REAL REELS?

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I’m back again with yet another reel to reel tape drive that could well be a real computer. However I’ve no info on this one. If you recognise it as a actual bit of tech please let me know.

SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE, 1970

Reel to Reel computers first appear in Doctor Who in the Sixties. But their heyday on screen is definitely the Seventies. By Doctor Who’s second decade they had firmly replaced the racks of dials and lights that had come before. This prop is an early example of this change in Doctor Who’s design aesthetic as it appears in the very first story of the Seventies.
INFERNO, 1970

And here we have two of them from later in the season. Here you can see the number 400 on the prop. Something that hints at branding and therefore makes me think these must have been real items. You can also see the middle panel in the body of the prop is different in these two examples. The one on the left has a complex pattern of lights while the right hand one features the same green glass as the Spearhead example.
OUT OF THE UNKNOWN, 1971

One year later and they are in the series 4 episode of Out of the Unknown called This Body is Mine. There are three in a row and we can see the one on the left has the same green glass panels as the Spearhead prop.
ROBOT, 1974

From Jon’s debut to Tom’s, here is one of them in Robot. Obviously this bunker set is dark. But the prop (in the middle of the image) is identifiable by the the triangle between the the tapes and the panels down the middle of the body. It’s the same one as the left hand example in the Inferno pic.

And that’s it for today. I’ll be back next Sunday with some more reused props.







 

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