Doctor Who: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Autons
9. The Autons' Real World Origins
Devised by Robert Holmes, one of Doctor Who's most influential writers and script editors, the Autons continue to be revered as one of the show's most iconic villains to this day. Even former showrunner Steven Moffat has shown his love and appreciation for their genius on numerous occasions, including his introduction to the 2013 Special Edition release.
In-universe, the name 'Auton' is derived from 'Auto Plastics' - the name of the factory that the Nestene Consciousness infiltrated in Spearhead from Space. Holmes, however, invented the word as a contraction of 'automaton'. Inspired by the historical metal Turk and homunculi - one of which would appear in his 1977 episode The Talons of Weng-Chiang - the Auton name would become synonymous with the show.
The name would later be borrowed by Joss Whedon, who used it as the species of a character in 1997's Alien Resurrection. There, Holmes' definition of Auton as 'a robot, usually in the form of a human being, designed to follow a precise sequence of instructions' would be expanded to include the suggestion of 'designed by other robots'.
The Autons' debut Doctor Who appearance was actually adapted from a script written for a film by Holmes - 'Invasion' from 1965. Already having dreamed up the idea of facsimiles on the hunt for lost meteorites, it would be the world's newfound fascination with plastic which would serve as the nightmarish base for his iconic villains.
Holmes would later act as Doctor Who's script editor between 1974 and 1977 and would serve as a veteran writer. Scripting famous stories including Pyramids of Mars (1975), The Deadly Assassin (1976), The Caves of Androzani (1984), Holmes also famously created Who-icons the Sontarans.