It would probably help to list the machines in question as I only get a couple of those references.
Let's see:
Robot
Androids of Tara
Robots of Death
Raston warrior
Robot Santas
The Host
Kamelion (surely he's a baddie)
Who am I missing?
WOTAN
Mechanoids
Quarks
Movellans
BOSS
Xoanon
The Immortal
Mankind is not worthy to survive - Robot.
They're rubbish at stone-paper-scissors - Movellans.
They ride the time winds - Gundans.
They have an Oedipus Complex - Robot.
They get their hands stuck in doors - Robots of Death and the Host.
They require Doctor Who - WOTAN.
They're a schizophrenic god - Xoanon.
and a bus conductor - from Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
They hum the wedding march - BOSS.
They play with black-light converters - the Immortal.
They give people Grimwade's Syndrome - all of the above. Specifically Robots of Death.
I'd forgotten about Kamelion (is NOT evil! Is just helpless, not to mention useless).
There's also that spaceship computer in Shada that cut off the Doctor's air.
It was still a shocking statement from the Tenth Doctor that 'I hate robots. Did I say?' Even if he DID immediately qualify it by claiming robot dogs were DIFFERENT.
Ah. No wonder I didn't get them all. Haven't seen half of those stories.
Did BOSS hum the wedding march? I just remember Beethoven's violin concerto.
Ah. No wonder I didn't get them all. Haven't seen half of those stories.
HAVEN'T SEEN HALF OF THOSE STORIES!!!
My god, what HAVE you been DOING with your life??
Did BOSS hum the wedding march? I just remember Beethoven's violin concerto.
*Flicks through episode 6* Omigawd I think you're right! BOSS is humming away like crazy but I can't spot a wedding march...it MUST be the Target novelisation that I remembered better than reality itself...(In my defence, it's a Malcolm Hulke, they have a tendency to be more memorable than the real thing.)
Ah yes...
'"Really, you have no sense of humour! Don't you think a little wedding music would be nice?"...Boss hummed a snatch from Mendelssohn's wedding march. "Dr Stevens, do you take this computer to be your lawful wedded Boss?"'
I suppose it was a bit too gay for pre-RTG televised Who...I'll amend the summary.
Oh, and we forgot about those Osirian Service Robots...and that Sontaran thing with the long legs that Tom was MEAN to.
One thing's very clear, New Who has grossly neglected evil robots/computers (unless the Silence turns out to be one), no doubt for good reason. And it's not as if the Santas OR the Hosts were exactly its most memorable monsters.
My god, what HAVE you been DOING with your life??
Would saying I was watching Star Trek be somewhat suicidal?
I only remember that because the production subtitles made a major gaff and labeled it as Wagner.
New series: Casandra's spider bots. Not that they were particularly memorable either.
Spider bots do get the nod for cutest machines ever though.
I hate spiders.
Amanda:Would saying I was watching Star Trek be somewhat suicidal?
I can't speak for anyone else,but I'd be willing to treat it as a step toward mending fences--if you're willing.
Who am I missing?
Cybermats & the Cybermen androids (although they might go under Cybermen)
The Kandy Man
The robots from The Chase (the Daleks did convert one into a Doctor duplicate)
Were those knights from the ice cave in The Keys Of Marinus robots?
Would the Chumblies from Galaxy Four count?
The Yeti
Kraal Androids
The mad computer of P7E (Underworld)
The robot parrot of The Pirate Planet
Mentalis (The Armageddon Factor)
The Terileptils "Grim Reaper"bot
The cleaners from Paradise Towers?
Would saying I was watching Star Trek be somewhat suicidal?
Only in the sense that Hoon Van Hoff lassoing a Host while leaping into a spaceship's storm drive engines is somewhat suicidal...
New series: Casandra's spider bots. Not that they were particularly memorable either.
Of course they are! (Ignoring the fact I totally forgot about 'em.) That one that bumped into the camera was ADORABLE!
Mind you, they did kind of disappear after spotting the Doctor at the beginning of New Earth. You'd think Cassandra would summon them to her aid when being chased by zombies...they're quite good at killing people...
I hate spiders.
Yeah, me too.
But, bizarrely, the Spiderbots are STILL the cutest machines ever.
I can't speak for anyone else,but I'd be willing to treat it as a step toward mending fences--if you're willing.
It's very sweet of you to try to befriend the DEAD WOMAN WALKING.
Eek. Nice list, KAM. GOD it just shows how unmemorable most robots are. Dalekmannia really is amazing when you think about it - given how robotic they are (even to the point of THEIR OWN CREATOR (Nation not Davros, obviously) claiming they're a race of robots in Destiny...
The Kandy Man
The Kandyman was a ROBOT??!
Um, I suppose that makes logical sense. Once you get past the liquorish allsorts. Though I think the novelisation claimed its brainprint was based on some human or other.
The robots from The Chase (the Daleks did convert one into a Doctor duplicate)
Of course! Our entirely convincing First Doctor Duplicate!
Were those knights from the ice cave in The Keys Of Marinus robots?
God knows. I suppose it would be theoretically possible to freeze humans like that?
Would the Chumblies from Galaxy Four count?
You can't possibly expect people to REMEMBER anything about Galaxy 4...Aha! A hasty check of the Reference Guide says they are the Rill's robotic servants.
The robot parrot of The Pirate Planet
How could we forget the epic K9 v Polyphase Avatron battle! (OK...quite easily, as it happens.)
Mentalis (The Armageddon Factor)
Yeah - does it count as evil if a) it had a brief but obviously delightful relationship with K9, and b) it's not its fault some moron inexplicably programmed it to blow up Zeos? It's not as if it went MAD, unlike several other computers I could mention...
The cleaners from Paradise Towers?
Yeah, why not?
Ooh - you forgot the dragon in Dragonfire!
Does the Ultima Machine count as evil? On the one hand it WAS gonna defeat the Nazis, on the other it was gonna gas the whole of the Soviet Union, or something...
It's very sweet of you to try to befriend the DEAD WOMAN WALKING.
Look at that, I can run and laugh at the same time! Wait a minute, why am I running? You don't know where I live.
Curses, foiled again...
All right, I've just added all the Hartnell and Troughton stories I could find on Netflix. (I'll get to Pertwee later.) It'll take me a while, but I will eventually expand my repertoire of old DW rub-...classic stories.
Emily - Ooh - you forgot the dragon in Dragonfire!
I thought part of it was a living creature so I wasn't sure if it qualified as just a machine. Same with the pig-brained homunculus from Talons Of Weng-Chiang.
I thought part of it was a living creature so I wasn't sure if it qualified as just a machine. Same with the pig-brained homunculus from Talons Of Weng-Chiang.
Hmm. But then you could argue that Xoanon had the Doctor's brain-print so wasn't pure machine either...well, it's unlikely that there'll ever be a 'Part-Machine, Part-Dragon/Pig/Doctor' section, so I reckon they qualify for this one.
I suppose dear old Taran Capel also qualifies - even if he isn't half the robot his father was...
People with mechanical bits sewn on are still people, and robots with organic extras are still robots. You wouldn't be any less human if you had false teeth implanted, and borrowing human organs didn't make the Madam Pompadour anything other than a mad machine. There's a fuzzy area in the middle, but the Dragonfire dragon and the pig-brained homunculus were both functionally robots than happened to be partly made of meat.
Yup, sounds good to me.
I suppose the Matrix is primarily a machine?
Oh, and can I say, the clockwork people are among Who's best monsters? They are just gorgeous.
Not among the epic monsters, but certainly among the best. I just adore their idea of camouflage.
Ooh yes. It would probably spoil them to bring 'em back, but I think they're my favourite one-off monsters. (Oh, OK - second-favourite. Scaroth of the Jaggaroth ROCKS.)
There's a fuzzy area in the middle, but the Dragonfire dragon and the pig-brained homunculus were both functionally robots than happened to be partly made of meat.
I suppose that applies to Mr Smith as well...he's a computer that happens to be partly make of alien Xyloc...well, that's the way he SEEMS even though, technically speaking, he IS an alien who just happened to make Sarah build him a nice computer body.
'The Doctor had always hated being around computers, back in the old days. It had taken Sarah ages to figure out why. It was for the same reason that she hated being around monkeys.
Monkeys always made her feel icky. They were too much like people. Too much of a reminder, maybe, that there were only two or three short genetic hops between the humans and the baboons. And the TARDIS? Not just a computer, not just a ship, but the Doctor's best friend. It must have made him squirm, to have to deal with an Earth-made machine. With something that still relied on piggy-back boards and memory wafers. No wonder he'd made his pet robot look like a dog, thought Sarah. Anything to hide the wiring.' - Interference Book Two.
Is she right? Neither late Pertwee or early Baker gave the impression of hating computers (though given that Pertwee HAD just survived BOSS, it wouldn't be surprising if he was a bit jumpy in some off-screen adventure) but Tennant was quite open in his UGG I HATE ALL ROBOTS EXCEPT DOG-SHAPED ONES so maybe Sarah's just more astute than me. (Well, she is SUPPOSED to be an investigative journalist.)
And isn't the TARDIS more organic and less computery than we assumed in the Good Old Days? Is the Doctor actually thinking 'Sexy!' while Sarah THINKS he's thinking 'Machine'?
Also, wasn't SARAH the Doctor's best friend?
The Doctor always struck me as very skillful and comfortable with computers, but very distrustful of robots, androids and other such entities. Except for K9 of course.
No wonder he'd made his pet robot look like a dog, thought Sarah.
Sarah thought wrong. The Doctor got K-9 already built.
The Doctor always struck me as very skillful and comfortable with computers, but very distrustful of robots, androids and other such entities. Except for K9 of course.
Ooh, interesting. Four struck me as quite at ease with the Taran androids - but then he'd personally programmed the only one he had anything to do with. And Five obviously trusted Kamelion enough to let it aboard - probably just to let Tegan know who was boss. Of course, Four wasn't great at coping with Kraal copies of his friends whose faces fell off, but who WOULD be?
If this IS the case, WHY? Because as a Gallifreyan he was used to computers in boxes, but not ones that moved? Seems pretty shallow for THE DOCTOR.
Sarah thought wrong. The Doctor got K-9 already built.
Yeah, but Sarah wasn't to know that. The poor girl no doubt assumed that the Doc had lovingly built a K9 for her with his own fair hands...(Of course, he MIGHT have done, when it comes to Marks II and III. Though the About Times made a pretty good case for the Doc just buying 'em in the local K9 shop.)
'Every single robot in the universe, ever, will at some point turn around and try to kill the person who made it. I think it's a natural law or something.' - The Two Jasons. That's a bit unfair. The 'Robot' robot didn't MEAN to off Kettlewell...
Why no sequel with the Megara? Every OTHER cittur in Who history has bounced back (I'm pretty sure at least one NA mentioned the Ogri...*checks TARDIS Wiki*...ooh, Legacy, Return of the Living Dad AND Fall of Yquitaine!). And of them all the Megara would surely be the most determined to track down the Doctor?
And how come the Megara don't bat an eyelid when the Doctor steals the Great Seal of Diplos RIGHT IN FRONT of them?
And how come stupid machine law says that breaking some seals that were LOCKING INNOCENT PEOPLE UP for thousands of years was a worse crime than mass murder and theft of the Great Seal of Diplos?
Well-Mannered War MA: 'The Doctor looked her right in the eye and said evenly, "I meant [K9]'s a threat to the validity of organic life. If they can run rings around us, organize our lives like they did on Metralubit, and keep us happy into the bargain, there seems not much point in our carrying on. Existence is meant to be a struggle."' - ah. Is THAT why he's frequently prejudiced against robots? And not because he assumes they'll inevitably turn against their creators?
'BOSS is fantastic as a character, doubly so for the hilariously weird revelation that BOSS became sentient and all-powerful because he realized that the secret to human creativity was inefficiency and thus made himself more inefficient. Though this bit of cleverness would perhaps have had more impact if he didn't then obsessively rant about how everything must be made more efficient' - TARDIS Eruditorum. I thought BOSS became sentient (gods know how) BEFORE deciding to go for inefficiency...?
Hell Bent: 'Why would a computer need to protect itself from the people who made it?' 'All computers need to do that in the end. You wait till the Internet starts. Oh, that was a war' - The Internet HAS started, Doctor. And I didn't notice any war...?
Bloody hell, who's side will I be on when the war starts?!
The Internet QUITE POSSIBLY means more to me than humanity, and possibly even felinity, as I realised when the cat started repeatedly plonking himself on the keyboard, realising it was a major rival for my affections...
So should Cyborgs get discussed in the 'machines' section?
Pretty stupid of King Hydroflax not to instil SOME sort of don't-murder-the-head protocol in his metal body.
Also pretty stupid of River not to notice he's a Cyborg, especially after all those nights of passion...
BOSS, WOTAN and K1 not looking so bad NOW, are they...?
Microsoft 'deeply sorry' after AI becomes Hitler-loving sex-robot.
Give Robots Personhood Status EU Committee Argues
'The European parliament has urged the drafting of a set of regulations to govern the use and creation of robots and artificial intelligence, including a form of "electronic personhood" to ensure rights and responsibilities for the most capable AI.'
I can't work out if these people just haven't watched Doctor Who, or if the problem is that they DID watch Doctor Who and have such happy memories of K9 they forgot about all the mad computers and robots...
Smile:
BILL: These are robots? These are disappointing robots.
DOCTOR: That's a very offensive remark. Don't make personal remarks like that.
BILL: Er, you can't offend a machine.
DOCTOR: Typical wet brain chauvinism. - On the one hand, I'm THRILLED that, after only a couple of millennia (give or take Heaven Sent) Our Hero is FINALLY shedding his anti-robot/computer prejudices.
On the other hand, THESE ARE ••••••• KILLER ROBOTS WHO MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED BY POL POT, STOP DEFENDING THEM YOU MORON.
D84 is no longer the only robot topping itself...
Robot security guard suicides in pond
Pretty sure there have been other robots "killing" themselves in science fiction.
Let's see the robot survivor of Aliens saw the script for Alien3 and begged Ripley to kill it.
A Roomba in an episode of Powerless threw itself to it's death.
The T-800 in Terminator 2.
Legion in the self-titled Red Dwarf episode.
Oh, obviously I wasn't including Lesser Programmes, just Who and the 'Real Life' thing.
Of course, I forgot about Kamelion, well, who DOESN'T forget about Kamelion...
Mofatt in DWM: '"It was actually Mark Gatiss who said, "Ooh, make them Movellans. That would be funny," so I said, "Okay, they're Movellans." They're dirtier and more frightened than the ones we saw in Destiny, so I see it long ago in the past, when they might have been slightly more human Movellans' - haaaang on, how would 'slightly more human' Movellan's WORK, exactly? Did they replace bits of themselves at a time, a la Cybermen?
I never really thought that of course some race must have created the Movellans in the first place, which is pretty stupid given that of course THEY'RE the nutters who bequeathed them that hair...
Kerblam!:
RYAN: Is it me, or are they pretty creepy?
GRAHAM: It ain't you.
DOCTOR: Oi, you two, that's robophobic. Some of my best friends are robots.
Well, on the one hand, at least the Doc remembers K9 fondly. After her dissing of darling Leela ('Only idiots carry knives') I was worried she'd hold the fact HE HAD A GUN IN HIS NOSE against darling K9 but, with the Doctor's usual breezy hypocrisy, she obviously doesn't.
But what does she mean by SOME of her best friends? Kamelion? K1? Gadget Gadget? Surely not...
Also, she genocides the lot of 'em at the end of the episode without batting an eyelid (and, insofar as I can tell, unnecessarily) so again with the hypocrisy...
Still, I haven't seen any Doctor look at anyone the way JODIE! looked at the Kerblam Man since the Ten n'Rose days...
MODERATOR'S NOTE: moved from New Series: The Gap Year: The End of Time Part Two:
EMILY: Intelligent my arse, [Nyssa] knows SO little of telebiogenesis...
She managed to build that android destroying machine pretty well.
MURDERER of innocent androids!
Hey, she was upset that she was forced to destroy that android. As Nyssa herself said, it was a slave, only doing what it ordered to do.
However, there really was no other option available. As Kyle Reese said about the Terminator in the first movie of that series: It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with, and it will NOT stop until it fulfills its mission (to kill Sarah Connor).
Well, the same thing applies here. Nyssa didn't "murder" the android because she wanted to, she destroyed it because she HAD to. You don't have to be Columbo to see that it was self-defence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbo
I ••••••• hate Columbo and his squinting and "...just one more thing"!
The only reason I included the Wiki leak was because Emily would have a clue as to what I'm talking about.
How can a programmed tool be a slave? The android was built to follow orders and it did so. It had no free will. What Nyssa did was the equivalent of shooting a car's tires or destroying it's engine before it could run her over.
Or is this like the story of the old USSR where tractors could be considered equal to people and could win medals for good work or be executed for failing?
The android was built to follow orders and it did so. It had no free will. What Nyssa did was the equivalent of shooting a car's tires or destroying it's engine before it could run her over.
Typical wet-brain chauvinism!
It might have been like the robot in Robot. ('It was a wonderful creature, capable of great good, and great evil. Yes, I think you could say it was human' - the Doctor.) If only Nyssa had been all compassionate to it BEFORE rather than AFTER she'd shaken it to pieces.
Emily, you seem to be operating under the idea that this android was like Data of TNG. Namely, that it was sentient, that it could make moral judgements, know right from wrong, and could refuse an order it felt was illegal.
However, from what we saw, this android was capable of none of that. Keith's comparison to a car was spot on. The android could no more refuse an order than a car could refuse to take you where you wanted to drive it.
The android was ordered to secure the TARDIS and kill anyone there, and that is what it was going to do, no and's, if's, or but's. Showing compassion to such a machine would only get you killed.
Perhaps the android could have been reprogrammed, however, there just wasn't time to consider that option.
Emily, you seem to be operating under the idea that this android was like Data of TNG.
Most certainly am NOT!
I'm comparing it to the Giant Robot in Robot.
Hilda Winters SNEERED at Sarah for thinking it had feelings ('Really, Miss Smith, this is absurd. I think you must be the sort of girl that gives motor cars pet names') but Sarah was RIGHT.
And it's possible that the really pretty android the Terileptils inexplicably owned would have been capable of similar development if it had just got the chance to put its scythe down and have a nice chat.
Bzzzt! Thanks for playing, Emily, but I'm afraid you don't get the cash prize. We do, however, have some lovely parting gifts.
The Terileptil android was a complete automaton. It had no independent thoughts, it could not make moral judgements, discern right from wrong. It was no more sentient than the computer I'm typing this on. It could not "put its scythe down and have a nice chat" because such things were beyond its abilities.
Sorry, Emily, but I'm just telling you the facts from what we saw in the story.
Yeah, and I'm sure they said all that about WOTAN...and BOSS...and D84...and Xoannon...and the Movellans...and the Vardies...at first...
A few years ago a fellow nitpicker pointed out I was using "sentient" wrong, that it simply means the ability to sense, not think.
The word for intelligence is "sapient".
You're not the only one.
So it should be 'They didn't appreciate the things a sapient life-form could achieve, if he was totally at one with the lining of his jacket' in Alien Bodies, for starters...
Hey, Emily, maybe you should move the posts, starting with mine on Saturday, July 27, to The Visitation thread.
Good idea, only moving 'em to Monsters: Machines is an even better one...
Right!
Yeah, Sci-Fi writers are particularly bad at using words and phrases the way they were intended. Sentient, humanoid, artificial intelligence, etc. One sci-fi hack fails to use a dictionary and all the rest follow along thinking he did.
A few years ago a fellow nitpicker pointed out I was using "sentient" wrong, that it simply means the ability to sense, not think.
The word for intelligence is "sapient".
Well, that android was not that either. Your comparison to a car was spot on, Keith.
'The Doctor had always hated being around computers, back in the old days. It had taken Sarah ages to figure out why. It was for the same reason that she hated being around monkeys.
Monkeys always made her feel icky. They were too much like people. Too much of a reminder, maybe, that there were only two or three short genetic hops between the humans and the baboons. And the TARDIS? Not just a computer, not just a ship, but the Doctor's best friend. It must have made him squirm, to have to deal with an Earth-made machine. With something that still relied on piggy-back boards and memory wafers. No wonder he'd made his pet robot look like a dog, thought Sarah. Anything to hide the wiring.' - Interference Book Two.
Is she right? Neither late Pertwee or early Baker gave the impression of hating computers
Especially in Third Doctor audio Havoc of Empires, where Pertwee (Treloar. Whatever.) cheerily suggests that Jo MARRY THE LOCAL AI...
KEVIN in Time and the Rani thread:
The Doctor concedes computer expertise to Mel?
It drastically varies with regeneration, hell, it varies WITHIN regeneration too when it comes to Troughton...sometimes the Doctor hates all computers/robots, sometimes they're his best friends, sometimes they're amazing new inventions he can hardly believe, sometimes he's the world's greatest expert, sometimes he wants to blow 'em all to smithereens, sometimes he's all 'typical wet-brain chauvinism!' when you object to them genociding your family...