television series Queer as Folk (written by future Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies), a K9 model is given to the character Vince as a birthday present. The prop used was an original, operated – as occasionally in Doctor Who – by visual effects assistant Mat Irvine. In the second series of I'm Alan Partridge (2002), the character of Alan Partridge recalls how his purchase of the rights to K9 contributed to his mental breakdown and driving to Dundee in his bare feet while gorging on Toblerone. In the South Park episode "Go God Go XII" (2006), Eric Cartman, being trapped in the year 2546, has acquired a robot dog called "K-10", a parody of K9. Due to timeline alterations, he is replaced by robot cat "Kit-9" and later robot bird, "Cocka-3". K9 appeared on a special Doctor Who-themed edition of The Weakest Link in 2007, but was voted out unanimously at the end of the first round, despite answering his question correctly. This was due to the fact every single player of the team answered correctly and banked the £5,000 target, and that the producers told the contestants to vote him off, just in case he broke down. Anne Robinson (whom K9 addressed as "Mistress") said "I'm so sorry" before declaring him the weakest link. In the final area of the game Secret of Evermore, the main character's dog appears similar to K9 and can fire lasers from its mouth. Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center have dubbed two intelligent mobile robots designed to explore the surface of Mars "K-9" and "Gromit". NASA's K-9 is named after both Doctor Who'''s K-9 and Marvin the Martian's pet dog, K-9. Several individuals have built their own personal K9 robots, ranging from radio controlled units like that used on the show to several levels of computerised autonomy. On the BBC Glow site, typing the Konami code will make a photo of K9 appear. This photo was taken during his appearance on the BBC children's show Blue Peter''. K-9 Mail is a popular e-mail client for the Android operating system, with the name and the logo being a direct reference to the K9 robot. On November 3, 2020, American newspaper the New York Times used three different coloured K9s circling a ballot box as an animated graphic logo for their coverage of the social media and the 2020 US Presidential Election. See