Edit Wars

You may wish to turn your attention to this video, which is taken from an episode of Robot Wars that was broadcast on BBC2 on 23 November 2001. (The episode is split up into parts, and the footage we're interested in continues into the next part for about 20 seconds.)

As you’ll see, starting from around 6:35 it depicts a battle between King B Powerworks and a robot called Draven. Except, when that battle was filmed, it wasn’t called Draven. And when the episode was first broadcast on BBC Choice on 12 October 2001, it wasn’t called Draven either. At that point, it was called Anthrax.

At some point between those two broadcasts, there was an anthrax scare in the US which necessitated the change of name and a re-edit of the episode for its terrestrial screening. (It’s a good thing the team hadn’t had any T-shirts made.) All I know for sure is that the version on YouTube above has a re-recorded commentary by Jonathan Pearce, but I’d like to see the originally broadcast version if possible to know exactly what edits or changes were made.

So, if you have a copy of the original version of the episode, do get in touch. (Rather sadly, there are at least two other articles about Robot Wars and strange editing I can think of writing, but this is the only case of there being two versions of the same episode that made it to air – definitely of this show, and possibly of any gameshow I can think of – so it’s probably the most interesting.)