Mickey Smith (Auton)

An Auton replicant of Mickey Smith was created to find out more about the Ninth Doctor.

As Mickey was waiting in his car while Rose Tyler was talking to Clive Finch, a plastic garbage bin near Mickey became animated. Mickey got out to investigate, but was swallowed by the bin and taken to the Nestene Consciousness' lair. He was replaced by an Auton facsimile that took Rose out for pizza. Rose, who strangely didn't notice that her "boyfriend" was plastic, tried not to talk about the Ninth Doctor, but the Auton persisted. When it pretended to be affectionate, it suffered a verbal tic twice, repeating "sweetheart", "sugar", and "babe" at differing pitches. Rose grew suspicious and the Auton's patience ceased. Moments before it sought to use violence against Rose, the Doctor showed up, and shot a champagne cork at the Auton, which merely absorbed it and spat it out.

It tried to kill the Doctor by melting its hands and reforming them as paddles. The Doctor beheaded it, but it still rampaged. The Doctor and Rose temporarily shut it in the restaurant and escaped in the TARDIS with the head. The Doctor plugged the head into the TARDIS' control panel to track the Consciousness's lair. However, the head melted and the body did with it. The Doctor and Rose found the Consciousness's lair underneath the London Eye, and found the Consciousness had kept Mickey alive in order to work the facsimile. (TV: Rose)

Behind the scenes

 * Mickey is the first of two male companions to be made into an Auton, as Rory Williams was later resurrected as an Auton in the Series 5 episodes The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang — though unlike the later Rory, the Auton Mickey is an imperfect copy with its own agenda.
 * The Auton replicant of Mickey was the first character to die on-screen in the revived series.
 * The Auton's ability to change the shape of its hands is reminiscent of the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
 * The Auton Mickey appears as an antagonist for the player-controlled K9 in the video game K9 Deja Who. Confronting the Auton at the restaurant, K9 finds his photon beam to be ineffective against him but is able to defeat the replicant by collecting ice which he channels into a ray. Notably, the Auton Mickey uses the adjective "plasticate" with regards to K9, analogous to the Daleks' "exterminate" or the Cybermen's "delete".