Robby the Robot

Robby the Robot appeared in 1956 movie called Forbidden Planet. Robby the Robot originated as a character in the 1956 MGM science fiction film Forbidden Planet. The story centers on a crew of space explorers from Earth who land their starship, the C57-D, on the planet Altair IV, ruled by the mysterious Dr. Morbius. Robby is a mechanical servant that Morbius has designed, built, and programmed using knowledge gleaned from his study of the Krell, a long-extinct race of highly intelligent beings that once populated Altair IV. The film’s plot appears loosely based on William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (1610), with the planet Altair IV standing in for Shakespeare’s remote island and Dr. Morbius for Prospero. In this context Robby is analogous to Ariel, a spirit enslaved by Prospero.

Robby exhibits artificial intelligence, but has a distinct personality that at times exhibits a dry wit. He is instructed by Morbius to be helpful to the Earthmen and does so by synthesizing and transporting to their landing site 10 tons of "isotope 217", a lightweight though still effective replacement for the requested lead shielding needed to house the C-57-D’s main stardrive to power an attempt to contact Earth base for further instructions. Morbius programmed Robby to obey a system of rules similar to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as expressed in I, Robot (1950). One of the laws is a rule against harming or killing humans; this becomes an important plot point near the conclusion of the film when Robby refuses to kill the Id monster. The robot recognizes that the invisible creature is an alter ego/extension of Dr. Morbius. Hollywood purposely, and misleadingly, depicts Robby in the film’s advertising posters as a terrifying adversarial creature carrying a seductively posed unconscious maiden, but no such scene is in the film and the images do not reflect in any way Robby's benevolent and intelligent character. Robby only carries one person during the film, the Earth starship's Dr. Ostrow, when he is mortally wounded near the end of the film.