Series 4: 1990

Transmission

Friday 7th September - Friday 21st December 1990 - 16 episodes

Teams

8

Quests

Sword: 1    Shield: 3    Cup: 2    Crown: 2

Winning Quest

Team 6: Dicken, Dominic, Tim and Praveen from Torquay
The Quest for the Crown (also the Longest Quest : 54mins)

Longest Quest

Team 6: 54 mins

Shortest Quest

Team 7: 25mins

New Characters

Pickle, Brother Mace, Boat Man, Gundrada, Malice, Fatilla, Mistress Goody.

Old Characters

Hordriss, Motley, Mellisandre, Merlin, Mogdred, The Ogre.

Other Additions

An assistant for Treguard - 'Pickle' the Elf, the Eye Shield to enable pre-recorded links between scenes so the advisors would no-longer need to guide their dungeoneer to a specific exit point, thereby saving time. All quests revolve around four set quest objects (Sword, Cup, Crown and Shield). New theme music, slightly modified titles and many real outside locations combined with computer graphics to produce new scenes.

"The Knightmare adventures demanded movement, danger, atmosphere and a complex variety of scenes in which to stage the game. The Greater Game was becoming ever more hungry - ever more demanding of scenic complexity, and Harris and Rowe were at the limit of what could be achieved either with computer or paintbrush...

So - if Virtual Reality wouldn’t do the trick, how about plain reality? Britain was rich in real castles with real crumbling dungeons. Harris’s relighting techniques could be used with any images, real or painted, so why not acquire a huge dungeon database by looting history?"

(taken from 'The History of Knightmare' - Part 2)

The castles that were used in this series can be seen in 'Castles on the Air' - an article in issue 1-2 of 'The Quest'. The Life Force remained the same as used in series 1-3.

During this series, Hordriss and Gundrada both made appearances on Children's ITV with presenters Jeanne Downs and Scally the Dog. See the Children's ITV pages for more information.

"Welcome watchers, doesn't it seem an age since the last time, well not for me perhaps, but you all look distinctly older."

"Oh dear, oh dear, not at all promising, but then appearances can be so deceptive... Take Pickle here for example, not exactly one of them, but not exactly one of us either."

Pickle put a banana into the knapsack! Treguard was not to happy when he found out!

"The food you need, you must find and place in this knapsack to feed your own sprite of energy. It's image will follow you through the dungeon and must be sustained, or your like in our game is over, otherwise you may carry two objects at a time.

And now your greatest handicap, from this moment on, your friend must be your eyes, you may only see where your feet have taken you and no longer where the path may lead. The rest of you, guide her well, or your challenge is doomed."

The new status bar on the bottom of the screen were produced using the Commodore Amiga 2000, and usually appeared throughout the quests when clue objects were picked up or magic received. Also shown when Pickle did the progress report at the start of episodes:

Video Clip (117KB) of the introduction to episode 2.

Some scenes used in the closing titles:

This room below that was used for the closing titles in episode 1. It shows large sharp swinging axe moving across the room in a circular sort of motion. This room did not made it to the dungeon at all, possibly because it looks pretty tough and unworkable. It was however used in the French version of Knightmare - 'Le Chevalier du Labyrinthe'.

Treguard was played by Hugo Myatt
Pickle was played by David Learner
The Ogre was played by Erin Geraghty
Merlin and Mogdred was played by John Woodnutt
Hordriss and Oakley was played by Clifford Norgate
Brother Mace, Fatilla and Doorkis was played by Michael Cule
Gundrada and Malice was played by Samantha Perkins
Motley and The Boatman was played by Paul Valentine
Mellisandre, Dooris and Dooreen was played by Zoe Loftin