Doctor Who Prop Hunt

Over the last couple of weeks premier Doctor Who podcast Radio Free Skaro has given this humble blog a few shout outs. Steven Schapansky of RFS has been discussing his passion for the spiral staircase I covered ages ago here and here . Well, I thought I’d look a look at another staircase, this time from the 1980s. It’s a staircase that featured a few times in 80’s Who and also turned up a lot in the final season of Blakes 7. I’m tentatively calling this post part 1 as I suspect there are more appearances out there that I have not yet found. MEGLOS, 1980 This is the earliest I have been able to find these stairs. They can be identified by their rather minimalist design with flat wedge shaped steps and straight unadorned supporting poles.  RESCUE, 1981 This episode of Blakes 7 is the premiere of Series D. In the episode Avon and Co establish a new base of operations on Xenon. This base appeared throughout the season and, of course, featured a familiar white staircase. HEADHUNTER, 1...

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Carnival of Monsters. Tomorrow I’m recording an episode of A Hamster With a Blunt Knife  where I’ll be talking about this third Doctor classic. So naturally, I also wanted to check out the props to see if I could find anything of interest. But sadly, I completely drew a blank! Luckily friend of the blog  Zoe’s Feather Boa was on hand to point a couple things out.  CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS, 1973 The opening of Carnival features this model shot. A space ship carrying Vorg and Shrina arrives on Inter Minor. And that space ship is none other than… THE SPACE PIRATES, 1969 …. LIZ 79! ******************************************* CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS, 1973 Beyond that space ship model, there isn’t a great deal of stuff that reappears elsewhere. The cloak worn by Plectrac (Peter Halliday) is probably the most well travelled item. Below are a couple of classic who appearances. I’m told it also pops up in Bla...

Nothing quite says ‘science fiction’ more than putting hexagons all over your walls. This design, first seen in The Mutants, pops up throughout the 70s and 80s. In this post I tried to catalogue all of its appearances in classic Doctor Who. Next week for part 2 I will cover the other shows it appears in.  THE MUTANTS, 1972 As mentioned, this story is widely considered to be the origin of this prop. I have checked to see if I can find an earlier appearance but have drawn a blank. THE MUTANTS ORIGINAL DESIGN DRAWING BY JEREMY BEAR As you can see in this original production drawing, the hexagons were always part of the design. THE STONES OF BLOOD, 1978 Rather surprisingly the hexagons don’t appear again for another six years. NIGHTMARE OF EDEN, 1979 Once they did return in the late seventies they were back for good. This one is quite subtle but it’s the first of two appearances in this season. THE HORNS OF NIMON, 1979 And here is the other. MEGLOS, 1980 For Meglos, Designer Philip Lin...

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...