B9 Robot

B9 Robot
Species:	Robot
Affiliated with:	Robot Banks
Appearance:	Robots Ad [+]Loading...["Robots Ad (TV story)"]

The B9 Robot was one of various robots employed as an operator at a banking firm's extremely dysfunctional call centre. It kept a few spare batteries and an oil can on its desk.

It once received a call, only to state the canned phrase "Your call is important to us" before even letting the customer speak. Instructing them to "Press # to continue", it then physically passed the call along to the even more useless John Robot. After John incurred the wrath of the Grey Dalek by trying to pass the phone to it, and a gunfight ensued, an increasingly frantic B9 Robot again repeated "Your call is important to us! Your call is important to us!" to no one in particular. (TV: Robots Ad ^[+]Loading...["Robots Ad (TV story)"])

Behind the scenes

The performer in the B9 Robot costume.

This robot, usually called simply "the Robot", is the most iconic creation of the 1960s American science-fiction series Lost in Space, where its full designation was given as the "B-9 Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot". It is not named on-screen in Robots Ad ^[+]Loading...["Robots Ad (TV story)"], but is referred to as "the B9 Robot", "the B9 Lost in Space Robot" or simply "B9" in the behind-the-scenes featurette released on facebook by Retro Universal Robots. The "B9" spelling is employed in the relevant featurette caption, rather than the hyphenated "B-9" more typically used in Lost in Space-related material.

Its appearance in Robots Ad ^[+]Loading...["Robots Ad (TV story)"] was authorised by the estate of Lost in Space creator Irwin Allen, with his widow flying in from America to oversee the filming (which marked the first and so far only full-blown, mutually licensed crossover between Lost in Space and Doctor Who, although the two universes would cross again at their outermost edges via The Druimport Entwister in 2024). The B9 Robot prop itself, however, was a locally-sourced fan replica provided by Australian Lost in Space enthusiast Glen Weir.

Although the performer in the B9 Robot suit was seen in the aforementioned featurette, his name is not given — nor his the voice actor credited. If Dick Tufeld reprised his role from the original series, this may have constituted his last-ever performance as the character.