Wait… No Pirate Vs. Ninja?!

Haven’t you always secretly wondered what would happen if a ninja accidentally stumbled into,
say, Bill and Ted’s time
traveling Phone Booth and ended up somewhere around 7th century BC, only to
come face-to-face with a feisty Spartan?
Have you not pondered what would happen if you locked up an Apache with a Gladiator
inside some sort of 21st century battle
dome? Are you frustrated because you feel like there’s nobody doing proper
scientific studies to see what would happen when you pit two historically violent warriors that
could have never actually met in real life? Worry no more people – I present to
you Spike TV‘s newest offering
– Deadliest Warrior!
The
show basically goes like this; you take two crazy fighters who, previous to the
show, have only been pitted against one another in heated debates between young
men in line for the midnight showing of the newest X-Men movie (or really
awesome drunk people). The show’s ‘Host, Simulation Consultant, and Blogger’, Max Geiger brings in experts
representing each warrior. The experts bring in weapons that are historically
accurate which are then tested on a variety of dummies that are stuffed with
SCIENCE! The data from said SCIENCE! all goes into a computer simulation based
on an unreleased commercial game engine by these guys. Not just the SCIENCE!, which
is actually pretty cool (ballistics gel, pig carcasses, high speed photography),
but also, as Max aptly put it:

“The simulation’s inputs include real world
scientific data gathered by one of my co-hosts, Geoff Desmoulin, who is getting
his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering. Our number crunching is balanced out by Dr.
Armand Dorian, an ER doctor who keeps our work firmly grounded in the actual
trauma our tests cause.”

The reviews are in! Variety
seems to feel it might be possibly the stupidest show ever, appealing only to
the lowest common denominator! Newsarama
was a little nicer, pointing out that there are some people on the show trying
to make it as scientific as it can possibly be, while also having a great time.
Either way, do you care? Don’t you want to watch a Viking fight a Samurai? Or a
Pirate against a Knight? You can apparently only watch the latest episode on the
website, here. Also,
looking forward on the Wikipedia, it does look like the show might slip-slide
from whatever tenuous grasp they have on ideas for fights as they start doing
shows about William
Wallace versus Shaka Zulu or finally, the IRA versus the Taliban.
I have only one
thought. How could they have NOT had a Pirate
versus Ninja episode? FAIL!