ED-209
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The ED-209 (Enforcement Droid 209) is a fictional crime-fighting robot in the RoboCop movies. The ED-209 was designed by Omni Consumer Products for law enforcement and defense purposes.
Capabilities
ED-209's weapons consist of three 20 mm machine guns (two on the left arm, one on the right) and a three-round rocket launcher on the right arm. The rocket launcher fires heat-seeking missiles. A compartment behind the robot's head is equipped with twin launchers which could be loaded with either mortars or gas grenades for riot control situations. ED-209 can also swing its arms to knock enemies away. The ED-209 has the capabilities of speaking fluent English in a commanding tone (the voice is of RoboCop executive producer Jon Davison). When engaged in combat, however, ED-209 growls using the sound of a black leopard, in order to intimidate the enemy.When requesting compliance from perceived lawbreakers, ED-209 states plainly what the party has to do to disengage the robot and the number of seconds the party has to comply. The robot will count down remaining compliance time in intervals of five seconds before utilizing deadly force.
One of the ED-209's key weaknesses is the design of its "feet"; it can move on a flat plane perfectly well, but an attempt to navigate a staircase ended with the robot tumbling down and landing on its back, immobilized and squealing like a pig. In RoboCop 2, a news report about the mass deployment of the ED-209 features the robot getting its foot caught in a manhole and collapsing.
The initial failure of the ED-209 program led to the creation of Robocop as an alternative way of fighting crime in Detroit and Delta City. When Robocop eventually tried to arrest Jones for murder, he found himself confronting the powerful droid which nearly killed him. In the film's finale, Robocop succeeds in destroying an ED-209 with a powerful Cobra Assault cannon.
Production problems
This robot, like any project, was created with numerous glitches, mostly due to budget cutting and a razor and blades business model. In part, the ED-209 project was designed to fail. The reasoning behind this is that the contractors stood to make a lot of money by selling replacement parts at a higher price and performing maintenance on the robots, while making the robot inexpensive enough for many international governments to purchase for their defense programs.One of the unforeseen side-effects of this poor workmanship was that the prototype robot killed an OCP executive during a product demo after failing to comprehend that the man had already cooperated with the robot's demands to disarm. The OCP chairman was displeased at this setback as it impeded his corporate plans, but failed to demonstrate any remorse. The fact that Dick Jones allowed the robot to be needlessly loaded with live ammunition for a simple demonstration in the boardroom, thus endangering all the occupants as well as killing a member is apparently ignored.
Trivia
ED-209 was intended to be a comment on modern American design and corporate design policy; specifically, form over function, "just like an American car". The model includes oil coolers, radiators, and heat exchangers. In addition, mounted on the legs are four large hydraulic cylinders. The open grille for the radiator in the front is, according to designer Craig Davis, "a big, obvious, extremely stupid place to put an open area like a radiator on a fighting unit like ED-209".According to Robocop writer Ed Neumeier, the ED-209 droid was designed to resemble a bipedal Vietnam-era Huey helicopter.
The ED-209 was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("I, D'oh-Bot"), where Homer fights an ED-209 look-a-like in a "Battlebots" (US); "Robot Wars" (UK) style fighting television show called "Robot Rumble", and in South Park ("Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery") which was worn by Kenny as a Halloween Costume and in The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer Chef's TV turns into a walking killing machine that resembles ED-209. The ED-209 also makes a cameo appearance in the show Family Guy ("Running Mates") as the "XL-K" hall pass enforcement robot. The sene in which an OCP executive is killed after complying with orders is also parodied in a student being gunned down after successfully presenting a hall pass.
The ED-209 also has a marked resemblance in the leg mechanics, to the AT-ST (All Terrain Scout Transport) "Scout Walker" of Star Wars, only on a smaller scale.
The 1997 computer game G-nome features a very similar looking vehicle dubbed the Union Tactical Defense HAWC.
The Delta-2 Peacebringer (Military Bot) in the computer game Deus Ex bears some resemblance to and functions much like the ED-209, although it has more of a slab-sided hull.
The Goliath unit in StarCraft, if clicked on multiple times, mentions "MilSpec ED-209".
ED-209 was listed as #5 in Wizard Magazine's "10 Villains We'd Like to Forget." The text reads: "Cool looking? Sure. Functional? Hell no. Forget about the fact it killed an innocent man and blew off its own arm, the dumb thing couldn't even master stairs."
External links
| RoboCop |
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| Films: RoboCop | RoboCop 2 | RoboCop 3 |
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TV: ' | ' | ' | ' |
| Video Games: RoboCop | RoboCop 2 | RoboCop 3 | RoboCop vs. The Terminator |
| Comics: RoboCop vs. The Terminator | Frank Miller's RoboCop |
| Characters: ED-209 |
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