Basic Trope: Medicine and/or surgery is taken care of by machines.
- Straight: Some After-Action Healing Drama involves Bob, The Hero, being operated on by an advanced apparatus.
- Exaggerated: Bob is reduced to just a pile of fleshy shreds, but the machine manages to revive him to full capacity.
- Downplayed: The machine is just there to keep Bob stable until he gets medical attention from actual surgeons.
- Justified: War Is Hell, and battles can go pear-shaped very quick. And there's not enough of The Medic to go around, so machines that can do all the medical care help ease the burden.
- Inverted: The machine is set up to Mercy Kill soldiers who are hanging on by a thread, and letting them pass as humanely and comfortably as possible.
- Subverted: Bob is put in the care of the Auto-Doc, but then The Medic comes in...
- Double Subverted: ...just to keep an eye on things and make sure the machine works right.
- Parodied: The Auto-Doc works for the most mundane of injuries, like paper cuts or pimples.
- The Auto-Doc has a Benevolent A.I. who treats its patients like a parent would a child.
- Zig Zagged: The Auto-Doc gets to work on Bob, but it suddenly glitches and it seems like it's hurting him... but then it reveals it was just slightly underpowered. It glitches again and gives him Worst Aid, but later it actually undoes the damage like it should have done the first go around.
- Averted: Machines are present, but they don't automatically do any medical stuff.
- Enforced: The author dislikes doctors but loves robots, and so puts machines in the place of medical personnel.
- Lampshaded: "Aw man, a robot doctor? Well, at least there's no bad bedside manner..."
- Invoked: The General, a Reasonable Authority Figure, demands Auto-Docs to be deployed, knowing the value of getting soldiers back in the fight as fast as possible. A robot can do it faster and more efficiently than a human can.
- Exploited: Bob intentionally chooses the Auto-Doc over The Medic, just to get a reaction from the latter.
- Defied: Bob quickly requests The Medic instead of an Auto-Doc, due to having a fear of robots.
- Discussed: "This would be a whole lot easier if we had robots taking the edge off." "Dunno, dude, those things give me the creeps..."
- Conversed: "Oh hey, it's my favorite part! I love these robot doctors!"
- Implied: Bob is being wheeled past one of the tents in the base. It has what looks like a chair and some sort of mechanical apparatus around it, but The Medic is nowhere to be seen.
- Deconstructed: Being operated on by an Auto-Doc makes patients a lot more stressed out, due to them perceiving it as a cold, unfeeling machine getting far too close for their liking.
- Reconstructed: Later models of the Auto-Doc are envisioned as a Robot Buddy, designed to take the place of an actual doctor without tying up said doctor to begin with. And with said Robot Buddy being mass-produced, this allows for multiple soldiers to be tended to.
- Played For Laughs: The Auto-Doc has a Dr. Jerk persona as its personality, regularly snarking at its patients while healing them.
- Played For Drama: Usage of the Auto-Doc is an indicator that things have gotten desperate, since doctors and medics are growing fewer and fewer in number.
- Played For Horror: The Auto-Doc gets infected by a Contagious A.I., whose patients later die horribly after being operated on by it.
Don't worry, kid, the Auto Doc will take care of you.
