Grr… my last quick reply got eaten by teh web spiders.
R2D2 - The main character of the Star Wars films
Chas - The combat-robot prototype from the StarShip Troopers cartoon
ED-209 - He was just cool. They shoulda put him in StarShip Troopers, even if we was just getting swarmed by bugs in the background, it woulda been cool to see him there.
Data - “You little life-forms… you tiny little life-forms… you itty bitty life-forms… where are you?”
The DRDs - the Distantly Roaming Dots from Farscape, most notably the one that the guy taught to “blink once for yes, twice for no”
Wow, no nominations for Johnny 5 (Short Circuit)? And where’s HAL?
My top five list would be:
1: HAL. I don’t really have to explain this one, do I?
2: Number 5. I dunno, I just think he’s a sweetie. And I like to flatter myself that I can do his voice pretty well.
3: R2-D2. The eternal pragmatist, the walking Swiss-army-garbage-can.
4: Andrew, from “Bicentennial Man”. The short story, not the novel or the movie, which I haven’t read/seen.
5: Robbie, of Forbidden Planet and so many other movies. The archetype of the movie robot.
Honorable mentions go to Voltron; Mechanikill, from Nuklear Age; the little guys from Batteries Not Included; and Gizmo, the robot my dad made and which stood in the corner of our bathroom for years.
What, no love for R. Daneel Olivaw or R. Giskard Reventlov?
Counting in the way Asimov tied in his Empire, Robot, and Foundation series I’d say Daneel has more appearances and influence over a major sci-fi universe than ANY other 'bot(even Unicron).
“India Golf Niner Niner transmitting in the blind guard…”
to go off on a tangent, every word spoken in the missile evasion scene was accurate pilot lingo…
maybe i shouldn’t have limited myself to 5 'bots, there are so many good ones…
the Farscape DRD’s (especially 1812, One-Eye, and DRD-Pike), two other unofficial names for the DRD’s are Diagnostic Repair Drones (i think this one is canon) and Diagnostic Repair Darters
hmm, wonder what the Bioloids would be considered, you have Not!Aeryn and Sikozu as examples…
Johnny 5’s a given
and how could i forget lovable ol’ Gir…
doo-de-doo-de-doo…WAFFLES!
Gir, what’s wrong with your guidance chip
oh, i left that at home
left what at home?
uhh, the guidey…chippy…thingy
*WHY would you do THAT!
to make room for the cupcake
Gir flies for a few feet with Zim riding him, then Gir’s thrusterfeet stop working
Gir, why did you run out of fuel so quickly?
i emptied it out
WHY!
to make room for the Tuuuunaaaa! (pops a cap off his leg and starts sucking out Tuna)
from “Rise of the Zitboy”, just the scene of Gir sucking happily on a tube of Acne Blast medication is an absolute gas
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Counting in the way Asimov tied in his Empire, Robot, and Foundation series I’d say Daneel has more appearances and influence over a major sci-fi universe than ANY other 'bot(even Unicron).
[quote]
Which is exactly why I didn’t nominate him. Deus Ex Machina is bad enough, much less Deus Ipse Machinus.
The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a “robot” as ‘a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man’
the Marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a Robot as “Your Plastic Pal who’s Fun to Be With”
the E. G. describes the marketing division of the S. C. company as "A bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes…
(come to think of it, that definition is also appropriate for microsoft )
okay, Hitchhiker’s quotes aside, (and who can resist a good HHGTTG quote, not me, that’s for damn sure), in this thread, “Robot” refers to the E.G. definition above, so therefore, C3PO, Gus, Robbie, and other humanoid-ish automata would qualify, the Borg and the Cybermen would not, as they are cybernetic (both organic and mechanical)
the mechanical Toasters from BSG qualify, but the Raiders and the meatbag Toasters are a gray area
And the thread has stretched it a bit to include any AI with an actual personality and consciousness (HAL). From the origin of the concept of “robots” in literature, Capek’s R.U.R., what he calls “robota” are what current English-speaking pop culture would call androids – human-like artificial laborers. However,
they are not “tin men” but synthetic-organic – in the end they are able to reproduce
Since you remember Astro Boy - do you remember the episode where the professor was working on some sort of cloning formula to end world hungry (injected into a loaf of bread - loaf then splits itself in two, and regenerates into two whole loaves)
Kid Sis AstroGirl, drinks formula, splits in two, and can then sneak out of the house without breaking curfew
how cool was that?
That would be “Mirror Image”. And The Robots of Dawn wasn’t too bad, either… Though Robots and Empire started down the slippery slope that led to Foundation and Earth, so I can see why you’d exclude it.
And I count Hal not just because he’s an AI, but because he’s an AI with sufficient periphreals that he can interact fully and independantly with his environment. I would not, for instance, count Mycroft as a robot (though if I did, he’d top my list).
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