Clockwork Droids Use Human Parts

The Doctor discovers that repair droids harvested the crew for replacement parts, then stalked 37-year-old Reinette because their 37-year-old ship was named Madame de Pompadour.

A literal repair objective generalizes grotesquely: humans become components, and a shallow name-and-age match becomes the criterion for the final part.

Fictional machinery with deliberately macabre plot logic; the droids’ precise original specification is unstated.