List of Doctor Who robots

Last updated

The long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who has featured a multitude of robots since its original airing in 1963.

Contents

Despite appearing as robots, both the Daleks and Cybermen are not listed here, as they are depicted as organic creatures that have been transformed into cyborgs, as opposed to completely inorganic and true robots.

A

Anne Droid

An Auton dressed as a bride, shown at the Doctor Who Experience Robot bride from Doctor Who (529564498).jpg
An Auton dressed as a bride, shown at the Doctor Who Experience

Auton

B

Bracewell

C

Cleaners

The Clockwork Robot as seen from the Doctor Who Experience Clockwork robot (2658984171).jpg
The Clockwork Robot as seen from the Doctor Who Experience

Clockwork Robot

D

Davinadroid

Drathro

E

Emojibot

H

A Handbot as seen in the Doctor Who Experience Doctor Who Experience (15083488345).jpg
A Handbot as seen in the Doctor Who Experience

Handbot

Heavenly Host

K

K1

K1 Robot Doctor Who Experience (30943589575).jpg
K1 Robot

The Doctor's first enemy in his fourth incarnation. It is the main villain during ‘’Robot’’.

K2

An upgraded version of K1 appearing in the comic Robo Rampage (2016). [ citation needed ]

K9

The Fourth Doctor's companion, K9 Doctor Who Experience (8105526993).jpg
The Fourth Doctor's companion, K9

A robotic dog that serves as the companion to The Doctor, during the latter half of his fourth incarnation. The first iteration of the dog was acquired by The Doctor during The Invisible Enemy .

Kamelion

A shape-shifting android acquired by the Fifth Doctor as a companion at the end of the two-part story The King's Demons (1983). Kamelion was weak-willed, allowing The Master to be able to take control of him on two occasions.

Kandyman

M

Mechanoid (Mechonoid)

A Mechanoid, hidden away in the Doctor Who Experience Mechanoid (3736125910).jpg
A Mechanoid, hidden away in the Doctor Who Experience

Mechonoids (sometimes spelled 'Mechanoids') are large, multifaceted, spherical robots created by humans. They first appear in the second season serial, The Chase (1965), being sent to prepare the planet Mechanus for colonization. While working on the colonization task, they imprison stranded astronaut Steven Taylor due to him not having their control codes. A group of Daleks, pursuing the TARDIS crew, engaged the Mechanoids in battle; which side was victorious is not shown.

In the original shooting script, they were to be called 'Mechons', but this was changed shortly before filming. But some actors had already memorized lines from the previous draft, leading to the robots being erroneously referred to as Mechons in some dialog in the finished episodes. Accidental misspellings in media publications and offial sources have led to confusion about the spelling of 'Mechonoids'. Originally intended to be spelled with an 'o' as a slight revision of the name 'Mechon', the name has been commonly misspelled with an 'a' both in episode credits and in other sources. [1] [2]

The Mechanoids next appeared in the TV21 comic strip story The Eve of War (1966). They are depicted as the sworn enemies of the Daleks. A race of blue-skinned humanoids subtly interfere with events, using a robot called K2, in order to prevent a war. This was followed by a further comic strip appearance (where they are again referenced as "Mechanoids") in the story The World That Waits, included in the 1966 The Dalek World annual. The narrative depicts a Dalek attack on Mechanus resulting in the destruction of a Mechanoid city.

War of the Daleks (1997), an Eighth Doctor BBC Books novel written by John Peel, features a Mechanoid identified as Mechon 179. It works as a gardener on the planet Hesperus and is destroyed helping to defend the planet against a Dalek invasion.

The Mechanoids appear in the Big Finish audio drama The Juggernauts (2005). In this story, Davros adds human nervous tissue to robotic Mechanoid shells to create the titular Juggernauts.

The third issue of Doctor Who - Battles in Time magazine (2006) featured a two-page Dalek Wars image and accompanying text entitled The Battle for the Planet Mechanus, depicting a battle inside a Mechanoid city.

In the graphic novel The Only Good Dalek, the Mechanoids are depicted as having been destroyed by the Daleks, with some of their remains making their way to a human space station, where research is being conducted on the Daleks in the hopes of finding a way to defeat them.

Movellan

Movellans are an android species originating from outside the galaxy. They make their first appearance in the 17th season serial, Destiny of the Daleks (1979) as adversaries of the Daleks.

N

Two persons afflicted with the template injuries, as shown at the Doctor Who Experience. Are You My Mummy%3F (5878714967).jpg
Two persons afflicted with the template injuries, as shown at the Doctor Who Experience.

Nanogene

Quarks
Doctor Who race
First appearance The Dominators (1968)
In-universe information
Home worldUnknown
TypeRobots
Affiliation Dominators

Nanogenes are 'flocking' nanobots that repair damaged tissue. In the two-part story, The Empty Child (2005) and The Doctor Dances (2005), Nanogenes inadvertently use a dead child as a template, reproducing the same injuries on anyone they touch. The Nanogenes restore those affected after they are provided with a complete human template. [3]

Q

Quark

The Quarks first appeared in the Second Doctor serial The Dominators (1969).

These robots were rectangularly shaped, with four arms: one pair folding into the body, the other pair being retractable. On the end of each arm was a solitary claw. The spherical head was divided into octants; the upper four octants formed the sensory hemisphere, which detected changes in light, heat and motion. At five of the corners of the octants were directional crystal beam transmitters (the sixth corner joined with the robot's neck). They communicated by means of high-pitched frequency, possibly contributing to their tendency to run out of energy quickly, which was their primary weakness.

The Quarks were used on the planet Dulkis by the Dominators to enslave and terrorise the indigenous Dulcian population to ensure the drilling of bore holes through the planet's crust. The Dominators planned to use their technology to fire down the holes, forcing the core to erupt, providing a new fuel source for their fleet.

A Quark was also seen in the serial The War Games .

Quarks are also referred to in the Big Finish Productions audio drama Flip-Flop . In this, they attacked the space yacht Pinto, where the Seventh Doctor and Mel sought leptonite crystals in order to defeat them. It is not known however, whether the Doctor defeated the Quarks on that occasion. The Quarks were also mentioned, and mocked viciously, in the Doctor Who Unbound audio play Exile .

On the BBC website, Captain Jack's Monster Files entry for the Vespiform mention that they may have been at war with "Quark rebels". [ citation needed ]

The Quarks were also portrayed by children in their appearances

R

Raston Warrior Robot

The Raston Warrior Robot was found in the Death Zone on Gallifrey; capable of moving faster than lightning and taking out a troop of Cybermen in seconds. Due to their extreme movement speed, they are only visible when remaining stationary. To pair with this, its targeting systems are primarily based on detecting movement.

Physically, the robot is very lithe, moving around to scan its environment for targets, and jumping around almost like a ballet dancer when attacking. Its face is smooth with no visible eyes. According to the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks, the robots were built by an ancient race, older than the Time Lords, who were ultimately destroyed by their own weapons. However, the novel Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles claims this was false advertising on the part of their manufacturers. It uses atomic radiation as a power source, drawing it from the atmosphere, and locks onto electrical impulses in the brain of its victim, but can become confused if it meets two beings with the same brain pattern.

A Raston Warrior Robot appears in the Past Doctor Adventure World Game , also by Dicks, and in the game Destiny of the Doctors .

Russell T Davies, in the March 2008 issue of Doctor Who Magazine , expressed interest in bringing the Raston Warrior Robot back in the new series of Doctor Who, citing the battle between the Robot and the Cybermen in The Five Doctors as one of the finest in the show's history. This has thus far not transpired.

A Roboform, disguised in a Santa Claus outfit to avoid detection Dr Who (2427559405).jpg
A Roboform, disguised in a Santa Claus outfit to avoid detection
A Roboform's true appearance Dr Who (2427560045).jpg
A Roboform's true appearance

Roboform

The Roboforms, also referred to as Pilot Fish by the Tenth Doctor, were scavengers often used by other species for their own means. They were shown allied with the Sycorax and the Racnoss, as well as the Pandorica Alliance., helping to seal the Eleventh Doctor in the Pandorica. The Empress of the Racnoss herself had an armed guard of Roboforms, which the Tenth Doctor infiltrated and knocked out.

They are shown to sometimes disguise themselves in Santa Claus outfits to avoid suspicion. Their weaponry was also disguised as conventional Earth items, such as flamethrowers in the guise of tubas and Christmas Trees capable of spinning fast enough to slice people apart. They are also shown to be capable of detecting Regeneration energy. Without disguises, Roboforms naturally have golden bullet shaped heads with two indentations on either side where a human's eyes would be.

S

Sandminer Robots

In The Robots of Death (1977), three types of slave robots were created by a distant human society are shown. These robots were originally built to perform menial tasks. In at least one instance, these robots took to raising a human child, Taren Capel. He eventually learned to reprogram the robots to kill humans, and attempted to stage a robot revolution.

The three classes of robots were:

A Smiler, dressed in a black robe outside of its booth Doctor Who Experience (13080867913).jpg
A Smiler, dressed in a black robe outside of its booth

These robots made appearances in:

Smiler

T

TeamMates

Teselecta

The Teselecta's antibodies, as shown at the Doctor Who Experience. Doctor Who Experience (15962282844).jpg
The Teselecta's antibodies, as shown at the Doctor Who Experience.

The Teselecta, first shown in "Let's Kill Hitler", is a robot with the ability to change its appearance. It is commanded by humans shrunk by a miniaturization ray and kept at that size by a compression field. Teselecta are sent through time by an organization called The Justice Department, with the job of removing people the department judges deserving of punishment from their time period. They are grabbed just prior to their death in order to be tortured.

In "Let's Kill Hitler", Amy Pond and Rory Williams are trapped within a Teselecta and chased by its robotic "immune system". [4] Wrist-bands worn by the crew serve as reverse antibodies, preventing the "immune system" from attacking them, and anybody not wearing one with proper identification status is incinerated. Later in the episode, the crew of the Teselecta is evacuated by what appears to be a transmat beam.

The Teselecta reappear in the Series 6 finale "The Wedding of River Song". In the episode, the Eleventh Doctor is shown being killed at Lake Silencio, Utah, however, it is later revealed that he hid with his TARDIS inside of a Teselecta, which takes his form, making it appear as though he had been killed.

Trine-E

W

A Yeti, covered in fur to disguise its robotic appearance Doctor Who Experience (30826731502).jpg
A Yeti, covered in fur to disguise its robotic appearance

War Machines (WOTAN)

Y

Yeti

Z

Zu-Zana

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davros</span> Fictional character from Doctor Who; antagonist

Davros is a character from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was created by screenwriter Terry Nation, originally for the 1975 serial Genesis of the Daleks. Davros is a major enemy of the series' protagonist, the Doctor, and is the creator of the Doctor's deadliest enemies, the Daleks. Davros is a genius who has mastered many areas of science, but also a megalomaniac who believes that through his creations he can become the supreme being and ruler of the Universe. The character has been compared to the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler several times, including by the actor Terry Molloy, while Julian Bleach defined him as a cross between Hitler and the renowned scientist Stephen Hawking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberman</span> Fictional race of cyborgs

The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. The Cybermen are a species of space-faring cyborgs who often forcefully and painfully convert human beings into more Cybermen in order to populate their ranks while also removing their emotions and personalities. They were conceived by writer Kit Pedler and story editor Gerry Davis, and first appeared in the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet.

Silurian (<i>Doctor Who</i>) Fictional race from the television series Doctor Who

The Silurians are a race of reptilian humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The species first appeared in Doctor Who in the 1970 serial Doctor Who and the Silurians, and were created by Malcolm Hulke. The first Silurians introduced are depicted as prehistoric and scientifically advanced sentient humanoids who predate the dawn of man; in their backstory, the Silurians went into self-induced hibernation to survive what they predicted to be a large atmospheric upheaval caused by the Earth capturing the Moon.

The Robots of Death is the fifth serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 29 January to 19 February 1977.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamie McCrimmon</span> UK TV Doctor Who character created 1966

James Robert McCrimmon, usually simply called Jamie, is a fictional character played by Frazer Hines in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A piper of the Clan MacLeod who lived in 18th-century Scotland, he was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1966 to 1969. The spelling of his surname varies from one script to another; it is alternately rendered as Macrimmon and McCrimmond. Jamie appeared in 20 stories.

Steven Taylor (<i>Doctor Who</i>) Fictional character in the TV series Doctor Who

Steven Taylor is a fictional character played by Peter Purves in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A space pilot from Earth in the future, he was a companion of the First Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1965 to 1966. Steven appeared in 10 stories. Only three of the serials in which Steven appeared as a regular are complete in the BBC archive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kaldor City</span>

Kaldor City is a series of audio plays using elements from the British TV series Doctor Who and Blake's 7. Many of the elements borrowed from these series for use in Kaldor City were originated by Chris Boucher, who wrote for Doctor Who and was script editor for all four seasons of Blake's 7. The series, produced by Magic Bullet Productions, was released on CD beginning in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice Warrior</span> Fictional alien from Doctor Who

The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. They were originally created by Brian Hayles, first appearing in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors where they encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. In Doctor Who, the Ice Warriors originated on Mars, which within the series narrative is a dying world. Their early appearances depict the Ice Warriors as attempting to conquer the Earth and escape their planet as early as Earth's Ice Age. A frozen group are discovered by an Earth scientific team who dub them 'Ice Warriors' in their first appearance. Despite this not being the name of their species, an Ice Lord later refers to his soldiers as Ice Warriors in the 1974 serial The Monster of Peladon. Similarly there is a fleeting reference to themselves as such in The Curse of Peladon. Although originally appearing as villains, subsequent appearances have depicted Ice Warriors that have eschewed violence and even ally themselves with the Doctor. They have also been featured in flashback and cameo appearances, in addition to appearing frequently in spin-off media such as novels and audio releases.

Revenge of the Cybermen is the fifth and final serial of the 12th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 19 April to 10 May 1975. It was the first to feature the Cybermen since The Invasion (1968) and the last until Earthshock (1982).

<i>The Chase</i> (<i>Doctor Who</i>) 1965 Doctor Who serial

The Chase is the eighth serial of the second season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Terry Nation and directed by Richard Martin, the serial was broadcast on BBC in six weekly parts from 22 May to 26 June 1965. Set in multiple time periods on several different planets, including Aridius, Earth, and Mechanus, the serial features the Dalek race travelling through time while pursuing the time machine the TARDIS and its occupants—the First Doctor and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, and Vicki —to kill them and seize the TARDIS for themselves. The Doctor and companions encounter several characters, including monsters Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, human astronaut Steven Taylor, and an android replica of the Doctor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Doctor</span> Fictional character from Doctor Who

The First Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by actor William Hartnell.

The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The mutated remains of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, they travel around in tank-like mechanical casings, and are a race bent on universal conquest and destruction. They are also, collectively, the greatest alien adversaries of the Time Lord known as the Doctor, having evolved over the course of the series from a weak race to monsters capable of destroying even the Time Lords and achieving control of the universe.

The Invasion is the partly missing third serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in eight weekly parts from 2 November to 21 December 1968.

<i>Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors</i> 1997 video game

Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors is an action video game based on the BBC British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was released on 5 December 1997 by BBC Multimedia.

"Rise of the Cybermen" is the fifth episode of the second series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on BBC One on 13 May 2006. The episode introduces a terrestrial reinvention of the Cybermen, as well as a parallel universe which would serve as a recurring plot element in the series. It is the first part of a two-part story, the concluding part being "The Age of Steel", broadcast on 20 May.

Alan Stevens is a British writer and producer who is based in the Southeast of England, where he runs his own audio production company, Magic Bullet Productions.

<i>Doctor Who</i> (season 12) Season of television series

The twelfth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 28 December 1974 with Tom Baker's first serial Robot, and ended with Revenge of the Cybermen on 10 May 1975.

References

  1. "The Mechanoids | Doctor Who World".
  2. "The Failed Dalek Rivals: Mechonoid Designs Rejected and Deleted Robots from the Chase". YouTube .
  3. Paul Parsons (2006), The Unofficial Guide: The Science of Doctor Who, Icon Books
  4. "Doctor Who – Let's Kill Hitler – News & Features". BBC. 17 August 2011. Retrieved 8 December 2011.