K-9 (Doctor Who)

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This article is about the Doctor Who character. For the television series, see K-9 (TV series). For other uses, see K9.
Doctor Who universe character
K-9
Affiliated with Fourth Doctor
Sarah Jane Smith
Race Robot
Home planet Bi-Al Foundation, on an asteroid near Titan
Home era 51st century, later 20th-21st century
First appearance Mark I
The Invisible Enemy
Mark II
The Ribos Operation
Mark III
"A Girl's Best Friend"
Mark IV
"School Reunion"
Last appearance Mark I
The Invasion of Time
Mark II
Warriors' Gate
Mark III
"School Reunion"
Portrayed by John Leeson
David Brierley (voices)

K-9, or K9, is the name of several fictional robotic dogs in the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who, and its spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures. There have been at least four separate K-9 units in the series, with the first two being companions of the Fourth Doctor. Voice actor John Leeson has provided the character's voice in most of its appearances, except during Season 17, when David Brierley temporarily provided the voice.

A new television series starring K-9, K-9, is currently in development and is planned to air in 2008.

Contents

[edit] Fictional character biography

Debuting in the 1977 serial The Invisible Enemy, the first K-9 was the creation of Professor Marius, a scientist working for the Bi-Al Foundation which was built on an asteroid near Titan in the year 5000. A mobile computer, K-9 was constructed in the shape of a dog as a substitute for the one Marius had left back on Earth. Highly intelligent, with an extensive database and equipped with sophisticated sensors as well as a laser weapon built into its nose, K-9 was instrumental in helping the Fourth Doctor and Leela defeat a sentient virus. At the end of the story, Marius suggested that K-9 join the Doctor on his travels.

All the K-9s referred to whoever owned them as "Master" or "Mistress" depending on their gender. The units were programmed to be both loyal and logical, with a penchant for taking orders literally, almost to a fault. The Fourth Doctor would often use a glib remark to disarm those who were surprised by K-9's appearance; in The Stones of Blood he said, "They're all the rage in Trenton, New Jersey." The Tenth Doctor defended its less-than-streamlined design ("...so disco!") to Rose Tyler, remarking that it was cutting edge in the year 5000.

[edit] Models

To date, four different versions of K-9 have appeared in the series:

K-9 Mark I continued to travel with and aid the Doctor and Leela until The Invasion of Time, when the Doctor left it on the planet Gallifrey to accompany Leela, who elected to remain behind on the Time Lord homeworld. However, once inside the TARDIS, the Doctor produced a box labelled "K-9 Mark II".

K-9 Mark II was more mobile than its predecessor, and exhibited the ability to sense and warn others of danger. It was with the Doctor and Romana when they were shunted into the parallel universe of E-Space, and was severely damaged by time winds during the events of Warriors' Gate. The damage was such that K-9 could only function in E-Space, and when Romana decided to stay and forge her own path, the Doctor gave K-9 to her. Due to a bout of laryngitis — which the Fourth Doctor was baffled as to how the robotic dog could have contracted — the voice of K-9 Mark II changes around the time of Romana's regeneration, only to revert some time later (in reality, this was due to voice actor Leeson temporarily leaving the series at the start of the 1979–80 season and being replaced by Brierley; Leeson returned for the 1980–81 season).

K-9 Mark III was a gift from the Doctor to Sarah Jane Smith, and appeared with her in the pilot episode of the aborted spin-off series K-9 and Company as well as briefly in the 20th anniversary television movie The Five Doctors. In the original outline to K-9 and Company, it would have been eventually revealed that K-9 Mark III was actually sent by and under the control of the Master, but this element never made it to the screen. K-9 Mark III's final appearance was in the second series of the new Doctor Who with David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, alongside Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in the episode "School Reunion". In the episode K-9 appears more run-down and worn, echoing Sarah's inability to repair it in the spin-off stories (see below). It died heroically, sacrificing itself by using the last of its energy reserves to set off an explosion.

K-9 Mark IV was a parting gift to Sarah Jane from the Doctor, appearing at the end of "School Reunion". It stated that the Doctor "rebuilt" it after the Mark III's sacrifice, implying that it had the same mind as the Mark III, but also confirmed it was a "brand new model", hence having the name Mark IV. Its systems were improved over those of its predecessor, including "omniflexible hyperlink facilities" and the ability to teleport. This model of K-9 also appeared briefly in "Invasion of the Bane", the pilot episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, where it was shown sealing off an artificially created black hole. The real-world purpose of this is to remove K-9 from subsequent episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures, in which he will not appear because of the concurrent development of K-9. K-9 reappeared once more in the series one finale to assist Sarah Jane against the series' villain. According to the official website for The Sarah Jane Adventures, the Doctor stored several presents for Sarah inside K-9, including a "sonic lipstick" and a watch to scan for alien life.

[edit] Conceptual history

K-9 was the brainchild of writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin. Its purpose was to have a character that could narrate while the miniaturised clones of the Doctor and Leela were inside the Doctor's body during the events of The Invisible Enemy. Martin's own dog had also been recently run over by a car, and K-9 was a car-proof tribute to it.

K-9 was not originally intended to be a companion, but producer Graham Williams liked the concept so much that the decision was made to retain it as a regular character. The original name for the character was "FIDO" — apparently from "Phenomenal [sic] Indication Data Observation" unit — but it was eventually named K-9 (a play on "canine").

The initial idea for realising K-9 was to use a small actor inside a robotic Dobermann costume, but that was rejected in favour of a radio-controlled prop, designed by Tony Harding and made by the BBC Visual Effects Department. The robot suffered from numerous technical problems during its time in the series, often malfunctioning because the radio controls interfered with the cameras and vice versa. On location, K-9 also proved unable to traverse uneven terrain, and shots had to be conceived with this in mind. Workarounds included using a concealed piece of twine to pull the character along, or laying wooden planks on which it could roll.

K-9 Mark III as it appeared in the 2006 series, showing wear and tear.
K-9 Mark III as it appeared in the 2006 series, showing wear and tear.

K-9's innards were redesigned twice more over the course of the series, firstly in collaboration with a company called Slough Radio Control. It allowed one of its employees, Nigel Brackley, to be seconded to the series semi-permanently to supervise the prop. Brackley, who has since gone on to a career in the movie industry, controlled K-9 for many of its studio appearances. Eventually, there came a point where the dog's inherent liabilities were outweighing its assets, and the internal mechanisms were completely rebuilt by designer Charlie Lumm. The wheels were enlarged and given independent drives for power and better manoeuvrability, and the radio controls were switched from the AM to the FM band to resist interference. However, by the time the improved model made its debut in State of Decay, the first story recorded for Season 18, the decision had already been made to write the character out of the series in the adventure Warriors' Gate.

K-9 was a popular enough character to warrant an attempt to spin it off into its own series, as mentioned above. In addition to K-9 dolls, there were also talking K-9 toys produced by Palitoy, the speech provided by a miniature record inside the body of the toy. John Leeson provided the voice for K-9 in all its appearances, except for Season 17 (which included the unfinished Shada) when it was voiced by David Brierley. When Shada was remade by Big Finish Productions, Leeson provided its voice.

The practical challenges of working with the K-9 prop have accompanied the robotic pooch in his return to Doctor Who. Producer Russell T. Davies told SFX magazine, "Yes, just as we expected, multiple takes [were required] when he bumped into a door or veered off to the left. Lis Sladen did warn us, and she was right!"[1]

[edit] Other appearances

[edit] Popular culture

In 1990, an unspecified K-9 unit appeared with Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace in an episode of the children's education programme Search Out Science entitled Search Out Space, which was included as an extra on the release of the Doctor Who story Survival by the BBC. Another unspecified K-9 unit also appeared in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time.

A modern day K9 Doctor Who toy.
A modern day K9 Doctor Who toy.

In the 1998 computer game Fallout 2, the Navarro base has a damaged robot dog known as K-9, which uses similar speech mannerisms to the Doctor Who character. If repaired, the cyberdog is willing to join the character's party as a companion.

In the 1999 television series Queer as Folk (written by current Doctor Who executive producer Russell T. Davies), a K-9 model is given to the character Vince as a birthday present. The prop used was an original, operated — as occasionally in Doctor Who — by visual effects assistant Mat Irvine.

In the South Park episode "Go God Go XII", Eric Cartman, being trapped in the year 2546, has acquired a robot dog called "K-10", a parody of K-9. Due to timeline alterations, he is replaced by robot cat "Kit-9" and later robot bird "Cocka-3".

Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center have dubbed two intelligent mobile robots designed to explore the surface of Mars "K-9" and "Gromit".[2] NASA's K-9 is named after both Doctor Who's K-9 and Marvin the Martian's pet dog.[3]

In the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, the character of Alan Partridge recalls how his purchase of the rights to K-9 assisted in him mentally breaking down and driving to Dundee in his bare feet while gorging on Toblerone.

K-9 appeared on a 2007 Doctor Who special edition of The Weakest Link, but was voted out unanimously at the end of the first round. Anne Robinson (whom K-9 addressed as "Mistress") said "I'm so sorry" before declaring him the weakest link.

[edit] Audio plays

In the spin-off media, K-9 Mark II remained Romana's faithful companion for many years. In the early 2000s, John Leeson and Lalla Ward featured in a series of audio plays produced by BBV as K-9 and "The Mistress", detailing these characters' adventures in a parallel universe. As neither Romana nor E-Space could be licensed, the aliases of the Mistress and the "pocket universe" were used instead.

When Romana eventually returned to her own universe, she brought K-9 Mark II with her (presumably having repaired it) and eventually became Lady President of Gallifrey. K-9 Mark II is first seen on Gallifrey in the Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, alongside K-9 Mark I, which had remained with Leela. Both K-9 Mark I and Mark II appear, voiced by Leeson, in the Big Finish Productions audio adventure Zagreus and the Gallifrey audio series. Leela's K-9 (Mark I) was destroyed at the conclusion of the second Gallifrey series and only Mark II appears in the third series.

[edit] Webcast

In 2003, a webcast adaptation of the never-completed Shada serial was produced for the BBC's Doctor Who website, rewritten as an Eighth Doctor adventure and featuring the post-E-Space versions of Romana II and K-9 Mk II.

[edit] Novels and short stories

K-9's co-creator Dave Martin wrote a series of four children's books entitled The Adventures of K9, published by Sparrow Books in 1980. K-9 is travelling on his own in these stories for reasons not explained.

In 1985, a series of gamebooks featuring the Sixth Doctor were published by Severn House under the title Make your own adventure with Doctor Who in Britain and Find Your Fate — Doctor Who in the United States. These books were actually written by scriptwriters for the television series. Martin wrote Search for the Doctor which takes place in the mid-21st century and features K-9 Mark III being reunited with the Sixth Doctor long after Sarah's death.

A short story, Moving On, in Virgin Publishing's Decalog 3: Consequences anthology and the Big Finish Productions-produced Sarah Jane Smith audio play Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre (both written by Peter Anghelides) indicate that K-9 Mark III broke down and Sarah was unable to repair it as the replacement circuits would not be invented for several centuries.

Another short story, Tautology, by Glenn Langford (Doctor Who Magazine #194), suggests that K-9 Mark III's motherboard will be passed down through Sarah's descendants and eventually end up in the hands of Professor Marius, who will use it to build the first K-9, creating an ontological paradox.

Jealous, Possessive by Paul Magrs, the "Scorpio" story in Big Finish's anthology Short Trips: Zodiac features K-9 Mark I and Mark II relaying their exploits to each other, and their veiled put-downs to each other reveal that each considers the other to be the "inferior" version. This attitude is also occasionally hinted at in the way the two units refer to each other in the Gallifrey audio series.

The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Interference: Book Two by Lawrence Miles indicates that the Doctor built a Mark IV model sometime prior to the events of that book, but what happened to this unit is not stated. In the novel The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin, K-9 Mark II makes another appearance, having been trapped within the TARDIS since the events of The Ancestor Cell. At the end of The Gallifrey Chronicles the Doctor sends K-9 on a secret mission to Espero, presumably to seek out his former companion, the living TARDIS known as Compassion.

The canonicity of the spin-off stories is unclear, especially in light of K-9 and Sarah's return.

[edit] K-9 (TV show)

Main article: K-9 (TV series)

A proposed K-9 television series or special had been rumoured since the late 1990s, and images of a redesigned K9 were leaked.[4] However, nothing became of this effort until 2006.

On April 24, 2006 The Independent, the Daily Star and The Times confirmed, following previous rumours, that K-9 would be featured in a 26-part children's series, K-9, to be written by Bob Baker.[5] The article in The Times also featured a picture of the redesigned K-9 for the animated series.[6] The series will be a blend of live-action and a CGI K-9.

Each episode will be 30 minutes long, made by Jetix Europe and London-based distribution outfit Park Entertainment. According to a report in Broadcast magazine, the BBC opted out of involvement in order to focus on their own Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood, meaning that BBC-owned characters are unlikely to appear in the series. A broadcast date for the series has not been officially announced, but a 2008 debut is planned.[7][8]

[edit] List of appearances

[edit] Television

Season 15
Season 16
Season 17
Season 18
K-9 and Company
20th anniversary special
30th anniversary special
Series 2
The Sarah Jane Adventures

[edit] Audio dramas

BBV
  • K-9: The Choice
  • K-9: The Search
Big Finish Productions

[edit] Books

Sparrow Books
  • K9 and the Time Trap by David Martin
  • K9 and the Beasts of Vega by David Martin
  • K9 and the Zeta Rescue by David Martin
  • K9 and the Missing Planet by David Martin
Severn House
  • Search for the Doctor by David Martin
Virgin Missing Adventures
Virgin New Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures
Eighth Doctor Adventures

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Comics

  • "Terror on Xaboi" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1980)
  • "The Weapon" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1980)
  • "Every Dog Has His Day" by Mel Powell (Doctor Who Annual 1981)
  • "Plague World" by Mel Powell (Doctor Who Annual 1982)
  • "K9's Finest Hour" by Steve Moore and Paul Neary (Doctor Who Weekly 12)
  • "Timeslip" by Dez Skinn and Paul Neary (Doctor Who Weekly 17–18)
  • "The Star Beast" by Pat Mills, John Wagner and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Weekly 19–26)
  • "The Dogs of Doom" by John Wagner, Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Weekly 27–34)
  • "The Time Witch" by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Weekly 35–38)
  • "Dragon's Claw" by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Weekly 39–43, Doctor Who Monthly 44–45)
  • "The Collector" by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Monthly 46)
  • "Dreamers of Death" by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Monthly 47–48)
  • "The Touchdown on Deneb 7" by David Lloyd and Paul Neary (Doctor Who Monthly 48)
  • "The Life Bringer" by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Monthly 49–50)
  • "War of the Words" by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Monthly 51)
  • "City of Devils" by Vincent Danks and Gary Russell (1992 Sarah-Jane Holiday Special)
  • "The Seventh Segment" by Gareth Roberts and Paul Peart (Doctor Who Magazine Summer Special 1995)

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Russell T Davies on Who season two", SFX, 2005-10-25. Retrieved on 2006-03-18. 
  2. ^ Perlman, David. "NASA's new robots show their stuff", San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-10-04. Retrieved on 2006-04-23. 
  3. ^ NASA Ames Research Center (2000-06-25). Introduction, Advanced Technology Field Testing. Retrieved on 2006-04-23.
  4. ^ Leaked image
  5. ^ Milmo, Cahal. "Doctor Who's K-9 sidekick is dragged into 21st century in computer-designed cartoon", The Independent, 2006-04-24. Retrieved on 2006-04-24. 
  6. ^ Sherwin, Adam. "K9 is back and ready to fight in shining armour", The Times, 2006-04-24. Retrieved on 2006-04-25. 
  7. ^ Lyon, Shaun (2006-07-18). More on K9 Series. Outpost Gallifrey News Page. Retrieved on 2006-07-18.
  8. ^ Johnson, Richard. "Master of the universe", The Sunday Telegraph, 2007-03-11, p. 3. Retrieved on 2007-03-12. 

[edit] External links

The TARDIS Index File has information related to:
v • d • e
Companions of the Fourth Doctor
Seasons Season 11 Season 12 Season 13 Season 14 Season 15 Season 16 Season 17 Season 18
Serials 074 075 - 079 080 081 - 085 086 - 087 089 - 091 092 093 - 097 098 - 103 104 - 109 110 - 111 112 - 114 115 116
Companions ← Sarah Jane Leela Romana I Romana II Tegan →
Harry K-9 Mark I K-9 Mark II Nyssa →
Adric →
v • d • e
Companions of the Eighth Doctor (Audios)
Season BBCi Season 27 Season 28 Season 29 Season 30 Continuing Adventures New EDAs
Production Shada 16 - 19 28 - 33 50 + 52 53 - 55 61 - 64 72 75 77 80 83 88 101 103 1.1 - 2.7
Companions (←) Romana II Charley Lucie
(←) K-9 Mark II C'rizz