Kryten - Personality

Personality

Having lost his obedience programmes, Kryten has been able to better himself. While he continues to be a sanitation droid, and to enjoy cleaning and serving others, he has also become the science expert amongst the Dwarfers, often leading missions such as their search for Rimmer on the psi-moon in "Terrorform". The dichotomy between these two aspects of his personality has led to Rimmer naming him things such as "Captain Bog-bot" and "Commander U-Bend".

Kryten has also extended his emotional range, which has led to him deactivating his shutdown disk (DivaDroid believes in planned obsolescence), although the crew were then forced into a showdown with his would-be replacement. His greatest ambition is to be human, and to this end he has attempted to learn to lie and insult people (mostly Rimmer), although he has trouble with the words "smeg head" (the best he can manage is "smeeeeeeee heeeeeeeee").

Perhaps the most significant element of his personality is guilt. When his ability to feel guilty for his actions is compromised in some way, he can become careless, rude and even aggressive. This guilt is not necessarily balanced out by a sense of pride in the good work he does — in the episode 'The Inquisitor', he believed his selflessness was purely a matter of programming and therefore he had not led a worthwhile life. In the series 5 episode "Back to Reality, Kryten almost commits suicide when under the belief that he took the life of a human (he later found out it was just an illusion created by the despair squid).

Kryten had at least three spare heads, one of which has droid-rot (a condition similar to computer senility) that gives it a Lancastrian accent. The spare heads can engage in conversation with Kryten. Once, the other heads held a poll and voted Kryten as the ugly, big-eared one, upsetting Kryten. The others took turns being head head. All of these were destroyed due to the final step of Mamet's joke; eventually a 2X4B mechanoid will "blow its top" (due to Lister wanting to put ketchup on a lobster). The "negadrive" which caused this has been removed, and, luckily, Kryten's personality chips survived and were placed in a new head. It is not made clear whether or not the personality chips of his spare heads were destroyed.

Kryten thinks that his middle name "2X4B" is jerky, but says he once knew a "poor sucker" of a mechanoid whose middle name was "2Q4B". He also knew a robot called Gilbert, who suffered from computer senility, who preferred to be called 'Rameces Niblick III, Kerplunk, Kerplunk, Whoops Where's My Thribble'.

Kryten formed an irrational dislike of the new Kristine Kochanski when he first met her, mostly out of a fear that she and Lister would fall in love and abandon him. However he grew to respect her (although not necessarily like her) after she saved Lister's life from the Epideme virus.