Doctor Who Prop Hunt

Hey, it’s time for another round up of props I’ve covered before and have spotted elsewhere. Yep, it’s yet another update. This one is for all you spiral staircase fans, looking at you Steven. So far I’ve spotted the staircase in 6 shows beyond its many Who appearances. Well chalk up yet one more. The screen grab below is from the Doomwatch episode Tomorrow The Rat. And for those keeping track, this one goes clockwise.  DOOMWATCH, 1970 Back in July I posted about the Dino stun gun from Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Well, I missed that a very similar gun can be seen in Frontier in Space. FRONTIER IN SPACE, 1973 This is another one suggested by Zoe’s Feather Boa. I previously posted about this cone prop here . It’s in The Dominators and The Seeds of Death. ZBF points out it actually started life as the base of the Gravitron in The Moonbase. THE MOONBASE, 1967 Like the spiral staircase, this wide blue computer, originally from UFO, pops up everywhere. This appearance in a 1977 edition ...

This one comes courtesy of Zoe’s Feather Boa who posted about it on a thread on Bluesky. It’s a small unit featuring three distinctive chunky levers. As we will see this prop features in several Sixties stories.  THE SENSORITES, 1964 The first appearance of this prop. Here you can see it front and centre being used by Maitland (Lorne Cossette) THE TENTH PLANET, 1966 It next appears at the very end of the Hartnell era. It’s in the very middle of the picture on the set of the Zeus IV. THE POWER OF THE DALEKS, 1966 And then it appears in the very next story. This time it’s wall mounted. THE MOONBASE, 1967 And again, it’s wall mounted in this Troughton Cyber tale.  FURY FROM THE DEEP, 1968 And one last Sixties appearance. Those distinctive chunky levers seem to have been painted a darker hue. 

Hey guys. I’m a bit tight for time this week so I thought I’d just provide a few updates on props I have looked at in the past. Probably the best place to start is with the prop I looked at last week .  COLONY IN SPACE, 1971 David Brunt  let me know that four of the pill shaped props from my last post can be seen at the conclusion of Colony.  THE MOONBASE, 1967 I first wrote about the unusual stools from The Sensorites  here and again here . I was watching The Moonbase the other day and I spotted a very brief cameo I’d previously missed. One of these stools can be found hiding out with the Cybermen in the shadows of a store room. THE MUPPET SHOW, 1976-81 In the top left of this Pigs in Space screen grab are the vac formed cupboards from Peter Evan’s Studios. I wrote about their Doctor Who appearances here . In a follow up post I mentioned their appearances in Blake’s 7 and Red Dwarf but I wasn’t aware of any other shows. Well here is another one to as to the list. R...

After several weeks of looking at stuff from the seventies and eighties, this post will take us straight back to the sixties. I’ve been looking for this pill shaped object that seems to have been a favourite of designers during the Troughton years. I feel this might have been a real world item once upon a time but I’m at a loss as to what it could have been. If you have any ideas I’d be very grateful if you reached out.  In the meantime here is a list of the appearances I have spotted.  THE MOONBASE, 1967 A couple of the appearances I have found are pretty hard to spot. And this first one is one of them. I’m almost certain that the pill shaped props appear on the walls of the sickbay. However they are too high up and the walls are too far back. So we do not get a good look at them in either the publicity stills or the existing episodes themselves. I’ve circled the prop I think is the correct one above. So I’ll leave it to you to decide if I’m right or not. FURY FROM THE DEEP, ...

For this post I am taking a slightly different approach compared to what I have done so far. Rather than looking for a particular prop I am concentrating on a set and seeing what can be found. The set in question is the War Museum from The Dominators. Because with a museum you’ll have exhibits and that means lots of props to look at.  THE DOMINATORS, 1968 Above is a clear view of the War Museum set. Sadly there is no way I can identify everything here. But I have been able to locate three of the Museum exhibits. Below are the objects I’ll be looking at.   Probably the most known element of the War Museum is the saucer shaped Cyber-ship hanging above the door. This model was originally seen in The Moonbase. Season 6 features another Museum in The Seeds of Death, the sequel to The Ice Warriors. These two Museums share a bit of common DNA as hanging from the ceiling of both institutions is this cone shaped prop.  This last one is a little contentious but I am confident these...