Reward
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Cool, although it's going the wrong way
Great to see the classic life force but updated.
Treguard: Warning team life force energy.....recovering.... what in dunshelm's going on ( later end of episode).. well that seems to have passed... warning team temporal disruption, oh dear..... why aren't you frozen... what's running this anyway... what.., error: your dungeon's performed an illegal operation & will be shut down... pickle did you remember to back up the dungeon.
Pickle: ......yeeeah (room goes dark )...., oh no forgot.
Treguard : Damn you windows vista ( room freezes with treguard shaking fist at screen & pickle hiding .
Lord fear: Spying at treguard ...oooh nasty.
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I have a feeling the sequence is reversed as a precaution so that it's a little less tempting for a fan to steal the sequence for use in a fan-game, video or elsewhere - after all, it's the whole sequence in high quality, on a black background that could easily be set as a transparent mask.
In regards to the sequence as a whole, it's strange but for some reason I can't quite fathom, I simply don't find the updated life-force half as intense or scary as the original one used to be.
There was a certain digitized look about the original sequence. While the quality could be considered lower, this actually helped the sequence be as intense and scary as it was. The newer sequence, with it's smooth edges and coloring, looks much tamer and cartoony in comparison.
For example the eyeballs - while the classic eyeballs had angular sides and seemed to more closely represent Crystal Maze crystals, the new eyeballs seem to me to appear more like comedy ping-pong balls. For some reason the originals were scarier... unless it's just me
Perhaps there was more luck involved when the original sequence was created. Having seen this version, I can't see how the original sequence could really be updated to retain the exact same feel and effect. The resulting sequence would either be far tamer and cartoonish than the original, or veer the other way and become way to violent and graphic for a young audience. The original sequence got it just right, and that sort of perfection is evidently incredibly hard to recreate.
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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.
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.
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Well, I do pride myself on my analysis and description of the mechanics of 80s game shows.
But yes, I think it's the tunnel effect that adds to the scariness.
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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.
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