List of Doctor Who robots
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The long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who has featured many robots. The Daleks and Cybermen are not listed as they are cyborgs, and therefore not true robots.
A
Adherents of the Repeated Meme
Advertising satellite
Androids (Androzani)
Androids (Cyberman)
Androids (Karfel)
Androids (Krall)
Androids (Taran)
Androids (Terileptil)
Androids (Urbankan)
Anne Droid
C
Caw
Chumblies
Cleaning robots
Clockwork Droids
In "The Girl in the Fireplace", the Clockwork Droids were androids who came to stalk and take Madame de Pompadour's brain in 18th Century France, believing it could be used to repair their ship.
The Clockwork Robots began as repair robots on board the space ship SS Madame De Pompadour in the 51st Century. Their only purpose was to fix the ship if it broke down. When the ship did break down in the Dagmar Cluster, they did not have the right parts and so they used the 50 crew members on board, using their body parts to repair the ship. The last part they needed was a brain and they believed that the 37 year old brain (the same age of their ship) would only work. They used the ship's quantum drive to open multiple time windows to 18th Century France, trying to find the one that led to Madame de Pompadour's 37th year.
They followed camouflage procedure to blend into the surroundings and costumed themselves. They are equipped with a short range teleporter, scanners, tranquilizers, and sharp saw-knives for part removal. They can also heat themselves up if they get frozen and empty unwanted fluids out of their system. They make an unnerving 'tick-tock' noise from their clockwork parts, so when they were following Madame De Pompadour, they broke the clock in her bedroom so that she would hear only one clock, and not realize that anything was wrong. The Doctor defeated them by disconnecting the time window that led back to the ship, which caused them to shut down from lack of purpose.
Clockwork Soldiers
Cybermat
D
Dalek duplicates
Davinadroid
G
Gundan
Template:Doctorwhorace The Gundans were a squad of war robots encountered by the Fourth Doctor in the 1980 story Warriors' Gate by Stephen Gallagher. They were designed by the human slaves of the Tharils and used as a spearhead in the revolution which overthrew the Tharil empire. Designed with the primary purpose to resist and kill Tharils, the Gundans could travel the time winds like their prey and butchered many during the revolt. Each Gundan was armed with an axe and decorated with horns to make the robots seem more fearful. The revolt began on the day of the Great Feast, and several inert and decaying Gundans were found by the Doctor when he visited the feasting hall in the Gateway between the universes. The skeletons of their defeated enemies remained in their seats around the feasting table. The Doctor repaired the memory wafers of a Gundan to discover what had caused the decay of the Gateway.
I
Ice Soldiers
K
K1
In Robot, K1 was a robot designed in the 20th century to replace Humans in dangerous environments, but was subverted by a group of intellectuals who wanted to take power for themselves.
K-9
Kamelion
Kandy Man
Template:Doctorwhocharacter The Kandy Man (or Kandyman) was a pathological, psychopathic robotic killer from 1988's Seventh Doctor story The Happiness Patrol (written by Graeme Curry). Employed by the egocentric Helen A, the Kandy Man delighted in creating methods of torture and destruction using confectionery, such as drowning people in sugary solutions like its "fondant surprise". It was sadistic, speaking with a squeaky voice and had a very warped sense of humour, claiming it liked its victims to "die with a smile on their faces" by making candies that were so sweet the human body was unable to cope with the pleasure.
Composed of things like sherbet, marzipan and caramel, it was created by Gilbert M, with whom it shared an almost symbiotic relationship. The Doctor stuck the Kandy Man to the floor using lemonade — it had to keep moving or its constituent ingredients would coagulate. The Kandy Man died when its external candy shell was dissolved in a pipe by fondant surprise released by the oppressed Pipe People.
Although it resembled the trademarked character of Bertie Bassett, the BBC's own internal investigations revealed that this was entirely coincidental, though they did promise Bassetts that the character would not return.
The Seventh Doctor encountered the Kandy Man again on the planet Tara in The Trials of Tara, a short story by Paul Cornell from Decalog 2 written entirely in iambic pentameter. In that story Count Grendel rebuilt the Kandy Man after its charred body crash landed on Tara.
L
L1
L3
M
Mechanoid
Template:Doctorwhorace The Mechanoids were large, spherical robots originally created to serve humans in The Chase. Mechanoids which had been sent to prepare the planet Mechanus for human colonization kept the astronaut Steven Taylor prisoner, since he did not have the Mechanoids' control codes. Daleks, following the TARDIS crew, engaged the Mechanoids in battle. It is unknown which side emerged victorious.
The Mechanoids appear in the Big Finish audio drama The Juggernauts. In this story, Davros adds human nervous tissue to robotic Mechanoid shells to create the Juggernauts of the play's title. The Mechanoids also appear in the comic strip The World That Waits in the 1965 annual The Dalek World.
A feature entitled Dalek Wars in the third issue of Doctor Who - Battles in Time features the Daleks battling the Mechanoids on Mechanus. The Mechanoids shown are computer-generated.
Megara justice machine
Metallic Root
Mining robot
Movellan
O
Osirian service robots
P
Polyphase Avatron
Q
Quark
Template:Doctorwhorace The Quarks appeared in the Second Doctor serial The Dominators by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman in 1969.
The Quarks were used on 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 seeds down the holes which would force the core to erupt, thus providing a new fuel source for their fleet.
The Quarks were rectangular in shape, with four arms: one pair which folded into the body, the other pair being retractable. On the end of each arm was a solitary claw. The legs extended out below the Quark body. The spherical head was visibly 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 extremely short neck). Quarks communicated by means of high-pitched sound waves. Their major weakness was a tendency to run out of energy rather quickly.
The Quarks were portrayed by children (requiring them to have a chaperone whilst on set.) One Quark was also seen in the serial The War Games, while one of the children who portrayed one of the Quarks appeared as an Axon (in their humanoid guise) in The Claws of Axos. The Quarks were designed as an, albeit unsuccessful, attempt at creating a merchandise property, as the Daleks had become earlier.
Quarks are also referred to in the Big Finish Productions audio drama Flip-Flop. When they attacked the space yacht Pinto, the Seventh Doctor and Mel went searching for leptonite crystals in order to defeat them. It is not known whether the Doctor succeeded in defeating the Quarks on that occasion. The Quarks were also mentioned, and mocked viciously, in the Doctor Who Unbound audio play Exile.
The Quarks can also be seen on the VHS cover of the The Five Doctors, although they did not appear in the story because they were drafted out at an early stage. They were replaced by a Raston Warrior Robot that was encountered by The Third Doctor.
Additional information on the Quarks can be found in:
- Harris, M. The Doctor Who Technical Manual 1983. Severn House London/J. M. Dent Pty Ltd Boronia/Australian Broadcasting Corporation Publishing, Sydney.
R
Raston Warrior Robot
The Raston Warrior Robot was found in the Death Zone on Gallifrey; it had the ability to move faster than lightning and was capable of taking out a troop of Cybermen (The Five Doctors). 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 that this is just 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. It is furthermore considered by many fans that the Raston Warrior Robot was made by Rassilon as a weapon against the Great Vampires. This explains the 'inbuilt armaments' that the robot has: arrows which it launches out of its hands to pierce enemy vampires through the heart, razor-sharp discs it throws to decapitate its victims and finally long blades that come out of the robot's wrists which can stab or cut; probably used in close combat or when its primary weapons have run out. Another of these robots appears in the Past Doctor Adventure World Game, also by Dicks.
Robot
In The Robots of Death, there were three types of slave Robots. They were created by a human society about which little is known. The robots were not utilised as weapons, rather performing menial tasks in all facets of society. 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.
There were three classes of robots: D-class, colloquially known as "Dumbs", were incapable of speech and merely followed orders. V-class, or Vocs were capable of verbal response, but no more intelligent than the D-class. SV-class, or Supervocs were capable of reason and decision-making, and were used to co-ordinate the other robots in an organisation. Supervocs have been utilised in detective work.
Robot Bus Conductor
Robot Clown
Robot Crab
Robot Doctor Who
An exact double of the First Doctor, created by the Daleks to infiltrate the TARDIS crew.
Robot Dracula, Robot Frankenstein's Monster and Robot Grey Lady
Lifelike humanoid robots created from the Festival of Ghana 1996. They mimicked characters from horror films to frighten visitors of a 'haunted house'.
Robot Knight
Robotic Santa Clauses and Christmas Trees
First appearing on their own at Christmas 2006 in "The Christmas Invasion", the Robotic Santa Clauses and Robotic Christmas Trees were later used by the Empress of the Racnoss on Christmas Day, 2007 in "The Runaway Bride". In the latter encounter, the Doctor refers to them as "mercenaries", perhaps implying that they are a race of robotic creatures who are employed — in their first appearance, he described them as the pilot fish to a larger enemy. However, apart from using the Sycorax teleport system, the Santas of the "The Christmas Invasion" didn't seem to work for the Sycorax. The Sycorax didn't need a reason to kill Rose, Jackie and Mickey but the Santas did. They wanted the Doctor's regenerative energy, attempting to kill Rose, Jackie and Mickey as they were protecting the Doctor. It seems that after the Sycorax invasion, the Racnoss took over the Santas, referred to by her as "roboforms" (which reflects more on her way of saying things than their name as she also called the Doctor "Doctor-man" and "Physician").
The robotic Santa Clauses were humanoid robots disguised as a brass band playing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen". However, they would then attack their targets with guns hidden within the instruments. They also had remote controls for both themselves and the robotic Christmas trees.
The robotic Christmas trees were used in a similar way to the Santas, yet used different methods of attack: in "The Christmas Invasion", the branches of the tree swirled at high speeds cutting through nearly everything, and in "The Runaway Bride" they used bombs disguised as baubles on the trees which would fly around the room and seemingly hit randomly around the area, detonating. In at least the latter case, the trees were controlled remotely by the Robotic Santa Clauses.
In "The Runaway Bride" the Santas appeared without their masks, and were shown to have golden faces, featureless except for black eyepieces.
S
Seers of the Oracle
Servo robot
Slab
Sontaran surveillance robot
Spider robots
The Spider Robots were used by Lady Cassandra in both "The End of the World" and "New Earth".
They are small robots with four tentacle-like appendages and two saucer-shaped body parts. The top part has a red 'eye' which can emit light. Individually, they aren't very strong or dangerous, but can be formidable in large groups. They were transported by metallic orbs, which were in turn transported by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme.
In "The End of the World", the Spider Robots were used by Cassandra to disrupt the systems of Platform One (namely the sun filter systems) so that she could claim the insurance money to pay for her plastic surgery bills. In "New Earth", they were used for spying around the eponymous planet.
T
Trin-e
W
War Machines
White Robots
Y
Yeti
Z
Zu-Zana
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