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ABC's 'BattleBots' Reboot Will Come Back For a Second Season (thewrap.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Good news if you're a fan of watching robots fight or just flail around in a corner. ABC has renewed BattleBots for a second season. According to The Wrap: "Following the summer ratings hit "Celebrity Family Feud," the six-episode first season of "BattleBots" earned an average of 5.4 million total viewers and a 1.7 rating among adults 18-49. Season 2 will keep the single-elimination tournament format of the first, but will double the size of the field to include expert roboticists, garage builders, families on a mission and past winners returning to defend their turf."
1. They aren't actually even robots. They are remote-controlled.
2. Any weapon that could possibly damage a metal-armored bot is banned as it could also kill a cameraman or spectator/audiencemember.
So instead of say, a 30mm tank cannon, they carry, uh, a wedge, that might, uh, lift the enemy bot up an inch or too and then, well, it won't actually damage anything, but you might get some "points" for "aggression."
Robot Wars (1998) was based on BattleBots (2000)?
If Craig Charles had a way to go back into the past, why didn't he tell his younger self to invent the Tension Sheet? (or warn him not to do drugs or what got him thrown into jail)
If you want the obvious sign, look at how many Brits were competing on BattleBots, and how few Americans were on the early seasons of Robot Wars.
Oh ... and 'minibots' were allowed in the original BattleBots -- you were allowed extra weight, but the bots had to be able to start out joined, and have some way to re-join, if I remember correctly. (I considered entering years ago, but it'd been a decade since I read all of the rules about gas engines vs. electric drive, wheeled vs. walking, etc.)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
And get rid of the whole pro wrestling everything's-a-grudge-match coverage. In fact, get rid of the sports commentators in the green-screen studio altogether. I know they're trying to pretend it's a real sporting event but I feel that they're losing their core audience by playing up all the tropes that engineers tend to hate.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Please, just have the fights and keep the 15 minute back stories to a minimum. I don't care about the plight of some person in their garage who's only dream is to be in a robot fight.