♦ The Three Igors ♦

Gilligan’s Island has had three individuals with the name Igor, Igor the Cosmonaut, Igor the Henchman and Igor the monkey. Igor the Cosmonaut stands alone and has nothing to do with the Igor’s that work with Dr. Boris Balinkoff the mad scientist who lives on a nearby island.

One theory is that somehow Dr. Balinkoff’s Henchman, Igor (from the episode ‘The Friendly Physician’} was changed into Igor the monkey who was the Doctors sidekick (from the episode, ‘Ring Around Gilligan’)? This would have easily been accomplished with Dr. Balinkoff’s Mind Changing Machine, but how this could have happened is unknown because at the end of ‘The Friendly Physician’ the castaways trapped Balinkoff and Igor in the mind transferring machine exchanging their minds with a dog and cat.

Igor and Dr. Balinkoff locked in the Mind Changing Machine

Somehow Dr. Balinkoff would have had to be transferred back into his original human body. Perhaps the mind exchanging effect was not permanent or quite possibly Dr. Balinkoff had another assistant who helped reverse the transferring process? How the Doctor returned into his human body is unclear but after it did happen, Balinkoff may have transferred his manservant Igor into the body of the small Capuchin monkey as a punishment for fouling up his diabolical plans?

The following are bios of all of three Igors (taken from gilligan.wikia.com)

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Igor the Cosmonaut

Igor is a Russian cosmonaut who completed 679 orbits around the Earth with Ivan, another cosmonaut in the Russian space program. In his ascent to Earth, he and Ivan come down into the lagoon of Gilligan's Island where he is met by the Professor and the castaways. Not believing their stories of being shipwrecked, he forbids them entry to their spacecraft, but he is easily vamped by Ginger, leaving the capsule unguarded and returning later to find Gilligan and the Professor in it. Although the Professor fixes the radio they shorted out, Igor conspires with Ivan to leave the castaways behind when they depart, producing two bottles of vodka stashed in the craft.

Igor and Ivan inside the Soviet Capsule HOΓO  CBTA II

However, Gilligan overhears them and arranges one of the bottles to be filled with water. The Castaways easily drink Igor and Ivan under the table and leave them to be found by their retrieval team, but by time they get back the next morning, Igor and Ivan have been picked up and the castaways have been abandoned once again.

The two Cosmonauts are shown exiting their space capsule which has landed in Gilligan's Lagoon

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Igor the Henchman

Igor is the manservant and bodyguard to Dr. Boris Balinkoff, the eccentric scientist who lives in a spooky castle on Balinkoff Island close to the Castaways on Gilligan’s Island. When Balinkoff brings Gilligan and the Skipper to his castle for his mind exchange experiments, Igor serves them dinner then locks them up in the dungeon after finding them wandering around the castle. After succeeding in imprisoning the other castaways, Igor helps Balinkoff in exchanging their minds with each other and then without Balinkoff, exchanging his body with Ginger who in turn uses his brawn and superior strength to help the others escape and regain their true identities. 

Igor exchanged his body with Ginger, and it felt good!

After Igor is returned to normal, he and Balinkoff are trapped in their own Mind-Transference Machine as Gilligan flips the switch, exchanging their minds with a dog and cat in the device. However, this fate may not have remained permanent as Balinkoff returns later as himself, possibly having dismissed Igor for fouling up his long-term plans.

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Igor the Monkey

Igor is a Capuchin monkey, considered the most intelligent New World monkeys in existence and often used in laboratories. He is the property of Dr. Boris Balinkoff, possibly named after his former manservant. Igor follows him back to the island with mind-control rings backed by a main control device to control the castaways. Igor soon watches from afar as Balinkoff takes Gilligan under his control and the Skipper and Ginger in turn. After Gilligan gets his ring back, 

Igor takes his turn playing with the machine and getting Gilligan to act like a monkey. Convinced his rings will work on anyone, Balinkoff has Igor distribute the rest of the rings, getting them to rehearse an attack on Fort Knox, but his remote control gets smashed and he has to cancel his scheme.

The popular belief is that Igor the manservant and a capuchin
monkey were placed into the Mind Changing Machine that
transferred each of their conciseness into the others ones body.

One theory is that Igor the monkey is possibly named after Dr. Balinkoff's manservant. But it is much more probable that Igor the monkey is indeed Igor the manservant after the Doctor performed a Mind Transfer as a punishment for messing up his mind changing experiment, but this time he somehow adjusted the machine's settings to keep the monkey's voice as well. 

Could it also be possible that somehow Igor, the Russian Cosmonaut could secretly be  Doctor Balinkoff's loyal manservant who has infiltrated the Russian Space Program? Could henchman Igor's mind have been transferred into the body of the Cosmonaut? Did Boris Balinkoff have some diabolical plan to steal soviet secret technologies to be used in his own crazy experiments? And was landing on Gilligan's Island not an accident at all because Igor had planned to land in that area but accidentally overshot Balinkoff's Island by several miles? Anything is possible but the likelihood of that happening is very slim. One of the main reasons why this probably wasn't the case is the fact that Igor the Manservant is too stupid to perform such a complicated task, let alone actually learning how to fly a Russian spacecraft! Also it is doubtful that Igor could actually fool his cosmonaut comrade Ivan unless Ivan was also part of Balinkoff's infiltration plans. Unfortunately we will probably never know the answer to this Igor theory. 

SCIENTIST YES!

MAD NO!

For now the safest thing to assume that the three Igor's are all separate individuals that have each affected the castaways of Gilligan's Island in their own way.  

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