K1 Robot

 Name: K1 Robot

 Format: Television Show and Audio

 Time of Origin: Earth, 1970s; Benny encountered its ‘ancestors’ on Earth colony Jegg-Sau in the twenty-sixth century.

 Appearances: "Robot"; ‘ancestors’ of the original robot appeared in "The Relics of Jegg-Sau" 

 Doctors: Fourth Doctor

 Companions: The Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, Sergeant Benton, Harry Sullivan; Bernice Summerfield faced ‘ancestors’ of the Robot on her own.

 History: Although it was essentially just a pawn of others, the Robot's tragic history and personality allow it to be considered a villain in its own right, even if its actions were fundamentally misguided rather than malicious in itself.

The creation of the brilliant robotics scientist Professor Kettlewell, K1 was intended to replace the human being in a variety of difficult tasks, composed of a living metal that could grow when it absorbed the right kind of energy. Although the robot's prime directive was that it had to serve humanity and never harm it, it was manipulated by Kettlewell's financial backers at the National Institute for Advanced Scientific Research - colloquially known as Thinktank to the general public -, to attack various individuals that they identified as threats to humanity and steal certain key items to help Thinktank's main brain trust, the Scientific Reform Society, complete their own plans.

K1 Robot

The SRS's plans could be traced back to a recent peace conference, which had culminated in America, Russia and China providing Britain with the location and access codes to control their various nuclear launch sites, reasoning that Britain would be a neutral party in a war between any of the three that could publish those secrets to end the war. With this in mind, the SRS, seeking to create a world based on scientific and rational lines, created a plan to gain access to the destructor codes. With the codes in their possession, they would then be able to blackmail the world's governments to cooperate with their planned reforms, the robot being selected as the perfect agent to gather the equipment needed to put this plan into action. Under their orders, the K-1 robot was used to steal the plans for a new disintegrator gun - developed by Thinktank before it was taken by the government once the work reached the practical stage - but this attracted the attention of UNIT, as well as Sarah Jane Smith and the Fourth Doctor (Although The Doctor was still somewhat disorientated from his recent regeneration ("Planet of the Spiders")).

Having determined from a crushed dandelion outside the base that they were dealing with a thief weighing over a quarter of a ton, The Doctor tracked the robot to Professor Kettlewell based on his publicised research into robotics, simultaneously attempting to help UNIT protect other parts needed for the manufacture of the gun. However, the robot bypassed their attempts to guard another component by digging into the facility from underground, and talking with Kettlewell revealed that the K1 robot had been dismantled as Kettlewell feared how quickly it was developing; if reactivated by the SRS, Kettlewell doubted that they would be able to properly program it. The SRS's inability to fully understand the robot resulted in it suffering the mechanical equivalent of an existential crisis, the robot's primary programming to protect humanity at odds with their demands for it to kill people they claimed were a threat (Their only 'crime' was that they were preventing the SRS putting their plans in action, such as the government minister who held the launch codes).

Despite Thinktank successfully stealing and using the nuclear launch codes, The Doctor was able to disarm the missiles at the last minute despite the limited time available to him and his lack of foreknowledge of the codes. Although Kettlewell was revealed to have been working with the SRS, he changed his mind when he realised the ruthlessness of his 'colleagues' after Sarah was abducted as a hostage, only to be accidentally killed by the robot when he tried to help Sarah escape. Driven further insane by its role in Kettlewell's death, the robot abducted Sarah to 'protect' her as it attempted to restart the nuclear launch to complete what it believed was its 'father's' last wish, its programming essentially traumatised by its role in the death of its creator as it tried to latch on to the only other person who had ever showed it kindness, unaware that Kettlewell had changed his mind about his role in their plans.

K1 Robot

When The Brigadier attempted to destroy the robot with the recovered disintegrator gun, the robot's unique metallic structure absorbed the energy from the gun and used it to increase its own size, leaving it approximately a hundred feet tall in height, allowing it to effortlessly dispatch the UNIT soldiers sent against it. With no other way to stop the robot, The Doctor was forced to attack it using an anti-metal virus that Kettlewell had devised as a recycling aid, contact with the virus casing the robot to shrink back down to its regular size before it dissolved into nothing, leaving UNIT to clean up the damage it had caused. Afterwards, although Sarah recognised that The Doctor had only done what he had to do, she still clearly mourned the robot's destruction, The Doctor noting that it had reflected the best and worst aspects of humanity during its existence.

Although the Seventh Doctor once had to deal with a Dalek agent attempting to make him reveal the nuclear codes he disarmed during this crisis as part of a plan to decimate Earth and allow the Daleks to invade two centuries ahead of schedule ("The Dalek Invasion of Earth" and "Return of the Living Dad"), the robot has remained only a memory, albeit one that remained with Sarah in particular long after she left The Doctor ("Death of The Doctor"). Copies of the robot were also created in the twenty-sixth century ("The Relics of Jegg-Sau"), but these robots ended with the same insanity as their 'ancestor', destroying the colony world that they had been built on before their existence was discovered by archaeologist and former companion Bernice Summerfield.