Knightmare.com

In fact we encountered it at start of Level 3. Treguard introduced the swinging axe by reference to the Sword of Damocles. It took us something like 2 mins 30 secs (or was it five minutes?) to get halfway round. Long enough for Giles to need to stand up - quite a scary sight with the axe swinging round! (I think I stood up and shouted for him to get down again!). Fortunately, he was near the centre-point of the axe's locus at the time, though. I offered for us to have another go at it but the floor manager said 'No; it's impossible'. Needless to say, it wasn't broadcast.

That's interesting, i wonder why they didn't just let you do and if you died that was it.

I don't know, mate. Stereotypical British sense of fair play, perhaps?

Maybe that room was untested, odd though how they never tried to use it again.. maybe having to use a spell to stop the axe.

Hi again Wombstar,

I would be very surprised if we were the only team for it to have been tested on, although if they'd deemed it unworkable from a previous team's attempt, they wouldn't have wasted studio time trying it again. Maybe they thought it worth another go to increase the variety of scenes on the series.

Stopping the axe might have worked, but then you have to decide whether the walkway itself was passable quickly enough for the scene to make entertaining television vs a tedious manoeuvring exercise (with a static threat). I'd have to look at it again to see whether it might have been passable standing up with the axe stopped - and that in a position where it wouldn't be blocked out by Giles when the axe was supposed to be in the foreground (if you're with me).

Cheers,
Brett

If it was unworkable or impractical the that could be why it wasn't given more of an outing.

However, in terms of how to defeat it within the Knightmare realm, then perhaps a spell would have been sufficient!

A good room to give a team on loosing status to kill them off... unless they manage to beat it.

I'm reminded of the axe room in series 3 with that really tiny ledge, which was tough enough without the ghostly axe. That always looked a bit impossible.

Agreed, although if it looked intrinsically impossible to the production team they might have decided not to use it even for a team in so-called losing status, as was the case.

I also agree about the ledge room from Series 3 looking hard enough without the team being harried along by a graphical weapon so closely!

Boil off many of the directional errors from the first three series of Knightmare, though (plus sidestep to the left in serie 4, of course!), and - as I see it - you're still left with some arbitrary challenges (even discounting the riddles and other classical and general knowledge questions).

How about allowing people to try the Swinging Axe room for the next KM Convention: is it really impossible?! Can anyone do it?!

I'd like to have something different at the next convention. Playing a room of the dungeon was fun, but it was expensive, disruptive, and hard to organise. It was also the last convention's "big thing". I feel we'd be taking away from the last convention by repeating it. But who knows, if our current plan doesn't work out, we'll be looking for another idea....

But surely being able to do something in the Dungeon would still be a big draw?

Very few people ever got to, even though I'm sure a lot of us on here would have applied...

Perhaps. But in view of the various restrictions regarding what we can actually do (keeping in mind time, complexity, and so on), I think doing something else would have a bigger draw.