Robot Wars is coming back!

The only thing that annoyed me, and this is a minor criticism, is that the teams that weren't from England were announced as being from their nation eg "Caithness, Scotland" and "Camarthen, South Wales" as opposed to those from "Reading" and "Bournemouth".

I guess the reasoning is that England isn't considered a nation in the same way Scotland or Wales are. In the interest of consistency, "Town, County" would have been better (although Caithness is a county).

I hope they sort out the footage from the high speed camera. When cut in as part of the regular-speed footage, it's been resampled to 25p instead of 50i.

There were all kinds of inconsistencies in the old series, too. Chaos 2 was always announced as being from Bramford, Ipswich, when Bramford is in fact a tiny village *near* Ipswich. Should either have been Bramford, Suffolk or Ipswich, Suffolk.

I enjoyed the new-look Robot Wars on the most part...

- Although no Craig Charles, Dara was good. His sciencey brain was good.
- Decentish battles
- Old era retro feel you could sense was there.

There were a number of mini gripes though...
- Lack of music during fights and the old titles music
- 2nd presenter - she needs to remain in the pits only, that worked better in the old series.
- If this was the old 45 min version - i'd have thought the padding was still bad. A bit with the judge etc fair enough but the X Factor style team stories in their livingroom was boring and I fast forwarded. The whole thing with the 45 minute format was it was quick and it was back to back fights. Which leads me too...
- When we got to the fights seemed to be cut to death. The camera work was awful, or more the directing constantly changing shots every 3 seconds, some had cinematic look too which was dreadful. Lighting poor.

The show still sucked me in but the wee tweaks didn't help it. I didn't mind refbot either! It give a clear signal when robots were 'officially' out etc... Also good for putting out minor fires!

I felt they tried to overdramatise in general with the camera cuts and dramatic music. The original felt much more "live" and a bit more fun. I found the camera work made the actual battles tricky to follow. And I do miss the original theme music. I wouldn't say it was dated enough that it would've been out of place.

That said, it felt faithful, and they could've done a much worse job choosing presenters. Wouldn't harm trimming it back down to 45 minutes though.

Did that not happen in the old series? I'm sure it did in some shape or form.

It didn't happen in the Craig Charles era apart from the "we're team Shaggy, I'm Fred, this is Daphne, that's Velma and this is our robot Scooby" inserts.

Here's an extract from the First Wars with Jeremy Clarkson presenting. Some of the pit inserts don't look like they're in the pits, maybe this is the sort of style you're remembering:

I miss (prefer) the old title music, I wish the new one had that sort of feel.

Edit: Oh yeah the gauntlet! That would make a welcome return to the new robot wars, means it test robot design and maneuverability as well as pure fighting power.

Did they go to the inventor's home towns for inserts on the grand finals perhaps?

Guess that might depend on the original frame rate and the required slow down. High speed cameras (as opposed to SuperSlowMo) usually record natively progressive, so if you shoot 100fps and run this at 50i you will get 1/2 speed, but if you run it at 25p you'll get 1/4 speed. (Though suspect this is people not really caring about fluid motion...)

Yeah - I didn't ever watch the Clarkson series but - can't ever remember seeing 2-3 min packages from a team in their backroom. You got the 30 seconds of team intro'ing themselves, tells us their main weapon then gets onto the fight.

Old format Basically was Link > Battle info/graphic > Teams intro themselves > battle > Pits post fight interview > graphic/Link > repeat. Pacey.