User blog comment:SpaceManiac888/Rusty Spanner and Golden Wrench of the Decade (2010s)/@comment-25770073-20191217090341

Rusty Spanners

3: Arena and Atmosphere - Sort of a two for the price of one but having similar context. The Arena was bland and is next to the First Wars Arena in how ugly and awful it looked, it didn't seem like much effort was put in with basic shapes, no "foreboding presence" and just this ugly grey square with a stupid logo in the middle (extra point: the reboot logo sucks!) This made worse by the lighting, in Series 8 it was practically dark with red lighting and occasional aqua lighting (which wasn't too bad...) Series 9 just had red lighting and Series 10 they realised their mistake with the lighting but then added the Fog of War... Then there's the lack of battle music. It took until THE FINAL TWO EPISODES TO FIX! Battle music in Series 1-4 was upbeat and exiting whilst EXT1-S7 had unique themes to illustrate and connote the feeling of the battles. For me it just feels like NO EFFORT was put in what so ever to create atmosphere or to make it feel like Robot Wars but who might be to blame for is in the next point...

2: BBC - I think what's already been said has been said, they never bothered giving it a chance, never bother capitalising on the merch, never bothered to advertise (much), never bothered with improving things and I'm almost confident they hardly funded it. Just look at the other responses for a better idea.

1: Series 9 - Everything wrong with the reboot can be summed up with this Series. It has a format that just sucks, the round robins that are mostly dull, boring or forgettable. An Arena that didn't bother adapting or changing for the better, over saturation of spinners and predictable battles and outcomes. Series 9 is a PRIME EXAMPLE of NOT TAKING IN ANY CRITICISM and thinking "it worked once once, why not a second time" The arena still used horrific red lighting, a lack of battle music, a format that just sucks, robots died from one hit around 45% of the time, battles were mostly awful. It just sucks and for me everything wrong can be highlighted just from this Series.

Golden Spanners

3: Old Faces with the new - I loved seeing Razer again, and although I was disappointed in seeing it lose in Round 1, it was in an amazing Series opener and seeing others like Nuts succeed was great. Other faces I enjoyed seeing was Thermidor 2, I was surprised to see again as was Crushtacean and Kad-Diotoir Sure we had Terrorhurtz, Thor and Behemoth being the golden oldies through and through but in someways these one time moments made it feel ever so better. Of course the newcomers were just as great and I loved seeing Live Event robots, new robots and classics clash.

2: Presenters - I really was disappointed that Craig Charles never returned and was a little hesitant to the new presenters. But surprisingly, I found myself adoring both presenters as they gave it their all and was simply enjoying themselves. I will say this, I did prefer Angela over Dara...and not because of looks ;)

1: Series 10 - Well, yeah. After the disaster that was Series 9, I'm sure lots of people including myself was a little hesitant over what the show was going to be onwards. What made matters worse was the roster reducing to 30...But then it aired and my God they actually took on the criticism and IMPROVED! The lighting was far better (arena still sucked and the introduction of FoW was a major downside) A more balanced set of robots, each episode had so brilliant high points and battles were fantastic! Sure the World Series was weak, but even they had plenty of good battles scattered through out. It's a shame that as soon as they finally got on the right track...it was cancelled.