Series 4: 1990

Treguard: "So, you've come! I just hope you've come prepared.

Looking for adventure are you? Well, you've certainly come to the right place."

Summary

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

Teams: 8

Quests: Sword: 1; Shield: 3; Cup: 2; Crown: 2.

Winning Quests:  Team 6: Dickon, Dominic, Tim and Praveen from Torquay (Quest for the Crown)

Longest Quest: Team 6 at 54 mins

Shortest Quest: Team 7 at 25 mins

New Characters: Pickle, Brother Mace, the Boatman, Gundrada, Malice, Fatilla, Mistress Goody, Weeping Doors (Dooris, Doorkis, Dooreen), Ogre. Assassins and redesigned skull hauntings also introduced.

Old Characters: Hordriss, Motley, Mellisandre, Merlin, Mogdred, Ariadne, goblins

Other Additions: An assistant for Treguard: Pickle the elf. the eyeshield to enable pre-recorded links between scenes so the advisors would no longer need to sepnd time guiding their dungeoneer to a specific exit point. 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.

History

"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)

Overview

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 that 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.

Treguard: "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 none too happy when he found out!

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

"And now your greatest handicap: from this moment on, your friends 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 top or bottom of the screen was produced using the Commodore Amiga 2000, and usually appeared throughout the quests after clue objects were picked up or magic received. Also shown when Pickle did the progress report at the start of episodes.

Some scenes used in the closing titles:

This room below was used for the closing titles in Episode 1. It shows a large, sharp axe swinging across the room in a circular motion. This room did not appear in 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.

Series Credits

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

Devised and Written by Tim Child
Production Co-ordinator, Sue Child
Illustrations by David John Rowe
Computer Animation Design by The Travelling Matte Company

Produced by Tim Child