The new KM episode is up!

[stockholmsyndrome]

Just saw the geek week episode, I thought it was great:) Whether this was a one of reprise or sparks a new era, thank you sincerely Tim and all involved. Loving Lord Fear looking majestic under the shards of light there.

Yep Hugo's Barnet and general youthfulness has faired a lot better than many of the 30 somethings from the first time round .

[Mystara]

@Kully: I agree. In fact, I think most of my post is just a poorer phrased version of yours

[wombstar]

Not that I want to be a purist but this really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.. and it's all down to the teams. In particular the two emo blokes. They didn't even come prepaid with pad and pencil."

Might I be so bold as to suggest you conduct a little fact-finding before forming your conclusions? Particularly if you're going to be so negative and particularly if you're going to state them publicly?

Are you under the impression that previous teams have provided their own note-taking equipment and that this team simply couldn't be bothered? Is that your assumption?

They were trying so hard to find a way to crack a joke and live up to their 'stage personality' pity they couldn't be themselves.

I met them and hung out with them back stage. I therefore feel that I can say with some degree of authority...
They were being themselves.

But as I say it shows that a updated version can work and I take note this was kinda cobbled together for youtube.

This is perhaps the most confusing statement that you've made. You say that "it shows a updated version can work". However, you've attacked every(?) difference between this episode and previous episodes of Knightmare shown on YouTube. So exactly what "updates" do you believe are shown to have worked in this episode?

UGH, my comment regarding the pad and pencil was OBVOUSLY A JOKE.

The team came across as jokey and if they can have a joke then so can the rest of us, this isn't me knocking them it just an observation, it's laughing with them not at them, they always gave the impression they were looking for something silly to say, that was clearly the catch, hence they were on the show.

I don't feel the need to repeat all the positives with the episode everyone has already done that. As i clearly said this is kinda like a demo/prototype/pilot in which a proper production would iron out all those little issues everyone has spoken about which i decided not to comment on, theses things were clearly 'unfinished' you could say, because of the tight restrictions. budgets, time scale it was made under, (sound effects, editing, character interaction, main chamber and so on) and i applaud what they did in such a short time. It had all the right ingredients. And quite frankly others have said pretty negative things about the episode too.

[Reboot]

If this is to be the end, I'm really happy for the show to have had its own opportunity to say 'goodbye'. It helps close the chapter on a very distraught 10-year-old searching the September TV listings from 1995 onwards!

Definitely a better coda to the show than Knightmare VR if it does turn out to be the very last really-this-time ever episode, I'm sure everyone can agree!

*wonders idly if it's going to be bunged in with the S8 rights if Challenge get that far*

[Dessimat0r]

How about someone remixes the episode to add all the correct Knightmare things, and get rid of some stupid parts of the opening? Also put the full ending music on, proper lifeforce, etc. That'd be very doable.

[Billy]

I think some people were expecting a perfect, jaw-dropping "Series 9" of an episode that was going to absolutely blow them away and be the best episode ever made in the history of the show, or at least near. Secretly so did I but that was always going to be impossible - it was only filmed a few weeks ago and they've had to rush-edit it to be out in time for today, so it was never going to happen.

What they have made, given the time and budget constraints, is utterly bloody brilliant. Definitely don't agree that it should be lumped in the same category as Knightmare VR or Doctor Who's 'Dimensions in Time' - the former was a brave attempt at rebooting the show for the noughties, the latter perhaps the worst episode of DW ever made . This for what it is may have been a little rough around the edges but is by far the best thing to come out of the show since the final episode of Series 8 left our screens nineteen(!) years ago.

Highlights:

[*]Hugo, Mark and Cliff. But was that ever in question? Save for a grey hair or two it was like they'd never been away, perfectly slipping back into their characters after two decades. Would have liked to have seen a Series 1-2 era Treguard but thankfully we got a little of that right at the end.
[*]Very very happy to see such a great mix of all eras of the show - including the best thing to come out of KMVR (Slice Me Dice Me) all together. Bizarre to think that was the first episode to see both bomb rooms and Lord Fear in together!
[*]Jessie Cave! Despite having perhaps the least knowledge of the show out of all the cast/contestants I was impressed by her portrayal of Theodora, nicely believable and a potential new Elita type.
[*]Great to see it left open-ended with the potential for further adventures with Treguard and Daisy. Can see lots of fanfiction being written exploring the interplay further, and I mean that innocently before anyone enquires
[*]Not in the episode itself but in the YouTube comments, those basically saying "I have no idea what this is but it's amazing and you have to make more!!" should be seen as very positive, successfully grabbing a new audience and what's the betting they'll be Googling 'Knightmare' and finding this site, or tuning into Challenge this Friday?

Not gonna use the term "lowlights" but on my first viewing it took me a while to work out what to make of it simply because of the editing issues. Again I understand that this was lack of time and money, even so the several awkward pauses, missing dialogue lines/sound effects/music and jump cuts are a great shame and make me wish Geek Week could have been delayed a month or two so they could have done a proper editing job. It has the unintended effect at points of making the show seem cheap, stilted and most importantly slow, when any episode from about Series 2 onwards (with a much higher budget!) shows this was never the case. I've seen some say that there was a lack of fear and save for a bit of worry at Ariadne and the SMDM blades the quest was something of a pleasant stroll, however I understand that some of it may have been cut in order to fit it into 25 minutes. There's a moment in the first spyglass scene where either Dan or Phil is seen clearly frantically shouting at Stuart to put the spyglass down...however not only is this seen in silence due to an editing error (so it's just him waving his hands around in panic for no reason) but it comes several seconds before the fireball actually appears, so in that instance a potential nice moment was sadly lost. It's just one of the visual/audio shortcomings that with just a bit more time could have been made much better.

Second time I put all technical aspects out of my mind and watched it more for the show itself and enjoyed it a lot more. I hope Tim doesn't take some of the more negative reactions here as the general fan consensus, when looking at the Youtube comments this is definitely not the case and it seems to be genuinely enjoyed by many.

Will this lead onto a new series? Gosh I hope so. If yes, bring it on. If not then it's a shame but even just a year ago I would have never predicted any of the excitement we've had in KM land this year, this especially. What I am is immensely chuffed to finally see a new episode of the show and extend my hearty congrats to all involved - please let this lead onto more awesomeness! The inner child in me salutes you

[wombstar]

Well said.
Due to the circumstances this was made under i don't think it's fair to fault the technical stuff, which is why i didn't focus on that in my previous comments. The only thing that really didn't work was the cheesy intro, but doing it in such a tight time scale i guess they had to make do.

I just hope a new generation of KM fan and keep it alive, i also hope any new series would have a proper revival story, this being a 'celebrity special' isn't always the best way to bridge the gap,


So am i the only one who liked the Jester then?

[Debz_g]

Yeah he was an interesting new character, if not a little creepy! Lol :-)

[Alex_Smith]

So am i the only one who liked the Jester then?

No I thought he was brilliant, creepy and enigmatic, the perfect Knightmare character.

[wombstar]

Not as doolally as Folly, and not as 'friendly' as Motley.
More sad clown then we was Jester.. but i really hope they sticks around in the future, he fitted right in.

[Canadanne]

OK, here's my proper review! This will be long, so I've no idea if anyone will read it...

~ Very pleased and relieved by the return of the old theme music (albeit with the dragon sound effect removed) - I was afraid it might have the KMVR music.

~ I thought for a minute that Isy Suttie was playing Mistress Goody, when she came in sweeping and chanting about the dust! She didn't sound very natural delivering those lines, but she did relax into the role as the scene progressed. I'm glad Treguard decided to rename her, as I did think "Ugh, REALLY?" when she introduced herself as Veruca. ("I want to learn magic NOW, daddy! Don't care how, I want it nooowwwwww.....") Can't say I feel that much fondness towards her so far, but there are many characters I was initially iffy about (e.g. Majida, Lissard) who grew on me enormously over time, so I expect she will too. It's quite fun just to meet a new assistant who isn't a fan creation! As others have pointed out, Daisy wasn't needed very much with a team of adults, but has the potential to be good with younger players who need some encouragement.

~ Agreed that the opening sequence dragged on a little too long, considering it was only a 25 minute episode, but then again it was important to establish who the new characters were, and what had been happening in our absence. I was certainly interested to see where it was going.

~ Nice to see the not-so-subtle Tolkien references still being dropped into Knightmare, with Treguard's miraculous rejuvenation! (He even looked a lot like Bernard Hill there!)

~ I was slightly bothered by Treguard's little humorous asides to the camera as well, which is odd considering it's not unusual for him to address the watchers. I suppose it's because he'd only just been woken up and had no idea the watchers were there, so his sudden breaking of the fourth wall was jarring and seemed a bit pantomime.

~ I hated the unnecessary chit-chat with the team before they started the quest. Since when has Treguard given a stuff about whether the contestants have any "special skills"? Name, age and direction was sufficient in the past, and it would have been far more amusing to see them introduce themselves in the traditional way. ("Dan Howell, from Wokingham, Berkshire!" etc.) This whole exchange sounded horribly scripted and wasn't even funny, so I'm not sure why they bothered with it.

~ The CGI antechamber did look, well, pretty dreadful, but that can't be helped since there wasn't time to build a real set.

~ The CGI rooms weren't good either. It was somewhat interesting to see new computerised versions of old familiar rooms (took me a few seconds to recognise some of them), but they looked so incredibly fake - the original paintings were so much more convincing and pleasant to look at. Maybe these could have been made to look better if there was more time and a bigger budget, but I can't help feeling a fully CGI dungeon is just a bad idea - this is the third time it's been tried, and it has never worked, in my opinion.

~ "Where am I?" "YOU'RE IN A ROOM!" Oh, hardy har har, how witty and original you are. The contestants did not make a great first impression with this! Within a few seconds I could tell it just wasn't going to work very well with adults instead of kids - they're too concerned with sounding cool or whatever. Mind you, I can think of one or two teams on the original show who were annoying as hell for the same reason.

~ Hahaha, quite amused how they had to avoid the death card (Ace of Spades) in the first room, as that's exactly what the team had to do in my fantasy Series 9 fanfic.

~ Why does Daisy have a go at Treguard for not knowing who the new jester is? She had already mentioned that she was acquainted with him herself, so it might have been more helpful to just tell everybody what she knew!

~ I liked Sylvester more than I was expecting to, though I agree that the recycling of character names is unfortunate, and his "thee" and "thou" speech was quite forced and irritating. He's not a patch on Folly or Motley, but is nonetheless intriguing. One of the things that always made Knightmare so good was the mixture of familiar and fresh faces in each new series, so I'm happy to see them sticking to this formula!

~ The spyglass scenes were a complete delight. Nice to see Lord Fear was eventually able to move back home to Mount Fear - that should make him happy! (Nice touch using David Rowe's original artwork here, too, even if the Pool of Veracity was too obviously a drawing!) The "brick" mobile phone joke was a bit too clichéd for my taste - I was hoping we might hear his Lordship's thoughts on Knightmare in the Internet age! - but seeing Fear himself again was an absolute joy. It was like Mark & Cliff had never been away - they hadn't changed a bit, other than the clothing alterations! (Lord Fear was even back to his wonderful Series 7-era persona; I found him a bit too hyper in Series 8.) Man, I'd almost forgotten how much I love his voice. What fun to hear his references to "Madame Ariadne", too - I'm pretty sure the Opposition never spoke about her in the original series, so it's lovely to see them using her as a weapon. I also quite enjoyed seeing the old fireball graphic effect again, even though they were majorly overused in Series 8! Oh, and I rather like Lord Fear's new outfit - a definite improvement on the last one.

~ The CGI spider was pretty creepy (all spiders are creepy!), but I would much prefer to see footage of a real spider like in ye olden days.

~ I too was fairly confused by the scene in the ex-Hall of Spears - there was nothing to stop them from simply exiting through the open door, and normally when a bomb is present, the thing to do is RUNNNNN!, so it was weird when they decided to light the fuse instead. Obviously some discussion was edited out which would have explained the situation more clearly. I'd also been too busy squealing with glee during the spyglass scene to realise the spell was meant to be used against Ariadne! (I then had a "NNNNOOOO, they killed Ariadne?!" moment, and was relieved to hear the explosion had done her no lasting damage, haha.)

~ Quite liked the lift down to Level 2!

~ Theodora is my favourite of the new characters (even if her name sounds more like a Harry Potter character... was that a conscious in-joke because of the actress?). She talks a bit like Catherine Tate's schoolgirl character, now I come to think of it! Would very much like to see more of her.

~ Interesting to hear Theodora refer to Lord Fear as "old skull-features", possibly confirming that's who Fatilla was talking about in Series 4!

~ The glaringly obvious edit in the clue room was indeed glaringly obvious, but if it couldn't be helped, fair enough.

~ Yeah, the goblin horn sound was very wrong and not half as chilling as the old one!

~ Very nice how they included Garstang and Slice Me Dice Me from KMVR; our glimpse into the dungeon was so frustratingly brief back then, it's good to see it all tied together. Just a shame Ellie the elf-maid wasn't included - I have long wanted to hear more about her!

~ I think I gasped and said something like "Whoa!" when Slice Me Dice Me appeared; I hadn't even considered that we might see that room again, and it's pretty formidable, especially when there's a *real* dungeoneer involved! (Great reaction from everyone when the first blades swung across, haha.) Their epic fail gave me a real laugh, as I mentioned earlier, but I would also really love to see someone succeed on this puzzle. By which I mean a real person being guided and jumping, not some videogame avatar like we saw in KMVR.

~ To the team's credit, they all seemed like fans of the show, displaying a firm grasp of what they were meant to be doing. Their reasoning skills were impressively quick at times; I liked how they figured they could trust Theorora's directions as she needed Stuart alive to help her, and they did very well to guess the safe sequence on Slice Me Dice Me from the scroll clue earlier - I was nowhere near working that out! Shame we didn't see them all waving goodbye at the end.

~ It definitely would have been better for Treguard to do his scary "Join us again..." line into the camera instead of just to Daisy! (It was annoying enough in Series 8 when he kept ignoring the audience in favour of Majida.)

~ I would just like to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for scrapping the avatars of KMVR and bringing back *real* dungeoneers and *real* actors in the dungeon! It's a million times better this way. So happy to see the real Lissard back as well. Despite its flaws (which are mostly due to it being such a last-minute production), this new episode has fixed a number of things that were wrong with our last visit to Knightmare, plus it has some wonderful moments that bring a huge smile to my face. So I'd say it was definitely worth doing.

Bring on the fanfic!

[Oldboy]

Good episode, I loved seeing some series 1 rooms again. My only nitpick would be that the team found it funny when the Dungeoneer died. Younger teams would take it a bit more seriously and wouldn't be patting themselves on the back for making someone walk through a Door. So if the series restarts again in future I hope they stick with younger teams. Great stuff though and a lot of fun to watch! Treguard and Lord Fear. Awesomeness.

[Mystara]

Having had the advantage of having seen it uncut, I can answer a couple of your questions...

~ Why does Daisy have a go at Treguard for not knowing who the new jester is? She had already mentioned that she was acquainted with him herself, so it might have been more helpful to just tell everybody what she knew!

In the uncut version, she knew who he was, and referred back to her previous conversation. I guess that it was felt that the scene dragged on for too long.

~ I too was fairly confused by the scene in the ex-Hall of Spears - there was nothing to stop them from simply exiting through the open door, and normally when a bomb is present, the thing to do is RUNNNNN!, so it was weird when they decided to light the fuse instead. Obviously some discussion was edited out which would have explained the situation more clearly. I'd also been too busy squealing with glee during the spyglass scene to realise the spell was meant to be used against Ariadne! (I then had a "NNNNOOOO, they killed Ariadne?!" moment, and was relieved to hear the explosion had done her no lasting damage, haha.)

There are a couple of missing rooms in which Ariadne gave chase (among other things). At some point, someone (Treguard?) made a comment about Ariadne continuing to chase them until she traps them. All of this has obviously been cut. The lighting of the bomb was intended to try and either kill her or chase her away.

[HobGoblin]

Alan - do you think there's any chance we'll get to see the uncut version?

A prolonged stalking by Ariadne sounds great and it makes me even more frustrated about the prolonged opening sequence.

I did wonder whether rights issues with ITV (ITN?) prevented the use of clips of the old series at the beginning? Quite an efficient way to introduce the show (under the old adage 'show don't tell') would have been to use a montage of classic clips - deaths, spells, panicking advisors etc. This would have taken about 30 seconds, have given a good idea of the show to knewbies and also made it look like the best show ever! Knowing that the YouTube stars could face a similarly horrible death would surely have been a great way to keep people watching? It could even have been presented as a dream Treguard was having - at the end of which he wakes with a start, looks into the camera and says 'it begins again' or whatever - and cue titles.

Sorry - don't mean to start rewriting a script lots of people may have liked! But to cut dungeoneering action for all that 'wakey, wakey' nonsense gives me the urge to insert an angry face - and here it is: >:(

[Insider]

How about someone remixes the episode to add all the correct Knightmare things, and get rid of some stupid parts of the opening? Also put the full ending music on, proper lifeforce, etc. That'd be very doable.

Good idea, I'm on it.