Knightmare in Geek Week

Could someone please help? I'd really like to see the extended version. You can now watch the original upload of the extended Geek Week episode here. There's also a later upload here. Let us know what you think of it. Something I've only just noticed: the first thing to happen in the episode is a facing-away-from-the-camera sidestep (by Veruca). Surely deliberate? Thank you! Great to see the extra stuff! Also nice to hear the opening theme tune fade out naturally without the door-creaking-open sound effect at the end.

In May, Knightmare fan turned Knightmare cast member Isy Suttie was a guest on Episode 10 of Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Lockdown Parenting Hell podcast. (Josh has made various references to Knightmare on TV and social media, as well as being a Knightmare Live advisor; Rob knows Knightmare too.) You can listen to the podcast here and via other podcast websites. Isy comes in at the 10-minute mark and very quickly makes this worthwhile listening for Knightmare fans.

I've enjoyed hearing Isy Suttie on the Asda adverts. She's on a Calpol advert at the moment too.

The Geek Week episode of Knightmare is now three years old. It's had over a million views on YouTube. This is impressive but I find myself wondering why it hasn't had more. Dan Howell alone has over 3.5 million followers on Twitter. Hopefully word will continue to spread, especially among CITV-era Knightmare watchers. Since the episode was released, Isy Suttie (Veruca) and Jessie Cave (Theodora Snitch) have both become parents. Specifically, mothers. Jessie's other half is the son of impressionist Jan Ravens. Isy's partner is Elis James, who co-stars in the sitcom Josh alongside Josh Widdicombe. As well as being a Knightmare fan (as confirmed on Mock The Week last month), Widdicombe wrote a comment for the cover of Isy's book, which mentions Knightmare. I'd be interested to know how influential Widdicombe's recommendation was for shifting copies. I put together a YouTube playlist comprising all the official videos relating to Geek Week Knightmare: the trailer, the Kryten videos and both versions of the episode. It's here.

Following the success of their book (as referred to in a recent Knightmare.com article), Dan and Phil were interviewed by Josh Glancy for the Sunday Times Magazine. They are referred to as 'becoming impossible to dismiss' since 2013 (the time of a 'vlogger boom'). If this isn't a deliberate nod to the 2013 Geek Week episode and Treguard spellcasting DISMISS on them, it's a heck of a coincidence.

Hi everybody, Just thought you'd like to know that Dan and Phil (from the Geek Week episode) are taking questions now on Tumblr, so you can ask them about Knightmare (or anything else) if you want. http://danisnotonfire.tumblr.com/ask

I didn't catch it, but I'll deffo have to check the online thing now.

-On the whole really positive, my only beef was parts of the opening section. The graphics of Treguard's crib, back story, camera angle, too long, everything was awkward there...Probably like one of my posts -The Team has divided opinion, I thought they were completely fine + respectful. They would generate a lot more traffic and interest than any a team made up of forum members, maximising chances of success. -Personally if anything would want to see something inspired by Knightmare return, rather than a continuation of Knightmare. Still says volumes for how highly its regarded that after all these years a stand alone episode was made.

Doesn't really surprise me. Dan and Phil have their own (hugely successful) radio show on Radio 1. That kind of thing could easily translate to a stage show.

Sorry if already posted elsewhere. Basically an intra-view with Tim Child @ Adventure X in Dec 2013. Includes some of the Geek week episode. Worth listening to for the opening music, not sure if that was used in original scenes or somebody playing around with the riff, some quality gothic keyboard there... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv8xEZBXC7U

I've taken the liberty of writing an article for Knightmare.com about this, which also covers Knightmare articles published in Metro before and after the one here. This seems a good opportunity to remind everyone that, as per the Requests section of the Forum Rules, news like this, and indeed anything newsworthy, is better off submitted as an article rather than posted about on the forum. If it's worth telling the forum's limited audience about then it's worth telling Knightmare.com's far more substantial audience about, and boosting Knightmare's profile that much further, which is more valuable now than ever. Plus, you don't get a medal for sharing news on here, only on the website.

I agree, ITV has dumbed down a lot since the mid-90's.

If you look, the endcap of the Geek Week episode states it is "A DungeonMaster production for YouTube"! Indeed it does (slaps forehead) lol I guess that answers the little mystery I posted about, since we now know it's related to Knightmare. As it's an actual company that's been formed, I'd have said the plot thickens in regards to there being a follow-on series - however we already know the plan to a certain degree thanks to Tim himself speaking of the Geek Week episode plus additional footage being edited to form a proper pilot he can market for a new series. From this we can see that, in the event the pilot is successful, Tim would remain in the production loop of the new series (as managing director of Dungeon Master Ltd), whether or not he chooses to come out of retirement to manage and produce the show as he always has.

hehehe The sequence is reversed because it's the countdown to Knightmare coming back to life. That is, it's Knightmare regenerating. That was the idea. As simple as that? I don't know how that idea completely went completely over my head, but it did. I've been hanging around Doctor Who forums for too long I guess, now I always tend to over-analyze things Regarding the scariness, I have two theories about that: Firstly, there's the absence of the heartbeat sound effect, which is particularly tension building. Secondly, the coloured circles from the original life-force sequence made a sort of tunnel effect. With the eyeballs floating away, it left you staring at this never-ending tunnel of nothingness. I think that adds an element of dread. Add those back in, and I suspect that you'd be a long way to recreating the intensity/scariness of the original. It's only now that you mention it that I recall the heartbeat sound effect of the original plain as day. Sound effects really do go a long way to setting or enhancing a particular mood. The absence of that effect in the trailer - indeed the episode itself - is incredibly noticeable in hindsight and I definitely think you've nailed the single biggest reason why the sequence didn't quite have the effect on me I'd have expected. While I realised the background was missing, I hadn't considered it's importance before. I'd always seen the background as merely being an indicator of the Green/Amber/Red status, but just like the sound effect it also pulses, and this pulsing is reflected in certain parts of the sequence such as the helmet and the eyeballs. This lent both a 3D quality in a difficult to describe way. In the original sequence, the eyeballs looked pretty flat, but once the final part of the skull broke away, they began to reflect the pulsing background on a vertical axis causing them to appear to spin. As the eyes rolled forward, the pulsing axis would rotate along with the eye, so the eye appeared clearly to be a 3D object. The updated sequence doesn't have the reflective eyeballs, instead they're smoothly shaded in a realistically spherical way. The problem with this is that the shading of a sphere looks identical no matter how the sphere is rotated, the only visual clue that an eye is rotating is the movement of the pupil, which draws the focus and merely looks comical as a result. Despite the criticism, I don't hate the updated sequence, I love it. I just could not understand until now how such a sequence, which I've waited decades to see made reality, could be so underwhelming, even when it's really high quality. Now, I'm confident with the soundtrack and tunnel effect restored, this could be exactly how we've always dreamed it could be.

Certainly something they need to go into more detail with of a new series in made, and it's something that could slowly leak out over the series as part it's story line, maybe treguard was put under a spell and doesn't really know exactly what happen himself until we learn it while taking on the dungeon. Always better to have a purpose to finished the dungeon than just trying to reach the finish line.

The misleading aspect is that it says, "Knightmare is also being reprised for a one-off internet show as part of Google's geek week." It's not necessarily misleading. It could be entirely accurate. Indeed that's certainly possible, I'd like to hope in any case. I have a hunch that a possible KM revival might have been planned for some time. We're led to believe the Geek Week Special opportunity literally came out of nowhere at the last moment, and while this could still be accurate, maybe two birds were killed with one stone. From what we know, Google made a request for Tim to create a one-off episode for Geek Week with a nostalgic slant purposefully designed to convey how the series was as opposed to how the series would be if made today. There is also suggestion that the whole deal was fairly last-minute, as evidenced by the recording sessions being fairly close to the online release of the episode itself. Given the circumstances, the most logical course of action would have been to use all existing available resources. More specifically, the David Rowe artwork that was used for Series 1-3 still exists, and based on the detail seen in these wallpapers provided by Rowe himself: They're certainly HD quality. In any case it would have definitely been feasible for the episode to have featured some of those since they're not only 100% authentically original but would surely be less expensive to re-use than the completely new dungeon backdrops that were seen in the episode itself. Those appear to have been created completely from scratch - just compare Granitas' room for example, the rooms resemble the Series 1-3 rooms but were re-created from scratch. Why do this? It's strange, especially since there were apparently more rooms featured in the adventure that didn't make the final cut into the episode itself. That's either an additional expense that wasn't absolutely needed (and in some ways wasted), or a possible clue that plans have been afoot for quite some time to revive the show in the 21st Century, with re-painted higher quality (or entirely CGI?) dungeon locations. Perhaps Tim simply saw an opportunity to use the new elements that already existed because of his previous attempts to revive the show (which KMVR would have been one), or maybe the potential of the Geek Week episode was seen and seized on very early with no expense spared creating the new scenery - which is what I'd expect might be the case if a follow-on series isn't merely a possibility but to be expected... And I'm not entirely convinced Treguard's "Join us again for Knightmare" line at the end isn't intended exactly as it sounds

Yes, the post needs moving.

Kryten also picked Knightmare ("one of the greatest TV games ever made") as a highlight of the week! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDW9zlGpDNs

It would be helpful for us to post up an article summarising reviews of the GeekWeek episode, perhaps including summarising the mood on the forums, Facebook, and YouTube. Would anyone be interested in doing this? We would need to post it up in the next 2-3 days to have the desired effect.

Of course as well as loading up the graphics and getting the objects in the right place they and work out the next 'scene' and inter rations with the characters.. we know it couldn't be fully scripted. So I guess an hour of prep between rooms isn't that long if you're working in it, feels like a life time if you're the team waiting in the in back room. Plus, it's not like a film where they can finish the short or effects after filming, they are after all sending a live feed back to the other team members. I remember getting involved with a Doctor who event at the bbc forum in Norwich a few years ago and we had a blue screen set up so kids could put themselves into a mini episode and do all sorts.. it looked rubbish but this was pretty basic compared to what's happening with Knightmre. But it would be interesting to find out how things have changed shooting a Episode for Knightmare today compared to 20 odd years ago.. Sometimes the as technology gets better and easier to use it can in fact make the proses even longer. Would be nice to spend a day in set watching it all happen.