Fembot

Fembot (sometimes spelled Femmebot) is an alternative name for a gynoid, a robot designed to look like a woman. It was used in two major productions, The Bionic Woman television series and the Austin Powers film series, which parodied the name. The television show Futurama also uses the fembot term. Fans of the Transformers toylines and related fiction sometimes use the term to refer to Female Transformers, and it was used once in the Beast Wars cartoon series.

The bionic heroes' enemy

In The Bionic Woman the Fembots are a line of powerful androids Jaime and Steve Austin fought in two episodes of the series, "Kill Oscar" and "The Fembots in Las Vegas". Despite the name, there were also male versions, including ones designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent, they still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for humans in most situations. Often times however, the face plate would often be dislodged and reveal the machine's facial mechanism, creating the classic image of the menace. Fembots on important missions were often remotely controlled by an operator back at the base who was able to see and hear everything through the machine.

Their main weakness was their default operational setting, which produced a unique high pitched sound that only Jaimie could hear, allowing her to detect their presence. However when the operator was aware of this problem, this sound could be turned down. Another way fembots could be discovered was their heavy weight. Steve Austin once discovered that Oscar Goldman had been replaced by a "male fembot" by tossing a pencil on a carpet. When the Goldman fembot unknowingly stepped on the pencil, it crushed it into tiny pieces. When the bionic heroes faced the machines in battle, the operator could increase their strength and make them extremely formidable foes.

Other fembots

The animated film Starchaser - The Legend of Orin featured a female robot referred to as a Fembot.

The Austin Powers versions were a parody, which looked like beautiful women dressed in sexually provocative outfits and fought with guns hidden in their breasts which can fire knockout gas or bullets. Originally tested by Dr. Evil on his own guards, they were meant to be a lethal distraction for Austin Powers, while Dr. Evil's plans came to fruition, their pleasing form and seductive behavior appealing to Austin's "free love" personality. They almost succeeded, but Austin managed to beat them by "outsexing" them, overloading their processors by giving such a sexually charged striptease, that their own programming was overwhelmed, causing their heads to explode. In the second film, Vanessa, Austin's wife, reveals to be one of Dr. Evil's fembots, evidenced when she goes backwards when Austin presses the rewind button at the TV. After the fight, Vannessa explodes, and Austin is excited to be single again. In the Goldmember movie Britney Spears played a fembot.

In Futurama, the term fembot was generally used to describe female robots. In one episode Bender discovers a "femputer" (voiced by Bea Arthur) to be a fembot.: Bender: You're no femputer. You're a fembot.: Femputer: It's true. I disguised myself as a femputer so I could rule the Amazonians.: Bender: But why?: Femputer: Why? Why? I came here from a faraway planet - a planet ruled by a chauvinistic manputer that was really a manbot. Have you any idea how it feels to be a fembot living in a manbot's manputer's world?: Bender: What?

In the Beast Wars episode "Nemesis", which is the series finale, Rattrap called Blackarachnia an "emasculating fembot" after she took his robotic rat mode's tail to use as a conduit cable. As she sliced off the bladed end of the tail with a claw in order to convert it into a cable (a not-so-subtle visual euphamism for a penectomy, as further demonstrated by Silverbolt's wincing in pain during the action), it is arguable as to how apt the insult is.

Frank Zappa's album Joe's Garage features the song "Fembot in a wet t-shirt."

In the TV show Just Shoot Me! it's revealed that the character Nina Van Horn played a fembot early in her career.

External links

* Things.org (Google's cache)
* The Neutral Planet