MovieChat Forums > Robot Wars (1998) Discussion > Robot Wars is making the same mistakes t...

Robot Wars is making the same mistakes that got it cancelled


It took 7 minutes and 15 seconds of fluff and stalling for the first battle to begin. That is unacceptable and was one of the reasons ratings declined so dramatically IMO last time. There is too much stalling and filler. Nobody gives a *beep* about how heavy the robot is or the awkward interviews in the back whether they are confident or not.

They need to find something else to fill the time. In the first and second wars there were non battling challenges in between the robot fights.

Another thing is the battles are too short.

If they don't address the fluff and filler then I think the show will go back to being cancelled.

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[deleted]

If you don't like fluff (which I don't either) then try watching a US Battlebots episode and you might appreciate Robot Wars more. That is way worse (up to 10 minutes before first fight, many more useless presenters/discussions/announcements etc. It actually has 3 separate sets of presenters/commentators that all bore you to tears for each fight, and it only has four fights per episode instead of seven!

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The reasons ratings declined last time were mainly:

1) Moving from an awesome Friday teatime slot on BBC2 to BBC Prime/Choice/Whatever the hell it was...a channel that hardly anyone had.
2) After that, moving to Channel 5 (A channel that, at the time, a lot of people still didn't have or couldn't get a decent picture on, and now they also had to watch ad breaks) and changing the timeslot.


The main "problems" with the new Robot Wars are (I still loved it overall):

1) The Pit. AKA a crutch for crappy pushbots and robots whose weapons don't do anything or have stopped working. It is too final and ends too many potentially good fights too suddenly. Also where is the incentive for innovation and new cool weapons when you can just shove the other robot into the pit? Either make it open automatically only in the last 45 seconds...or GET RID OF IT.
2) Unreliable robots. This is because this series was a rush job and shot very quickly so the competitors had hardly any time to prepare (and bring plenty of spares) or repair their robots.
3) Crappy boring pushbots and weak lifters from 1999. This is a problem that would sort itself if the show becomes popular again and people really get back into building robots to compete in it. Once again this could easily be blamed on the lack of notice entrants got and the rush to prepare their robots to compete in this series.



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Hitler was a dog person.

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