Knightmare

Those who know me well enough will know that Knightmare is never far from my thoughts. It is a permanent feature, for better or worse, of my being. Knightmare elegantly punctuated my primary years. It introduced me to fantasy, encouraged me towards intellectual pursuit, and proved to be a strong enough source of a fair majority of my strongest friends. I appreciate criticism against this kind of thing, but I am neither a fanatic gamer, a regular role-player, nor a writer of fan-fiction; first and foremost, I just engage in nostalgic appreciation of revolutionary television, for a show which has transcended its particular era, demonstrated the exponential nature of technological change, and has provided millions with entertainment, discussion, and memorabilia; far more than ever will be said for the majority of today’s mediocrity.

To several of those ends, it shares a place with Andrew Marvell. What could the two possibly have in common? Well, let me explain in the following paragraphs. A few months ago, I alluded to my current state of mind as the character of a grasshopper from a poem by Richard Lovelace [Farewell Frost]. Not so long ago, I exchanged private comment regarding some of the issues of that piece, and was inspired enough that looking for novel ways for self-expression may be a sufficiently rewarding process. When I tried to refresh the thought, what came to mind was an image that encapsulates one of Knightmare’s most enigmatic in-game mysteries: a firestone cased in ice. The concept is not unique to me. I have often, in similar vein, sought inner counsel to Sir Thomas Wyatt’s antithetical sonnet; from an entry evocatively titled ‘Nirvana‘ in 2005, I nonchalantly labelled it a ’stock-epithet’ in ‘Maranatha‘ at the end of 2008.

I find no peace, and all my war is done;
I fear, and hope. I burn, and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise.
And naught I have, and all the World I seize on…

Attaching this to Knightmare has unique significance to me. For those not overly familiar with the show, it would require more space than I have liberty to take, but in short, it was a revolutionary and groundbreaking (labelled the world’s first) virtual-reality television gameshow, which ran in the UK between 1987 and 1994, and was also commissioned for shorter periods in France and Spain. The game, or quest, was undertaken by groups of four aged 11-16, with the objective of surviving three ‘levels’/stages of increasing difficulty, interacting with in-game characters, solving and navigating around tough riddles, puzzles and perils, and achieving an end-goal of, (with the odd exception), retrieving a magical, historical object. One player, blindfolded by a helmet, took the role of ‘dungeoneer’, and entered a chromakey blue-screen set, onto which was superimposed an atmospheric fantasy dungeon environment. Three companions remained in the central antechamber along with the Dungeon Master, and gave aid and directions.

One of the attractions of the game was its controversially graphic nature and its notorious degree of difficulty. The show was not without some political forbearance. Created in the uncompromising Thatcherite era of the 1980s, and intercepting trends favouring historicism, the show was fantasy escapism, that, in a sense, was no escapism. The vast majority of the participating teams met the ‘death’ of their dungeoneer, which was achieved in a variety of creative ways, ranging from falls, to bomb explosions, to piercings by spikes, to massacre by blades. There is a glint in the eye of Tim Child, the show’s creator, when he states in an interview in 2007 [accompanied by a clip from the final series in 1994]:

Some of the gameplay was really quite complex. It was always challenging, and also, it was quite scary. A dungeon is a dark, dank, dangerous place. It’s not the sort of place you would send six-year-olds in. Even in fantasy terms, with drawn environments, it’s pretty convincing. We scared an awful lot of children, but it made for great gameplay once they had been scared.

(Tim Child, ‘Children’s TV on Trial’, 2007)

Knightmare, refreshingly, did not suffer fools and often displayed exacting standards: failure, for example, to answer one riddle correctly in the final level, after 40-45 minutes of airtime, would withhold the vital information needed to complete the game, and rendered the team’s pending end inevitable. At the opposite end of the spectrum, several weak teams, especially in the early seasons, did not escape the first level. Near the beginning of each level, teams were presented with a choice of objects, of which two could be taken, often with clues as to what may be needed or prove helpful in the coming scenes. But from a series of more sporadic single-room challenges, as Knightmare’s audience swelled and the fantasy world and its characters began to formulate a television trademark, from its 5th series in 1991 the gameplay began to switch to greater background narratives and wider level synopses for each quest.

Knightmare Series 3 (1989). For one incorrect riddle in an earlier scene, the excellent Martin is foiled, or fried, at the death by the sorceress Morghanna

The evolution of the gameplay added a strong autopsic value to the legacy of the programme. It has long been argued amongst fans that there were elements of the show that were intrinsically unfair, and there are parallel attempts to try and decipher some of the tantalising mysteries behind some failed quests that continue to perplex its adoring fans 15-20 years afterwards. This is what begins to resemble the study of my favourite poet. The primary evidence is there, and so often it poses so many fascinating and intriguing questions that actively encourage the speculation, but it can only really be subjected to conjecture, with little chance of finding conclusive answers.

In this vein, I once declared that discussion of Knightmare was a science. I understand what was meant by that – a search for answers, with known facts and probabilities thrown in – but perhaps I am a little mistaken. The ‘field’ of my interdisciplinary PhD surrounding Andrew Marvell and seventeenth-century privacy falls into a strange category. A draft of my second chapter, which comprises the main historical synthesis, has recently been completed, and so I wait tentatively to learn how it is received, which directs my mind towards such methodologies. Literature fits within the humanities, while the history component falls between the humanities and social sciences. One objective, then, is to present the historical case as more conclusively factual, and then to offer a subjective reading of the poet within that context. The other is to present an original contribution to knowledge.

Applying that principle to Knightmare, to my regret, I have only been able to offer what I believe are two small contributions. The first is factual, related to my hometown: the shortest quest, in terms of airtime, was the first team of series 2, and not, as commonly thought, a later team of that same year. The second, true to form, is much more interesting in terms of conjecture, and relates to the quest featured here. One of the most seasoned of fans was left to consider, ‘This has got to be one of the best teams as far as wild speculation is concerned, since there are so many possibilities about what could have happened’. [The images are linked to clips, but this does not come close to representing Knightmare at its fiery best. The docile series 5 of 1991, plus a young team, has produced a mystery, not a thriller. These clips might help to follow the events].

"Fair Trade is No Robbery"

"Change" or "Switch"?

Backfire. The spell is a trick, and portends a gloomy end.

My interpretation of the synopsis of this level, to the best of my knowledge, has not been registered elsewhere relating to this discussion. The team learn that passage to the final level will require a firestone, and that one is frozen away in the level and will require magic to free it. The clue they receive along with the choice of objects in the level clue room is ‘Fair Trade is No Robbery’. The trader they encounter in the level is trickster Julius Scaramonger, who offers them a potion of impurity. When the team ask persistently about magic, he offers a choice of spells: Change or Switch. With little on which to base their choice, the team take Change, and attempt to cast it at the encased firestone, but it turns out to be a trick, and turns the dungeoneer, Chris, into a goblin. They are left to progress without their required object, and inevitably their progress is doomed. Their unique death is consumption by a Blocker. The discussion has all centred around the choice of spells. To me, ‘Fair Trade is No Robbery’ indicates that the initial offering, a rarity with Scaramonger, is the correct option, and that the impurity solution will dissolve the ice.

However, this does not solve all of the mysteries. In a later scene, the team encounter the monk, Brother Mace, for a second time. Mace hints, rather uniquely, at a second chance saloon, by advising them that with a jester’s stick (available to choose earlier from the clue room, but rejected), the team could summon the dungeon jester, Motley, who could reverse the spell. We learn after the team’s demise from the Dungeon Master that the jester would have provided them with the password to bypass the Blocker. Therefore, even though the team are lured into a trap and fail to retrieve the object needed for transport to the next level, there was still a potential synoptic route for the team to at least advance to the end and give themselves a chance. But there was no obvious clue that the team should choose the jester’s stick over any other. So, even had the team achieved the difficult element of the level in successfully retrieving the firestone, we might still be left to believe that without taking a gamble on the jester’s stick, their quest was bound to end in the same manner.

What this sequence of clues shows is that enough pieces of the synopic jigsaw were revealed to start forming an hazy image of how the level could be cracked, but not enough to be conclusive. If a dozen academically minded fans contemplating the case cannot conclusively decipher the fact, goodness knows how 12-13 year olds are expected to. But that, in a nutshell, was Knightmare.

The same degrees of mystery are true of the good poet. The end of the finest essay on Marvell’s finest poem, the equipoised and ultra-ambiguous ‘Horatian Ode’, says: ‘Reading the poem through once more, we think that Marvell has declared a commitment after all. Then we see the shadows closing in’ (Blair Worden, 1987). Meanwhile, the opening paragraph of the doctoral thesis of one of my academic inspirations, speaks of Marvell in a way that I have come to regard Knightmare as well:

his most distinctive poems are brilliant precisely because they perplex the reader, perhaps perplexed Marvell himself, and often tacitly make perplexity their subject.

(Dr. John McWilliams, ‘Andrew Marvell and the Act of Writing’, 2003)

Why I come to this in the first place is distinctly personal: something that I wish to underplay, but which may benefit from understanding in the exploration. I have been looking for that same brand of striking, iconic allegory, and find that the allusion runs deeper than an image, but an episode wreathed in perplexity. I find what I am looking for, not only in the thoughts surrounding perplexity, but in this wonderful antithesis of fire encased in ice. There is some icy kind of barrier inhabiting my fire, and it stops me from moving on, figuratively speaking, to the next level. And I don’t know how to break through it. Do I need medication? Do I need counselling? Do I need to go back in time and alter my choices? Perhaps the answer is ‘yes’ to all three, but I fear that to take the wrong option, I may start inflicting yet further damage that cannot easily be rectified. If only all such problems could be consigned to a gameshow, to remain on a pedestal for others to heartily discuss for decades to come.