I’ve been watching a few of my old Sci-Fi DVD’s when I started wondering, what were the most memorable robot sidekicks…
K-9; the first Robot Sidekick I remember from my childhood, the Doctor’s Faithful Friend, and a very memorable robot in his own right
C3PO; never was a fan of Threepio, always seemed too prissy and panicky under stress
R2D2; the polar opposite of 3PO, cool and collected under stress, pity about the Astromech/human language barrier
Marvin the Paranoid Android; a classic, and easily in my top 10, even if he does have that terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side
Lucifer; Battlestar Galactica TOS- aside from the memorable voice work of Jonathan Harris, I never really liked Lucifer, toadying sniveling little weasel-bot
Gus (Tripping the Rift) an obvious parody of 3PO, and a much better robot sidekick, the biting sarcasm adds a lot to his character, plus his constant gender-preference confusion is always a tad amusing, i mean, a “closeted” robot is almost as funny as a Manic-Depressive robot
Bender “Bending” Rodriguez; easily in the top 10, a boozing, antisocial, kleptomaniac robot, after all, we all know that Bender is Great, Bender is Great, Benderbenderbender is Great!, and if you don’t like it, you can bite his shiny metal ass (Gus would probably comply)
Gir (Invader Zim); what could be better than a Manic-Depressive robot, or a Closeted robot, or a klepto/antisocial robot?, how about an INSANE robot, completely unpredictable, chaos-theory personified, you never know from one second to the next how that malfuntioning S.I.R. unit will react
DRD-1812 and DRD-Pike (Farscape) DRDs (Diagnostc Repair Drones) are generally seen as disposable/ignorable aboard a Leviathan, but these two had personalities in their own limited way, Pike was damaged in his initial encounter with John Crichton (one eyestalk was broken) and he communicates in the “Captain Pike” method from ST-TOS, one blink for yes, two for no, 1812 was a rescue from the dying Leviathan Elak, John trained him to hum the crescendo bars from the “1812 Overture” and saw him as a pet, even giving him a custom French flag paintjob, 1812 was the closest thing to a “pet” John had in the Uncharted Territories
The Iron Giant; how cool would it be to be a young boy with your own car-eating/metal munching giant robot for a friend? pretty darned cool…
I’m sure there are some others I have forgotten, what are some of your memorable Robot Sidekicks