Robot and A.I. Sidekicks

Lets have a little blog about computers and robots that accompany the casts to many of our favourite movies and television shows. I think that it would be wise to start with the most famous sidekicks, which if you look to your left there should be a picture of them(just a little Shooting Stars moment then). They don't need an introduction. As we all know 3PO is a protocol droid and his dustbin companion is R2 who is the doer of this particular outfit. Also Goldie(not the Blue Peter dog) is fluent in 6 million forms of communication but I bet this droid couldn't communicate with a ZX81. That's because nobody can. R2 always saves the day with the way he talks to the computer networks at the various locations the heroes find themselves, eg. knowing the hyper drive on the Millennium Falcon had been disabled on the Cloud City. But it seems that as the story passes through all of the six films R2's upgrades haven't progressed in fact they regressed in eps 1 and 3 he has the jet packs in his legs, but no such gadgets appear except in Jedi when he lunges a sabre in Luke's direction(yes that was meant to sound rude). Moving on from a galaxy far far away and a long time ago, let's skip forward 3 million years into the future to the crew of the Jupiter Mining Ship Red Dwarf.


Again this wee fella situated to the right is of coarse Kryten who is actually strangely absent from the first 12 episodes except in the episode cunningly named Kryten, in which his duties were to attend to the dead crew of a vessel (can't remember name of the ship no doubt some anorak will post a message later). Then when said duties were finished his fav show on TV was a version of neighbours called androids although strangely this made up show was actually better than it's Aussie counterpart. The BEEB missed a trick there, just as Cheers spin off was Frasier, Red Dwarf could have had it's own Androids. I'm sorry I digress. Back to the plot(not that there was much of one). But at his proper introduction in series 3 he was an addition that help to turn the Dwarf into one of the funniest shows of it's time, and helped it achieve cult status. Not the usual type of robot either(just gander at his face), starting off as the crew's doormat(well Rimmer's anyway) and developing into his own robot complete with action man knickers and groin socket attachment!!

I suppose you can't have a blog on this particular subject without mentioning the best of them all that has appeared in the longest running sci-fi series namely Dr. Who. It is of coarse K9 and his catchphrase was I don't really need to mention it do I? OK I will was "AFFIRMATIVE MASTER". I am actually quite fond of canine because this author actually knows the guy who invented this character SO THERE. Not only that but K9 got called a "bad puppy" by Giles from Buffy in a particular episode and that stand alone fact would any A.I. sidekick jealous.

Although in this particular picture does look like he is about to be spit-roasted. And that was meant to sound positively disgusting. And on that note I is finishing.