I think there may well have been a change in how they saw their potential audience throughout the entire run of Knightmare, ie. they were shooting for a younger age-group at the end than at the beginning. This idea seems to show in the lighter, more comic atmosphere KM had latterly, with serious characters like Lord Fear becoming humorous (although I don't actually mind that in the case of Mark Knight - there was a really good rapport with Cliff Barry, who played Lissard). But he wasn't the only one - Sylvester Hands was definitely a semi-threatening character when he was first introduced and then gradually just became comical. Also, Treguard in the first 2 or 3 series was on the side of the Dungeon and they certainly weren't providing any helpers for the teams, whereas later there was Pickle, then Majida. Perhaps after a win-free season (series 3) someone on the production team thought that extra assistance was a good idea. Not all of these changes were a bad thing, but it's certainly hard to compare series 1 or 2 with series 8 - and of course, the changes didn't actually create any more winners in the end anyway. So it probably looked easier (and sometimes less interesting) for us, but was no easier for the teams involved.
