Doctor Who has often featured devices and designs that originated in strange other places - from the sci- worlds of Gerry Anderson to the Grace Brothers department store.

Feature by JONATHAN MORRIS

Back when it began, Doctor Who had a small budget, and the programme makers couldn’t always aff ord to manufacture bespoke sets, props and costumes. Instead, they’d be hired from scenery stores, prop houses and costumiers, using items created for other, earlier productions.

For instance, one of the alien delegates in Mission to the Unknown (1965) wore a helmet from the ABC TV series Pathfinders to Mars (1960-61), and the Zeus astronauts in The Tenth Planet (1966) sported spacesuits created for the film The First Men in The Moon (1964). Throughout the 1960s, Doctor Who shared tape-spooling computers and control panels with The Avengers (1961-69), Out of the Unknown (1965-67), Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-67) and The Prisoner (1967-68), and frequently featured a clock and a mysterious glass-domed apparatus created for the film Curse of the Fly (1965).