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.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/smiley.gif)
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!
![Grin :D](./images/smilies/grin.gif)