Series 4 Episode 14
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We did however tantalisingly get a quick view of the Assassin's face as they turned around.
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awww i did feel sorry for the team that died in that episode. Sure there is the stick to the right rule but they were aimed more towards the left door than the right. Maybe i just feel bad because i like it when there is a younger team on. The quest seems to go faster with younger people
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Not only are the lines heavily scripted, but so are the camera angles. "Close up on Treguard, wide shot of Pickle and the advisors, close up on Pickle for the last line, close up on Treguard, quest begins" has been used for practically every episode so far. Series 2 wasn't much better ((Close up on Treguard)"Your next stage is Amber..." (Zoom out to wide shot) "...and on Condition Red, you are in grave peril...").
Enough moaning. Wasn't the music outside the Crazed Heffer brilliant? You had the jolly music of the inn, and the moody undertones of the Pooka making a great contrast. In the inn (ha!), Motley gives them a JOKE spell after Jeremy gives him one about some chicken crossing a road, I forget how it ends.
"Oh-oh" they say as Oakley's face appears, but they do fairly well on his riddles, getting 2. After screaming at an assassin in Dungarth, they find what looks like Brother Mace, still in his lizard form, wanting revenge. Looks like that Etruscan Brandy is more powerful than I thought.
Fatilla appears at the Level 1 wellway again, but they get rid of him using the JOKE spell, which presumably sent a message into Fatilla's brain showing him the CITV schedule in 10 years time. The result is that he begins laughing hysterically, and they make their way into Level 2.
Beware the evil eyes! (?!) Maybe it's a descendant of Medusa, though not as powerful. They throw a cloth over the statue to stop the lifeforce drain, when suddenly Muttley and Smelly Melly appear, congratulating them. They get a joker card after correctly answering Mellisandre's riddle, and exit in triumph. Nothing can stop them now, they're having such a good time, they're having a ball!
Except the Block and Tackle. They go too far to the left, and perish. Shame, they were doing well.
Another new team, then! Giles the dungeoneer, and advisors Robin, Andrew, and 20-foot high Bret. They choose the cup, and begin their quest as we time out. Unfortunately, it's now December...
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Wait a minute... so Motley has a mysterious female friend with long curly reddish hair, who's older than she looks but never seems to get any older, and whom he calls "Mels" while praising her skill at rhyming something with "river"? Now she just needs to call someone sweetie and fall out of a window... come to think of it, she does have a habit of falling through trapdoors without coming to any harm...
And was it me, or was that Brother Mace behind Motley in The Crazed Heffer?
I too thought it looked like Michael Cule, and then I wondered if it was actually Tim Child making a cameo appearance, but I'm not convinced it's either of them.
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Next team was Giles's team. The first couple of scenes seemed to have been edited a lot, notice how quickly they decide what to do with the Spindizzy and get onto the 'cup' path!
Even Treguard's speech sounds edited "Now listen team cut Choose now, the quest..." etc. I think they cut out the bit with Treguard explaining about the place of choice and what the two paths are, as well as Pickle saying 'make them choose'.
Is this Challenge editing, or how the original was?
I have a feeling that the Place of Choice scene may have been cut slightly, due to Giles team being the last team of the series. I look forward to seeing episodes 15 and 16 on Monday and Tuesday and I presume that series 5 starts next Wednesday. Anyway back to the episode and I wonder if Jeremy would've got out of the B&T had the advisors directed him towards the right door or would he have been hit with a brick.
At the end of todays ep another cheeky comment from the announcer, reguarding hairloss. Don't understand what he was getting at though!
Team captain Brett writes:
Yes, it was cut. In real life we spent about five minutes negotiating the Spin dizzy.
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This was the episode that was shown by Challenge this last Sunday. Not always possible to take in a viewing at the 10 am start time but they put on again one repeat episode at 11-30 later that night. (Why not both episodes ?)
The team came to a premature end with a demise in the block and tackle room (a nasty situation that catches out so many contestants and is so hard to get through) but other than that they were going so well up until that point.
I enjoyed the scene with the tavern (The Crazed Heifer) and the Pooka outside was really menacing and with it some eerie music to add to the suspense. Motley inside was fun as always and a big improvement on Alec Westwood from the earlier series. "Why did the chicken cross the road" - "Stop laughing you lot !" - and then the camera pans to the team in the studio and I'm sure they genuinely believed it was directed at them.
I like the tree 'monsters' such as Oakley the guardian of the forest and the riddles he gave were quite difficult I thought. "What is the tallest tree ?" - I always believed it was the Redwood tree but they never provided an answer for it. I knew the Mistletoe and Sherwood Forest ones but they provided two right answers to allow Oakley to believe they were genuine 'tree friends'
The Olaf type pillager (Fatilla the Hun is his name ?) who accepts the gold (and then changes his mind which I thought was a bit mean spirited ) is a character I can't really warm to but then I never liked the original Olaf from the earliest series. If they were not in possession of the Joke spell they would have been 'blipped and blopped' by his large cudgel so relief they were able to proceed.
The evil statue with the harmful eyes was a strange moment and not something you would maybe expect to encounter in the series but was impressed that they thought quickly enough to put the towel over it's head to prevent further damage. (I hadn't even thought of that)
Once again the block and tackle room is largely unfair and causes such a state of panic that there's so little time for thinking and dungeoneers (and team) can so easily be panicked into making fatal errors. I don't know (or can't remember) and what stage of the series they removed this from the show but felt sorry for any team that was unfortunate enough to come in contact with it.
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Thanks, Evelyn!
The team who failed to complete the Block and Tackle in this episode (we met them before and afterwards) did seem to have their dungeoneer continuing to walk forwards towards the wrong exit when the floor fell away. Had the dungeoneer sidestepped to the right they might have made it through. But I agree with what you put about the unfairness and duress caused when encountering the room for the first time!
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Team 7 collected the eye-shield and made their way to the Crazed Heifer Inn. They told Motley a joke and received a "JOKE" spell in return. Their joke wasn't as good as Martin's, but it was still better than Leo's. Even tho it was an old joke, Motley hadn't have heard it, so maybe humour was a new concept in the medieval era....
Did ok against Oakley (2/3) and were told which item not to take! Took the hour-glass & gold.
Directed Jeremy past the assassin and the giant reptile with no problems, then entered a (bladeless) conveyorbelt. Jeremy just didn't seem to have enough hands to pick up the food, set down the hour glass and hold the gold & the eye-shield.
Bribed Fatilla with the gold, but he cheated them, so (with a little prompting) they used their spell to distract him and entered the well.
Landed in a room with a life-force draining statue. Very quick thinking to instruct Jeremy to cover the statue with the cloth from the table.
They answered Melly's riddle easily enough to earn a "Joker" card.
Into the block&tackle room. They reacted very quickly again but sadly they aimed for the left-hand exit (perhaps because they were already facing in that direction?) and the floor crumbled beneath them just before they reached the door.
Considering that they looked very young, team 7 were a good team and it was a shame that their quest ended so suddenly. Lead advisor Alexander was particularly quick-witted.
Team 8 chose the path of the crown-quest and just had to time to jump from the spindizzy before time-out arrived. Giles had to rush his jump slightly, but landed neatly.
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I thought the block and tackle room in this episode was particularly unfair. The dungeoneer entered at a 45 degree angle facing to the left, facing where the floor crumbles away first. With the panic when the room starts to go haywire, the advisors have very little time to realign the dungeoneer and direct him to the right door. It is much easier if the dungeoneer is facing the rear wall when he/she enters, then it is sidestep right, run forward, next room.
Working my way through the series, I have noticed that because the directional instructions are of the form "walk forward", "sidestep left/right", the advisors have no problem in directing the dungeoneer at right angles, but struggle if they have to move at an angle. I'm a little surprised that no team who has applied has thought to try and train directing the dungeoneer by angle or clock face, which greatly increases the freedom of movement. With that block and tackle room and the horrible entry angle, the first instruction is turn 45 degrees right. The dungeoneer can see their feet so cann judge what a 45 degree turn is. That would have put them facing the best direction to make it out of there quickly.
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Hi asrl07,
I agree with everything you said about that room!
In the case of our team, we did train using clock face instructions in the garden, but in episode 16 Giles was very close to the falling area and so he 'died' on the first take because (as you say) it's not fair to start so close when most other teams have not, particularly when you haven't seen the room before and haven't had any appreciable time to observe the overall pattern of its disintegration. On the second take, getting Giles far away from that area with sidesteps to the RIGHT as soon as practicable was my priority. However, had Giles taken four less enthusiastic 'large steps', the fairness of the challenge might have been more agreeable.
I have a suspicion that we might have been put in at the same angle (albeit on Level 3) as if to show the room wasn't unfair in those circumstances (because we appeared to overcome it, even though they didn't) if there's any mileage in the idea that Jeremy and the Three A's were quite intentionally put in a difficult situation due to suffering homesickness. But, again, that might not be the truth of it; it would seem also to imply that Jeremy had actually landed in Level 3, having inexplicably skipped Level 2.
I totally agree that a calm, 45 degree turn would have been ideal. Perhaps, if 45 degree turns were required more often in each quest, Dungeoneers and their advisers would have been more ready to deploy them.
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Thanks, Evelyn!
The team who failed to complete the Block and Tackle in this episode (we met them before and afterwards) did seem to have their dungeoneer continuing to walk forwards towards the wrong exit when the floor fell away. Had the dungeoneer sidestepped to the right they might have made it through. But I agree with what you put about the unfairness and duress caused when encountering the room for the first time!
The problem they had was the dungeoneer entered at a 45 degree angle pretty much facing the left exit, so that likely motivated them to send him forward quickly to that exit, unfortunately he had no chance of getting there before the floor fell away. It was a rotten starting position for the dungeoneer. Is this part of the artificial difficulty element, to make the same rooms vary significantly in difficulty for different teams?
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