User blog comment:SpaceManiac888/Rusty Spanner and Golden Wrench of the Decade (2010s)/@comment-1836789-20191231125148

Rusty Spanners...

3. The BBC

I've really grown to dislike the BBC recently. Favouritism, poor scheduling and insipidity have really plagued it over this decade. But enough about politics, are we going to let it slide that they cancelled Robot Wars again?

In truth, the beeb never seemed to give Robot Wars a fair crack of the whip. Besides Series 8, the marketing was atrocious - I remember saying to my university housemates in 2017 "are you watching Robot Wars tonight?" to which I was met with the response of "Robot Wars is back?"

An iconic BBC show pushed to the side in favour of other, shinier iconic BBC shows. Desperately sad, just as we thought we were on the way back.

2. World Series, Episode 2

Bit of a personal one. So this was the episode I finally managed to gather a few of my friends together to watch. Then...

"It's not really gripping, is it?"

"It'll get better, trust me."

"That robot can't even do anything, what's the point?"

"It's usually better than this."

"Christ, this is boring. Fancy pub instead?"

Why is my life like this?

1. Judging

And I thought judging in boxing was bad. Robot Wars had its fair share of poor decisions, some of the outcomes in Battlebots were downright abysmal, especially in the first two seasons, which were more or less completely ruined by them. A misguided ploy to scupper wedge bots from success (deemed "boring" mainly by children) it simply ended up prematurely ending the campaigns of robots like Stinger, Sawblaze, Disk-o-Inferno, etc etc.

The focus on primary weapons was short-sighted and stupid. Essentially, we were left with many, many decisions that didn't reflect the battle at all, instead giving the nod to spinners (and Chomp) almost unanimously (providing they didn't break). My favourite instance of this was Chrome Fly, a robot I'd honestly struggle to imagine make an impact in 1995, being awarded points for breaking its spinner on Bucktooth Burl. Excuse me, what?

Then we've got that lovely wildcard rumble at the end of Season 3. Robot Wars handled this so, so much better than Battlebots. Granted, while it was a fun brawl, there was little doubt in everyone's mind at the end that Duck was the clear winner at the end. Then, a unanimous decision victory was given to... Bombshell? Even though it'd been dead for a good 40% of the fight? Yeah, ok. You're the boss.

Robot Wars isn't free of charge here, with the two main culprits being PP3D vs Cherub and Sabretooth vs Behemoth vs Donald Thump (Ant's face when he finds out he's won is priceless, because he knows he didn't) but they've already been talked about to death - I see no reason to beat the mouldy carcass of what once was a horse. Seriously though, Cherub's activity in that fight was taking unnecessary damaging from Dead Metal and then getting yeeted by PP3D. It didn't even attempt to fight.