Robot Wars (TV series): Difference between revisions
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Removed the Storm II controversy under Executive Meddling as it is now considered inaccurate.
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The first season was hosted by [[Top Gear|Jeremy Clarkson]], but later seasons were hosted by [[Craig Charles]], who was more suited for this. The show was originally a mix of fighting and various "trials" (games such as pinball, sumo, obstacle courses, etc.); later on, more emphasis was put on the former and by series 5 the format was entirely combat-based.
The show ran for 7 series and 2 Extremes before it ended in 2004, but after 12 years of live events across Britain, the show was revived in 2016 in a new filming location, a new arena, new presenters and, most importantly, a new breed of modern combat machines taking advantage of new technology and resources; also returning are House Robots Sir Killalot, Dead Metal, Shunt and Matilda, all bigger, badder, and meaner than ever before. The revived series was hosted jointly by Dara O' Brien and Angela Scanlon, with old hand Jonathon Pearce returning as commentator. The modern era was commissioned for 3 wars in 2016 and 2017 with 2 episode specials in between.
Not to be confused with [[Super Robot Wars]], or with the American series ''[[Battlebots]]'' with which it shares a common ancestor in the form of underground American competitions in the early 1990's. No relation at all with the 1993 [[Giant Mecha]] movie of the [[Robot Wars (film)|same name]]. If your looking for a trope about wars against robots, that's [[Robot War]].
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*** Hypno Disk comes to mind. It was one of the most powerful, destructive robots on the show, the massive disk could wreak most machines to pieces within a couple of blows. Sadly, Hypno was extremely prone to mechanical failures, presumably due to the extreme recoil caused by the impacts of the disk dislocating sensitive machinery within, and therefore, Hypno Disk would rarely win tournaments.
***One of Tornado's weapons in Series 7 was a vertical spinning bar recycled from the infamous external frame used to win Series 6. In theory, it could have been a good weapon, but the team didn't use it since Tornado would not be able to run inverted (not surprising considering 6 of its 7 opponents had some flipping capacity).
***Wheely Big Cheese had an enormous flipper capable of launching 100kg robots out of the arena from halfway across the box, but it was weak everywhere else; welding, manoeuvrability, speed, and reliability. As a result, Wheely Big Cheese wasn't as successful as it could've been despite reaching 2 semi finals.
***Vortex Inducer from the Dutch series; it had a spinning disc mounted on a thin axel and could rotate between vertical and horizontal configurations. This sounded like pure genius, but unfortunately, its effectiveness was diminished due to circumstances: the robot needed tracks to move the whole thing, and the team had to take them off because the robot was overweight. The result is a robot that barely moved, and lost very quickly. Worse still, the axel the disc was mounted on was extremely thin, as Sir Killalot was able to easily cut the robot clean in two with his claw!
***Project 2: Hex 'Em, another Dutch entrant (well, Belgian) featured only one drive wheel and two casters at the front. The wheel was mounted on a pivot and can be rotated with a linear actuator. Sounds cool, right? Well, in practice it proved difficult to control as Project 2 was unable to properly line up for an attack against its opponent.
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** In one of the early series, Uglybot managed to make a ''negative'' score on the Gauntlet because it got stuck on the turntable.
** One of the series 2 "trials" was a Joust, where each robot had to cover as much ground as possible against Matilda. The fourth robot to run got stuck and was pushed back, meaning that the last robot to run had to beat a negative score (-2.10m) to qualify. It didn't move at all until it was too late, whereupon it got stuck as well, and was dragged back to -2.80m.
▲** Also in the Second Wars semi-finals, in the case of Mortis. In the pinball trial, when Mortis first started to move it got stuck on the arena spikes, meaning that it scored 0 points. However, somebody on the production team decided to let Mortis run again. (This at least may have been justified, as the roboteers had been told the spikes would not be used.) However, the usual driver was unhappy about this decision, meaning that another member of the Mortis team drove the robot. In the second attempt, Mortis scored very few points, and the house robots started ''scoring points for them'' (note that when the trial was introduced it was explicitly pointed out that points scored by the house robots would not count), and according to the scoreboard, Mortis had scored 100 points. In the televised version, there was no hint that Mortis had been given a second run or that the production team had fixed it. The production team clearly wanted Mortis, the favourite, to reach the final. At least when Panic Attack pushed Mortis into the pit in the next round the executives didn't try and persuade the judges that they shouldn't win.
▲*** The "Grudge Matches" special at the end of the series included a fight between Mortis and Napalm, the robot eliminated as a result of the above meddling. The intro to the match didn't explain in any detail and made it look as if the Mortis team had been given a second chance by protesting to the judges, when in fact they were given one ''despite'' their protests. (Mortis won the grudge match.)
** Another instance pertaining to The Seventh Wars. With the new producers, a new rule was implemented that all competing robots ''must'' have an active weapon. Therefore, robots who only had static wedges and spikes, or were Thwack-Bots (a robot which caused damaged by spinning on it's axis and slamming a clubbing or sharpened weapon into its opponent) were a big no-no. Even STINGER, a former ''GRAND FINALIST'', which had consistently participated in highly entertaining battles and fought reigning champion Chaos 2 to a standstill in series 4, where it placed 3rd overall by a very narrow margin was barred from competing as well, ''because it didn't have an active weapon''. The majority hated this rule, especially considering a sit-and-spin robot called T-Wrecks made it through the cracks.
*
▲* [[Filler]]: Constantly, especially in the Grand Final where four battles (or three; on two occasions the third place playoff had to be cancelled) lasting five minutes each were milked out to the full timeslot.
* [[Five-Bad Band]]: The house robots:
** The [[Big Bad]]: Sir Killalot
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** Robots without SRIMECH (itself an acronym for Self-righting mechanism) would sometimes have PTO written on the bottom, "Please Turn Over".
* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: Chaos 2 getting flipped out of the arena by Dantomkia
** Chaos 2 was also knocked out of the Second World Championship on ''Robot Wars Extreme'' by being driven into the pit while in the process of flipping another bot
** Razer getting immobilised in the third wars when it got itself stuck on the spike at the back of its weapon which had raised its wheels of the ground.
* [[Humiliation Conga]]: Once immobilised, the House Robots are free to come in and [[Kick Them When They Are Down|punish the robot more]], using their own weapons plus the arena's own hazards; a lucky competitor might find themselves in the pit straight away, but there's also the floor flipper, drop zone, flamethrowers, saws...
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*** [[Lightning Bruiser|Doesn't matter how fast you run...]]
* [[Nice Hat]]: The captain of S3 sported a nice trilby hat, and a team member from The Stag donned a very nice hat with lights and moving parts!
* [[Non Gameplay Elimination]]: The best remembered example is Pussycat's disqualification from series 3 for using an illegal weapon. Notably, several robots failed to make it into the arena. Terrorhurtz also springs to mind in Series 7 when it was disqualified for arriving at the studio incomplete.
* [[Numbered Sequels]]: Some of the follow up robots' names (e.g. Chaos was followed by Chaos 2).
** Got somewhat ridiculous with Firestorm who changed its number yearly and was on 5 in series 7.
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* [[Took a Level in Badass]]: Killerhurtz becoming Terrorhurtz during Series 5, Atomic's upgraded design in Series 7, X-Terminator swapping out the axe for a flywheel, the reason why nobody remembers the original Chaos. Do we need to go on?
** Terrorhurtz was a double-subversion; in its first Wars it failed to do any better than Killerhurtz despite the look, won only one battle (and that was because a house robot interfered) and only in the Sixth Wars did it really get going.
** The House Robots in 2016: they weren't simply brought out of retirement, they were rebuilt to modern standards being heavier, stronger, and in Sir Killalot and Matilda's cases, faster.
* [[Too Powerful to Live]]: Chaos 2 flipped its way to become Champion in series 3 and 4 with often minimal damage and effort, and came close to repeating the feat in series 5. This trope was invoked in one of the series 4 Annihilators when in the very first round, ''every single other robot'' united to take it out before anyone else; [[Badass Decay]] set in later in series 6 and the Extreme II All Stars.
* [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnexpectedCharacter Unexpected Character]: There were a fair few veteran robots from the classic era of Robot Wars that no one expected to see again in the 2016 reboot, such as Chompalot, Thermidor II, Supernova, and a few others.
** The General really exemplifies this trope since its only appearance before 2016 was in the Robotic Soccer competition in Series 3, '''''17 years prior''''', and never fought in the main UK championship until the show came back.
* [[Unperson]]: The VHS release of "The First Great War", a collection of highlights and behind-the-scenes material of series 1, removed any footage of or reference to Jeremy Clarkson, and the video itself was presented by Craig Charles. No tie-in media mentions Clarkson at all, and many people watching series 1 for the first time since broadcast are surprised to find someone other than Charles as host.
** It seemed like that season was never broadcast in the US.
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