The long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who has featured a multitude of robots since its original airing in 1963.
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.
See main article: Bad Wolf.
See main article: Auton.
See main article: Victory of the Daleks.
See main article: Paradise Towers.
See main article: The Girl in the Fireplace.
See main article: Bad Wolf.
See main article: The Mysterious Planet.
See main article: Smile (Doctor Who).
See main article: The Girl Who Waited.
See main article: Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who).
The Doctor's first enemy in his fourth incarnation. It is the main villain during ‘’Robot’’.
See main article: K9 (Doctor Who). 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.
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.
See main article: The Happiness Patrol.
See main article: Mechonoid. 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 colonisation. While working on the colonisation 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 memorised lines from the previous draft, leading to the robots being erroneously referred to as Mechons in some dialogue 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.
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.
| Quarks | |
| Series: | Doctor Who |
| Type: | Robots |
| Affiliation: | Dominators |
| Home World: | Unknown |
| First: | The Dominators (1968) |
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.
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".
The Quarks were also portrayed by children in their appearances
See main article: The Five Doctors. 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.
See main article: The Christmas Invasion and The Runaway Bride (Doctor Who).
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.
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:
These robots made appearances in:
See main article: The Beast Below.
See main article: Kerblam!.
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 miniaturisation ray and kept at that size by a compression field. Teselecta are sent through time by an organisation 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".[3] 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.
See main article: Bad Wolf.
See main article: The War Machines.
See main article: Yeti (Doctor Who).
See main article: Bad Wolf.