Fight Time!

Here's a really interesting piece of Robot Wars ephemera to surface. On the show's reddit, someone has uploaded a filming schedule for 1 September 2001:

Happily, this is for fights from the first series of Robot Wars Extreme, and the fifth series of the main competition (including the Grand Final of the latter, no less) -- one of the most chaotic filming processes the show ever undertook. If you recall the last time we looked at the show's filming dates, this was specifically the second filming block of Extreme -- the first block had been done in June and July, but fell so far behind schedule that some of it had to be picked up alongside Series 5. This schedule is for the seventh of nine days filming at Elstree Studios.

But the key takeaway is that, sadly, I don't think this schedule is a reliable guide as to what was actually filmed. One of the first things they film is the third place playoff for Series 5, between Hypno-Disc and Firestorm -- which ended with both robots going down the pit together, and the judges calling for a rematch, which Hypno-Disc could not take part in as the impact of the disc with the floor of the pit had immobilised the robot. And yet Hypno-Disc is down to participate in the first Annihilator less than an hour later! The only explanation for this I can think of is that filming was in such a disarray at that point they decided to prioritise the Annihilator over a playoff match (if you go and look at the aftermath of the playoff it does look like it might be a bit staged). Something also seems off about the fact that Hypno-Disc was down to take part in potentially six battles in one day, most of which would have had three or more robots in the arena at the same time -- Tornado fighting, and winning, five one-on-one battles in the same day for the Challenge Belt was pointed out as a remarkable achievement...

The second Annihilator was also plagued by robots being damaged beyond repair and having to pull out between battles -- of a scheduled five rounds, only three actually took place, and they had to do a filler battle (a quite obviously spurious Vengeance match) between rounds to try and give the surviving robots time to mend the damage they'd taken.

The Antweight fight filmed in the pits can be seen here -- note that Razzler, literally a converted Razer action figure, was a last-minute addition to the schedules.

Oh, and what's "BNN", I hear you ask? That would be the Dutch series of the show, which the given battles match up with perfectly: BNN refers to the Dutch broadcaster who carried that series. So on one day, they were filming two different series of the UK version and an overseas version.

And as for "RX Plunderbird Song"? That would be this fantastic musical experience. (Note that the Comengetorix team appear during that number, and whilst not scheduled to fight that day according to this schedule, they did end up taking part in the aforementioned filler round, which is further proof that that was indeed added to the schedule after this went to print.)