User blog:SpaceManiac888/Wooden Spoon of the Episode: Series 10, Heat 1 Results

With the voting period over, I have now totalled up the scores and detailed top three aspects of Episode 1 of Series 10 that were considered "Wooden Spoon" moments.

The scoring goes as follows; when a user lists three Wooden Spoon moments, the top pick gets six points, the second four points and the last one two points. These are totalled up to determine the highest scorers, which will be listed and detailed below. In the case of a tie, I will either put one moment ahead of another based on how many people voted, or if the same number of people voted for both moments, how many times it was their first or second pick.

With the rules on scoring out of the way, let's begin with some dishonourable mentions.

Dishonourable mentions

 * Sabretooth being robbed in Round 1 (6, 2): In fairness, it did look as though Behemoth broke down a second before Sabretooth was overturned, so I understand this nomination.


 * The Fog of War (4, 4): There are several problems I found with this hazard, in particular its lack of effectiveness and the fact that NOBODY in the audience can see the battle! Imagine paying for tickets for something you cannot see!


 * Sabretooth (6): Although it was not the least competitive robot in this heat, Sabretooth no doubt still underpeformed greatly, not helped by its drum's poor reliability. To be honest, I would rather have seen The Swarm in the Rumble, although who knows, maybe Sabretooth will redeem itself there.


 * Weapon failures (6): Occurred to Apocalypse, Donald Thump and the aforementioned Sabretooth, when really this new format should prevent weapon failures from being this common. Let's hope the remaining heats have more reliable weapons.


 * Donald Thump's internals (2): For being covered in jeans...


 * Dara and Angela taking up a control pod (2): To be honest, it is not the fact that Dara and Angela do have a control pod that is bothering, it is the fact that all three teams are forced to control their robots inside one, which as Diotoir has mentioned, may cause passive attitudes and ruin battles as a result. We need a third control pod in my opinion, for Series 11.

3: The malfunctioning arena spikes (6, 4)
No doubt one of the funnier moments that occurred in the heat (although I guess that is not the case for the crew members responsible for the maintenance of the arena), two of the arena spikes I believe became aware of their existence, and perhaps more notably, Robot Wars: Extreme Destruction. They just wanted to replicate what happens in the Siberian Military Base, whereby a missile occasionally comes out of the missile silo. Either that, or they really hated Sabretooth for some reason and attempted to cause more damage to it than they previously would.

Either that, or they just became loose, and that ended up causing them to shoot high into the air and enable Sabretooth to use them as weapons against The Swarm. Still, it was at least entertaining to say the least, and did make me laugh when it occurred, but it no doubt deserves third place on the Wooden Spoon awards for Heat 1 of Episode 10.

2: Gabriel Stroud (4, 4, 2)
And now we move on to one of the more annoying recurring Wooden Spoon moments of the heat. Now, I have to be honest, I do respect Gabriel Stroud, I really do. After all, he has built some very good robots over the years, and I no doubt sympathise him for not being able to win a televised battle until Series 9, when a more forgiving heat could have enabled Sabretooth to win in Series 6 and even 5 in my opinion. He is also a nice guy too. However, despite all of this, it still does not explain how annoying he was throughout every battle he happened to be in during this heat.

Such examples that made me want to mute the program at times included:


 * 1: Complaining about losing to Behemoth, which thankfully Angela Scanlon managed to mock the team on.


 * 2: Being reluctant to hand over controls to Rob Pickford for the battle against Apocalypse, and admitting he would probably be swearing during the fight.


 * 3: Threatening to call out Professor Noel Sharkey and make him retire should Sabretooth lose the Judges' decision to The Swarm.

And, of course, this Wooden Spoon moment would not be complete without Stroud's commentary during the Apocalypse battle. Even though Apocalypse was already pretty much dead, and having the experience of seeing his own robot suffer unnecessary hits against Aftershock a series prior, he still ordered Rob Pickford to continue hitting Apocalypse with brute force. Come on now, man. Thankfully, Pickford, being sportsmanlike, noted that Apocalypse was already immobile and refused to hit it any more times.

So, Gabriel Stroud in my opinion is worthy of the second spot of the Wooden Spoon moments of Heat 1 of Series 10. However, he was actually beaten to the top by another person. And that person was...

1: The voice-over (6, 6)
When Robot Wars was rebooted in 2016, the BBC decided to introuce new faces (and in this case, a new voice), for the new series. Whereas some were praised (Angela for example), others have not received as much acclaim among myself and most other fans. This includes the voice-over, who replaced Stuart McDonald in the role of introducing the robots and announcing the start and cease of battles. But although I would argue he was OK for Series 8 and 9, I really cannot say the same for Heat 1 of Episode 10.

I do get what the voice-over is trying to achieve, in that he wants to sound both intimidating and robotic too, and in some cases it works quite well. However, the problem I have with this, especially in this heat, is that he is not only trying WAY too hard to achieve this, but because of this, I have trouble sometimes hearing what he is saying. For example, if you go to the recap video, the way he pronounces "drum spinner" during Sabretooth's introduction is barely comprehensible in my opinion. Plus, for some reason, Apocalypse's location was not mentioned during its introduction in the actual episode, although maybe this was not the voice-over's fault and that perhaps editing or Apocalypse's team refusing to disclose their location for privacy reasons may be the actual reasons behind this.

The thing is though, whilst I do understand the concept behind an intimidating electronic voice, I would rather have it so that at least most of the audience can understand it. Stuart McDonald's introductions were famous in the original series, not only for the deep voice he had when announcing, but also for how clear it was too. Yes, he was not immune to errors either, but still, the way he introduced the show, robots and battles was generally well-received among the Robot Wars audience. Maybe with a few changes, perhaps this new voice-over will receive the same acclaim in time. And besides, why would he care? He probably makes a lot of money doing this. But for now, he gets the top spot on the Wooden Spoon moments of Heat 1 of Series 10.