Handbot
Handbots were alien robots designed to aid people with the plague Chen-7.
They administered medicine, which was deadly to anyone humaniod who doesn't have two hearts. The Handbots had no faces. They had blank head and hands crafted from bio-engineered organic skin. Their hands were fused with techno-organic sensors allowing to "see" their enviroment it also acts as a sort of medical scanner as a Handbot was able to detect the foriegn bacteria in Amy. This was a feature questioned by The Doctor, who wondered why the robots' creators wouldn't just give them eyes. Any human touched by a Handbot's hand would fall asleep instantly due to the fact the hand can also adminster anethesitics . Touching two hands together would create a feedback loop which would cause a sensory overload stunning the robot(s) for a short time. Their heads came apart to reveal a gun which fired anaesthesia-inducing needles. When someone spoke to them, they chose whether to accept a statement as true; the green and red buttons on their chest showing the result. The chest could then drop down to reveal a syringe used to administer the antibiotic medicine.
The handbots spoke in warnings, such as "Do not be alarmed. This is a kindness." perhaps as a means of simulating personality or to reassure patients of their beneficent nature, regardless of their limited ability to distinguish different species who did not require their services. They could be reprogrammed to be docile(, as in the case of Rory however this might not be always effective as Amy "disarms" the robot suggesting that even made docile it can still be unintentionally dangerous. (DW: The Girl Who Waited)
Behind the scenes
- Writer Tom MacRae has said that one of the scariest Doctor Who moments for him personally, was a scene in Terror of the Vervoids where Vervoids attack a man using deadly seed pods delivered from their hands. He speculated that the idea of hands being frightening may have subconsciously inclined him to create the Handbots.
