Saturday/Sunday,
8:25am (repeated 3:20pm),
CBBC
Press release
Well it had to happen eventually, a Robot Wars-esque gameshow about drones, and it’s no accident that it might look and feel Robot Wars-esque given that this too apparently comes from original TV RW-supremo Steve Carsey. It even has house drones, apparently.
Will Best and Rachel Stringer guide four teams through elimination rounds testing flying skills ending in a head to head laser based dogfight.
The clips we’ve seen make it look very cool, somewhere between Metropolis and Tron, but bearing in mind we’re likely to be much older than the intended audience will it stand up to repeated viewing? Watch it and let us know what you think in the comments.
I really want this to work, as CBBC is missing a show like this. It has the feel of Mechanoids about it, but obviously not as post watershed.
I’m not going to be able to watch until tomorrow night so look forward to reading comments in the interim.
It was pleasant enough but a little slow in places. You can see why the drone pilot So TV did didn’t get commissioned as it’s just exciting enough for prime time tv.
For those that want format details, it’s relatively simple. Four two person teams start, all piloting relatively standard quadcopter drones with a fancy shell to distinguish them. The pilot is always a CBBC demographic child, assisted by a friend or parent as a wingman.
In this episode, Round 1 was an assault course, going through hoops, flying at set heights through narrow gaps, coping with the updraft of a massive fan, and avoiding a house drone. Slowest to complete the course is eliminated, colliding with an obstacle ends the run. Presumably if multiple teams fail, it’s a furthest fastest idea for distinguishing.
Round 2 is task based, here it’s adding magnets to the base of the drones to transport weights to a target area, again with a big house drone blocking things. The second team member is used here to work the magnet, as well as offering guidance advice. Again, worst performing is gone, but the winner gets a small advantage in the final.
The final is the combat, unsurprisingly. The winner of round 2 gets a 5 second head start over their opponent, but seeing as all they have to do is reach a designated area to turn on their lasers, it’s not that much of an advantage. The battle is simply to fire your laser at the opponent, first to score four hits wins. Apparently going off course leads to a house drone attacking you, but the arena is large enough for that not to really come into play unless the steering is really bad.
It reminds me of the story about The Golden Shot’s creator, that decides to pitch his ‘new’ idea to ATV, only for them to see it’s basically the same game mechanic in a different set.
This is essentially early Clarkson era Robot Wars without the need for the team to build their own vehicle, there’s a gauntlet stage (Airsault course), a trial (the electromagnet) and finally a battle round to decide the winner. It even has a PPZ! Colin Bryce is no J. Pearce though, and things are a little more measured.
This was quite interesting, not as a show (for various reasons) but for what doesn’t quite work for me.
The airsault course is both not quite visually appealing (it’s just some lit hoops and pillars, I think King of the Nerds was a bit more successful at this really with its moving obstacles and whatever) but also actually quite hard to follow – you really have to pay attention to work out which of the three drones flying is actually the contestant’s, sadly I don’t think *quite* enough thought has been given to how the 3D space looks on your actual 2D television, it’s quite difficult for us to judge how well the obstacles are approached and how fine they might cut it from the angles we’ve got.
The Dogfight is rather spectacularly dull, being as it is several minutes of the drones bouncing up and down and hopefully their wingman managing to press their fire button at the right time. Top Gun it isn’t. Also when they get shot for the last time someone should tell the loser to land their drone as if it had been shot.
The two round twos I’ve seen seem relatively successful although they could do with being a bit more sharply paced.
I’m confused as to what the purpose of the House Drones actually is, on the obstacle course they just seem to fly out of the way if something comes towards them. We’ve yet to see what would actually happen if someone wanders into the PPZ, are they going to take them down or what? I do accept that they look pretty cool though, although the funniest bit of episode one was when the Air Marshall crashed out of control in round one and had to be replaced by the PIG.
Mmm. Really very much the sort of thing that looks as if it might be great if you only ever watched short fast moving clips of it, but as a half hour show I don’t think it’s there, it’s not particularly exciting I’m afraid.
I think the House Drones idea is because Robot Wars had them, to be honest – I’m told that the non ref one has some sort of laser that can be used to shoot at transgressors but like I say, why would you go out that far.
For those who care, it seems that it’s Chris Reynolds behind some of the drone designs – presumably adding some extra radio controlled bits to what seem to be very standard Spyzor vehicles with a little shell around the real body.
From what I see on the iPlayer, it seems like a really dull version of Robot Wars, and pretty much for all the points made above.
As an alternative, I’d suggest someone takes a look at the initial videos coming out from the DRL (Drone Racing League). The first heats of the first meeting are up on YouTube and actually look quite decent. Sure, some of the excitement is lost from it being lightweight flying toys, but given the limited amount they had to work with (and even managing to turn an empty American Football stadium into a course…) they’ve done a pretty decent job. This could work on TV, certainly.
I wonder how expensive relatively-low-budget drones are? A much less elaborate outdoor version of this could make a potentially very good Schlag den nicht Raab race, if German laws about flying drones near TV studios permitted, though I imagine that the drones would have to be somewhat slower and there would probably have to be rather a lot of spares. (Probably no need for the first-person views to be shown on-screen.) On the other hand, if flying drones is so difficult that people can’t be expected to pick it up in a few minutes, maybe not.
They say it can take months to learn, though they have a software simulation here:
http://thedroneracingleague.com/fpv-simulator/
I think the DRL would lose something without the drone cameras though, without them you’re looking at four things racing in a large empty stadium for most part, with them you get a sense of why it might seem exciting. I can’t imagine it working very well at Brainpool Studios at all unless it was a much tighter test of defined skill which would work in the wholly third person.
I laughed at them getting all excited about it being a race when in reality it’s just a series of time trials. I did quite enjoy it though.
Alternative, more F1-influenced take on drone racing here:
Mmm, people are desperate to make it A Thing aren’t they?
I fear that although the tracks are quite exciting to look at initially the act of racing the drones just isn’t a spectacle, they’re too small, and without 3D it’s quite hard to determine how close they are to hitting/avoiding things.