Doctor Who Prop Hunt

It’s guns galore this week as I look at pairs of pistols, matching muskets, and coupled cannons! Each gun featured appears in either two Doctor Who stories OR Doctor Who and something else. Enjoy. GALAXY 4, 1965 The long energy weapons of the Dravhins turn up ten years later in…. GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, 1975 …and the clear cube thing on the end turned out to be green. Who knew! EARTHSHOCK, 1982 The Eighties Cyber-guns, created by freelance costumes and effects company Imagineering, were later cannibalised to appear in….. WARRIORS OF THE DEEP, 1984 Careful Tarpok! You’ll have your hand off! INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS, 1974 The Doctor’s dino stun gun actually first appeared in…. MADAME SIN, 1972 …. a fairly obscure British thriller starring Bette Davis, Robert Wagner, and Denholm Elliott. Interiors for this movie were completed at Pinewood and it seems likely the gun ended up in their prop store after filming was complete. Studios like Pinewood and Elstree would often rent out props to oth...

This week’s prolific props are these rather alien looking stools from The Sensorites. These multipurpose items were a mainstay of the Hartnell years, popping up in a number of stories. However their popularity with designers seems not to have extended beyond the Sixties, as exotic visions of the future gave way to the more utilitarian design of the Seventies.  THE SENSORITES, 1964 It’s the story I most associate with these stools and it’s the earliest appearance I can find. The Sensorites features two different sizes of stool. We will see both versions pressed into action in future stories. THE SPACE MUSEUM, 1965 1965 seems to have been the banner year for these beauties with the bulk of their appearances coming from this year. The Space Museum was up first, broadcast between April and May 1965. A number of the taller props where used as displays for Museum exhibits. GALAXY 4, 1965 September and October 1965 sees the shorter props on the set of Galaxy 4 in the Drahvin ship. They se...