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TRIP

FALL

ON YOUR FACE

Resumed here at the Fortress of Doom, and encountered Fatilla the Hun (a big ugly person, according to the advisers) in his first appearance! Bribed him with the gold, convincing him that it 'tastes very nice' because he didn't know what to do with it! Julie asked the advisers to guide her out of the room, and Treguard prompted her to hold up the eye-shield!

Next, first appearance of the new-look floating skulls, along with the entrance to the moving corridor. Just got past the skull, and into the corridor, which didn't have any blades... yet! Instead, the conveyor passed a few doors then took the dungeoneer into blackness.
(If I can somehow eliminate that flickering, I might make an animated GIF of the new floating skull - since it stayed in one position for a while)


Then the wellway room, with an armored knight on guard. Took the dagger out of its sheath, which made Julie semi-invisible! Used that power to get down the well.

Almost caught by goblins at the beginning of Level 2, but Gundrada (another first appearance!) Gundrada accompanied Julie to the next room, where there were several clues on the table. Gundrada took some food and the gold straight away, leaving Julie with some other food, some silver and a bracelet/locket thing.

In the next room, Gundrada decided to desert them, and there was a man trapped in the stocks! Interesting how they guided Julie round the grate in the floor to reach the trapped man, when they could clearly have walked over it - other teams have!
After freeing the trapped man, he reveals himself to be Merlin! Well, he sure looks like Merlin, though he didn't say his name

Entered the Block and Tackle. Just made it through, and narrowly avoided stepping off the edge at the right! After that, another door-monster appeared (Doorkis). Pickle didn't tell them the calling this time, they had to remember it!
When Doorkis was asked to repeat the 1st riddle, it said 'No, I can't!'
Scored 2/3 on the true/false riddles though, and gained passage over the drawbridge.

Only now, in the Dunkley Wood eye-shield sequence, did Merlin's name get mentioned (by Treguard)! Pickle is already taking over some of Treguard's duties by telling the advisers about places
They held up the reflector, causing a small flashing light to appear on the eye-shield view, leading the way to the elf-path door.

Brother Mace made his debut in the next room, and kept using Latin words and expressions Answered a riddle from him and gained a FREEZE spell.

Next, the entrance to Ariadne's Lair (you could tell by the spider web on the left). Chased by Ariadne (new footage filmed this season) into a door in the tree!
Ariadne's new lair had a visible web over the ceiling. Ariadne came chasing them, so they had to use the FREEZE spell to stun her, and get the food and gold which was on the tree stump.

Another first next, the boatman. He asked for silver AND gold as the fare for crossing before he allowed Julie into the boat! Then timed out just after they entered the fortress!

Under the credits this time was a knice blue cavern with waterfall. The pace is REALLY slowing down for this series - two episodes, and we're still on the first team, no death yet!

A slight correction Tom but the dungeoneer is Helen and not Julie. Anyway a couple of things did anyone notice the dog right before Helen appeared just before she met Brother Mace? Also how does the Boatman know where to go and when and where to stop when he doesn't appear to be able to see where he's going and notice how he gets the right place everytime. Does he count in his head the number of rows?

The boatman is a bit greedy requiring both gold and silver. Must have been quite wealthy towards the end of the series.

Moana Liza wrote:did anyone notice the dog right before Helen appeared just before she met Brother Mace?

http://www.furry.co.uk/dogclip.wmv (63KB, under a second!)

Blink and you'll miss it. I'd suggest turning off sound and looping before you look at it, too, unless you want to go mad.

Edit: here's a slightly longer version (430KB, 10 seconds) featuring the actual walk-up-to-door, the dog, and the quick cut-back to advisors)

http://www.furry.co.uk/longerdogclip.wmv

Dan wrote:I'd suggest turning off sound and looping before you look at it, too, unless you want to go mad.

What, barking mad? Anyway I just noticed on the second clip oh and the first one that the Challenge logo contains the question mark unless you're clips are from the first Series 4 showing on Challenge.

Moana Liza wrote:What, barking mad?

Groan

Anyway I just noticed on the second clip oh and the first one that the Challenge logo contains the question mark unless you're clips are from the first Series 4 showing on Challenge.

Yes, they're from the first showing.

Anyone watch this episode this morning on Challenge?
I know you've all probably seen all the series loads of times but it was the first one I've watched since I was little. Fantastic to see again after all this time!
Great fun shouting at my TV for Helen to hurry up & laughed when merlin had to hold on to his wig when he took his hood off
Set KM on autoview in my personal planner on sky so I won't miss any episodes from now on!

I've never commented on these S4 episodes before, as I was on holiday during August 2004, during when the first ten episodes were shown. And this time I missed episode 1 - annoying, seeing as I'm recording the episodes. However, looks like it'll be shown again in April, so I've included 30 minutes of blank at the start on the tape which I can put episode 1 in.

The transparent effect looked good...presumably done by recording the knight separately, as otherwise he'd have been transparent too. What on earth's happened to Merlin, though? In Series 3 he had his own chamber, and now he's stuck in the stocks (sorry, pillory) pretending to be a prisoner. Heaven knows how long he'd been waiting there before Helen arrived. I think it's the beginning of Merlin's slow descent into madness, culminating in *that* series ending (and continued, unofficially, in the 4th Interactive Story). Can't remember where the ad-break was, but they used a really odd break slide of the opening titles' knight on his mare looking shocked. Thankfully they'll soon change it to simply a still of the logo.

Oh dear, here's Doorkis. Treguard says he's (?) 'not quite as miserable as Dooris', which would have worked fine, but then he has to go on and say it to EVERY OTHER TEAM who gets that far. Riddles have decreased in importance since the riddle-heavy Series 3, where teams went into losing status just because they got one wrong...now they're just True or False questions, which you have a 1 in 2 chance of answering correctly. You've still got the old-style ones in the guise of Oakley, though. Bizarre moment where Helen asks Doorkis to repeat the first riddle, and gets the reply "No, I can't!" Wha?!

A dog appears in the forest! Obviously filmed seperately, judging by the cut to the advisors and then back to Helen walking in. One of the few non-huge animals in the history of the series, which is probably why we saw it run away.

I always thought the 'sea' was a nice effect, even though you can sometimes see the tape jump back to the beginning. There must have been a boat shortage, though, as the boatman's demanding silver and gold for the trip. Good thing Helen found a bar of gold in Ariadne's lair, although I'm not entirely sure how it got there in the first place. Ariadne's way too big to somehow nab it from a clue room...unless Gundrada saw her in her lair, ran away, and dropped the gold?

Will they be the first winners since 1988 to conquer the dungeon? Well, if you've read the rest of this thread, you probably know...and if you don't, it'll have been revealed when episode 3 was shown about 2 minutes later. On we go to that!

They enter a clearing in Dunkley Wood, and still, as ever, "You're in a room..."

A very slow-paced episode again, altho it was kept interesting by the appearance of several new (and enjoyable) characters.
Immediately team 1 were confronted by Fatilla, a very large and very stupid guard, who threatened to clobber them with his club. (A like-for-like replacement for Olaf, then.) They bribed him with the gold, altho he seemed more interested in whether he could eat it.
A rare case of a weapon being useful (they had been given a clue to take it) as the dagger made then invisible, enabling them to evade the behemoth in the well-room.

Helen was immediately surrounded by goblins in level 2, but help arrived just in time. I really like the character of Gundrada, a boisterous and ever-so-slightly-barmy sword-mistress who was generally helpful, if rather condescending, to teams.
They had some amusing dialogue with her in the clue-room.
Did they not realise that it was Merlin in the stocks? The were a very bright team, so i assumed they would guess that.
First sighting of the notorious block&tackle room. They got Helen moving in time, altho she was out of view in the corner for a while. That first, lower block only just missed her.

Oh no, another of those talking drawbridge things. One was tedious enough. This one got to the point a bit quicker and at least it refused to repeat any questions.

Next-up they met a wonderful new character: Brother Mace, an amiable "tavern-monk" with a fondness for latin quotations & strong ale. They worked-out his riddle and received a "FREEZE" spell.

Into ariadne's new lair and used their spell to escape.
Had to find a way across the dunswater. The ferryman demanded silver & gold but, strangely enough, in the absence of any other punters, he made no complaints when they offered him just gold.
Reached the other side and headed down the steps towards level 3 as time-out arrived.

The 30th anniversary today of this episode means the 30th anniversary of Michael Cule's Knightmare debut. That first Brother Mace scene, available here on the ITV Children's Classics YouTube channel, is one of my favourites.

Michael has commented:

I was bloody terrified at the time that I’d lose it because the writer/director, Tim Child, had as was his habit given the character far, far too much dialogue for his first appearance and rather too much of it in Latin. I had crammed it all into my brain as hard as I could but to my eyes (looking back now) I was giving the dialogue (well, mostly my monologue) all the welly I could and barrelling through the scene at speed and volume. I don’t know that anyone else sees the fear there but I can.

It was Tim’s habit to overwrite until he became confident that you could improvise and work from a brief. It wasn’t too long before he would send me on with just an outline or a couple of paragraphs especially as Fatilla the Hun. I’m quite pleased, looking back over the years, with what I managed to do as those two characters especially when the youngsters chose to bowl me a googly.

A numerical coincidence that applies to this Knightmare episode and to some others: it was Episode 4.2 and Episode 42. What's more, for Michael Cule as an alumnus of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which "42" has some significance, there could not have been a better episode for his debut. Not to mention the presence of David Learner, another HHGG alumnus.

This has led to me to investigate whether there is an official clip of Michael Cule encountering Knightmare's very own Team 42 (aka Series 5 Team 3).

Thankfully, with Michael under his guise of The Gatemaster, I was not disappointed.