Team 2: Daniel, Benjamin, Gideon and Justin from London
The second quest of Series 8 was for the Sword and lasted 49 minutes.
Level 1
Daniel is targeted by snap-dragons in the tunnel. Gideon orders him to "Run! Run! Run!"
The Level 1 clue room. The scroll refers to a 'self-operating danger horn'. The clues are: a bar of gold, a horn, a necklace (or pendant) and a crossbow.
Spyglass: Lord Fear and Lissard are playing Dungeon Monopoly.
- Lissard: "I can't pay, Lordness... It's not fair."
- Lord Fear: "If you wanted fair, you joined the queue for the wrong life!"
Sylvester Hands appears on the viewing screen. Lord Fear orders him to go and retrieve an item from Stiletta.
Daniel drops the spyglass in time. They take the horn and the necklace.
Next is a room with a fireball hazard. The ACME horn sounds, which they initially mistake for a goblin horn. Treguard explains that it means danger.
Fireballs begin to drop from the ceiling, striking out tiles from the floor. The team proceed cautiously.
Next, they encounter Stiletta in the middle of target practice. She advises them to move aside.
Undeterred, they approach and warn her that Sylvester Hands is looking for her. They demand information, but Stiletta wants more, so they trade in the pendant.
In return, she offers a ring which destroys Skeletrons.
Stiletta: "It's jolly good fun. Bit of them fly everywhere!"
She spots Sylvester Hands loitering downstage and fires at him!
A Skeletron is guarding the trapdoor to Level 2, so they use the ring to destroy it.
Daniel proceeds onto the trapdoor, but nothing happens.
Brother Strange skulks in. He says that to open the trapdoor requires magic.
They offer the horn, but he wants a proverb for his collection. Daniel succeeds with "many hands make light work".
Brother Strange uses his staff to open the trapdoor and gifts them a FLOAT spell.
We see the book of spells appear for the first time, before Daniel descends to Level 2.
Level 2
It's the Black Tower of Goth! Level 3 of the previous series has now become Level 2.
Treguard: "I've heard the rumours but this confirms it. Lord Fear never played by the rules but now he's got worse - the old levels have gone and Level 3 becomes Level 2.
I'm afraid to have to tell you that the toughest task in the dungeon dimension has just got tougher!
Snapper-Jack appears. Treguard describes him as a 'fool-taker'.
Snapper-Jack: "Three questions I gives you. Two good answers you gives me. And if you don't, I 'naps ye."
They pass the test by answering at least two riddles correctly. (We rarely got a definitive answer as to whether two or three were scored.)
The Level 2 clue room. The scroll reads: "Humorous or what? That's funny. Get the joke?"
The clue objects are: a green gem, a bone, a casket, and a Fearsome Potion.
Spyglass: Lord Fear argues with the sorceress, Maldame.
Lissard: "A redoubtable woman, Lordness. They call her the iron maiden."
Maldame demands the word key to Linghorm, one of Lord Fear's two towers. Fear loses his temper and turns her to stone.
Lord Fear: "There you are, Lissard. Now you can call her the concrete lady."
Lissard queries the word key, which is revealed to be 'Phoenix'.
The team take the bone and the potion as a Skeletron approaches.
In the ensuing panic, and to Gideon's dismay, Daniel sprints through the left-hand door.
Skeletrons are sort of reconstituted warriors. You might call them undead - though I'm not convinced they ever lived. They don't like water, apparently, so the Sewers of Goth are finally good for something.
The Sewers of Goth and a meeting with Sylvester Hands. Sly wonders off briefly, knowing that Daniel has nowhere to go.
Daniel convinces the team that he should take the Fearsome potion. He turns into Lord Fear! When Hands returns, he is ordered to take Daniel across the sewers.
Into a moving floor obstacle (similar to that from Series 7). As Daniel is halfway through the puzzle, a goblin horn sounds. Two strange creatures appear.
Treguard: "Miremen, I think. They're slow on land but deadly if they catch you."
Raptor appears with the Miremen. Daniel points the humerus bone at him, making him laugh until he staggers off.
The team guide Daniel out before the Miremen can react.
They enter a room with an image of the stone Maldame on the wall. Daniel uses the Reach Wand to release her from Lord Fear's spell.
She doesn't seem particularly grateful, and demands they make her an offer.
It's all a matter of personal and private enterprise. In this case, my personal enterprise.
They exchange the word key to Linghorm for their escape to Level 3.
Level 3
We see the Tower of Linghorm for the first time. Majida describes it as magnificent.
We receive an over-the-shoulder shot of Daniel walking through the corridor.
The junction is patrolled by a Skeletron, which the team avoids.
Into the Level 3 clue room. The scroll reads "Welcome to Level 3. This tower is Linghorm. The Sword lies in Marblehead".
The clues are: a 'Sight' potion, a needle, a key, and a gauntlet.
They take the key and the Sight potion. Daniel makes his escape.
Into the watch tower. Daniel is greeted by a trader, who introduces himself as Honesty Bartram.
Trader: "Bartram's my name and bartering's my game."
Under pressure to make a quick trade, the team swaps the Sight potion for a SHADE spell. Bartram tells them that they will need to get on the Golden Galleon to get to Marblehead.
They board the ship in the next chamber. The decks are guarded by Miremen. The team spell-cast SHADE, which makes Daniel invisible so he can proceed below decks.
Spyglass: Fear is frustrated that Maldame is now lingering outside Marblehead.
Lord Fear: "She's already squatting in one of my properties. Now, she wants this one."
Lissard says he has set Bhal-Shebah to guard the quest object. Fear explains that the dragon is schizophrenic and will be useless if this is discovered.
He gives Lissard the word key to Marblehead.
Daniel disembarks the ship to a mountainous area. Maldame is loitering in the background. When they approach her, it's clear she wants the word key.
The team bargain hard. They exchange the word key for a gem that opens gates and the calling spell SAVANT (on the condition that Daniel does not summon her).
Maldame: "It will call any mage or sorcerer to you up to and including the fourth level of magic."
Daniel moves into the outer courtyard of the Great Fortress of Marblehead. The green gem opens the portcullis.
We follow the eye shield as Daniel passes through the foreboding tunnels of Marblehead...
...and ends up at the new entrance to the dreaded Corridor of Blades!
Treguard: "What Daniel needs is a Sight potion or a seeing-eye spell, but you've got neither. All you've got is a red key that you don't seem to need..."
Death
They go into the slicer...
And meet a gruesome end.
Treguard: "Oooh, nasty."
More information
In 1996, Tim Child, Creator of Knightmare, was interviewed for the Eye Shield fanzine.
Do you have one outstanding memory of Knightmare?
Tim Child: Probably the team of Jewish boys in the last series, who you may remember all came wearing their skull caps. They were all eleven and became almost uncontrollably excited about their adventure!
They became totally absorbed in what they were doing, and we had to think about toning the adventure down, just to calm them somehow!
Worse still, was that Children's TV does not allow swearing or blaspheming in any show, so we had a lot of editing to do! We must have cut out about 200 "Oh God's" (It was more like two dozen actually).
DownloadFull interview with Tim (799.69kB)
Hear from the team
In March 2001, Justin Kett signed the Guestbook.
Knightmare was the best experience of my life. All the guys still talk about it, and every time I mention it in public, someone remembers us being on it.
Believe it or not, we are all still bitter about the way we were killed - they really hated us by the end, and all because of Gideon's cockiness!! We do remember that we were only 12 years old, and naive with it.
Gideon does know his left from right now - he had to learn for Cambridge to let him in!
In July 2005, Justin signed again.
I'm writing again now because I still find it so funny how people still come up to me quite randomly and ask me if it was really me on it - all thanks to Challenge TV!!
It's just so weird and shows how popular Knightmare really was. It would be fantastic if it was released onto DVD.
