ED-209
Encyclopedia
The Enforcement Droid Series 209, or ED-209, is a fictional robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...

 in the RoboCop franchise
RoboCop (franchise)
The RoboCop franchise, began in 1987 with the film RoboCop. RoboCop 2, followed in 1990 and RoboCop 3 in 1993. There have also been various television series, video game and comic book adaptations. The franchise has made over $109,715,854 USD worldwide.-Future:Sony Pictures was working on a new...

. The ED-209 serves as a heavily-armed obstacle and foil for the series' titular character
RoboCop (character)
OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001 is a fictional Detroit cyborg police officer and protagonist from the feature film series of the same name. The character begins as a human being who is killed in the line of duty by a vicious crime gang...

, as well as a source of comic relief
Comic relief
Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character, scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension.-Definition:...

 due to its lack of intelligence and tendency towards clumsy malfunctions.

The ED-209 was designed by Craig Davies
Craig Davies (designer)
Craig Davies, also known as Craig Hayes, is a stop motion and full size movie model maker, art designer and visual effects director. He is most notable for his work in the RoboCop movie franchise, where he designed and built the ED-209 and other robotic menaces.-Filmography:* RoboCop, ED-209...

, who also built the full size models, and animated by Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.-Early career:...

, a veteran stop-motion animator. Davies and Tippett would go on to collaborate on many more projects. As one of the setpiece
Setpiece
In film production, a setpiece is a scene or sequence of scenes the execution of which requires serious logistical planning and considerable expenditure of money. The term setpiece is often used more broadly to describe any important dramatic or comedic highpoint in a film or story, particularly...

s of the movie, the ED-209’s look and animated sequences were under the close supervision of director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 Paul Verhoeven, who sometimes acted out the robot's movements himself.

The ED-209 is featured in every RoboCop major motion picture, while it is missing from the series’ direct-to-video releases and the television series (although an ED with a different model number is present).

Design

Director Paul Verhoeven made it clear very early on that ED-209 shouldn't look “cute.” He wanted the robot to look hard and mean. For this reason, various common robot features were left out. There are no eyes on the ED-209, for instance, since Craig Davies believed they conveyed too much emotion as well as being clichéd. According to RoboCop writer Ed Neumeier, the ED-209 robot was designed to resemble a bipedal Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

-era Huey
UH-1 Iroquois
The Bell UH-1 Iroquois is a military helicopter powered by a single, turboshaft engine, with a two-bladed main rotor and tail rotor. The helicopter was developed by Bell Helicopter to meet the United States Army's requirement for a medical evacuation and utility helicopter in 1952, and first flew...

 helicopter. The robot's digitigrade stance
Digitigrade
A digitigrade is an animal that stands or walks on its digits, or toes. Digitigrades include walking birds , cats, dogs, and many other mammals, but not plantigrades or unguligrades...

 makes ED-209 a so-called chicken walker
Chicken walker
A chicken walker is a fictional type of bipedal robot or mecha, distinguished by its rear-facing knee joint. This type of articulation resembles a bird's legs, hence the name. However, birds actually have forward-facing knees; they are digitigrade, and what most call the "knee" is actually the...

.

Craig Hayes (then Davies) also incorporated his ideas about modern 1980s American design, especially car design, into the robot. He envisioned futuristic designers making the robot look good in order to make it marketable before they made it work well, “just like an American car.” The crew commentary audio track on the Criterion Collection DVD release confirms the obvious allusion to ridiculous corporate design policies, with such features as an clearly over-designed hydraulic system, over-attention paid to aesthetics and the placement of vulnerable features such as the radiator grill on the very front of the robot.

The audio for the ED-209 was composed by Stephen Flick and John Pospisil of audio effects company Screaming Lizard. The hydraulic heavy machinery feel of the robot was composed of various motor and piston noises. An intimidating growl produced by ED-209 in the first movie was created by playing a jaguar growl backwards. Its distorted human voice was recorded by the film’s executive producer Jon Davison
Jon Davison
Jon Davison is a film producer.-Biography:His producing credits include Airplane! , RoboCop , RoboCop 2 , Starship Troopers , The 6th Day and Phasma ex Machina ....

. It was never intended to be in RoboCop’s theatrical release and was only recorded for an initial screening. However, it was kept as the voice of ED-209 all the way to the theaters.

The original full-scale 'ED' currently resides at Tippett Studios in Berkeley, California, as well as the original stop-motion puppets. The paint and armament scheme was reconfigured for RoboCop 3, and is how the full-scale ED-209 is preserved.

The ED-209’s primary weapon in all films are three 20mm cannons, two on the left arm and one on the right arm. The left arm contains two external high-capacity ammo magazines and the right arm one which snap into place when the guns are armed. The robot also uses its gun pod to point down and move upward again to uppercut its opponents as it did to RoboCop when the two fought against each other. It also featured a three-round rocket launcher on its right arm and twin launchers for mortar rounds or gas grenades behind its head. The grenade launchers are never used on film, but are shown on models and schematics of the ED-209. It is also discussed in the first film that once it has proven itself in Delta City it would be marketed to the military, explaining the extremely powerful weaponry for a police droid.

Movie plot

ED-209 is primarily featured in the first film, where it appears three times. The 209 series is developed as one of the possible program to be the part of OCP
Omni Consumer Products
Omni Consumer Products may refer to:*Omni Consumer Products , a fictitious mega-corporation seen in the RoboCop series of Movies and TV shows.*Omni Consumer Products , a company that manufactures products based on fictional movie items...

's plan to create a law enforcement unit capable of pacifying Old Detroit of crime, another was the Robocop program. It is attempt to create a series of law enforcement robots, the brain child of the movie’s main antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...

, OCP Senior President Dick Jones. Jones describes ED-209 as being capable of use for urban pacification of crime and potentially for use in the military. The ED-209 is armed with three cannons and a missile launcher on its two flexible arms, and can swing its arms to hit a nearby assailant. The ED-209 in use for law enforcement duties in the United States is programmed to understand and recite the U.S. Model Penal Code
Model Penal Code
The Model Penal Code is a statutory text which was developed by the American Law Institute in 1962. The Chief Reporter on the project was Herbert Wechsler. The current form of the MPC was last updated in 1981. The purpose of the MPC was to stimulate and assist legislatures in making an effort to...

 and recognize violations of it. The ED-209 utilizes a loud deep voice and growling noises to intimidate assailants. During a demonstration of the ED-209's offensive capabilities to the OCP board, it malfunctions and brutally kills an OCP executive, Kinney - even though he had complied with the robot’s orders to “surrender” and put down his gun, ED-209 is unable to recognise this fact, which Dr. MacNamara explains because the robot did not hear the weapon hit the ground, which appears to be the requisite for ED-209 to end its threat of physical force to an armed assailant (Also, why this demonstration model was loaded with live ammunition is never addressed). Because of this disastrous malfunction, the RoboCop program is given the green light.

In a confrontation between Jones and Bob Morton, Jones is enraged by Morton having outflanked him with the Robocop program, and describes that the ED-209 series had been well into development, with pending contracts with the military and for replacement parts for the 209.

The ED-209 appears again when RoboCop confronts and attempts to arrest Dick Jones. The robot seriously damages RoboCop in a brief battle. However, ED-209’s faulty nature is again highlighted when it trips and becomes disabled while attempting to traverse an ordinary flight of stairs. It also loses an arm during the battle when RoboCop forces the other arm into it while it fires.

After Jones has Morton killed and Robocop is attacked and forced into hiding by Detroit Police outside of OCP headquarters, the ED-209 series returns to OCP plans. In Jones' final OCP meeting, he describes that numerous ED-209s are operational and ready for immediate service to take the place of the Detroit Police who went on strike.

The robot or another copy (this one appears to be undamaged from the previous battle) makes his final appearance stationed in front of OCP Plaza, protecting the building during a police strike. When it attempts to interfere with RoboCop (saying he is "illegally parked on private property"), he destroys it with a Cobra assault cannon taken from Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker’s minions. As with previous encounters, this again highlights its inadequacies in that the 209 failed to react in a timely fashion to an obvious threat as any human would. RoboCop fires the weapon twice, the first shot incapacitating it and the second annihilating its upper half.

RoboCop 2
RoboCop 2
RoboCop 2 is a 1990 science fiction action film directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Belinda Bayer, Tom Noonan and Gabriel Damon. Set in the near future in a dystopian metropolitan Detroit, Michigan...

features only quick cameos of the robot, where it is featured as a security bot for an OCP building on a television news report. The robot promptly trips on an open manhole and flails about uselessly while trying to disperse demonstrators.

A full-scale model (or out of commission) ED-209 also appears in the background at the OCP Headquarters Office Lobby as the executives are discussing their problems with the RoboCop 2 program.

Just before the Mayor enters the OCP CEO's office, an ED-209 unit is spotted standing on the right side of the screen outside the building. This is not visible in the pan and scan
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...

 home video versions.

RoboCop 3
RoboCop 3
RoboCop 3 is a science fiction action film, released in 1993, set in the near future in a dystopian metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, and filmed in Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the buildings seen in the film were slated for demolition to make way for facilities for the 1996 Olympics. Nancy Allen as...

has one scene of ED-209 once again used as a security bot for an OCP building, this time an armoury. Resistance fighters with the help of computer whiz kid Nikko Halloran are able to easily hack and take control the ED-209 via a dataport in its leg with Nikko's portable computer, ("I am now authorized to... be loyal as a puppy.") The ED-209 is promptly turned against its owners, and opens fire upon OCP security personnel, ("Eat Lead, Suckers!")

Animated series

ED-260, the upgradable version of the Enforcement Droid Series 209 has made numerous appearances in RoboCop: The Animated Series
RoboCop: The Animated Series
RoboCop: The Animated Series is an animated series produced in the 1980s by Marvel Productions, and is based on the character and events of the movie RoboCop....

, but did not appear in RoboCop: Alpha Commando
RoboCop: Alpha Commando
RoboCop: Alpha Commando was a short lived animated series based on the Orion Pictures film RoboCop and the series/films that followed in the 1980s-1990s. It was the second animated version of the character, following on from RoboCop: The Animated Series. The series premiered on September 7, 1998,...

.

Video Games

The ED-209 is also used as a boss
Boss (video games)
A boss is an enemy-based challenge which is found in video games. A fight with a boss character is commonly referred to as a boss battle or boss fight...

 in RoboCop computer and video games, and the video game RoboCop versus The Terminator
Robocop versus The Terminator
RoboCop Versus The Terminator is a video game released for a number of platforms and is based on the RoboCop and Terminator franchises....

. In the 2003 RoboCop game for the Xbox, the ED-209 appeared at several points as a boss or boss-like enemy. The game also featured an upgraded design based on the 209, called the ED-1000.

Comic appearances

There were two ED-209s in the comic RoboCop versus The Terminator (though it is mentioned that there are 200 of them deployed), assisting RoboCop in shooting down Terminators bent on killing Flo. However, their limited intelligence remained a problem. In one instance, when ordered by RoboCop to “scan for cybernetic activity,” the ED-209s immediately registered RoboCop as a target and opened fire, hitting each other by accident.

In Marvel’s 1990 RoboCop comic, OCP Vice President Donald Johnson orders the creation of the ED-309.

In popular culture

  • In an episode of The Simpsons
    The Simpsons
    The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

    (“I, D’oh-Bot
    I, D'oh-Bot
    "I, -Bot", or "I, D'oh!-Bot", is the ninth episode of The Simpsons fifteenth season, which originally aired January 11, 2004...

    ”), Homer
    Homer Simpson
    Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...

     fights an ED-209 built by Professor Frink
    Professor Frink
    Professor John Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr., or simply Professor Frink, is a recurring character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria, and first appeared in the 1991 episode "Old Money". Frink is Springfield's nerdy scientist and professor and is extremely...

     and his son in a robot-fighting television show called Robot Rumble.

  • ED-209 appears in 3 episodes of South Park
    South Park
    South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...

    . He first appears in “Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery
    Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery
    "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery" is the twelfth episode of the third season of Comedy Central's animated series South Park. It originally aired on October 27, 1999...

    ”, Kenny
    Kenny McCormick
    Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is one of the four central characters along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman. His oft-muffled and indiscernible speech—the result of his parka hood covering his...

     wears a life-sized ED-209 Halloween
    Halloween
    Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

     costume. “A Ladder to Heaven
    A Ladder to Heaven
    "A Ladder to Heaven" is episode 91 of the Comedy Central series South Park. It was originally broadcast on November 6, 2002.- Plot :Stan, Kyle and Cartman have won an all-you-can-grab candy prize but cannot claim it without the stub of the ticket they bought. After thinking hard, they remember that...

    ,” featured an ED-209 guarding a house. In “The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer
    The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer
    "The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer" is the fifth episode of the sixth season of the Comedy Central series South Park and the 84th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on April 3, 2002. The episode parodies Russel Crowe's real life altercations as the boys must watch his show...

    ,”

  • The ED-209 makes a cameo appearance in the show Family Guy
    Family Guy
    Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...

    (“Running Mates”) as the “XL-K (Extra Large Killer)” hall pass enforcement robot with a blue and red finish.. The scene in which an OCP executive is killed after complying with orders is also parodied when a young girl is confronted by the XL-K and requested to present a hall pass. It attacks her even after she complies. Also at the ending credits, Mr. Fargous is seen traveling down the hallway. The XL-K interrupts him asking for his hall pass. When he replies Excuse me, the XL-K then opens up his guns pods and demands a second request. Farg has no choice, but to just stand there and get executed.

  • The computer real-time strategy game StarCraft
    StarCraft
    StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...

    features a unit (Terran Goliath) similar to the ED-209. When clicked on repeatedly the Golliath will say "Mil Spec E.D. 209 online." Another unit (Protoss Dragoon) when clicked on repeatedly can say the ED-209's quote, "Drop your weapon. You have 15 seconds to comply. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."

  • ED-209 appears in the final sequences of Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge
    Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge
    Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge was released on November 14, 1987 and it was the sequel to Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter; this game once again used Sierra's AGI.-Plot:...

    , before the player escapes from Vohaul’s asteroid.

  • A robot strongly resembling ED-209 is shown off by Genie in the film Aladdin and the King of Thieves
    Aladdin and the King of Thieves
    Aladdin and the King of Thieves is a 1996 animated film that is the second direct-to-video sequel to the Disney animated feature Aladdin...

    .

Toys and models

  • Kenner toys in 1990 featured an ED-209 figure in their RoboCop and the Ultra Police line. It had a rotating waist and articulated legs. The figure was not to scale and did not have any automatic actions or accessories. It was renamed “ED-260” for the line. the back of the "ED-260" can be opened to add roll caps which could be triggered with a small metal lever to simulate gunfire.
  • Mez-Itz RoboCop line contained an SD (Super Deformed) ED-209 figure in its RoboCop figure pack, which also contained RoboCop and Officer Anne Lewis.
  • Kotobukiya toys featured a figure line in Japan based on the RoboCop movies. ED-209 came in a singular pack which had to be assembled. Also, in a two-pack, RoboCop came with the damaged legs of the ED-209 from the first RoboCop film.
  • JAM Japan has produced a 2.36 inch ED-209 figure.
  • Horizon Models produced a vinyl 1/9 scale ED-209 model. Upon going out of business, the molds were bought by an unknown Thai manufacturer and the models were re-released.
  • The same Thai manufacturer has a 1/12 scale ED-209 model as well.
  • Hot Toys produced a 1/6 scale 15" ED-209 model as part of their Movie Masterpiece series - the popularity of this model later prompted the release of a battle-damaged version. This model was distributed by Sideshow Toys in America and Europe.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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