Our Roboteers in the North

In August 2000, at the conclusion of the filming of the fourth series of Robot Wars, five special episodes were filmed, to go out as Christmas specials. Two of these promised to be the most destructive episodes imaginable: the Annihilators, where six robots fought until one was immobilised and eliminated, then the remaining five returned for the second battle, and things carried on until only one was left. The two Annihilators were split into the Northern and Southern groups, with one half of the geographical divide represented by each show.

And if you look at the Southern Annihilator, all seems fine: Bournemouth residents Razer, Hemel Hempstead natives Behemoth, Essex boys Spawn of Scutter, Bedford's Onslaught, Vercingetorix of the Isle of Wight, and finally Atilla the Drum hailed from Southampton. One or two of those actually stray into the East of England, not the South East or South West, but all seems fine here.

Turning our attention to the Northern Annihilator, we start off perfectly acceptably with Chorley residents Spikasaurus. Then we've got Dominator 2 of... Cambridgeshire? Suicidal Tendencies from... Derby? Stinger, residents of... Lincoln? Killerhurtz, native to... Oxford? And Chaos 2, residing in... Ipswich?! This is a very odd definition of "the North" we've got here, isn't it? What's going on?

Perhaps the most informative thing to do here is to look at the robots competing in the fourth series who genuinely did come from the North. Mazakari of Darlington. Manchester's Medusa 2000, or Predator. Banshee, Milly-Ann Bug, Disc-O-Inferno, Terror Bull and War Hog all hailed from Yorkshire... but I think we're beginning to see the problem here. With respect to their roboteers, none of these would have been the first choice for a tournament promising the most extreme mechanised mayhem yet seen in the series; many of them were inexperienced and had made very little impact in the main competition. Availability issues might also have been at play, but I think the more likely explanation is that the programme just cheated and brought in some ringers for the sake of a more interesting show than if they'd rigidly stuck to the commonly accepted definition of the North, with Spikasaurus included for the sake of having at least one genuine Northern team in the mix. (As per the Killerhurtz website, they were drafted in on the grounds that captain John Reid was originally born in Scotland -- a repeat of the First World Championship, where his team had represented the Czech Republic on even more dubious grounds -- but this is not mentioned in the show, nor are any explanations the show might have had for the other teams.) The one notable omission is Firestorm, whose team came from Durham and would certainly seem to have been available for the filming, as they took part in the Tag Team Terror special and both the Sumo and Pinball side tournaments which were filmed at the same time.

The Annihilator quickly became the most popular side tournament ever invented for the show, and returned for later series but without any such pretexts for who got included: in Extreme, the competitors were determined by the results of twelve three-way battles with only one winner, known as "Mayhem" fights, and by Extreme 2 there seemed to be no criteria beyond the first six robots available for filming.