Show Discussion: Robot Wars

By | July 24, 2016

New_Robot_Wars_logoSundays, 8pm,
BBC2

It’s been away for a while but tonight Robot Wars returns promising more story and emotion than ever before, which really captures the appeal of the original.

I’m joking of course, people tune in for watching big old robots fight each other. And we’re not joking when we suggest old, there are teams (and house robots!) here who were part of the original series over a decade ago, and Jonathan Pearce and Dr Noel Sharkey return to commentate and judge ties.

New are hosts Dara O’Briain (it’s vaguely science so it’s Dara!) and new reporter Angela Scanlon, Sethu Vijayakumar and Lucy Rogers join the judging line-up and there’s a new bulletproof arena.

We’re hoping for lots of destruction and not just waiting for a robot to be pushed into The Pit like loads of old battles used to end and got really boring.

It will be interesting to see how this does, the Battlebots revival started fairly strongly in the US but seems to have tailed off rather by series two. Let us know what you think in the comments.

38 thoughts on “Show Discussion: Robot Wars

  1. Andrew 'Kesh' Sullivan

    Robot Wars is back and more grown-up than ever

    First point to bring up is the new arena. It’s 22m x 22m and to be honest, it looks very sparse compared to the arena of old. In each corner is a CPZ for the House Robots, and the only obstacles are a flipper, a flame pit, 5 pneumatic spikes and the ever-present Pit of Oblivion, which is activated by hitting a tyre as usual. No angle grinders or drills along the side walls, but it’s prettied up with a polycarbonate cage around the entire arena and there’s green laser beams everywhere, because reasons

    In each heat, 8 robots are split into 2 groups of 4. They battle each other in a 4-way melee with the top 2 of each group moving forwards into a mini league of 4 robots

    In this mini league, each of the 4 robots face each other opponent with 3 points for a win by knockout and 2 points for a win by judges’ decision. Ties between 2 teams are broken by their performance in their heat against each other. Again, the top 2 move forward to a final match, with the winner moving on to the Grand Final

    Overall, it retains the spirit of the original show, but it has a more serious edge to it. It DID hold my interest and it is still an entertaining watch, but I miss the ‘fun’ of previous series. Dara is a competent host, as is Angela in the pits, but Craig Charles was a great showman with his energy and enthusiasm that is sadly lacking here

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  2. Brig Bother Post author

    That was really interesting in that it feels like the first half gets a lot of things wrong and the second half gets a lot of things right.

    The whole thing comes down to the story. The show tells the story of the day effectively so there’s *a lot* of setting-up during the first half hour, which features all of two fights. This annoyed the hell out of me but I do think there’s a good payoff when we get to the group stages and we start to see increasingly battered robots fight each other and the garage time really feels important.

    My gut says the balance needs to be a little less docusoap and a little more theatrical, the original was very good at this, we don’t really have any sort of build up to many of the fights really, Dara and Angela (who was very good I thought) are just reporters really and I think it needs a ringmaster. The set lacks a certain verticality.

    I’ve no idea what the field removed effect is all about, it looked rubbish.

    The second half (seven fights) is a marked improvement on the first half (two fights). The best bits remain when robots damage each other rather than fall into the pit (although the ending was quite funny).

    I got tired of the original fairly quickly, I probably will end up watching the rest of this.

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    1. Matt Clemson

      Thinking about it, it strikes me that it’s an hour that lends itself very nicely to a 40-50 minute cut for export/filler/Dave purposes.

      Reply
  3. Clive of Legend

    Absolutely superb contestant casting, I thought. I wanted every single team in that arena to win. So much more good-spirited than a lot of the contestants on Battlebots.

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  4. Matt C

    A question springs to mind: In the past, were flywheels allowed to already be spinning at the point the fight began? I’ve a nagging feeling they were, but I’m not sure. It looked here like they had to go from a standing start, which gives them a weakness of a spin-up time

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    1. Mike

      Depends on the series. When spinners first came to prominence (well…Hynodisc) they could be spinning from the start. This changed later (series 5?) so that spinners had to be still at the start. Hence in series 7 every robot trying to hit Typhoon in the two seconds before it span up, and the controversial end to the Storm/Typhoon restarted final.

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  5. Michael

    Whisper it, but as a fan of the originals, it didn’t work for me.

    The arena feels very small, and it felt like the house robots had very little to do. The format changes really don’t work for me, when you end up with a final that is more “hope the opponent falls apart first” than “let’s be aggressive”. I wanted less docusoap, more fun.

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  6. John R

    I wasn’t that impressed after marathon watching the original on Challenge all day.

    It was missing that certain Colosseum battle arena feel that Craig Charles did so well, I don’t care where you come from or what you do in your day job I just want to see your robots fighting each other!

    The second half was certainly an improvement on the first half when they actually got into the head to head battles though.

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  7. John R

    Oh, they also need to ditch the pointless 3:00 clock displayed at the start of each battle as it vanishes within a few seconds anyway, and also ditch the slow motion replays until the end of the match…

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  8. Brig Bother Post author

    1.9m/10%. I think that’s a bit disappointing for the hype, although it’s not completely awful by any means.

    Also 21% of the 16-34 demo, which means that of all the 200 16-34s who were watching telly at the time 42 of them were tuned in to Robot Wars.

    What’s really interesting is that Dragon’s Den after it did 2.9m/14.4%.

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  9. Alex

    This doesn’t feel like Robot Wars. This feels like the Battlebots revival with a different logo slapped on it.

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  10. Karen

    Really quite disappointed, it feels like they’re trying to make a kids show appeal more to adults rather than keeping the fun for everyone feel of the original. The whole production feels really subdued and nothing feels exciting. As other people have said, Craig Charles had that ringmaster presence and Dara just isn’t that kind of presenter. I’d be very surprised if it holds its rating next week.

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  11. Brig Bother Post author

    One of the things people have commented on is that it looks like the arena’s quite small. I expect it’s probably about the same size as the original (I’m sure someone will pipe up if this isn’t the case) but the studio feels so low-ceilinged, is my issue. It feels quite claustrophobic.

    It’s a silly thing to quibble about given the the show mainly works on a 2D plane, but it’s the one set-thing I picked up on the most.

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    1. Alex

      The Wiki suggests the original arena was 32×48 feet. So the arena’s actually a bit bigger now, then.

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    2. Malcolm Owen

      If you look at the new Battlebots (and arguably earlier seasons), the arena has little of a bearing on the match result, and is largely a big open space with some small annoyances.
      The new Robot Wars arena seems to lean proceedings on the team’s ability and creation as well, offering a hefty space to fight in with a few widely-distanced hazards. The bigger space to work in helps showcase the robots a lot more, and that’s good.
      And while the hazards are off to the edges, they are still a bit too impactful. More specifically the Pit. Sure, it helps less-weaponised robots by giving a way to end the fight against an overpowered opponent, but it’s an “instant kill” that ends fights too quickly. While the fans may have been upset if it had been removed, maybe it could have been replaced by something quite damaging, but still doesn’t grind the fight to a halt.

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      1. Karen

        Watching series 4 recently gives some idea on how to fix the pit, since there it’s producer controlled and descends usually when time is running out or a robot has already been incapacitated. Formalising that to be the pit comes into play when there’s only 30 seconds left as a last chance to determine a stalemate would do a lot to manage it’s impact on a battle.

        Reply
  12. Mike

    Don’t forget there would be a LOT of people who have never seen Robot Wars before, hence having to go through “these are the House Robots”, “These are the pits” etc. I would guess the first half will speed up over the weeks.

    The one thing I found curious was the lack of reference to the previous shows. For example Razer, two time World Champion, was described as “having been around for a while”. Strange, as it’s still being made by Mentorn that there has obviously been a production decision to gloss over the history of the show

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    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Mmm, I don’t know, I didn’t think there was a great deal of explanation of how it works really – and really it doesn’t really need it (here are some robots, they’re going to knock the shit out of each other. And there are a few added dangers to avoid.) We’ll see. With nine battles over the hour the *maximum* arena time is going to be 27 minutes plus replays, so there’s a very considerable amount of time given over to not-battling. As I say, I get where they’re coming from, I think it needs to be quicker in getting on with it, devote a little more time to arena theatrics (it was a bit cold in places) and a be little bit smarter with its storylining.

      I did quite like the series one of Gladiators-style house robots introductions.

      As we always say – watch the trend.

      Reply
  13. Brig Bother Post author

    Incidentally whilst I was initially quite upset that drones aren’t on this, given how Airmegeddon bored me to tears I think it’s absolutely the correct decision.

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  14. Chris M. Dickson

    Seemed to me to do rather a lot right. Sure, the show took a while to get around to the first two fights, but the first half didn’t actually feel slow to me; the only parts which risked starting to drag were the promo videos of the final four and even those got off the builders’ stories and onto the robots’ stories quickly – and the development of story from bout to bout was genuinely interesting; maybe a bit more Scrapheap than Robot Wars, but the emphasis on repair worked for me. While the daft green lasers didn’t help, the graphics were very good. The de-emphasis of the House Robots was a step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned, especially in the opening bouts.

    What everybody else said: contestants and robots were good, that strange video effect was rubbish. though maybe it looks much better on modern TVs if you’re watching it at live bandwidth rates rather than on demand.

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  15. Alex S

    Finally had chance to catch up on this, and I’m actually pretty disappointed. I watched the previous and current season of Battlebots and to me, that’s the far superior programme.

    I don’t mind the angle RW has taken with a little more focus on the teams having to repair but I have to agree with others that it makes your final feel more like a fight between two broken robots.

    With regards to that weird video effect, to my eye it looks like they’re running some cameras at a high frame rate (so they can have nice slow motion replays), but then using that footage at normal speed by dropping frames. This means that the ‘real-speed’ footage from that camera has significantly less motion blur and looks super weird.

    Equally, I don’t know why the arena has a second set of bulletproof glass walls around the four corners. The whole arena has a good 4 foot ‘trough’ between the arena walls and the full-height glass in front of the audience. This would be fine if you used the space for cameras, etc. like they did on the original series of Robot Wars (which was really well shot), but that space is completely dead so all of the action is pushed away from your cameras and it means most of the shots are having to be shot through two separate panes of glass.

    Odd production choices for me, for instance having both teams in the same control room means (being British) that they’re generally more polite and considerate in what they say, I think if you isolated the teams you’d have a lot more interesting moments from the roboteers.

    The whole thing to me felt very un-spectacular, no big music like the original, no big introduction or close, a very uninteresting set. Wasted potential.

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    1. Brig Bother Post author

      What I don’t get is that The Cube coped perfectly well getting the same sort of effects but at no point resorted to field removed nonsense.

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      1. Alex S

        Possibly done on the cheap here, or through thoughtless editing/data wrangling.

        Watch any sports OB these days and they’ll have high speed cameras delivering normal-speed images live, the technology is very much available but I suspect they will have added the slow motion replays in edit afterwards, potentially from a (cheaper) high speed camera running separate to the rest of the multi-camera setup.

        Reply
  16. Brig Bother Post author

    Angela is great value, I reckon she’s pulling her weight more than Dara does. Also I quite like the Tron Legacy-ness of the music when it does actually get an airing.

    Well done on removing the FMV nonsense from the fights. I’m not sure putting them in the garage sections is any better though. Is there some sort of BBC mandated quota? Is it trying to cut down on frames to save licence fee money?

    It feels a bit odd that the same robots can battle each other three times in an episode and both finals have been a bit underwhelming (although this one was at least quite surprising). I still think it feels too low key. I think Robot Wars *needs* to feel a bit 90s Gladiators to bring in more casuals.

    It doesn’t give me a great amount of pleasure pointing out the bits where it falls short, I was never a superfan of the original (I’m not nerd enough, presumably) but there’s some decent pedigree on the production so it just seems a bit of a shame really. I predict a drop tomorrow, I don’t feel much enthusiasm from those who aren’t RW-fans to be honest.

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  17. Chris M. Dickson

    This series is doing several things which are probably objectively wrong but which nevertheless I like rather more than I expected. It’s remarkable how much this series seems to have learned from, well, Bake-Off, of all the things.

    1) At the risk of opening the show up to criticism about a lack of atmosphere, I like the fact that so much of it is… well, quiet. There isn’t that gradual ascending screech during the 3-2-1-activate and then the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa in the background; after the starting siren, all the bumps and bashes come from the robots. No background music during the introductions. The ring walk from the workshop to the arena (a powerful image that I really like) is quiet. Works for me.

    2) I also like the arc of robots being allowed to fail gradually and still keep fighting. It’s fascinating. I like the message that comes out of taking lickings and still keeping ticking, to greater or lesser extents.

    3) Robot A beats robot B in the head-to-head but robot B eventually beats robot A in the final so the first match doesn’t matter. OK then. (I believe that’s what’s called a “redemption story”.)

    I’m finding an awful lot to like here. Dragon’s Den has been unexpectedly good as well this year.

    Reply
    1. John R

      Meanwhile I’m currently HATING the new series of Dragon’s Den, especially that damn ‘reaction room’ nonsense!

      It all just seems far too designed for the American market now, half the pitches are a bit boring and Evan is currently one not so hilarious pun away from someone having to pitch a new television set to me…

      Reply
  18. David B

    While the show could be a bit more showbizzy, you have to say that the average quality of the fights is far better than the old series. On the old show, if a robot got so much as a dent it was seen as a major incident.

    And I’m getting a bit fed up of the needless cutting to shots of the lasers, TBH.

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  19. Brig Bother Post author

    1.78/9.4% last night, which isn’t actually down as much as I was expecting and pretty much the slot average.

    The good news is that I don’t actually think it will fall much further than that, it’s only a six episode series and if you’ve sat through the first two you’ll probably sit through the rest, if you don’t forget it’s on (which a worrying amount of people seemed to do on Twitter last night, which suggests it’s not quite a memorable must-watch proposition).

    The bad news is that I just don’t think it’s good enough. It’s not been bought back, a major entertainment commission amid much fanfare and an above average budget, to be getting barely slot average ratings and falling. It should be getting much closer to Dragon’s Den (2.7m, tougher slot, 20p to make, over 10 years old) than it currently is.

    I expect it will probably get a second go to iron out its issues provided it doesn’t completely collapse, but I’d suggest between this and Battlebots slumping robot fighting is still something that looks cooler on paper than it comes across in actuality.

    Edit: The first one consolidated to 2.57m in plus seven, so it *did* iPlayer quite well.

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  20. Brig Bother Post author

    1.58/7.9% last night, not helped by the Women’s road race finishing about ten minutes in, and people like me probably stuck with the Olympics then. I’m still not getting overexcited though.

    Ep 2 again added half a mill in seven days consolidated.

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  21. John R

    There was a glaring editing mistake last night relating to Big Nipper! See if you can spot it…

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  22. Brig Bother Post author

    Blimey, 860k/3.8% versus Max Whitlock last night.

    Episode three didn’t consolidate into the BBC2 Top Ten, only adding 200k to 1.78m

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  23. Max T

    So series one is finally done and holy crap, the finale was one of the best ANY series of Robot Wars had to offer. I think that the series picked up from episode 3, as the editing got hugely better and the battles didn’t become a case of ‘who can survive before their link got knocked out’.
    I can safely say this is getting a second series

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    1. Michael

      I would 100% agree that the finale was really really good. The entire series was plagued by certain decisions though – only nine battles, stretched to 60 minutes is a *lot* of filler, and yesterday’s episode was the first time that it didn’t feel glacially paced for me.

      I would like to see Carbide go up against Razer though, cause I suspect Razer would have eaten it alive.

      Reply
  24. Brig Bother Post author

    And the Grand Final finishes with an overnight of 1.4m.

    An expensive show that has underperformed, but seems to have taken editing criticisms on board over the series. Have internet nerds done enough to get the show a second series in a better timeslot? Probably.

    Reply
  25. Brig Bother Post author

    Rumour on Twitter suggesting ‘big news’ coming soon, which I’m taking as a greenlight for series 2.

    Reply

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