Sektor


Sektor is a player character from the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise created for Midway Games by Ed Boon and John Tobias. Making his debut in Mortal Kombat 3 in 1995, he is a member of the Lin Kuei clan of assassins who underwent transformation into cyborgs. Along with counterparts Cyrax and Smoke, Sektor was assigned to hunt down the rogue former clansman Sub-Zero. Unlike Cyrax and Smoke, Sektor never rediscovered his human side and pledged his complete loyalty to the Lin Kuei. He battled with Sub-Zero over leadership of the clan before forming his own faction, the Tekunin; composed entirely of other cybernetic warriors. His backstory prior to his transformation is expanded upon in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, in which he is officially seen as a human prior to automation for the first time.
Sektor has also been featured in other Mortal Kombat'' media such as the 1996 animated series, ', and the 2011 web series, '. The character has received mostly positive reception, particularly for his Fatality finishing moves and personality, but a response to his gameplay has been decisively mixed.

Appearances

In video games

When the Lin Kuei decide to automate their ninja in the events leading up to Mortal Kombat 3, Sektor was the first volunteer to undergo the process, which he did out of loyalty to the clan. Designated as unit LK-9T9, he was sent to find and kill the rogue defector Sub-Zero, who had quit the clan after refusing to be mechanized. Future events would leave Sektor as the only active cyborg remaining out of the original three created, with Smoke having been captured and shut down in an Outworld prison before he was subsequently enslaved by Noob Saibot while Cyrax joined Sonya Blade and Jax Briggs as a member of the Outer World Investigation Agency after his human soul was restored. During his many violent battles against Outworld forces, Sektor's programming became corrupted to the point that he believed the Lin Kuei Grandmaster to be inferior and killed him, but he was stopped from claiming the Dragon Medallion, the proof of the clan's leadership, by a returning Sub-Zero, who defeated Sektor in battle and claimed the title of Grandmaster for himself. Sektor fled to Japan thereafter and formed the Tekunin, his own clan of cyborg ninja warriors.
Sektor returned in , but he plays a minor role in the game's Konquest mode when he captured the Edenian demigod Taven while he was searching his father, Argus', temple for a weapon he left behind and imprisoned him in a Tekunin warship. Sektor tried to interrogate Taven about a message he had received from Argus, but failed to glean anything from him. Before he could try further, the warship was attacked by Sonya Blade and the Special Forces, Taven escaped in the ensuing chaos, and while Sektor confronted him before he could leave, the Edenian defeated him in battle. Following this, Sektor escaped from the warship before it self-destructed.
In Mortal Kombat, an alternative-timeline retelling of the first three games, Sektor is depicted as the son of the Lin Kuei Grandmaster, a position the former hoped to usurp from him. He is introduced during the Shaolin Tournament as a human Chinese member of the clan who, along with Cyrax, was paid handsomely by tournament organizer Shang Tsung to compete and kill Earthrealm's fighters. Sektor and Cyrax had conflicting views over the Lin Kuei's impending "Cyber Initiative", which called for all of its members to be transformed into cyborgs. Sektor wholly supported the proposition while Cyrax was reluctant to surrender his humanity. Sektor later came to blows with Cyrax when the latter refused to kill Johnny Cage in battle, but was defeated by his comrade, who quit the clan soon after. During the second Mortal Kombat tournament, a cyberized Sektor attacked Smoke and attempted to kidnap him so he could be cyberized as well, only to be prevented by the thunder god Raiden. However, in a reversal of Smoke and Sub-Zero's storylines from MK3, the Lin Kuei captured Sub-Zero inside Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's arena and eventually cyberized him, with Sektor pledging his services to the Kahn in exchange. When Shao Kahn launched an invasion of Earthrealm, Sektor and the rest of the cyberized Lin Kuei launched their own attack on the Earthrealm defenders to stop them from interfering with the Kahn's plans, only to be thwarted by defeated by the warrior Nightwolf. Despite this, Shao Kahn's wife Sindel completed the clan's objective of slaughtering the Earthrealm warriors.
Sektor makes a cameo in Mortal Kombat X. After the previous game, as shown in the comic book prequel, Sektor completely cyberized the Lin Kuei and made clone robots in his image to bolster the ranks. After the revenant Sub-Zero was revived and returned to human form, Sektor sent his robots to capture the wayward warrior again. Apparently, it failed due to Sub-Zero's being turned into Chaosrealm cleric Havik's slave by a dagger he tried to retrieve for Raiden. After Sub-Zero recovered from both the curse and his injuries, he infiltrated the Lin Kuei to stop Sektor for good. During the ensuing fight, Sektor captured Sub-Zero, but the latter outwitted him by uploading a virus into the cyber Lin Kuei's systems, restoring Cyrax's humanity and causing him to turn on Sektor. With Cyrax's help, Sub-Zero killed Sektor by decapitating him, though he kept his parts to access his memory files. In doing so, he discovered that the Lin Kuei had aided the sorcerer Quan Chi in the slaughter of the Shirai Ryu clan and Hanzo Hasashi's murder. The Lin Kuei were to pledge loyalty to fallen Elder God Shinnok as part of the agreement, but when the time came, Sektor and the Lin Kuei refused due to Quan Chi resurrecting Hanzo as the undead revenant Scorpion; an act that Sektor felt violated the terms as Hanzo was still "alive". Sektor also appeared as a variation for the downloadable character Triborg.
A time-displaced Sektor appears in Mortal Kombat 11 as an NPC. Sektor and his Cyber Lin Kuei army are revived by the keeper of time Kronika and brought into her ranks. They are joined by Sub-Zero’s former apprentice, Frost, who became Sektor’s trusted second-in-command and later successor after undergoing the cyberization process. He, Cyrax, and Frost, backed by Noob Saibot, kidnapped all of Sub-Zero’s Lin Kuei warriors and forcibly converted them into cyborgs. After learning of what they had done, Sub-Zero and Hanzo arrived at the Cyber Lin Kuei's factory to shut it down. Sektor confronted them after Cyrax is freed from his control, revealing he contributed to Hanzo becoming Scorpion, but is defeated and later deactivated when Cyrax shuts down the factory. Noob and Frost escape with Sektor's body, which Kronika's allies use to revive him and the Cyber Lin Kuei. Once they were ready, the cyborgs joined the Black Dragon crime cartel in storming the Special Forces base, where Kano used a kill-switch installed in Sektor's systems to destroy it. When the joint Earthrealm/Outworld armies launched an attack on Kronika's keep, the Cyber Lin Kuei attempted to stop them under Frost's leadership, but Raiden destroyed them. In Sub-Zero’s arcade ending, he discovers Sektor was responsible for corrupting Bi-Han before he eventually became Noob Saibot.

Design and gameplay

As a byproduct of all the costumes worn for the filming of Mortal Kombat 3 being red, Sektor, played by Sal Divita, was the first of the three cybernetic ninjas to be conceived, during which he was simply called "Cyber-Ninja." When Cyrax was later added to the roster, he and Sektor were nicknamed "Mustard" and "Ketchup," respectively, before their final names were determined. John Tobias said that Cyrax and Sektor's design was in part inspired by Boba Fett and the Predator. According to Ed Boon, he proved the most difficult of the new MK3 characters to name, a decision that extended late into the development process until "Sektor" was finally chosen because it was the name that the team "didn't hate the most." In an April 1995 feature about the game by VideoGames magazine while it was still in production, Boon gushed about Sektor's "great" then-unnamed "Compactor" Fatality: "He stands in front of you and all this machinery comes out of his chest and just crushes you." In the 1995 television special about the making of MK3 that was shot while the game was in production, a brainstorming session among the development team was filmed in which they were discussing the cyber-ninja characters; rejected names included "Saibot X-11" and "Defcon," while special effects designer John Vogel joked that the game would have a secret character named "Mayo," in reference to Cyrax and Sektor's development names. Divita was also shown in one segment putting on Sektor's helmet before engaging series graphic artist Carlos Pesina in a mock fight.
Sektor's development name is referenced in ' as the name of one of Sektor's combos in his Sambo fighting style, and he also has a special in Armageddon called "Ketchup's Revenge." Like Scorpion's sprite being multiplied for the series' human ninjas, palette swaps of Sektor were used to create Cyrax and the robotic Smoke. Being a cyborg, Sektor has the abilities to shoot out missiles from his chest and project fire from implements attached to his wrists, which he uses for certain special moves and Fatalities. He also utilizes a teleport uppercut for one of his special moves. When Fatalities are performed on him, his corpse and contents are human, although he bleeds oil when hit.
From MK3 and its updates to Mortal Kombat Gold, Sektor's appearance originally resembled an armored ninja, but the series' transition into full 3D allowed for more mechanical design possibilities, the cyber-ninja template having first changed with Cyrax in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Sektor received an exact replica of Cyrax's design change with a red recolor; the lower body appears more mechanical, yet the head remains the same. Sektor retained this appearance in '. He finally received his own original design in Armageddon, leaving his helmet design as the only visual link to Cyrax. The Krypt in Armageddon has concept art of Sektor holding a weapon similar to a polearm ; the concept was dropped in favor of giving him two lightsaber-like swords in the game.
Sektor's Fatalities in MK2011 involve the dismemberment of his opponents, whether through an implement fired from his chest, or cutting of them into several pieces before blowing the segments up with missiles. His and Cyrax's MK3 costumes were released together in June 2011 as downloadable content for the reboot game.

In other media

Sektor is briefly seen in two episodes of the 1996 animated series '. In the , he and Cyrax led an attack on Earthrealm that was thwarted by the Earthrealm defenders. He individually challenges Kitana but is defeated, during which Kitana deflects one of his missiles with her fans. During a brief flashback scene at the Lin Kuei compound in the , he was unmasked and depicted as a black man with long dreadlocks. They are also shown in their present forms as working for the Grandmaster in attempting to apprehend Sub-Zero while fighting the Earth warriors before they later retreat from battle by exiting through a portal. Sektor did not appear in the 1997 film ', which instead saw Smoke utilizing his chest missiles during a fight scene with Liu Kang.
He makes one appearance in the 2011 first season of director Kevin Tancharoen's web series and is played by Peter Shinkoda. In the ninth episode, he and Cyrax are first shown in their human forms and are being trucked to a nondescript warehouse that serves as the Lin Kuei headquarters. After a successful test battle pitting them against cyborgs disguised as human fighters, Sektor and Cyrax themselves are seen undergoing automation, the process of which is shown in detail for the first time in any type of MK media while featuring moderately graphic imagery. They then fight two against one in hand-to-hand combat against another cybernetic named Hydro, who decisively pounds Sektor until Cyrax gains the upper hand that enables them to team up and finish Hydro off by decapitating him, all while the Grandmaster and a pre-injury Kano watch from inside a laboratory.

In promotion and merchandise

Sektor made his official debut when a close-up of Divita in costume was featured on the April 1995 cover of VideoGames with the tagline, "Johnny Cage is dead. Reptile is missing. The Cyber-Ninja lives." In 2011, Sektor was included in a "Mortal Kombat Klassic" three-pack of action figures along with Cyrax and Smoke that was released by Jazwares, and was one of twenty MK characters featured on 2.5" x 3.5" collectible magnets from Ata-Boy Wholesale.

Reception

placed Sektor 26th—one spot behind Cyrax—in their 2012 list of the top fifty Mortal Kombat characters, and GamesRadar named Sektor, Cyrax and Smoke in a three-way tie for first in their ranking of "gaming's most malicious machines," commenting that "no one does killer cyborgs quite like MK." Armando Rodriguez of 411mania.com ranked Sektor as the ninth-best MK character, while fans ranked Sektor as the nineteenth-best MK character in a 2013 online vote hosted by Dorkly that rated the series' entire character roster.
In 2011, UGO ranked Sektor's "Compactor" Fatality from MK3 as the fifteenth-most gruesome finishing move ever, adding: "That's some impressive engineering there, whoever built that evil robot. Nice work!" It was additionally ranked among the series' best by Game Informer, Cheat Code Central, and IGN, though the latter also criticized Sektor himself for being a "lazy Cyrax clone." Both of his MK2011 finishers topped Pastes list of the best Fatalities from the game, while the "Scarecrow" finisher in particular was ranked second in Game Rant's list of the top ten Fatalities in the reboot. FHM included it in their selection of the game's nine most brutal Fatalities, describing the mutilated opponent as "looking like an action figure abused by a careless kid." Complex listed the finisher as the 27th-craziest video game Fatality ever. Bloody Disgusting's Bill Frye ranked it as his favorite overall Fatality: "I finally like Sektor because of this." The "Scarecrow" was omitted from Prima Games' 2014 list of the fifty best series Fatalities, but "Robo-Sek" from MK2011 was included at fifteenth and the "Compactor" from MK3 at eleventh.
Sektor's appearance in MK: Legacy has also been well received. Ben Kendrick of Screen Rant said, "Cyrax and Sektor may not have the same fan-fueled clout as the traditional MK ninjas—but, despite being a bit light on character development, the pair has some of the coolest action-shots featured in the entire run of the series." IGN gave the "Cyrax & Sektor" episode itself a score of nine out of ten, describing it as "pretty damn terrific" while praising the special effects, and " big fight sequence at the end of the episode is probably the coolest battle of the entire season." C.J. Miozzi of GameFront wrote, "Cyrax is a whiny baby about . I never liked that guy—huge Sektor fan, right here." Fearnet praised the "complete accuracy" of the episode's depiction of the characters.