Episodes Afterlife: The Invasion Cyberships

If you've read the Episodes themselves, you'll know that two different designs of Cybership feature in The Invasion. Most look like a pair of drums with a large illuminated globe between, which we'll call warships. Then there is the bigger vessel covered in rectangular boxes at either end, which we'll take to be a transporter ship.

With budgets tight on the final season of the 1960's, one of these would feature as a prop in the very next story...

With some additional wheels attached, one of the warships appears as a piece of equipment which the Doctor and Zoe run past inside the Dynatrope in The Krotons.

Bill King & Trading Post were handling the VFX on both stories, so it was only natural that they might reuse items.

(This wasn't the first time a Cybership model had been reused as a prop, of course. The saucer from The Moonbase could be seen hanging above the inner door of the Dulcian war museum in The Dominators, from the same director, Morris Barry).

The larger transporter ship then turns up as a prop in a couple of Pertwee stories...

For its first appearance, it is standing upright in the background of the UNIT laboratory in Spearhead From Space, just beside where the TARDIS has been placed. The cargo containers are blue. You can see that it has the basic warship model as it's core. (The lab also features the Morok Freezing Machine prop, in its final appearance in the series).

With the containers now repainted silver, the same model makes another appearance amidst the alien technology of the planet Uxarieus, in Colony In Space. It appears in the room in which the Doctor, Jo and the Master are held prisoner.

The room also contains one of the warship models.

The Cyberships seen in Silver Nemesis were inspired by The Invasion design, being bulky (diamond shaped rather than circular) at both ends but narrow in the middle.

If there are any more appearances in Doctor Who - or in any other series / movie - of these Cybership models, do let me know.

This particular design of Cyber warship was popular with Steven Moffat, as it made two appearances during the tenure of the Eleventh Doctor...

One took centre stage in the skies above Stonehenge in The Pandorica Opens...

And they then formed the fleet of the Twelfth Cyber Legion in A Good Man Goes To War.