Re:Bypassing levels *POSSIBLE SPOILER until Friday*
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Bypassing a level is not at all fair, it was done because the season was drawing to a close (with it being a shorter season), and the production evidently wanted a winner.
Personally I would have allowed Dunstan & Co. to go through a tougher level 2 (therefore possibly dying), as I believe the final team had a lot of potential to win. Although again, they got a bit of help in their quest, too.
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None of the possible solutions would work perfectly but here is another possibility:-
Instead of simply removing a complete level (way to obvious that meddling is occuring), why not simply shorten the entire quest (Shorten all 3 levels by a relatively small amount)? The cut-down wouldn't be completely obvious and the cumulative effect would still give the shortened quest that the production team needed, winner or no winner.
Also remember that, backstage, there would be a standby team wondering whether or not they will get into the dungeon at all (can you imagine getting all the way through the audition, being selected from however many potetial teams, GETTING TO THE STUDIO.... Then being told at the last minute you can't play "'cause we're out of time"??).
What actually happened was a rush job under difficult conditions. Ourselves discussing the situation here have had YEARS to look back and figure out a better ending.
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Couldn't agree less with that idea, Snowcat. With the removal of the easy bits of Levels 2 and 3, what Dunstan actually got was an unusually tough third level. If there'd been three contracted levels, it wouldn't have been as tough.
In some ways, losing level 2 made the job harder for Dunstan, not easier, as there was no gradual learning curve from level 1 to 3, so I think that maybe offsets the assistance of the short cut.
The only thing Dunstan really got away with was when he was hit on the Corridor of Blades, and he certainly wasn't the first to get undue benefit of the doubt there.
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I think they could of made Dunstan's quest slightly longer. I noticed that they beat the dungeon in 35mins while some of the earlier teams in this series died after around 50mins and were very close to the end.
I also say it should've been longer because 8mins for Team 6 was no way long enough to get into the quest properly even though they bypassed level 2.
Perhaps Level 1 could of been lengthened slightly so that Dunstan would complete the dungeon at the same time as the series ended perhaps adding a small storyline to his quest as well?
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That would have been a better option, have level 2 about 5 or so minutes long and make level 3 as long as required. Even make out that Lord Fear was so annoyed by the win that he had made the dungeons inpassible / closed to all early (ie cheating). Also acts as an excuse for why only 10 episodes were made.
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i found it fair, as it ws rumoured at the time that it would be the last series of knightmare, ad sadly it was!!! so i think short cut was necessary to speed things up, level 3 was however a lot longer i feel in the final series too with Linghorm and Marblehead.
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I accept Alan Boyd'd explanation:
We won that particular quest completely fairly without any rigging or intervention whatsoever.
Infact, Tim Child and the real powers that be didn't expect us to win, a final scene with Lord Fear wasn't even written until we got there! (As we proved during the first level our communication was less than perfect although this did improve later on). Take a look at every other team and you'll find a similar level of communication during level 1 while the teams get used to everything.
Level 2 was missed out and (as the team captain) I can tell you now that we were possibly the most disappointed to be missing out on a third of the dungeon. However due to time constraints we were told that if we didn't miss level 2 out it would be highly unlikely that we would be able to complete the dungeon at all as and such we decided to take our chances in level 3 rather than trawling through the second level for nothing due to the time running out.
We were made fully aware that the difficulty would not change. The easy puzzles from levels 2 and 3 were removed and the harder puzzles were put together to get us a tougher level 3 (which is the point we quickly started to improve).
Our victory was a fair one.
Furthermore, having re-watched my 1994 recording, I'm not convinced Dunstan was hit by a blade.
And Barry's quest was not fixed, Brollachan.
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Erm Barry did effectively die 3 times: Moving Blocks room (stepping over on a gap), PYCR (touched the joker), Lie Force starved with no helmet on skeleton (dripping tap), Corridor of Blades (blade went through him practically).
My point being whilst I dislike the way in which a level was skipped, Dunstons' team had to avoid being killed. However I suspect when there was only one episode left as they were still alive they may have been allowed to win.
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PYCR (touched the joker)
Im sure you know, as well as everybody else does, in a game of cards a joker can be anything - thus it couldnt be a wrong card
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having re-watched my 1994 recording, I'm not convinced Dunstan was hit by a blade.
Yes, looking at it again on Challenge yesterday, I no longer think that he was hit by it either. It's the first time I saw the scene since '95, and it seemed a lot closer the first couple of times I saw it.
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I have to agree. No quests were "fixed" maybe made a bit more forgiving but definately not fixed. If they were fixed and they got the blade right through the middle of them then they couldn't carry on. i think barry misses the blade by a cm in series 7 and i dont think the quests were fixed in series 8. Im not sure though that it was fair to make some easier whil they practically killed off series8-team2 by giving them the corridor of blades. and im sure that on the fireball puzzle(is it nathan) when they say side step left he was past the hole but then they shout stop and then it just showed him falling down the hole. Sometimes i think they kill earlier teams off because they don't want a winner so early in the series.
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Well 1 or 2 early quests were kind of fixed in a way, in that deaths were reversed. Team 6 season 2 failed to get any riddles right so were given a second chance, and team 1 season 3 fell off the serpent-tongue bridge, but were allowed to refilm it because team 2 hadn't shown up.
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G'day
For those who don't know me (not unrealistic....despite my being easy to summon, it is rare that people choose to do so ) my name is Alan Boyd and I was the team captain for the series 8 winning team (the one with the red hair).
Most of what I previously said has been brought up again here. In fact, I have even been quoted
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Our quest was not fixed. In fact, the production team thought we were going to fail.
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Our game rules (given to each team before they played) specifically stated that a shortcut existed. This was also emphasised by Tim Child to our team. At the time of filming, we did not know what other teams had gone through (and the team ahead of us were not permitted to tell us). We therefore had no idea if anyone else had taken the shortcut, etc.
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We were told that if we took the short cut ("if you can find it"), we would miss out the easy parts of level 2 and level 3 (the difficulty of the levels do overlap). If we were not particularly good, therefore, we were likely to be knocked out very quickly in level 3 (or even level 1).
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If we did not take the shortcut it was likely (but not definite) that we would be 'running for fun' (playing, even though you don't have time to complete the quest).
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At the end of the quest, I asked TC if he thought we could have made it through level 2. I was told that our pace through the rooms we did was FAST and that it was likely we would have had time. But of course, we could have fallen along the way.
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The point raised earlier about quietly shrinking the size of levels is entirely valid. Nobody would have been any the wiser (and actually, having counted the rooms we went through, I think you'll find another winning team actually had fewer than us).
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From what I saw it looked like the plan was to make the shortcut a standard feature of a possible future series.
The shortcut would stretch from half way through level 1 to half way through level 2. There would then be a shorter level 3 and a new level 4. I think they were trying to get away from the concept of "level 1 is a warmup, bad teams get to level 2, good teams get to level 3".
This is a lot of speculation based on what I saw. The only thing I know for sure is that it was implied the shortcut would be around and that the dungeon design was going to be different in the next series (if there was one, they weren't sure)
- Dunstan was not hit by the blade. It was close. But he wasn't hit (look at it in slow motion). They put blue masking tape on the floor to mark where the blades stretch to, so they can tell if he should have been hit by the blade. Of course, that doesn't mean that everything is aligned properly, graphically (which is why the blades can something seem too close to have not hit)
In any case, quite simply, we ended up with harder rooms than some other teams. But got 4 or 5 fewer than the average winning team were given. It all balances in the end, since you can always make a silly mistake (we've all seen great, sure winning teams do something odd like walk off a cliff).
Hope that clears some stuff up
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Furthermore, having re-watched my 1994 recording, I'm not convinced Dunstan was hit by a blade.
Having watched it again yesterday, I am now positively convinced that he wasn't.
Erm Barry did effectively die 3 times: Moving Blocks room (stepping over on a gap), PYCR (touched the joker), Lie Force starved with no helmet on skeleton (dripping tap), Corridor of Blades (blade went through him practically).
I don't recall the block room situation (and I think I'd have noticed), Sumaya's death in Series 6 indicated that a bare skeleton is not the sign of death, merely that of critical ill health (there is one last stage: the skeleton's collapsing and turning green), and, in any case, the life force/food thing wasn't actually for 'real' and all the sequences were added in afterwards, and, again, I'm sure you wrong when it comes to the blade. Perhaps it's an optical illusion - since the blades are round (or semi-circular, effectively, since half is in the wall), if the dungeoneer marginally dodges one the eye 'think' that the blade was rectangular and that its corner passed through the dungeoneer.
Incidentally, if you think Barry's quest was rigged in order that the Bullstrode situation be played out, bear in mind the premature termination of Chris's quest in Series 6 - if Barry had died, they'd have done something similar with the next team.
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If you watch closely while he's in the sliding block room, there's no doubt at all that Barry gets away with stepping over the edge at least twice. It's not by a big distance, but he definitely "floats in mid-air" several times.
I've also studied the sequence when Barry's on the CoB a few times over in the last couple of weeks and he definitely got sliced.
As you say, the "Life Force running out" thing is entirely speculative as the Clock has no real time limit to it and is added into the show purely for effect. It has NO real bearing on gameplay at all.
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Actually, when we were filmed there was no lifeforce clock. You were told when you went in what the 'colour' of your lifeforce was (green, amber, red). You therefore knew whether you had to pick up food in the room or not (and there is never a case where you are unable to replenish your life force if you need it)
It looks like it's a real clock, and that you had a certain amount of physical time. But actually it's not true, they added it in, post production
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Hmm blue masking tape, that could explain Barry's very close escape in s7 (well that and the lack of episode time).
One thing I suspect you can answer, is the spell book sequence added in post production, or could you see the spell book when spellcasting. Also in the final encouter sequence was it actually Dunston in the warrior outfit, I assume there was a few edit points.
Just so you know mystara I'm not against your winning quest, I just didn't like the way which the levels were skipped. Although your comments about it being a permenant feature for a future series is a very interesting thought. My opinions about Barry's quest are summaries in HStorm's previous post.
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Spell book was post production.
I understand from Dunstan that he was pulled backwards by someone and an actor dressed as the Paladin stepped forwards. Dunstan was then walked around the perimeter of the blue room (which presumably is covered graphically by the walls at a might higher layer) and then when the Paladin wandered off towards the camera, Dunstan walked back in.
I don't know exactly how it happened, since obviously we didn't get these sorts of questions answered, none of us saw it happening and it was quite a while ago. There were no flashes of any kind (all post production) and I don't remember seeing anything particularly odd on my monitor (like a hand
All rooms were done in a single take with 2 exceptions:
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Transition rooms where nothing interesting happens, yet someone navigates himself perfectly were shot at the end (for example, when Dunstan walks off the boat in L3). These were done following instructions from TC and were usually something like "follow the blue masking tape" or "follow the actor" (or in one case..."walk on this treadmill"). I believe there were only 1 or 2 such rooms for us, and they last about 5 or 10 seconds. The rooms where Hordriss navigates Dunstan back to the castle are all examples of this, but I believe they were also practiced
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The sound for the joke with Smirky was rerecorded at the end because Dunstan was (and still is) a smart arse and tried to be clever with the joke
The only 'edit point' that we knew of were:
1.) When our trophies appear at the end
2.) In the room with the combination lock. Filming stopped for about 5 seconds and a new room image was shown to us (with a zoom in of the lock itself), filming then resumed.
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