| Tom Servo |
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Tom Servo is one of the two wise-cracking Robot main characters of the show '' Mystery Science Theater 3000 '' (''MST3K''). He was built by Joel Robinson to act as a companion and help stave off madness as he was forced to watch terrible movies. He is somewhat more mature and cynical than his companion Crow T. Robot . Tom Servo is a red Puppet that has a Gumball Machine (Carousel Executive Snack Dispenser) for a head, a body composed of a toy "Money Lover Barrel" coin bank and a toy car engine block, and a bowl-shaped hovercraft skirt (a Halloween 'Boo Bowl') instead of legs. His arms are a pair of small white ventriloquist's dummy hands on the ends of springs that are not really functional as arms, a point that is commented on occasionally throughout the series. (Oddly, though, some episodes feature Tom with objects already in his hands, raising the unanswered question of how they got there.) His shoulders are made from the front of an Eveready Floating Lantern. Because Servo's head is transparent, Chromakeyed images appear projected through it, and thus a second puppet was built for use in the theater segments, entirely spray-painted black. This black Servo also appeared in a host segment in Season 6. Servo's appearance has changed over time. In the pilot for ''MST3K'', the robot who would become Servo was named "Beeper", who just spoke in beeps that only Crow could understand. He was an all-silver robot vaguely shaped like the ultimate Servo, with funnel-shaped shoulders, silver rubber tube arms, and a small fishbowl for a head. He was renamed 'Servo' after a vending machine called the Servotron. Sometime between the pilot and episode K03 (''''), Servo's head was replaced with the now-familiar gumball machine used throughout the series. (''MST3K'' archival site mst3ktemple.com presents a substantive argument that this replacement was probably done before or during episode K01, '' Invaders From The Deep '', based on an analysis of related set and costume changes. {Link without Title} ). In Season 1 on the Comedy Channel , he was given a red color, longer black tube arms, squared white shoulders, a different hoverskirt, and a gumball machine with a large, white beak. The beak was changed back to silver later in the season, and by Season 2 the black tubing used for his arms was replaced by a pair of small silver springs. This physical form was kept throughout the remainder of the series, except for a brief flirtation (during episodes 205 and 206) with a slim cylindrical gumball-machine head to try to reduce the screen area Servo's head obscured. It was introduced as a "haircut" that Joel gave Servo, but quickly abandoned. Servo's voice and personality also changed during the show's early years. While ''). Whenever a member of the cast is required to dress in Drag for a sketch, Servo usually does the honors. This is both because of the dichotomy of women's clothes amusingly contrasted with puppeteer Murphy's strong Baritone voice and because, in Murphy's words, "Servo looks better in a dress than Crow." Tom Servo also appeared in the '''' is also known to contain a reference to Tom Servo's Used Robots in the directory to the station's Promenade business area, though it is unlikely that this reference ever appeared onscreen. REFERENCES
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