Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: K9 (Doctor Who)

K9! The one and only robot dog with the satellite-dish ears and the wagging antenna tail. Even though K9 is always something of an add-on companion, decidedly second fiddle to any and all humanoids in the TARDIS, he does get his moments to shine on the show, and that’s what we need to celebrate today. Here are my favorite wins for K9 (spoilers.)

Fighting the Infected (Series 15, Episode 7 – “The Invisible Enemy:  Episode 3”)

In K9’s first serial on the show, he does well for himself in helping Leela hold the line against the infected.  He destroys a service shaft to cut off one route they could use to get to the Doctor and uses his blaster to make a barricade across their one remaining entry point.  When Leela is forced to fall back, he keeps on fighting, at personal risk to himself (K9 is then infected and becomes temporarily aligned with the baddies.)

Saving Leela (Series 15, Episode 15 – “The Sun Makers:  Episode 3”)

Leela has been sentenced to execution by “steaming,” involving being cooked alive, and the only chance to save her requires switching off the water main.  The Doctor is keen to do it himself, but he’s told in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t survive it the temperature/pressure within the vents:  enter K9.  There are a few things I like about this moment.  First, K9 volunteers to go into the vent himself, and I always like when he’s regarded as a contributor rather than a tool.  Also, he doesn’t actually know whether or not he’ll be able to withstand those conditions – all he knows is that his chances are better than the Doctor’s and, to be able to stop Leela’s execution, it’s a risk he’s willing to take.  Good boy, K9!

Rescuing Garron and Unstoffe (Series 16, Episode 4 – “The Ribos Operation:  Episode 4”)

When Garron and Unstoffe as trapped in a cave-in, K9 uses his laser to clear away the rubble (with a wide beam that seems to completely vaporize all the rock without touching Garron and Unstoffe on the other side – who knows how K9’s laser actually works.) The benefits here are twofold. Obviously, he rescues Garron and Unstoffe, who, while conmen, aren’t really bad guys. This move also allows Romana to recover the locator, as Garron stole it from her earlier in the serial.

Repairing the Projector (Series 16, Episode 12 – “The Stones of Blood:  Episode 4”)

After the Doctor builds a projector to send himself into hyperspace and retrieve a captured Romana from the Ogri, the device is smashed.  Despite K9 taking quite the licking earlier in the serial and still being only semi-functioning, he calmly assures Vivien that she can reconstruct the complicated alien machine under his guidance.  He talks her through the process, which allows them to use the repaired projector to bring the Doctor and Romana back safely.

Escaping the Labyrinth (Series 17, Episode 20 – “The Horns of Nimon:  Part 4”)

When the Doctor, Romana, and the Nimon’s captives are trapped in a labyrinth, K9 analyzes the maze’s patterns to calculate a safe route to freedom, recalibrating when the pattern changes. What’s more, when they reach the exit, he’s the only one able to recognize it for what it is: an open doorway overlaid with a hologram to look like a solid wall. As everyone wonders how to make a hidden door in the wall open, K9 simply glides on through the apparent wall.

Character Highlight: K9 (Doctor Who)

K9 isn’t the Doctor’s only inorganic companion (Kamelion, we hardly knew ye,) but he is the best known and definitely the most fun.  He’s also, thanks to his post-Four-era connection to Sarah Jane, one of the few classic Who companions to carry over into the modern Whoniverse.  This is everyone’s favorite tin dog.

Despite not being alive, K9 first encounters the Doctor like any other companion does, meeting him in the middle of one of his adventures and then accompanying him on the TARDIS afterwards, first with Leela and then with Romana and later Adric.  He spends the better part of four seasons on the show, which might technically make him the longest-running companing, although his actual presence in the series doesn’t make it feel that way.  For one, he’s always very much a secondary companion – more like Mickey than Rory, despite his longevity on the show – and for another, he’s absent for a handful of stories over the course of his tenure.  The in-story reasons are usually some technical problem or another, circuits in need of rewiring and the like, but I imagine that the real reason is often down to the difficulty of maneuvering the electronic K9 prop over anything less than smooth terrain.

But of course, not much point in talking about the times when he isn’t around.  How ‘bout when he is?  In some ways, K9 is just a movable talking computer, or perhaps a suped-up sonic screwdriver, and his place on team TARDIS is largely functional.  His memory banks store all kinds of pertinent facts he can spout on request, he can analyze everything from data to biological matter, he’s capable of interphasing with most any computer, and he’s equipped with a stun gun.  To a large extent, he’s a fancy gadget that the Doctor and his companions can use to get the job done.

But that’s not all there is to him.  He’s also a character in his own right, even if his personality is very programmed and kind of pedantic.  I like his tendency to take things literally, defining things like “piece of cake” instead of taking them as the idioms the Doctor intends.  He’s also quick to correct anyone who anthropomorphizes him too much, like when he’s asked, “How are you feeling?” after a malfunction is repaired.  He gives occasional input on team TARDIS’s plans and pokes holes in the Doctor’s sometimes-inventive logic.

Plus, there’s just something fun about him being designed to look like a dog.  I love the little details, like his tail being an antenna and what looks like tiny satellite dishes for ears.  The Doctor and co. treat him like both a dog and a computer, and there’s something so endearing about watching the Doctor lose at chess to K9, try to convince him he’s always wanted to be a bloodhound, or call him “my best friend.”  Aw.