Battlebots

Battlebots (vt Comedy Central's Battlebots). TV show, Comedy Central, weeklie, after 30 April 2000. Advertised on Battlebots: Prelude to Battle, 30 April 2000.

"Professional robot fighting," now televised from the Battle Box robot fighting arena in Fort Mason in San Francisco. The show features two commentators, plus free-roving reporters doing the standard "color" backgrounds on the competitors: the builders of radio controlled, relatively small, fighting robots. Note the Battle Box as a very hazardous environment for even an unopposed robot: remote-operated saws and other implements of destruction can and do come out of the floor to do harm to anything above. On the Prelude preview, one of the 'bots was spider-like, and one looked like a lady bug: a killer lady bug, as it turned out, and the winner of its match. Note also the flippant tone of the show: among other things, it is a parody of professional wrestling and sports TV more generally.