Series 2 - Episode 4
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A knice, well-paced episode, imo.
I think this team may have been given a little bit of an easy ride, though, since they didn't have to answer any riddles from Cedric. Still, I think they're acquitting themselves well - in Level One they kept their cool in the Bomb Room, making sure Mark took the right door.
I believe the card game is used again in this series. Maybe in the early stages of development, it was intended as another option for the first room (based on the series 1 routine).
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Stranger still... If you look carefully as they make their exit from the bomb room. They walk through the right hand door which is blocked off with a portcullis!
When Gumboil hit the floor. The graphics behind him looked as though there was blood pouring from his head!
Great episode nonetheless
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Igneous: "To proceed, you'll need to wake the dead - or you'll BE dead."
Just a figure of speech, or is he implying that Lillith is some kind of zombie?!
He's making a snide reference to her career. He'd learned that she was facing the axe (walls have ears). Of course the clue tables were turned when she killed two further dungeoneers and went out in a blaze of gory, while Igneous got the TRUTH spell treatment and departed in shame. As for the other S2 wall monsters, they extended their careers by shifting-and-blending into a single entity, having a few chips and tucks around the eyes, and selling "Grolganitarth" to an impressed Merlin who didn't quite hear the name properly.
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What a bizarre episode and what an easy quest so far. No riddles after Igneous, no major room challenges and sending the lovely message to kids that you can get past anyone by either bribing or lying to them. Lillith and Merlin at least finished the ep with their dignity intact although even then they seemed much less of a threat/challenge than usual.
Indeed it feels like the quests have been getting progressively easier since this series began and you can't help feeling that Tim and the gang were desperate to have a winning team this year to show it can be done, if only just, otherwise the kids might think "Oh, no one ever wins on that so I won't bother applying" and the show faced with a shortage of applicants for Series 3. Mark at least is perhaps the most entertaining dungeoneer to date, immersing himself in the world as much as possible and causing that awesome bit where, in response to Gretel's "Are you the Knave of Hearts?" answering "Yes" and completely throwing the poor actress!
Unfortunately there just hasn't really been any danger in their quest so far, they've been helped along nicely and even the bomb room had a fuse that clearly wasn't going to run out any time soon. Hopefully the rest of Level 2 will provide some well-needed - ahem - (C)hallenge.
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I was gonna say the same thing.
It's clear to me they really needed/wanted a winning team and this feels as if the team has been giving a free ride really, feel sorry for the other teams that had to really work hard and failed due to one wrong question.
Level 2 has been easier than level 1.
Positives the team are really into it and likable.. I think they would have done well giving a 'real quest' than the scripted win we're seeing here.
Nice variation to some of the rooms, Merlin's room making it's first appearance this series and used as a clue room, and I liked folly's card puzzle.
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I've always thought it a little suspect that the first winning quest was to free the maid; it's just a little too neat narrative-wise...
That said, you can only beat the team in front of you and, easy quest or not, this lot are very good. I particularly admire their adherence to the adventurers code, even going for the right hand door in the bomb room (though there is a hint of portcullis on that door - difficult to tell from the angle).
I have to agree that their biggest risk of failure comes v early on in the level one clue room. Did those three early truths seal their fate as first ever winners?
Don't have many memories of this episode - it might have suffered in my subconscious by being sandwiched between two absolute classics.
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Team 1: died on Level 1. Team 2: died on Level 2. Team 3: died on Level 3. Team 4... to continue the sequence, they'd have to complete the third level. I can't blame anyone for being cynical. In particular, the simplicity of the Level 1 riddles caught my attention (even if by Series 6, alchemy had apparently gone from too easy for Level 1 to too obscure for Level 3).
But as with Dickon's adventure in Series 4, the quest is so entertaining and the team so competent and deserving that I don't mind. And this quest was the first Knightmare I ever saw, so watching it on television for the first time since original transmission is something special.
Lillith may not have been saying, "The bells! The bells!" My theory is that in her dream she was reliving her ruthless encounter with Maeve and co a year earlier, and was in fact saying, "The belles! The belles!"
Cedric's assistance to Mark is recreated in the first Knightmare gamebook. I liked Mark's pluralisation of "Where am I?"
This episode featured a dungeoneer picking up a candle, later discovered to be self-lighting, for the first time. He could not have had a more apt surname.
It was a red jewel and a candle that Mark took from the clue table. Does that mean he was a fan of Ruby Wax?
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Rewatching yesterday, great episode, loved the scene when Mark & Cedric enter another room & he says where are we , cedric should've said something in that bit.
Mark : Where are we?
Cedric: We're in a room ( treguard almost laughs ) it has 2 doors & tin man...oh wait that's gumboil but he looks a bit like a tin man.
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Team 4 made a solid start and looked very competent. 3/3 against Igneous, who was as grouchy as ever. After that they progressed smoothly, altho no riddles from Cedric. Amusing to see Cedric lose his bravado when he encountered Ariadne.
I don't agree with some who say that this quest was a walkover, but even so their clue object choice in level 2 was a no-brainer: ruby, candle & crossbow.... They could hardly go wrong there.
Interesting that they took the less-obvious exit from Merlin's study.
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An interesting comment from Cedric when he and Mark encounter Ariadne:
"You may not be able to go back but I can."
A rare example of a character acknowledging the rules of dungeoneering. Another that comes to mind is Gundrada in Series 4 recognising the Helmet of Justice as Helen's "constraint". It makes sense for a companion character, as Cedric and Gundrada both were, to appreciate questing rules.
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