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Handbots were alien robots designed to aid people with the plague Chen-7.
The primary purpose of a Handbot was to administer medicine, which was deadly to anyone humanoid who didn't have two hearts. The Handbots had no faces and instead possessed blank head and hands crafted from bio-engineered organic skin. Their hands were fused with techno-organic sensors allowing them to "see" their enviroment. Their hands also acted as a sort of medical scanner as a Handbot was able to detect the foreign bacteria in Amy. This was a feature questioned by the Eleventh 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 because the hand could also administer anethesitics. Touching two hands together would create a feedback loop which would cause a sensory overload stunning the robot for a short period of time. Their heads could come apart to reveal a gun which was capable of firing anaesthesia-inducing needles. When an individual spoke to them, the Handbots were capable of designating whether to accept a statement as true; the green and red buttons on their chest displayed the result. The chest could then drop down, revealing a syringe used to administer the antibiotic medicine.
The Handbots spoke in a series of warnings, namely, "Do not be alarmed. This is a kindness." This was 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 because Amy "disarmed" the robot this suggests that even made docile it could 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.