User blog comment:Nweston8/Top 18 Series of Robot Wars/@comment-24393094-20180321221203/@comment-35435623-20180321223326

Completely understandable. Series 7 is so open and that's what makes it incredible. But still: going into the series, there isn't a true x-factor of a robot that your route for from the start. Firestorm and Tornado are the only two big names that return, and them two are by far the two most 'vanilla' of the big boys - in that they don't have many fanboys at all.

For me and Toast, going into Heat A is the start of the incredible story about M2. For a lot of other people it can simply be: "Pussycat is the big boy in the opening Heat of the series. Pussycat is past its peak now and was easily beaten in Extreme 2. If this is the best Series 7 can provide in terms of big names in the opening Heat, then this is going to be a chore of a series to watch". It's not fair to be this way, but it's often a subconscious feeling that people have. In Series 7, there's very few cannon-fodder Heats for seeds to destroy everything in their path. There's no Chaos 2 romping in its Series 4 or 5 Heat, there's no Razer cleaning out its Series 6 Heat. For some reason, it does feel like a big name walking through an opening Heat feels the 'natural' way for the viewers to form an early attachment to a series. Chaos 2's and Razer's Heats 'feel' like Heat A's. M2's Heat doesn't. It's basically the best opening Heat ever, but it doesn't feel like a Heat A. It feels like the episode would be between Heats C-I in, say, Series 4-6. Where a random newbie has their moment. Series 7 doesn't do that though. Series 7 rips up the script. It doesn't follow the traditional Robot Wars way for Heat order because it's such an open series. That can easily throw people off with forming an attachment for Series 7, even though that openness is one of Series 7's biggest draws.

What hinders Series 7's 'it' factor further is Channel 5. Robot Wars was no longer this Friday night, 6pm show. It wasn't passionately watched by drones of people anymore in the year 2003, and less people would've talked about it in friendship groups and at school. Chaos 2 vs. Hypno-Disc and Razer vs. Tornado type fights were the talk of the town. People debated them for hours, and when you have those childhood memories that are reinforced outside of just watching the fight itself, then that grants fights like those that x-factor type feel. My friends didn't discuss M2's Heat, my friends didn't discuss X-Terminator vs. Tsunami (heck, I bloody missed that Heat because of Channel 5!), my friends didn't even discuss Storm 2 vs. Typhoon 2. It's a shame, but it is what it is. Series 7 basically feels like a halfway reboot. You have all of those memories from the early series all the way through to Extreme 2, and yet Series 7 feels like you watch it in full several years later - when you're more grown up, and when you have no memories or attachment to fall back on. It's funny, because of a lot of people actually did only get the experience of watching the series in full several years later - me included!

I completely agree on Series 2. It was when Robot Wars was at its strongest as a balanced show. The show was the strongest as a brand during Series 4 because of merchandise and the like, but Series 2 was definitely the easiest for a casual viewer to tune in to - and that's why they so often did.