Gypsy is the female robot aboard the
Satellite of Love on TV's
Mystery Science Theater 3000. She is the only robot aboard who doesn't watch the movie of the week because she is too busy tending to the higher functions of the ship: regulating oxygen mixtures, steering the ship, performing maintenance, and other day to day operations that keep the ship intact and the human test subject aboard (her creator
Joel Robinson and later
Mike Nelson) alive. In fact, it is an inviolable rule that Gypsy cannot watch the movie (except for when she does in
Hercules and the Captive Women when her curiosity got the better of her and she sat in with
Joel and the 'bots for the first fifteen minutes of the film). While the modern day Gypsy was constructed from some tubing, a child safety seat, and a flashlight, the original Gypsy featured during
the show's year on KTMA television was built from what appears to be pieces of a laundry hamper. The original concept for the series involved her watching the movie as well, although this idea was dropped between the filming of the unaired pilot episode and the series premiere. Her original personality was that of a simple, dopey, cow-like pet (an interview with the cast years later recalled that "We only had one female character on the series and she was a cow-like creature voiced by
a man."), but as her character evolved she became the wise, all-knowing, and loving friend to
Joel/
Mike and the 'bots. Also, for reasons known only to her, she is obsessed with actor
Richard Basehart.
Series producer and director Jim Mallon provided Gypsy's voice for seven years and a half years before stepping aside and handing the role to Best Brains staffer Patrick Brantseg. Patrick's take on the character was much like Jim's and unlike the chaos that erupted in MST3K fandom when Mike Nelson replaced Joel Hodgson as the host of the show or when Trace Beaulieu passed the torch of Crow T. Robot to Bill Corbett, there were few complaints regarding the casting switch. This could be because we don't see Gypsy very often; after all, she is busy running the ship's higher functions. She was also responsible for aiding Joel escape to Earth when she believed that Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank were planning to kill her creator. When we do see Gypsy in action it's either because she's taking part in one of Joel's art projects or she's warning Mike about a shipboard malfunction. Gypsy spends most of her free time cleaning up the messes left behind by Mike and the 'bots, and I'm not talking spills and stains. When Mike destroyed the Hubble Space Telescope in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, for example, Gypsy volunteered to fix the disaster he had created. Furthermore, in episode #601, Girls Town, Dr. Forrester launched the Umbilicus, a large tube that connected Deep 13 to Gypsy to act as a transport tube between the Mads and the Satellite of Love. At the end of Season 7 the Umbilicus was cut, freeing Gypsy from her physical link to Deep 13.
After the Satellite of Love crashed back to Earth in the show's series finale, episode #1013 Diabolik, Gypsy formed her own company, Congypsco. She offered an opporunity for Mike and the 'bots to get in on the ground floor, but they declined and her company soon became highly profitable.
References:
http://www.mst3kinfo.com