Weeping Doors
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Is it really true (!) that teams needed one correct answer in Level 1, two in Level 2 and three in Level 3?
It would seem an anticlimax, from a production perspective, to make the end of series 4 hang on getting three True or False questions correct.
After our Level 1 encounter I asked Treguard (off camera) 'Will it go against us, that we only got two right?' and he said 'Let's just say it would have gone better FOR you, if you had got them all right'.
Seems to me the idea of the questioning is fine; what I would have changed about the Weeping Doors is the whole concept of sadness/weeping. A quick challenge from a knight or a monk on the drawbridge would have felt a lot more compelling, if not exactly uplifting.
Come to think of it, the KM script had several elements that might not be regarded as appropriate nowadays for 11-14/15 children's TV, e.g. the Third Weeping Door being described by Treguard as a manic depressive/bipolar 'Better deal with her quickly before she depresses us all' (or similar), the reference to Pickle being 'a half-wit elf, not a demented hunchback' and the drunken appearances by various characters.
If it were written again today, I daresay a team might have to stop Lord Fear from some crime of pollution near Knightmare Castle!
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Is it really true (!) that teams needed one correct answer in Level 1, two in Level 2 and three in Level 3?
I have no idea if that information came from the programme makers or if it's just fan speculation - I've only ever seen it mentioned in fan-written articles, not from any "official" source. It would make sense (especially since the Level 3 questions were very easy, as if to make sure teams wouldn't fail right at the climax of their quest), but it's strange how the required score was never specified in the show, giving the impression that it makes no difference how many you get right. Hugo's comment to you is intriguing!
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After our Level 1 encounter I asked Treguard (off camera) 'Will it go against us, that we only got two right?' and he said 'Let's just say it would have gone better FOR you, if you had got them all right'.
Because Series 4 quests didn't seem to have the same flexibility as the earlier series (in which Tim Child has said that a team might have been 'chucked into a bomb room' to 'sharpen them up' if they went wrong), it's hard to imagine how that would have worked. Perhaps Oakley would have asked less of you.
I always liked the effect of the weeping doors lowering. I think of it when I open the dishwasher.
By the way, Brett, thank you for continuing to post on the forum. It's good to have an ex-contestant with us from the first half of Knightmare (Mystara/Alan being from the second half).
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I thought the Weeping Doors could have gone more than the one season.
While I found the Manic Depressive rambling funny, in these ultra PC days, maybe they would be deemed insensitive.
I also think of them when using a dishwasher.
I'll also be keeping an extra special eye out next time I'm anywhere near Tower Bridge...
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Thanks for your thoughts, Drassil and DuxBellorum!
I am sure Tim could have come up with some ways of increasing the difficulty on Level 1 in Series 4 - extra clearings with goblins/assassins/the ogre etc. Corridor of Blades?! That would be more likely if the production team thought we were unlikely to progress very far into Level 2 or 3, and wanted to introduce another team soonish (obviously even more so earlier in the season).
Not sure about decreasing it, maybe a clue about throwing a spanner in the works - but I don't think Tim would have done that, even had we got all three questions correct.
I take it Hugo was improvising something vague "let's just say ..." to give a sense that everything we did had consequences. It didn't occur to me when we were filming it - until relatively recently in fact - that everything was scripted. Even now I'm not convinced absolutely every word was scripted.
Best wishes,
Brett
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