10 TV Shows That Re-Used Props From Other Shows

Assuredly the champion of recyling old props has to be Star Trek. And no Star Trek prop has been more recycled than this pair of strip lights between some vaguely sciency equipment that appears to have no discernible purpose.

Trekkies may recognise the do-nothing device from appearing in the Regula lab in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, but it got most of its use on the small screen. It was a piece of background lab equipment in at least three episodes of The Next Generation, three more of Voyager and was last seen in the Trek-verse in the Cold Station 12 episode of Enterprise in 2004.

The blinky light thingy was not built for Star Trek, though. And, for all that it's a Trek favourite, that wasn't where it originally appeared either. It's actually a hireable prop from the Modern Props company, who described it as "dual generators with rotating neon lights...knobs and buttons". And it was first used on the 1970s Incredible Hulk series.

Since then it has also cropped up doing its generic lab equipment thing on sci-fi shows like V, Knight Rider and The Six Million Dollar Man. It has even had occasional forays onto the big screen, including appearing opposite former Trek co-star William Shatner in Airplane 2 (in which the fact that the prop appears to do nothing was lampshaded in the script).

When Modern Props ceased operation earlier this year, they claimed that the prop had been hired out for over a hundred TV and film productions. Not bad for an object that doesn't have any obvious function.