H is for... Handbots

Featureless white robots which were used as clinical staff in the Two Streams medical facility on the planet Apalapucia. The planet was under quarantine after an outbreak of the deadly Chen-7 disease. This was known as the "one day plague" as its victims died within 24 hours. The Two Streams Facility used compressed time to allow those infected to live a full life. The Handbots were so called because they sensed their surroundings through artificial hands, which could emit a powerful anaesthetic. They also dispensed medication by darts, fired from a unit in their chest or when their heads opened up. Chen-7 only affected people with binary cardiac systems, like the Doctor. When Amy became trapped in the wrong Stream, cut off from Rory and the Doctor, he had to remain in the TARDIS and send Rory in alone to rescue her. As she did not have Chen-7, the Handbots' medication would prove fatal to her, so she had to go into hiding. The Facility's time engines masked her from their sensors. When Rory found her, she had lived there for more than 30 years, and was now an embittered older woman. She had learned to fight off the Handbots, making herself armour from their bodies.

For company she had a reprogrammed Handbot, whose hands she had removed. She had drawn a face on it, and called it Rory. The Doctor was able to locate the Amy from the earlier time period and rescue her. The older Amy had also wanted to be saved, but the Doctor could not allow such a paradox to take place. She sacrificed herself by giving herself up to the Handbots, although by removing the earlier Amy from the Facility she would never have existed in the first place.

Appearances: The Girl Who Waited (2011).