Edit Wars #7

In the summer of 2001, two new series of Robot Wars were filmed: the fifth series of the 'regular' show, and Robot Wars Extreme, a special run of shows featuring a variety of different mini-tournaments. The Pussycat team, with driver David Gribble, participated in both of them.

On the 13th of October 2001, David - a familiar face to Robot Wars viewers for nearly three years - was involved in a motorcycle accident and passed away at the tragically young age of 17; his final television appearances were aired posthumously. Various sources say that this dedication was featured at the end of Extreme episode 1, taken from the Robot Wars Wiki:

At the time, Robot Wars was first run on BBC Choice, then got a terrestrial outing on BBC Two a few weeks later. I would presume that this was seen on the 26 October 2001 BBC Two broadcast of episode 1; the episode was originally broadcast on BBC Choice on 8 October 2001, five days before David died. Eight new episodes of Robot Wars were broadcast on BBC Choice between David's death and the first BBC Two screening of the series; it is possible that one of those also carried the dedication, and they also used it on the first episode's terrestrial outing to make sure it was seen. (For the record, David's final appearance on the show was the Series 5 semi-final, which was originally broadcast on BBC Choice on 23 May 2002 - but that episode would not be seen by terrestrial viewers until 25 October of that year, over a year after his death.)

Despite the Wiki having an actual screengrab, though, I'm not exactly certain which episode(s), on which channels, used it. There are three different copies of episode 1 on YouTube; the BBC Two broadcast, a Challenge repeat and a copy of a USA broadcast on TechTV. I can't see the dedication on any of them (it should be right at the end, after the credits, but I'm not sure whether it comes before or after the preview for the next episode); do they all cut off before the dedication can be shown? (The copy of the BBC Two airing is definitely incomplete, as it is missing the information about how to sign up for the Robot Wars Club; given the club has been defunct for over a decade, this is edited from Challenge's repeats, and the US version replaces it with its own information.) Was the dedication actually on a different episode? If you know exactly when and where this was seen, please let me know.

For what it is worth, my suspicion is that this was indeed seen on BBC Two's airing of episode 1, and the YouTube copy simply cuts off before it can be seen, but it would be good to see a complete version just to be certain, as well as to see exactly how it looked in context; it is also possible this was seen on a different episode on BBC Choice.

It is also possible that Challenge cut the dedication out, presumably inadvertently, when removing the information about how to join the Robot Wars Club if it came directly before or after, which would be very unfortunate if so - that seems to be what happened on TechTV's airing. Compare with this - I really, really doubt Challenge would have deliberately removed the dedication, so it is possible that somebody was editing the Robot Wars Club information from their copies of each episode and this was an accidental removal. I can't say for certain that the copy above is complete, though, so we'll have to wait for the next repeat to know for sure...