BattleBots: At Least This Dystopia Has Robot Fights
June 8, 2019 6:45 PM - Season 4 (Full Season) - Subscribe

Episodes premiere Fridays on Discovery and repeat Wednesdays on the Science Channel. It looks like each will be two hours of twisted steel and bot appeal. IT'S ROBOT FIGHTING TIME!
posted by Etrigan (8 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks to some loser for the title.
posted by Etrigan at 6:46 PM on June 8, 2019


S4E1: What on Earth happened with Blacksmith/Quantum? I mean, Quantum clearly was on track to win either way, but they couldn't finish the full three minutes because of a situation that there kind of isn't a rule for.

My thoughts:
1) Would it have made sense for Quantum to be disqualified? The rule is that you must let go of a bite/trap/clinch after 30 seconds, and the edit clearly showed Blacksmith's driver complaining about this verbally. Should the onus have remained on team Quantum to figure out now to disconnect the two bots, since it was their main weapon that got them stuck together to begin with?
2) There was a mini-narrative that suggested that team Blacksmith was at fault for the situation because they put extra armor on top to defend against Quantum's weapon. IMO, that's a load of crap.
3) Since they couldn't go the full three minutes, should there even have been a decision? Maybe it should have been called a draw, or deferred to a rematch?
4) Mapping this to boxing rules, I imagine this would probably been a TKO for Quantum. But, in boxing, there's no such thing as two fighters who clinch, and then can't be separated even through use of a prybar.
5) I'd like to see the rules updated to deal with what should be consistently be done if two robots get stuck together, and can't be extricated from one another.
posted by Citrus at 7:12 AM on June 10, 2019


Yeah, I was amazed that there wasn't a rule about two bots getting locked together. It has to have happened before, right? I could swear I've seen it happen, but I don't remember what the result was.

I assume they've put this all together after the fact, so Ray Billings embracing his role as "Exposition Asshole" makes me think that we're looking at some kind of Plucky Good Guy Defeats Dominant Bad Guy scenario, but it's working for me.
posted by Etrigan at 11:30 AM on June 10, 2019


S4E3: Just wanted to point out that this week's main event did not disappoint. There's something viscerally pleasant about seeing two spinning weapons collide.
posted by Citrus at 10:41 PM on June 23, 2019


Boy, watching three in a row really makes Chris and Kenny's uses of "spastic" jump out at you.
posted by Etrigan at 11:59 AM on July 8, 2019


Great, now I'm NEVER going to stop noticing it. :)
posted by Citrus at 7:59 AM on July 9, 2019


Holy crap was Tombstone-Rotator good. Fight of the year candidate, even taking into account that it wasn't really a fight after the first minute.
posted by Etrigan at 8:16 PM on July 19, 2019


Yeah, the "spastic" and "spazzing out" stuff really jars.

S4E4 Duck/Cobalt: holy shit.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:03 PM on July 26, 2019


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