Doctor Who Prop Hunt

I have a quick update on my post from last week all about the Classic Who props that turned up in an Ultravox music video . As always I’m indebted to the prop hunt brains trust for helping to track down more appearances of these props.  TERMINUS, 1983 On Bluesky, Zoe’s Feather Boa pointed out this Doctor Who appearance I’d missed. The example in this image actually differs slightly from those seen in The Twin Dilemma and Attack of the Cybermen. The circular screen is the same but the control panel is different. Here it features switches and dials whilst in the other stories it’s coloured lights. As mentioned in my last post, there are three units on set for Attack that are not clearly seen on screen or in photos. So this variation could be one of those.  NORTH SEA HIJACK, 1980 Some of the consoles in Attack feature a cylinder on top. This attachment is from the feature film North Sea Hijack starring Roger Moore. Again, thanks goes to Zoe’s Feather Boa for making this connecti...

This is not the post I had planned at all! I’ve been working on something else for a while. In fact I’m a bit late with that as the research has taken longer than normal. But in the meantime something popped up and I just had to share it. Friday evenings on our house are filled with the BBC4 repeats of Top of the Pops. One of the episodes this week, from May 1984, featured something that made me point at my telly like Leonardo DiCarprio. It was this trio of consoles. But what Doctor Who stories feature these props and why were they on Top of the Pops? First let’s look at their Doctor Who appearances. The unit with the circular screen can be seen in The Twin Dilemma. Designer Valerie Warrender made sure to give it a suitably glittery finish. THE TWIN DILEMMA, 1984 Here is a closer look at the console screen.  The consoles next appearance is the very next story, Attack of the Cybermen. This story features several variations on the same prop. Some featuring the circular screen and oth...

It’s part 4 of a 2 part series all about the vac formed wall design from The Mutants! I thought I was done with this prop but I was tipped off to a couple of appearances I hadn’t previously found. So this post is just to wrap those new items before I move onto something else.  THE LEGEND OF ROBIN HOOD, 1975 An unexpected period piece. The hexagon wall design is actually found on the ceiling this time. This show actually helps me to fill in the blanks a little. Originally I had not been able to find anything between The Mutants and The Stones of Blood. But, along with The Deadly Assassin which I covered last time, we can see that this prop was in use during the mid seventies after all. RED DWARF, 1988-99 The hexagons appear a few times during the shows original run. In particular in the enlarged Starbug set of series VII. You can see it at the top of this screen grab. So with these two appearances I have now found 10 Classic Doctor Who stories and 10 additional programmes that have ...