Canadanne

Wow! What a cast, I hope they will share more clips on the channel.

Re: Fanfic: Woodland Trust (~8,000 words)

Canadanne said:

A bit of a geeky one, featuring (some of) my Tolkien-inspired headcanons - blame The Rings Of Power for reigniting my interest in this stuff! - plus more fun with characters who never met in the show.

http://www.canadanne.co.uk/writing/km_woodland/ch1.html

If anyone else wondered what Gwendoline did next after this story, my brain insisted on telling me:
http://www.canadanne.co.uk/writing/km_girl/

I also had an idea for a third story while I was still planning this one, so it seems this is going to be a trilogy!

@Drassil said:

I'm pleased to tell you that there are now four restored Knightmare Teletext games available to play:

• Eagle Quest (1993)
• To the Ice Palace of Aesandre (1993)
• Journey through the Lairsdale (1993)
• Swamp Quest (1994)

https://andrewnile.co.uk/tt/

Wow, brilliant that they've all been found!

Eagle Quest is the only one I remember playing back in the day. I never managed to complete it and apparently I am still no better at it.

Jake's intro this week gave me a proper LOL!

Mark Knight cheekily suggesting "Syphiris?" when Ben can't make out Sidriss' name - one of Knightmare's "near the knuckle for a kids' show" moments!

I love Ridolfo, I'm not sure if I've ever given him the praise he deserves. Always a great fun performance from Adrian.

On the subject of locations, we still need to know where that Wooded Area is...

I've never noticed this before, but when Treguard gives his little speech about hoping they've got something to pay Smirkenorff, the advisor on the right with the pencil in his mouth appears to go "Shiiit" under his breath!

@Mystara said:

Dunstan insisted on telling this particular joke and whomever voiced Skirkenorff didn’t know the format. In the original take, Smirkenorff burst out laughing as soon as Dunstan said “to get his pension”. Right at the end of our quest they brought Paul Valentine back in to rerecord the audio and tell the joke properly. If you listen very carefully, you can tell the audio changes.

Oh yeah! I always figured that joke must have been pre-arranged since Paul knew how to respond, but I hadn't noticed the audio difference where it's been redubbed.

Canadanne said:

I have to conclude there are multiple Dreadnorts, even if I find it difficult to visualise!

I just remembered that I made reference to multiple Dreadnorts in a parody of Hotel California I wrote back in 2011. "How he laughs as the Dreadnorts leave them all dead / Some choose to dismember / Some choose to behead."

Was it actually Clifford Norgate doing Smirkenorff's voice in the scene with Dunstan? It's the only time they put that weird effect on his voice, which makes me wonder if they were trying to disguise that it was someone else standing in. It sounds a little like Bill Cashmore doing Bhal-Shebah at one point, but then more like Clifford towards the end, so I'm not sure!

Made a crude little map of Smirkenorff's flights around the Gower Peninsula. I dunno how the forum will display this but you'll probably have to enlarge it!

After a long delay, the latest 'American Reacts to Knightmare' video is finally up, covering the next 3 episodes of Series 5.

@Mystara said:

I will need to look it up. But I have a stack of Clifford Norgate’s scripts and in some cases I seem to recall him rewriting the spells.

Oh wow, that would be interesting to see...

Intriguingly, I've just noticed another example of something that sounds like Black Speech: the weird landing command Kelly has to use for Smirkenorff, "Avash kraf" (or however it might be spelt).

No, I haven't cast a vote on the poll so you can count it from here.

The oriignal skull ghosts are definitely much better than stormgeists! (And I prefer the first design to the Series 4 ones.)

I didn't realise January's quest was the first time the Descender appears in Series 6. Perhaps that's why it's one of the few specific Knightmare scenes that I always remembered from childhood.

The Big Issue has certainly had me scratching my head this evening - I've gone back and forth on it several times while considering the evidence!
I agree we're left with a strong impression that there's only one Dreadnort (I've always tended to think of him as a unique creation) and there doesn't seem much point in having multiple Dreadnorts around.
I like to incorporate as much on-screen content as possible into my headcanons, so if Pickle had actually said "It's one of Lord Fear's Dreadnorts" in that scene, I would've accepted that he knows there are others. But the way he words it like an afterthought ("That's Lord Fear's Dreadnort - well, one of them") might suggest Pickle himself isn't sure if there's one or several.
It's not the only such quote in the series, though... Pickle again says "that's a Dreadnort" in the next episode, and Elita says "If you should meet a Dreadnort..." while speaking to Sophia, so she must think there's more than one. More significantly, Skarkill in the first episode asks Lord Fear for "the loan of one of them mech... well, that ruddy great metal warrior thing", which seems to imply there will be several if there aren't already. Lord Fear replies with a comment about "the Dreadnort", but he could be talking about it as a general concept rather than implying there's only one, or perhaps he's only built that one so far, as Martin suggested. Lord Fear does tend to produce a few of his monsters (Frightknights, Skeletrons etc), and Tim Child refers to "Frightknights and Dreadnoughts", plural, in The Quest.
I do think either interpretation is valid (there's always room for "character error" as they call it on the IMDb), but overall I have to conclude there are multiple Dreadnorts, even if I find it difficult to visualise!

Incidentally I think Dreadnort's lines are definitely live in the next episode as he ad-libs "Out of my path!" when the advisors tell Ben to start walking at the same time, which could've really messed up the visual effect if Ben had stepped in front of him. (Pickle has to hastily intervene as well, telling him to stay where he is!) And perhaps because of that, he adds "Pass and live in fear" rather belatedly just as he's walking off-screen.

I would love to know what Jamie's team did to deserve their fate, too! (I even wrote them a filk once.)

I can't agree that the Stormgeists look unsettling - I commented during my first watch-through that they look like something out of Button Moon, and I've never been able to shake that impression! (I think they vaguely remind me of the plastic bottle characters, combined with the slightly rubbish puppeteering when things are supposed to be flying.) So they just don't work for me as a threat, apart from that one time when Sophia was trapped in the Descender with a huge one.

Wow, I've never noticed any real-life issues with Rayner Bourton's leg in this series - what an interesting observation! I'll have to look out for that when I'm watching in future. (Shades of Mark Knight's broken arm in Series 8.)

Yeah, it's showing in full now.

Well, this is... different.

The private messages / "All chats" thing doesn't seem to display properly - there's no way to see the top half of it?

I was at Warwick Castle last month. No sign of Fidjit at the entrance.

Ha, that does look very similar! (Fidjit was at Simancas Castle, though.)

Having noted the many similarities between Lord Fear and Sauron, it occurred to me recently that his Series 8 incantations might be intended to resemble Black Speech, which has the same kind of harsh sounds (and includes "ash" among the few words Tolkien invented).

Interestingly we see this again in Lords Of The Game where Lord Fear's name is Veerash - very Orkish-sounding! (His middle name less so, haha.)

Hold up the Eyeshield - RoseTintedSpectrum's Series 4 review is out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF07_Hds2ms

Wow, from Norman dormitory chamber to Airbnb.

Could be worse. One of the Series 7 locations has recently changed from a tourist attraction to a five-star luxury spa hotel:

https://backend.castillatermal.com/storage/app/uploads/public/69c/11a/69e/thumb_8322_973_0_0_0_crop.webp

https://backend.castillatermal.com/storage/app/uploads/public/6a7/d7f/198/thumb_8692_973_0_0_0_crop.webp

Same here. Wasn't too sure who to contact, so I messaged Drassil.

I tried doing that too, but I dunno if the message went through as it just vanished for some reason (never appeared in my outbox or sent folder). Anyway, glad the spammer's gone now!