Johnny Ball for the new millennium Dara O’Briain will be hosting the new Robot Wars alongside Philippa Forrester for the new millennium Angela Scanlon. Jonathan Pearce is back!
.@DaraOBriain & @AngelaScanlon to present #RobotWars reboot on @BBCTwo, & new logo unveiled https://t.co/7fpjI3bw7V pic.twitter.com/6qSGXdr98f
— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) February 3, 2016
An intriguing choice and one I can’t quite picture, but we’ll see.
You will be able to get tickets from Lost in TV, the show films in Glasgow.
The big question is how far is production prepared to make destruction of robots go? It’s quite the big dichotomy between what viewers want and what the people who make the robots want.
If they’re using the live event teams, there’s very little destruction at heavyweight level, simply because they’re the most expensive to make. There’s a lot of solid steal and bumpers around anything vital. The featherweights on the other hand do tend to be a bit more active because repairs are easier, though I gather this will remain a heavyweight contest.
I wonder how well putting a scratch in something or a minor dent will do in 2016. If it’s just going to be more sumoing the other other one into a pit I’m going to get bored very quickly.
You do get some interesting fires now, because a lot of people use mobile phone batteries for power, and they don’t take too kindly to being battered around. But yes, everything is a bit superficial unless you can persuade people the risk is worth it.
Craig Charles is reduced to mopping the floors…
8/10
Only 6 episodes in the series which doesn’t seem enough for a proper tournament. Wiki says (apart from series 1) the other series were either 15 or 19 episodes long.
There are several ways to think about this. Firstly, BBC may not want to commit to a full-length tournament straight away because they need to know A TV audience will warm to the new style of the show and the modern technology involved with today’s robots.
However, it might also be important to note that early Robot Wars episodes were just 30 minutes long, with only later series increasing to 45. While we can’t know just yet how much of the new series’ extended 60-minute timeslot is to fit in the new “science-focused” content, if we assume around ten minutes, this still gives up to 15 minutes or so more content, which would make the 6 episodes equate to about 9 “classic episodes”. That would be enough to fit a full tournament structure, though it would admittedly still be a far shorter tournament than previous televised series.
There is a second possibility: We could see a resurgence of the original Robot Wars tournament structure from Seasons 1 and 2, with two qualifying games and then paired battles. Then the first 4 episodes could determine the semi-finalists; the fifth could be the semi-final; and the last episode the third-place play-off and final. However, given the statement of “more battles”, returning to a less-battle-heavy format admittedly seems like an unlikely move.
The Battlebots revival here in the US was 6 eps long last year (it’s rumored it’ll be longer this year), and they got most of a 24-bot tournament in (they only did highlights of some of the early round matches)- usually they showed three or four matches per episode (I don’t remember- does RW have a time limit? BB has a 3 minute max per match)- and this was only in about 40 minutes when you figure commercials in.
Yes there’s (or used to be) a ten minute limit IIRC (three judges would adjudicate on damage, control, style and aggression in these cases).
They’d probably elide for time though.
First series (the shorter ones) they went with 5 minutes as timing, with editing for obvious pacing reasons. Maybe they went up to 10 later on? I know some American competitors complained that they had issues with petrol powered machines, since the tanks weren’t big enough to run for the longer time. The official rules just say that the time limit has to be consistent, so they can do as they please really.
I’ve had a few people point in this direction:
http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/robotsrule/robot_wars_info.htm
So yes five minutes (don’t know where I pulled ten from to be honest).
RE: that clip of international bridge you tweeted earlier-
It’s interesting how many card games they’ve done on TV- Poker of course, Bridge, Blackjack, even Go Fish (remember a WIDM ep a few years back that had that as a mission?)- but this has to be the longest-running one- they’ve been airing in Switzerland since the late 60’s a show with people playing the card game Jass-
https://youtu.be/0MUNSBcCgQM
(bit of trivia on this- the show originally was live and the player on the phone used to play from home, but now they tape the shows in advance and the phone player is actually in a room just off stage)