Mission 2110 is set in the future and the adventures you are about to see are controlled by trained professionals. Please do not try any of the missions performed in the show at home.
— The disclaimer shown at the beginning of the show
Mission: 2110 was a British childrens' Game Show that aired on CBBC, with a tie-in web game, about groups of children trying to fight back against a horde of hostile robots.
In the 2030s, the Roboidz - toy robots that could think for themselves, essentially - were invented, and over the years were refined to become humanity's helping hands. Eventually, though, they decided they had enough and exterminated their creators, turning their victims into the zombielike Shades. By the year 2110, only one human (as far as he knows) is left alive: Caleb, the partially-robotic son of the Roboidz' creator, and he's not happy with the canheads occupying his home. To combat the Roboid menace and take back the Earth from them, Caleb recruits children from the year 2010 to infiltrate the Futuregate ship, the Roboidz' home base, and trains them while simultaneously raiding their power reserves, ultimately taking his finest recruits to a final assault on the Roboidz and their leader Neuros.
Four teams of four recruits, over the course of 12 episodes, would be whittled down to just four for the final assault via a series of games.
Provides examples of:
- After the End: The Roboidz have won by 2110 and the show is focused around overthrowing them.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Roboidz were originally peaceful servants of humanity until one of them went rogue. Their leader Neuros is not a case as she represents Laura's brain without her conscience, making her a non-mechanical threat.
- All There in the Manual: A lot of the backstory behind the show was hidden away in the tie-in web game.
- Brain in a Jar: Neuros, the show's main antagonist, is a brain in a jar that resembles one of the many Biorods.
- Brain Uploading: Laura did this to herself so she could guide Caleb in the future. This wound up creating two entities - Cybele, her conscience and consciousness given digital form, and Neuros, her biological brain without her morality.
- Catchphrase: The announcer's "Mission on!" when a game started.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Each Roboid class has a different color of external shell - Workers are yellow, Wardroids are red, and Commanders are silver. Arkon is blue.
- The Vaporiser grid would also change color in the first playthrough to show how the enemies were moving: green for right, blue for forwards, and purple for left.
- Cyborg: Caleb is revealed to be partially mechanical in Series 1, apparently as a treatment for his former illness.
- Darker and Edgier and Lighter and Softer: Manages to be both to its predecessor Raven. While the setting is much darker (Raven's usual fare is a tournament where the in-universe risk is minimal thanks to Raven's resurrective magic, whereas 2110 takes place After the End in a world dominated by hostile robots who won't hesitate to maim humans in-universe), Caleb is allowed to be emotionally closer to the contestants than Raven and humor is more present, contributing to a lighter tone despite the heavy setting.
- David Versus Goliath: Caleb takes on Arkon, a commander-class Roboid who's easily twice his size, in a fight scene during the last moments of Series 1 and wins.
- The Dragon: Arkon, the original Roboid who was responsible for their rebellion in the first place, is this to Neuros.
- Evil Smells Bad: Frequent reference is made by Caleb to the awful stench of the Shades.
- Final Boss: Neuros was always involved in the final game of each series, Neuros Web, where she forced the players to go through a web of laser beams.
- Hive Queen: Downplayed. Neuros, the central computer of the Roboidz, commands them from her jar, but some individual Roboidz like Arkon are able to act indepedently of her.
- Human Popsicle: Caleb was put under cryogenic stasis when he contracted an illness that couldn't be cured in his time. Although he was able to be cured when he was thawed out, he suffers amnesia and relies on Cybele to tell him about his past.
- Keystone Army: The Roboidz and Shades have two different flavors of keystone: first, they require Biorods to power themselves, although there are so many Biorods that it would take decades to make a dent in their forces by pilfering them. However, the second and more important keystone was Neuros, the computational mind coordinating the Roboid forces. Unplugging her would shut down all of the Roboidz and Shades as a result.
- Laser Hallway: The final game of each series, Neuros Web, consists of a long hallway of lasers leading to Neuros's tank. Touching a laser merely teleports the unlucky Recruit back to the starting point.
- Last of His Kind: Caleb is possibly the only human with free will and flesh of his timeline still alive in 2110. All the other humans are either Recruits from 100 years ago, mindless Shades controlled by the Roboidz, or body-less brains.
- Once per Episode: Not quite in every episode but in every second and third episode aside from the final was the Vaporiser, where the Recruits would have to navigate a triangular grid and avoid enemy characters while working towards a goal.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Shades are reanimated cyborg humans created by the Roboidz to be their servants. They're clad in black with face-obscuring helmets, tend to be not very bright, a mere touch from them is lethal to a human, and they supposedly smell nasty.
- Robot War: The show takes place during the aftermath of one.
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Spiritual Successor: Mission: 2110 aired after the end of the original run of Raven, and had several cast members from that show working on it. - Teleportation: Each Recruit was given a "panic button" that they could (and in some cases had to) press in order to teleport themselves out of danger, sometimes at the cost of the Biorods they accumulated. Naturally, these were taken from them during the Vaporiser.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The Roboidz. Possibly justified in that they were originally a childrens' toy.
