Series 4 Team 7 & Gameplay
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http://www.knightmare.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4381#p46628:
Anthony from Series 4, Team 7 is a mate of mine. Did your paths cross at all during filming?
Whenever I mention KM to him, he'll go into a little rant about how they were sent into the Block and Tackle at a very awkward angle!
Angle and point of entry to the Block and Tackle varied greatly. For example, had Simon come in as far to the right as Helen had three quests earlier, his infamous sidestep left would probably not have had such dire consequences. (Unless of course he'd taken more than one. )
There's been {speculation} that Team 7 of Series 4 were the {'homesick team'}, and that their Block and Tackle entry was made deliberately awkward in order to kill them off and let them go home. (It was certainly unusual that the Block and Tackle came so early on Level 2 for them.) Do you know from Anthony whether or not that was the case?
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I'll ask Anthony about feeling homesick, but it's not the impression he's given me. He seems to have had a great time staying in a nice hotel and playing Double Dragon on the greenroom Amiga in between set-ups!
I do know that his sister Amanda was less keen on the experience and was dragged along to make up a foursome. Whether the production team picked up negative vibes I cannot say.
Amanda sees her time on KM as a rather embarrassing memory - I wonder how many other contestants feel that way given how many would killed to get on the show!
That said, Anthony looked blank when I first uttered the phrase 'Block and Tackle' to him - those who made it on the show obviously weren't always the biggest fans scowls bitterly
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Anthony's take on his team's death:
"The truth is, the team before us completed the dungeon so they had to rush us through as they had one more team that they wanted to fit on afterwards. The room we died in was one of the more difficult rooms from a later level and our dungeoneer was placed in the room at a very dodgy angle. A few rooms previous to the death room we encountered a goblin with life-draining eyes. We didn't know that we were supposed to cover the eyes with a cloth. Pickle broke rank and told us that we had to cover the goblin's eyes - maybe because he liked my cousin. Afterwards, Tim Child was furious and told us that we should have died in that room! Probably why he engineered our demise."
This suggests some rooms were edited out but it's more likely to be Anthony's memory!
Could probably get the whole team back together for an interview. They weren't the most interesting team but if there are enough questions it might be fun to do...
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Anthony's take on his team's death:
"The truth is, the team before us completed the dungeon so they had to rush us through as they had one more team that they wanted to fit on afterwards. The room we died in was one of the more difficult rooms from a later level and our dungeoneer was placed in the room at a very dodgy angle. A few rooms previous to the death room we encountered a goblin with life-draining eyes. We didn't know that we were supposed to cover the eyes with a cloth. Pickle broke rank and told us that we had to cover the goblin's eyes - maybe because he liked my cousin. Afterwards, Tim Child was furious and told us that we should have died in that room! Probably why he engineered our demise."
This suggests some rooms were edited out but it's more likely to be Anthony's memory!
Could probably get the whole team back together for an interview. They weren't the most interesting team but if there are enough questions it might be fun to do...
In the spirit of the game I think it was a harsh death just because they wanted to squeeze another team in. In the previous room the team correctly answered the riddle so they didn't do anything wrong.
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Thing is, I just find it unlikely that the team were killed off purely for the purposes of squeezing in one more team.
What benefit does that have? It doesn't make the series any more exciting.
Far more likely, I suspect, is that TC decided that the team deserved to die and he engineered a way to try and kill them off as quickly as possible to give a new team a chance to play.
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Far more likely, I suspect, is that TC decided that the team deserved to die and he engineered a way to try and kill them off as quickly as possible to give a new team a chance to play.
Another possibility is that he wanted to do it in an original way. No other team was killed off by life-draining goblin statue eyes, and it wasn't seen ever again, either. Maybe TC, feeling they deserved to die, set up an original and entertaining death, both to surprise the Watchers and reinforce the "nothing is safe, there is always a threat" element.
Difficult to tell, though.
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I don't think the team deserved to die though. I can't think of anything they did wrong, granted they might not have been the most interesting team. I personally think that death by the goblin statue eyes would have been a bit boring. Their death in the block and tackle was good but at the same time unfair.
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Thing is, I just find it unlikely that [Team 7] were killed off purely for the purposes of squeezing in one more team.
We know from one of Brett's recent posts that his team (i.e. the next one) had a standby team, meaning that Tim Child was open to the possibility of fitting in at least two more teams after Team 7.
Another possibility is that he wanted to do it in an original way. No other team was killed off by life-draining goblin statue eyes
It sounds to me like it would have been a less colourful version of Series 2's Medusa death. And as with the recurring joker card in Series 4, it may have been an idea that was intended for an earlier quest but never brought to completion. (Five quests earlier, Alistair had found a cloth in the Level 3 clue room but didn't continue far enough to put it to any use.)
"The room we died in was one of the more difficult rooms from a later level and our dungeoneer was placed in the room at a very dodgy angle. A few rooms previous to the death room we encountered a goblin with life-draining eyes ... Pickle broke rank and told us that we had to cover the goblin's eyes - maybe because he liked my cousin. Afterwards, Tim Child was furious and told us that we should have died in that room! Probably why he engineered our demise."
If Tim Child tried to kill the team with the evil-eye statue and failed, and then tried to put the team into losing status via a one-out-of-one riddle challenge and failed, then it begs the question: what if Jeremy had survived the Block and Tackle? Mogdred's All-New Playpen? A Corridor of Blades with simultaneous blades on both sides? Merlin's Advent Calendar of Doom?
If I were the Knightmare producer wanting to engineer a Series 4 death, I'd present the team with a clue room and make whatever object they leave behind the one that keeps them out of losing status. Any outcome would be difficult to argue with. (Series 5 proved that given a choice between a horn and gold, it was impossible to predict which one would have seen off Skarkill.) Other ideas include a room with Gundrada in the pillory where goblins drive the team out just a bit too soon (with some urging from Treguard or Pickle) for them to free her and secure her help, not unlike Jamie, MEDAL and the Automatum in Series 2.
Could probably get the whole team back together for an interview. They weren't the most interesting team but if there are enough questions it might be fun to do...
Behind-the-scenes insights are always welcome from any contestant. As The Eye Shield eventually demonstrated, every quest was a classic quest.
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Thing is, I just find it unlikely that [Team 7] were killed off purely for the purposes of squeezing in one more team.
We know from one of Brett's recent posts that his team (i.e. the next one) had a standby team, meaning that Tim Child was open to the possibility of fitting in at least two more teams after Team 7.
Every team had a standby team - in case of injury, illness or sudden death of the previous team, it means that filming didn't have to completely stop.
The team after mine had a standby team, but since TC was unsure as to whether we'd even complete the dungeon, I seriously doubt he thought our standby team's standby team would have any chance at all.
But that point notwithstanding, being open to the possibility of fitting in two more teams is a far cry from deliberately killing a team off just to squeeze one more in, which would appear to have no benefit whatsoever.
"The room we died in was one of the more difficult rooms from a later level and our dungeoneer was placed in the room at a very dodgy angle. A few rooms previous to the death room we encountered a goblin with life-draining eyes ... Pickle broke rank and told us that we had to cover the goblin's eyes - maybe because he liked my cousin. Afterwards, Tim Child was furious and told us that we should have died in that room! Probably why he engineered our demise."
If Tim Child tried to kill the team with the evil-eye statue and failed, and then tried to put the team into losing status via a one-out-of-one riddle challenge and failed, then it begs the question: what if Jeremy had survived the Block and Tackle? Mogdred's All-New Playpen? A Corridor of Blades with simultaneous blades on both sides? Merlin's Advent Calendar of Doom?
If I were the Knightmare producer wanting to engineer a Series 4 death, I'd present the team with a clue room and make whatever object they leave behind the one that keeps them out of losing status. Any outcome would be difficult to argue with. (Series 5 proved that given a choice between a horn and gold, it was impossible to predict which one would have seen off Skarkill.) Other ideas include a room with Gundrada in the pillory where goblins drive the team out just a bit too soon (with some urging from Treguard or Pickle) for them to free her and secure her help, not unlike Jamie, MEDAL and the Automatum in Series 2.
These are the other reasons that I just don't buy the idea that TC was out to get them:
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I don't see why David Learner would break rank. Why try to help a child that you're never going to see again by pissing off your employer?
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What would be the point? David Learner helps them in one room, then TC simply devises yet another team-killer.
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If TC really wanted the team to die, there are better and safer ways to do it, as Drassil points out above. Furthermore, is causing the dungeoneer to enter at a funny angle really a big deal? It only takes ten seconds to reorient your dungeoneer. Worst case scenario, you can't do that, and you have to perform exactly one more manoeuvre in the room. No big deal.
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Finally....why? How does TC benefit from killing off one team to squeeze another team in?
I can understand it if the team was in a losing status. They've had their chance, and the rules of the game say that they lose. Then it's just a matter of making the death happen.
But for no other reason than to squeeze another team in just makes no sense at all. The show starts to drag when you start dealing with the process of dismissing one team, bringing in another, introducing them, kitting them up, sending them in and (at some point) giving them their quest. That's where the pace of the show slows down dramatically. It's just not good TV to keep repeating that.
Not to mention that I think it would generally be perceived as better viewing to let each team get as far as possible. The deeper you go into the dungeon, the more you get to see the rare rooms and puzzles that other teams don't get to. Starting all over again just leads to repetition of the same rooms that you've seen ten times before.
So there might be more going on than we're aware. But I find it hard to believe that it all boils down to TC killing off one team for the sole purpose of introducing another.
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I dont think Anthony would lie about something like that? He was on the program after all and he made a good point. Jeremy did go into the block and tackle in a dodgy angle in my opinion. Prehaps they should have done better in it but it didn't help them. The only person who could say that Anthony is wrong is Tim Child himself.
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I don't see any accusations of lying here.
There's been one suggestion - that Tim Child intentionally tried to kill the team off;
and there have been several other statements arguing that such a situation is unlikely to be correct.
As for entering at a funny angle, I just don't see that as conclusive proof at all. It doesn't guarantee their death, it doesn't even really make their job any harder. It just requires them to rotate a bit. I don't have the episode to hand, but how does their angle of entry correspond to their angle of exit from the previous room? Could the incorrect angle be caused by the dungeoneer not quite walking in a straight line into camera shot, or stumbling a bit?
Re-reading the original text, I suspect Tim Child's fury comes from the fact that the TEAM didn't overcome the challenge of the statue, but were told how to do it - rather defeating the point of it being a challenge.
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I don't see any accusations of lying here.
There's been one suggestion - that Tim Child intentionally tried to kill the team off;
and there have been several other statements arguing that such a situation is unlikely to be correct.
As for entering at a funny angle, I just don't see that as conclusive proof at all. It doesn't guarantee their death, it doesn't even really make their job any harder. It just requires them to rotate a bit. I don't have the episode to hand, but how does their angle of entry correspond to their angle of exit from the previous room? Could the incorrect angle be caused by the dungeoneer not quite walking in a straight line into camera shot, or stumbling a bit?
Re-reading the original text, I suspect Tim Child's fury comes from the fact that the TEAM didn't overcome the challenge of the statue, but were told how to do it - rather defeating the point of it being a challenge.
I understand what your saying Alan and I'm not saying anyone is lying. It's only my opinion! I guess though only Anthony and his team or Tim Child could tell us what really happened.
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I guess though only Anthony and his team or Tim Child could tell us what really happened.
Well, I guess that's just my point. Tim Child (and, presumably, certain members of the crew) know exactly what happened and why.
Conversely, Anthony and his team only know what they were told.
The idea of Anthony's team being intentionally killed off is simply a theory. It fits some of the facts, but not all of them. I therefore think it's dangerous for people to be assuming that this THEORY is a FACT.
I would say that the facts, as presented to us, also do not lead to the conclusion that David Learner broke rank or that Tim Child was angry because David Learner foiled Tim's plans to kill the team off. Maybe there are more facts that support such theories. Maybe there aren't.
My own experience of Tim was someone who was both very much focussed on fair play and very direct.
I therefore think the above theories clash quite significantly with his personality.
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I think the notion of fair play in the context of Knightmare is an interesting one to explore.
The makers obviously had to balance the gameshow aspect (with surely had to have strict rules and a level playing field in order to be fair) with making good television.
Quests could obviously be manipulated very easily by throwing teams into easy or hard rooms and I do wonder how much of this went on. I think Hugo Myatt mentioned this in the documentary when he talks about boring teams he wanted to die!
On a related point, Hugo also talked about making quests easier to plan for by making them more linear e.g. whichever door a dungeoneer walked through they'd end up in the same place - only an illusion of choice was presented to teams/viewers. In any other gaming format this would be unacceptable. If the producers wanted it to happen at any point, a team could end up in a room like the block and tackle no matter what they did and where they went.
Is this absence of any real choice compatible with concepts of fair play?
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Hugo also talked about making quests easier to plan for by making them more linear e.g. whichever door a dungeoneer walked through they'd end up in the same place - only an illusion of choice was presented to teams/viewers. In any other gaming format this would be unacceptable. If the producers wanted it to happen at any point, a team could end up in a room like the block and tackle no matter what they did and where they went.
Is this absence of any real choice compatible with concepts of fair play?
If you think about the various quests undertaken, it really didn't matter which object they set out to redeem or even whether they succeeded in bringing it back. The quest object was a MacGuffin; the important thing was how they performed along the way, proving they were worthy champions.
I think you can look at the "illusion of choice" thing in a similar way. Sometimes it didn't really matter which door they took or which playing card they chose, as long as they demonstrated sound reasoning and the ability to make quick decisions as a team. If they clearly weren't good enough, they were more likely to be punished or given a scare, like sending them into a bomb room to "sharpen them up". I don't think that's unfair.
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Hugo also talked about making quests easier to plan for by making them more linear e.g. whichever door a dungeoneer walked through they'd end up in the same place - only an illusion of choice was presented to teams/viewers. In any other gaming format this would be unacceptable. If the producers wanted it to happen at any point, a team could end up in a room like the block and tackle no matter what they did and where they went.
Is this absence of any real choice compatible with concepts of fair play?
If you think about the various quests undertaken, it really didn't matter which object they set out to redeem or even whether they succeeded in bringing it back. The quest object was a MacGuffin; the important thing was how they performed along the way, proving they were worthy champions.
I think you can look at the "illusion of choice" thing in a similar way. Sometimes it didn't really matter which door they took or which playing card they chose, as long as they demonstrated sound reasoning and the ability to make quick decisions as a team. If they clearly weren't good enough, they were more likely to be punished or given a scare, like sending them into a bomb room to "sharpen them up". I don't think that's unfair.
Yes your right. But it has to be a fair contest and should be judged on making the correct decisions and not based on the team's personalities. The producers knew what the teams would be like and whether they would be good enough to go on Knightmare. Yes most of the teams could have been quicker with making decisions and being quicker in general, but they were only kids.
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Yes your right. But it has to be a fair contest and should be judged on making the correct decisions and not based on the team's personalities.
I disagree on that, it was first and foremost a television show and would have been dreadfully dull if teams with no personality could get all the way to the end just by picking the right doors each time! Certainly when I watched the programme, I rooted for the smart, likeable teams and prayed that the dithering, argumentative ones would be killed off soon. They just wouldn't have held onto their audience if every group of mumbling bores were treated with equal "fairness".
The producers knew what the teams would be like and whether they would be good enough to go on Knightmare.
Well, I'd say it's pretty clear from the quality of certain teams that the audition process was not necessarily a good enough indicator of what they'd be like in the studio.
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I think Canadanne has hit it on the head.
I'd add that, even if you remove the nature of choice, there isn't necessarily a removal of fair play.
To me, a removal of fair play means that, through no fault of the team, the loss is impossible or highly unlikely to be avoidable. That situation doesn't directly arise as a result of a team's choice being removed.
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I agree that the illusion of choice per se doesn’t make it unfair. However, the inability of a team to directly influence their path through the choices they make, along with the fact that the difficulty level can rise earlier for some teams, doesn’t seem very sportsmanlike (as a concept).
To me, taking a team’s personality into consideration is unfair in terms of gameplay. That said, I agree it makes much better television to favour the interesting teams and Knightmare was obviously a fantastic show so this was probably the right way to run things.
What am I trying to say?
I suppose what I’m saying is that as a kid I thought of Knightmare as a sort of live action Fighting Fantasy adventure – teams would be successful if they chose the correct items and followed the correct path.
I now realise this isn’t the way to think about the show – rather, it’s a role playing adventure in which the producers can alter the script at any time as they see fit. Some of you will no doubt think I’m stating the obvious here!
Better television, but purely as a game, unfair?
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