Cambot: Difference between revisions

Cambot is one of the fictional robot characters on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television series. It is through Cambot's "eye" that viewers watch Joel Robinson (later Mike Nelson) and the other robots as they watch the movies that are sent to the Satellite of Love each week.

Cambot is only seen during the "Robot Roll Call" portion of the opening credits, often with his name reversed, presumably to imply he is shooting his own image in a mirror. His appearance was changed with almost every reshooting of the opening credits, most likely since there was little need to keep the puppet around once its one appearance had been shot. While originally being shown as a separate robot operating a camera during the original KTMA season, Cambot would later be changed to a robot with a built in camera during the show's official run. Season 1 Cambot only vaguely resembled a camera, having been built from the KTMA season's Gypsy puppet. When the opening was reshot for Season 2, Cambot was redesigned to look much more like a videocamera, though retained some basic design elements. In a drawing fellow 'bot Gypsy once presented in episode #507:I Accuse My Parents of the Satellite of Love crew, her "ideal family", Cambot's body was shown as a long and snakelike tube, not unlike Gypsy's . Midway through the fifth season of the series the opening was once again reshot and Cambot was again redesigned, this time given a more compact shape, becoming a round hovering ball with a camera lens for an eye. He would keep this form for the remainder of the series, although the color scheme was changed during MST3K's switch from Comedy Central to the Sci-fi Channel (becoming blue instead of gray).

From time to time, the characters on the show interact with Cambot in a Brechtian fashion. Cambot is apparently the conduit whereby the SOL crew and Deep 13's denizens communicate via a forward viewscreen (not unlike those of various "Star Trek" starships) that the characters look at (when they are in fact "looking into" the living rooms of the viewers); this screen should not be confused with the Hex-Field (stage right), which usually only receives transmissions from non-Deep 13 sources.

Cambot apparently watches all of the movies while recording the "guys" watching the movies. Although a number of episodes depict Joel/Mike, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo reacting as if traumatized by a particularly bad movie, Cambot suffered a severe reaction only once, weeping when several security cameras were systematically destroyed by the hero in episode #620: Danger!! Death Ray. (This was signified by a watery effect over the screen image.) Another rare case of Cambot interacting during a movie segment came in episode #202: The Sidehackers, when Cambot added an ESPN-like mock scorecard on one side of the screen during one of the movie's race scenes. Cambot was also once moved to tears during episode Danger! Death Ray after witnessing dozens of security cameras being destroyed by machine gun fire by the film's hero Bart Fargo.

Cambot also frequently provides music, video clips, and other enhancements to host segments. When Joel or another character requests to see "Rocket Number Nine" (the ship-mounted camera that supposedly allows the crew to see the ship's exterior and anything in its vicinity), it is Cambot who provides the image. During the first five seasons, when Joel or Mike would read fan mail sent to the show, they would request Cambot to put the letter on "still store," freeze framing on a close-up of the letter.

Cambot was voiced a single time during the original KTMA run by Kevin Murphy. Though he never spoke during an actual episode during the official seasons, it can be presumed that it is Cambot's voice heard during the "Robot Roll Call" portion of the opening theme from Season 1 through 5, and when shown during the opening of later seasons, though it is left ambiguous.

At the end of Season 7, Cambot was shown joining his fellow crew-members ascending into pure energy at the end of the universe. When the Satellite of Love crashed on Earth in the show's final episode, it is not specified whether Cambot survived the crash (although one could presume that he is the one filming the final scene). Cambot was not mentioned in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie.

• A page with instructions for building a Cambot (As seen in seasons 5-7)