Gypsy

**Gypsy**, also known as **Gypsum**, is one of the robot characters on *Mystery Science Theater 3000.* Gypsy normally only appears during the host segment parts of the series, but briefly took a seat in the theater to watch the movie in episode #412 *Hercules and the Captive Women*, According to the MST3K storyline, Gypsy takes care of the higher functions on board the Satellite of Love. She needs to use most of her computing power to handle this responsibility, which generally makes her appear slow-witted when dealing with others. Episode #207 *Wild Rebels* demonstrated a much brighter Gypsy when the demand on her systems was temporarily reduced. (She also made a quick appearance in the theater during this experiment when someone mentioned *Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea*.) As the show progressed, she became a more frequent participant in the host segments and appeared somewhat more intelligent.

In #112 *Untamed Youth*, her brain was once X-Rayed, and found to contain RAM chips and a photo of Richard Basehart, of whom she is a big fan. In the same episode, Gypsy was shown to have the ability to copy any material if she was told, she'd make copies by coughing them up, much like hairballs. She made copies of cotton, saltwater taffy, paper towels, Tom Servo even asked her to cough up another Tom Servo, and a partially-built Tom Servo fell out of her mouth. After *Untamed Youth*, she was no longer seen using this ability, though it might explain how Tom Servo made so many copies throughout the years.

As the only "female" aboard the SOL, Gypsy is often portrayed as a mother figure to Crow and Servo while treating either Mike or Joel as the abusive older brother they need to be protected from. This behavior can be seen in Episode #415 *The Beatniks* where she crushes Joel after he cruelly dominates a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors with Crow and Servo (despite the fact that he was punishing them for a prank they pulled on him earlier that morning). This protective trait is carried on in Episode #603 *The Dead Talk Back* when she tries to execute a proper fire drill. Also, she fixes ship-wide decompression when they break a window in Episode #306 *Time of the Apes* and sternly reminds Joel and the robots not to play ball on the satellite. Her parental nature is explicitly depicted in Episode #320 *The Unearthly* when Tom chides Crow for his failure to appreciate all that Gypsy does (in a parody of the short *Appreciating Our Parents*). This motherly nature is forgotten from time to time though, such as when Servo is inspired to ask her out on a date in Episode #503 *Swamp Diamonds*, in which she is openly bored and indifferent to all of Servo's insecure attempts to impress her.

The pressure of being the only "female" robot doesn't seem to weigh her down, and she does her best to demonstrate that she is a strong and independent artificial person. Whether performing "Gypsy Rose Me", she's not bashful about strutting her stuff and doesn't let anyone tell her not to.

In the unaired KTMA pilot, Gypsy was considered to be a male robot, but was later considered female beginning in the second KTMA episode *Revenge of the Mysterions from Mars. Her name also alternated between "Gypsy" and "Gypsum". No explanation for this inconsistency has ever been given.*

During the Episode *The Human Duplicators*, Gypsy mentioned that she singlehandedly redecorated her room, indicating that she had her own room, just like Tom & Crow did.