Handbot

The Handbots is a nickname coined by Amy Pond for the alien, medical robots designed to assist residents of the Two Streams facility, administering medicine (known as "kindnesses") to them if necessary.

The Handbots were approximately 6 foot tall, white and humanoid. The hands of the Handbots were their most prominent feature, serving many strange and mundane purposes (hence their nickname). Not only could they use them to manipulate objects (such as hypodermic needles, which they carried in their chest and head) but - with the aid of synthetic, organic skin that had been grafted onto their hands - used them for sensory perception also, seeing with their fingers. This form of sight was so potent that Handbots were even able to see the types of bacteria being carried on a person. The eponymous hands of the Handbots also held anaesthetic transfer - one touch was all it would take to send someone to sleep within moments.

Handbots were able to communicate to some degree with the patients, however, they lacked any kind of artificial intelligence. If a person's reply to a Handbot did not match any "acceptable" reply, the statement would be rejected and the handbot would continue any course of action it deemed appropriate.

As previously mentioned, the Handbots were equipped with hypodermic needles and darts, which they used to administer their "kindnesses" with. The syringes were held in a chest compartment and given by hand. The darts were held inside the head (for feistier residents) and were shot at the resisting patients in what was known as the "secondary delivery system". Administration of medicine would usually be accompanied by a set dialogue, 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)

Inside the chest cavity, Handbots also held a "black box recorder", which would record any cause of termination (i.e. hostile or accidental). The Handbots could naturally walk from place to place and jump between time streams, if necessary (not to be confused with a Teleport, to which their Time Jumps greatly resembled).

Still, despite their many features, Handbots were less than formiddable. Their sensors malfunctioned in the presence of Temporal Engines (and derivatives there of), they were slow moving and they were easily knocked out with blunt to sharp force trauma. Furthermore, if the hands of Handbots touched it created a feedback loop which would knock them out. Only in great numbers did the Handbots pose a real threat.

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.