only Panels 1 and 3 that I have found in other stories. I’ve included it here for completeness sake. As mentio...

Following my recent post about Gerry Anderson’s UFO I wanted to take a look at a typical Doctor Who story of the mid-Seventies to see just how much material came from that show. So here is an examination of just two sets from The Green Death highlighting everything I have found. The sets are the Global Chemicals Computer Room, home of BOSS, and the smaller Pumping Room. Here are some views of these sets. I have numbered each of the UFO props I have found.  THE GREEN DEATH, 1973 (Images 1-5: Computer Room, Image 6: Pumping Room) Below I have presented more information about these props. The cut out image on the left is from The Green Death and the image on the right is from UFO. Hopefully using these images and the Green Death pictures above you can see how they match. NUMBER 1 - THE UFO MOONBASE DESK In the middle of Global Chemicals Computer Room is probably the most obvious prop from UFO. This large circular desk is featured throughout UFO’s run as the centrepiece of their Moonba...