The Doctor has got more flirtatious over the years, and Doctor Who merchandise is now all pervasive, but he went much, much further back in the 1980s.


Yes, that really is Tom Baker’s Doctor waxing lyrical about Prime Computers, praising their ‘responsiveness’ and claiming to have seen them on Gallifrey. Meaning the Time Lords were packing less computing power than the phone in your pocket.

The adverts for the (now defunct) Massachusetts based computer house will seem strange to British viewers, aware of the BBC’s usual rules concerning commercial tie-ups, but these seem to have been relaxed for foreign markets.

(The Daleks were a special case: the complicated rights agreement with Terry Nation meant the pepper pots occasionally cropped up in adverts for chocolate bars and the like.)

Back to Prime and you’ll notice a saucy tone to it all, a reminder that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, who played Romana, got married in real life. Speaking of, here’s our favourite exchange in the bunch:

The Doctor: I can design ships, run power stations: oil, gas! Where would the energy industry be without Prime?

Romana: Ask it how to handle a woman.

PRIME: MARRY THE GIRL, DOCTOR

The Doctor: Romana, will you marry…

Romana: Yes!

The Doctor: Oh, Prime.

Romana: Clever Prime.

The Doctor: You can say that again.

Romana: Clever Prime.

Yes, the Doctor proposed to a companion, and the companion said yes. In an advert for a minicomputer stack. Now for the important question: is this canon? A parallel dimension where the Doctor’s life revolves around Prime Computers? And what about this?


Does anyone have a Prime computer? Maybe it will have the answers.