REAL REELS? - A MINI PART 2

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Last week I asked if a group of reel to reel tape drives had at one time been real computers. This week I’m still with these units but I’m posing a different question. This will be just a short post, but I felt it was worth striking while the iron was still hot.

THE SPACE PIRATES, 1969

None other than the mighty Gav Rymill, of Dalek 63.88 fame, pointed out I’d missed this example in The Space Pirates. It’s a real blink and you’ll miss it appearance in the extant part 2. This one has a different body to the ones I posted last week but the tape section is identical.
BBC tv SPECIAL EFFECTS EXHIBITION, 1972

Around the same time I had a message from Gav I’d spotted a group of three of them in the photos taken of Jon and Co at the opening of this seminal exhibition. The central tape drive in this image is the same one as seen in Inferno and Robot. But the one to the right of Katy appears to be different to both the ones posted last week and the Space Pirates version above. So, although we have typically seen these computers in groups of 3, there appear to be at least 4 different varieties. 
But are these real computers? All of the units are branded with the word MAGNA and a number. Usually it’s MAGNA 400 as seen above. But the Space Pirates variant says MAGNA 410 and one of the Science Museum ones says MAGNA 500. This would point to them being real, but despite rigorous searching, I could not find any computer with this name. But my searches led me to a Facebook post on the Doctor Who Photo Research page where Rhys Williams wondered if they might have been made by Magna Models. 

THE MIND MONSTER, 1972

Magna Models was an outside prop maker. Probably their most significant contribution was the creation of the TARDIS console used during the Third Doctor’s era. They also made The Master’s TARDIS/computer console seen in The Time Monster. I had a quick flick through the recently released The Doctor Who Production Diary and could not find any confirm this weeks props had been made by Magna. So it seems the jury is out for now. 

Back soon. 









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