Fiction Robots in Space: Captain Future's Grag

Today we will take a look at the robot Grag, part of the Space Opera Captain Future. Space Opera - what a lovely term. On Wikipedia it reads:

Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.

Captain Future is the brainchild of the science fiction writer Edward Hamilton. They were first published as stories and after Hamilton's death were filmed as a Manga TV series, translated and broadcasted in many countries and languages and gained overall success - maybe because of this stunning outer-space atmosphere and great soundtrack (at least in Germany).

Inside the series Curtis Newton, orphaned while their parents died, fights named as Captain Future the evil with his own intelligent robot called Greg and a shape-shifting android Otho. His father build those two robots with the scientists professor Simon Wright, who survived his body as brain in a tub. The brain had to be carried around in its glass-container and later got autonomous control mechanisms. What a cool background story! For more details look at captain-future.tv.

The robot Grag was built from pure metal parts, that gave him incredible strength compared to human. It was the first successful experiment in building an artificial intelligence robot by Captain Futures father. Greg's modular body design allows various enhancements like drills and lasers, which he hides in his steely chest. At least this clearly can be identified on all tin-robots I've seen so far!

Grag is grey, tall, dark, friendly and supportive. He is not such a talker like Otho is, he is more like someone who does. A totally reliable partner in the team. At least very clever, but not that smart like the professors brain Simon is.


Greg, Simon, Captain Future

I also found five maps form the early Caption Future books and if you search on YouTube for Capitan Future Grag, you likely will find some video footage.

Tags: tin-robot, humanoid, space, classic, tv
Feb_25:2008 .020200 Comments(0)

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Rosie: The Female Housebot from the Jetsons

Yesterday I told that 99% of all tin-robots are male. After heavy thinking I remembered a female tin-bot. I want to present here to you. It is the Robot "Rosie", that keeps house-holding at the home of the Jetsons and everything that is related to "modern housework" from the ultra-harmonic utopian 60ies: keeping the kids, help schoolwork, help learn driving the car and that sort of things.


Tin-robots seem to be good in hiding things inside their bodies.

At least we all should know, that the distinction between male and female robots is just a fantasy of us humans.

[via]

Tags: tin-robot, tv, female
Jan_17:2008 .020200 Comments(0)

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Bender: The Worlds Most Popular Tin-Robot?

Do I have to introduce Bender? I don't think so, but nevertheless I feel the duty so mention Bender here in the category Tin-Robot. He is a soul-robot and got some similarity with Robbi. That is in particular that he can do things with his mechanical gear, that people can't. That he is always supportive to humans, and that he got thousand of things inside his body. In that context I figured out, that tin-robots are to 99% male.

Tags: tin-robot, tv, male
Jan_16:2008 .020200 Comments(0)

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Robbi, Tobbi and the Fliewatüüt

A classic children TV-Show, that was quite popular in Germany and at least for me introduced the Tin-Robot. Most remarkably is the robot "Robbi", that really got a rough-warm personalty of its own. The funky detail is the distorted "vocoder-like" speech from the robot and - maybe far ahead of its time - that Robbie makes click after finishing a speech or action, as if he had a pulse generator inside triggering control commands, using speech "click" like indicator.


Tin-Robot "Robbi" with his unique rough character of its own.

Tags: classic, tin-robot, tv, male, germany
Jan_15:2008 .020200 Comments(0)

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Score: 4.5 (Number of votes: 2)