Endeavour Season 4 Episode 1: "Game"

 

The reason I have picked this episode amongst the many repeats we are currently watching, is not just for the scenes of Oxford, glorious they may be, but for the chess match from which gives the title it's name. More importantly it is the computer that plays against the Russian academic. It is called the Joint Computing Nexus or JCN. A nod to IBM if you just move once the letters in the alphabet. It's programmed in "Forbin-66", perhaps a nod to the 1970 film "Colossus-The Forbin Project". (Thanks to tvtropes.org). Colossus is that famous machine now at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. 

Now this is the summer of 1967 and what I really want to know is where did the production team find the computer they used in the episode or how it was built. I have not found the answer. So what I did was stop the episode and photograph the following shots.

So it looks to me that it was built in the studio. But they must have got the bits from somewhere. Perhaps the following website from Chris Sullivan can help.

Morse, Lewis and Endeavour – Welcome to the Morse Universe (morseandlewisandendeavour.com)

I have probably mentioned it before, but the same year in which this episode was set, I visited my company's (George Wimpey) computer department as I was given the opportunity to join them the following year. Maybe turning this down to go on site was not the best decision, but one I would not change.

A couple of photos from the episode that I found on the above website. First here is Morse at The Sheldonian.

A body is discovered.

I believe that the author of all the books Colin Dexter used to make an appearance in every episode. But due to illness, they just had his photo in the background.

Finally Morse with Dakota Blue Edwards.