Robots That Suck (or: "He's got a bad motivator")

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is a bit of an offshoot of the Optimus Prime thread where it was definitively argued to the agreement of all that T-Bob from the M.A.S.K. cartoon sucked big time.

Fact is robots are used as comic relief so often that a great many of 'em suck the big camshaft.

To prevent bickering I am also opening this list to include cyborgs, androids, mechinoids, exo and endoskeletons and people with microchips implanted in their brains. I’m not fussy.

Those little black “Mouse” robots on the Death Star in Star Wars.
Couldn’t fix anything more than 8 inched off the ground, couldn’t get down stairs, Grand Moff Tarkin was always tripping over them in the hallway, easily scared off by wookies, obviously they were the body of a radio controlled car with two thermostat covers glued together on top, and just generally sucked.

The Daleks from Doctor Who.
Once again can’t get down stairs (lets from now-on just abbreviate this as “CGDS”), toilet plunger arm a source of ridicule throughout galaxy and pretty ineffective beyond three feet anyway, wide body made getting through crowded restaurants and theater isles difficult. Sucked.

Officer Bot.
This robot might be pretty obscure I suppose. Officer Bot used to travel from school to school during the late 80’s for the D.A.R.E. program extolling the virtues of a drug-free life to kids. He was pretty limited in movement, was radio controlled by some guy behind a curtain, and was the subject of a bit of controversy because some ungodly amount of taxpayer money went into creating him.

Another of Officer Bot’s problems was his tendency to overheat and catch fire, which he did several times including his visit to my junior high. Officer Bot was there blinking and waving his arms around, telling the kids to “Just Say No”, when suddenly there was a loud “Pop!” and he went dead and started smoking. Some guy rushed from off-stage and doused him with an extinguisher. All the while the prerecorded speech kept playing (needless to say this was the highlight of my entire academic career). CGDS.

The Robin Williams-Bot from Bicentennial Man.
It’s a robot Robin Williams, isn’t that enough?

R5-D4
The red droid in Star Wars that the Jawa’s were trying to palm off on Uncle Owen. Showed up, blowed up, had an action figure with a hidden missle launcher, lame. CGDS.

2

My cardboard robot halloween costume I made in the 3rd grade. That really fucking sucked. Damn cheap parents.

3

B.O.B. from “The Black Hole”. He was beat up and had a terribly designed lay out/shape to do anything useful. Plus his name was an acronym, but the other robot that looked just like him was named V.I.N.C.E.N.T. What’s up with that?

4

**

Eve from “Eve of Destruction.”
Quite literally, you know :wink:

5

From “The Next Generation”:
Lore: Data was pretty cool, but the episodes where his “evil twin brother” showed up were just plain bad. Almost as bad was Data’s robot “mother”, but she at least only appeared once and didn’t keep coming back again and again.

From “Lost in Space”:
Do I really have to explain this one? “Danger! Danger!” my ass. How about “Annoying! Annoying!” And it was one more robot that CGDS.

From Doctor Who:
I’ll second the much over-rated Daleks. But just as bad was the unnamed robot from the first bunch of Tom Baker episodes; the one that fell in love with Sarah-Jane and grew to giant-sized and carried her around like King Kong and…, well, it was just sucky. COULD get down stairs however.

From Buck Rogers:
IMHO This was a flat-out sucky t.v. show, but the robots were the suckiest part about it. That pint-sized one that always said “bdbdbdb” (what was it called? “twiggy?”) and the supersmart that Twiggy had to carry around (CGDS again!) were probably the worst robots of all time.

6

The ‘supersmart’ one was named Theophilus. And curse you forever for forcing me to dredge that up from the cesspools of my memory…

I do have to agree with you though…both of them sucked.

7

Daleks don’t need stairs; they level the building (actually, it was shown that they could climb stairs, at least in their later incarnations). They are pretty much the standard for evil robots, especially in Britain.

And the Robot in Lost in Space (the TV Series, not the movie) is another classic. Best thing about the show, and it never tried to be cute. Ironic, yes, but never cute.

Christ, next you’ll be complaining about Robbie or Gort or, God forbid, Maria. These are classics, folks. Complaining about them is like complaining about Shakespeare: a sure sign you don’t get it.

Now Twiki from the Gil Gerard Buck Rogers was definitely a stinker. The only thing worthwhile was Mel Blanc’s voice.

There’s the robot in Robot Monster, but I haven’t actually seen the movie to confirm how awful he is (ape with a diving helmet).

Also there was that awful Mary Sue* robot on ST:TNG – the one where Data makes a robot friend for himself. Gag.

Not to mention the Daggit (robot dog) on Battlestar Gallactica.

*Mary Sue story – a story where a syrupy sympathetic character is introduced so everyone can feel sad when she dies. Often shows up in Star Trek fan fiction. Best known example outside of ST is Jack in Titanic.

8

**

Ugh! It was “Tweakie” I think. How could I forget a robot with a Dorothy Hammel bob hairdo? Looked a bit on the “circumsized” side as well.

If true that is a sad, sad thing. The term “An Empire in Decline” comes to mind.

9

Well, technically, they were labeled as “messenger droids”, and are supposed to have their own transportation “tube” system to get from place to place. Also, the bottoms of their treads supposedly are capable of sticking to other surfaces, much like a fly, and thus don’t need stairs (turbolifts are used more often than stairs, anyway). Basically, they were a mobile holographic projector, although a repulsorlift-equipped unit would have been more effective, even if its power cells probably wouldn’t have lasted as long.

Anyway, to address the OP…

Yunapotli, from The Savage Empire (an expansion of the Ultima series of games from Origin… came out at about the same time as Ultima 6). He was tough, yeah, but aside from that, he wasn’t very special. And he dies the second you destroy the underground city of Kotl. Bah!!

Star Trek’s Exocomps. They’re supposed to be little floating toolboxes, but all they have is this little electric cattle-prod-like thing. I guess reparing hull plates and energy conduits requires the same tool.

That crappy little robot that was released as an accessory for the old NES. He was intended to be a “companion” to help you play specially-designed games for the Nintendo. Two such games were released, and they sucked (if I recall correctly, one involved a sleep-walking scientist and sliding poles).

Al Gore. 'Nuf said. :smiley:

10

Marvin the Paranoid Android