User blog comment:SpaceManiac888/Rusty Spanner and Golden Wrench of the Decade (2010s)/@comment-4700688-20191215233753

Rusty Spanners for reboot Robot Wars:

Here, I won't really be putting forward anything new, rather I'll be bumping up the most important issues already raised.

3. The documentary approach (lack of atmosphere etc). - While the return to our TV screens in 2016 was such a welcome one, I couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed in the opening minutes of S08E01. Robot Wars had always been filled with colour, dramatic camera angles, music, and generally exaggerated content. Dara Ó Briain making a failed joke about Jeanette Crankie in a standard wide lens shot with no music or flair didn't really hit the mark, and the lack of nineties-vision continued to make the presentation a bit plain overall.

2. Series 8-9 didn't have heat finals - change my mind. - What was once the most important part of an episode suddenly became the worst bit on a regular basis. If the shining light of heat finals in this era was Pulsar's transmitter not working, and Cherub getting launched out in less than ten seconds, it really wasn't a strong selection. The high standard of Heat Finals in Series 10 could be enough to push this complaint off, but this was a very strong issue set up by the round robin format which I'm not nominating in its own right as it worked so well for Series 8, even if it didn't help Series 9.

1. Knowing that the summer holidays would soon be over (the inevitable demise of the reboot due to BBC's mistreatment). - If it was just one thing, we could let it slip, but it seemed very clear that the BBC never cared about its Robot Wars reboot from the off. It should say a lot that they never even planned to run one - it was Robo Challenge who convinced the BBC that a Robot Wars reboot would be more valuable than the drones show they were planning on! Waging part of Series 8 against the Olympics was already a red flag, but then we got absolutely 0 promotion for Battle of the Stars, minimal promotion of Series 9 which held a weaker timeslot, and then the biggest finger of them all, running Series 10 at the same time as Blue Planet II. There's no way that last one was an accident.

The personal one: Vulture withdraws from its fight against Track-tion - Given that I now live with Team Immersion, the sad withdrawal against Track-tion remains more haunting than ever. It was already a prominent negative of Series 10 to lose a fight in this way with no replacement, but for it to happen to some of my best mates in their first and final crack at Robot Wars, truly heartbreaking.

Dishonourables: Grand Final clips in the trailers, lack of entrants in all three series, series being restricted to six main episodes, Battle of the Stars Ep 1, Spinner excess in Series 9, Round Robin downsides