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I was never a big fan of the Series 6-8 (+ YouTube Geek Week 2013) opening sequence:

I wrote: 26 Nov 2003, 18:21 Another clear memory is watching the first episode of Series 6 with my friend; we laughed ourselves silly at the new opening credits. How on earth does the dungeoneer in them manage to run around with such agility, with the Helmet on?

As a result, I've never watched it that closely, until recently.

I was interested to notice how dragon imagery is used throughout the journey of the implausibly unguided running dungeoneer - the 'Rungeoneer' if you will - from the foreground statue at the beginning to the archway decoration at the end. I counted at least 7 occurrences (including the snapdragon).

It also hadn't occurred to me that the thing that pulls the falling Rungeoneer into the wall could be a dragon's talon, connecting it to the next scene. I'd always assumed it was some kind of wall monster.

I wonder now if the sequence was created with an underlying narrative related to dragons. Equally, they might just have picked dragons as obvious fantasy imagery.

Either way, perhaps it was in Tim Child's mind when he wrote Treguard's Geek Week line about the previous quest having been in "the age of the dragons".

Well, in the words of Knightmare's very first: "Every hero should meet a dragon".

This post made me re-watch the opening sequence closely, and wow, that is a lot of dragons. Which made me very happy for obvious reasons.

But seriously, I guess that dragons have simply evolved to become a symbol of a quest, perhaps even more so than the Chalice. I could be mistaken, but there seems to be far less grail imagery in the latter series.
And there were just more dragons featured in series 6-8, with Smirkenorff being upgraded to a speaking role as well.

And honestly, is there such thing as too many dragons?

I wrote: 06 Aug 2021, 18:37 I wonder now if the sequence was created with an underlying narrative related to dragons. Equally, they might just have picked dragons as obvious fantasy imagery.

When I made that remark, I had missed the most obvious connection: that the end of Series 6 was very much about dragons. If that's merely a happy coincidence, it's also a happy coincidence that Series 8 ended with a dragon in flight.

I don't think Tim Child's ever been asked why he changed the intro for Series 6. Perhaps there'll be an opportunity in a future interview.

DragonsBeHere wrote: 07 Aug 2021, 14:59 And honestly, is there such thing as too many dragons?

I realise that you asked that question rhetorically, but I am going to treat it as non-rhetorical because then I get to keep rambling.

Knightmare went from one extreme to the other and back again:

• Series 1-3: No team met a dragon unless they got deep into Level 3, with S3 T4 (Leo) the exception. In other words, only three teams met a dragon.

• Series 4: No dragons (unless that giant lizard was hiding its wings very well).

• Series 5-7: Every team met (flew on) a dragon, with the exception of S5 T5 (Jenna) though they were on course to.

• Series 8: Four teams met a dragon (T1 Bhal-Shebah; T5-7 Smirkenorff); the other teams apparently had no opportunity to unless they made it to Level 3 and a Bhal-Shebah encounter had been planned (as it had been for T2). Only one team (T7) got a dragon flight and it wasn't really part of their quest.

Some might hold the opinion that if there was a balance to be struck between too few dragon encounters and too many, no Knightmare series found such a balance.

Then again, with all the expense and effort that went (so successfully) into Smirkenorff's flights prior to Series 5 - from the puppet-making and the group puppetry to the helicopter filming - it makes a lot of sense for that to be used as often as possible.

Yes, good spot!

Hadn't noticed that until now!

Where did they all come from?

I've also always wondered where exactly Lord Fear found Bhal-Shebah/Firestorm Of Marblehead...