BBK
Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 10:58
Years and years ago, Paul McIntosh - through the medium of TES - started the Bring Back Knightmare campaign. Yeah, there were only 16 readers of TES, and so the campaign was fairly unsuccessful, but the concept of BBK started and was fuelled.
This website, along with other Internet resources - such as NKTP, The Homepage of Knightmare, and perhaps most importantly, bbk.co.uk - gave the BBK campaign new life, with the relaunch of BBK, as well... much more and widespread interest than before. The original petition, which ended up gaining 2000+ signatures, got absolutely nowhere, despite all our hopes that it would.
Then along came Elessar and thegreatestquest.co.uk, which evolved into Mystara and bbk.co.uk, which re-re-started the whole campaign, again with new hope and a much more realistic goal: get Knightmare back onto our TVs, in whatever form.
Okay, eventually we sort-of achieved our aim; Knightmare got repeated on Challenge? *and* Televirtual started making Knightmare-VR. This appeased both parties: people who wanted old KM repeats *and* people who wanted a new series of KM (even if the KM-VR pilot wasn't all that great, it was better than nothing at all).
But we are stuck.
I'm breaking my lurker status and posting this here because the whole spirit of BBK - the guiding light behind the community - appears to be rapidly dissipating. If we take a look at the status of Knightmare for a second, we'll notice that Knightmare has been shown on Challenge? for some time, and that their rights have to end some time in the future - and that will probably be soon, as well.
Plus, KM-VR, whatever you think of it, is not being made any more. Suddenly, the target of persuasion - originally Anglia *and* TV stations - has switched to the company that originally made KM, Broadsword/Televirtual itself. They got a huge Lottery grant to produce KM-VR, and we got nothing except a mediocre pilot which only prompted lukewarm interest from both TV companies and fans.
Mystara is still running bringbackknightmare.co.uk (go and look if you're unsure), and surely we have hundreds of visitors to knightmare.com, AND to the forum, so why has the spark of BBK gone? And where has it gone?
Sure, we are still making the RPG, but with that and the increase in fan-made videos *and* the number of people that are remembering and/or coming to view KM for the first time, thanks to Challenge?, surely we can do more than appease a small fanbase...
It's time we, as a united community, breathed new life and hope into the ailing BBK campaign and reanimated it - we need to create more and more awareness of BBK, because the goals we were aiming for have faded, and we've descended into a world of petty squabbles and fading nostalgia. If we don't unite once again behind the banner of BBK, then we'll never get Knightmare back, which is what we want!
We *almost* had what we were originally aiming for, but it's slipped through our outstretched fingers, and we need to catch it before we fall.
New series, more repeats, DVDs, RPG, whatever... we need action here, and we need it soon.
Let's restart BBK.
This website, along with other Internet resources - such as NKTP, The Homepage of Knightmare, and perhaps most importantly, bbk.co.uk - gave the BBK campaign new life, with the relaunch of BBK, as well... much more and widespread interest than before. The original petition, which ended up gaining 2000+ signatures, got absolutely nowhere, despite all our hopes that it would.
Then along came Elessar and thegreatestquest.co.uk, which evolved into Mystara and bbk.co.uk, which re-re-started the whole campaign, again with new hope and a much more realistic goal: get Knightmare back onto our TVs, in whatever form.
Okay, eventually we sort-of achieved our aim; Knightmare got repeated on Challenge? *and* Televirtual started making Knightmare-VR. This appeased both parties: people who wanted old KM repeats *and* people who wanted a new series of KM (even if the KM-VR pilot wasn't all that great, it was better than nothing at all).
But we are stuck.
I'm breaking my lurker status and posting this here because the whole spirit of BBK - the guiding light behind the community - appears to be rapidly dissipating. If we take a look at the status of Knightmare for a second, we'll notice that Knightmare has been shown on Challenge? for some time, and that their rights have to end some time in the future - and that will probably be soon, as well.
Plus, KM-VR, whatever you think of it, is not being made any more. Suddenly, the target of persuasion - originally Anglia *and* TV stations - has switched to the company that originally made KM, Broadsword/Televirtual itself. They got a huge Lottery grant to produce KM-VR, and we got nothing except a mediocre pilot which only prompted lukewarm interest from both TV companies and fans.
Mystara is still running bringbackknightmare.co.uk (go and look if you're unsure), and surely we have hundreds of visitors to knightmare.com, AND to the forum, so why has the spark of BBK gone? And where has it gone?
Sure, we are still making the RPG, but with that and the increase in fan-made videos *and* the number of people that are remembering and/or coming to view KM for the first time, thanks to Challenge?, surely we can do more than appease a small fanbase...
It's time we, as a united community, breathed new life and hope into the ailing BBK campaign and reanimated it - we need to create more and more awareness of BBK, because the goals we were aiming for have faded, and we've descended into a world of petty squabbles and fading nostalgia. If we don't unite once again behind the banner of BBK, then we'll never get Knightmare back, which is what we want!
We *almost* had what we were originally aiming for, but it's slipped through our outstretched fingers, and we need to catch it before we fall.
New series, more repeats, DVDs, RPG, whatever... we need action here, and we need it soon.
Let's restart BBK.
maybe even show them some videos 