The former name of a channel available on satellite and cable television, renamed 'Syfy' in 2010. It was the first channel to repeat episodes of Knightmare, from 1995 to 1998.

Some shows on CITV are repeated for many years after initial airing, sometimes over a decade later. Knightmare was rare in that every episode was only ever shown once on ITV, and in the dark days before Youtube/TV On Demand, if you missed an episode and didn't have it taped on VHS, you were stuck. So when the repeats began in November 1995, it was the first time any of the episodes had been seen on television since their original transmissions. The channel itself was brand new, having launched in the UK that month (a US equivalent had been around since 1992), so Knightmare was one of its first acquisitions.

Episodes of Knightmare rebroadcast on Sci-Fi can be revealed by the presence of a digital on-screen logo burned into the corner of the image, shaped like a planet. Depending on the size and position of the logo, you can work out approximately what year the repeat showings were taped. If the logo is large, blue and bottom right of the screen, then this means it's from a very early repeat run, possibly the first ever in 1995:


The logo later became smaller:


Later still it turned a bright orange and jumped to the top right:


By which time we're in 1998, the final year of Sci-Fi repeats. The episode timeslots changed a lot over the years, but by now had settled on 7:30am on weekday mornings, a timeslot it remained in until the end.

Detail about individual series transmissions and full timeslots are hard to pin down, because during the 1990s the channel operated on different times depending on whether you were watching on satellite and cable television. By 1998 the programme was no longer seen on satellite, as the channel was only broadcast later on in the day after KM had been shown. On Sky Digital it was replaced with Bloomberg News, yet still briefly displayed as 'Knightmare' on the EPG to viewer bemusement. So by the final year of repeat transmissions KM could only be seen on analogue cable television. It was also broadcast on the European feed of the channel, meaning people across the world could watch the show in their own country for the first time.

Before the Challenge repeats of 2002-2007, it was the 1998 repeated episodes that formed many people's collections of the first three series of Knightmare. Tape traders such as Adam Battersby's collection of episodes mostly came from Sci-Fi for Series 1-3, and Knightmare.com's screengrabs of these series were also mostly Sci-Fi until 2009, when they were replaced with high-quality Challenge shots. It meant that the orange Sci-Fi planet logo was a common site on KM copies for many years.

By 1998 an ad-break was inserted into all episodes. This consisted of a clip of Treguard putting the Helmet of Justice onto Helen, dungeoneer of Team 1 of Series 4, with a voice saying "Knightmare continues after the break" or on return, "You're watching Knightmare". Over the end credits, the voice would promote the next programme - The Bionic Woman - saying "All man, all woman - almost! The Bionic Woman, next".


Repeats of Series 1 were also edited to replace the final Anglia Television endboard, which on original 1987 transmission was a model of a knight on horseback (the same logo they'd had since the 1950s - quite fitting really) and for the Sci-Fi repeats was changed to a more modern logo made up of triangles, the then-current Anglia logo which replaced the knight in 1988. By the time Challenge began repeating Series 1 in 2004, this logo was also defunct, so the original 1987 endboard was used again.

The last day of Knightmare on Sci-Fi was Saturday 31st October 1998. The rights then expired, and regular repeats of the show resumed on Challenge in December 2002. But that's another entry!

login to vote

Showed Knightmare Series 1-8 from late 1995-1996, for the first time since they were on CITV and January-October 1998 showed Series 1-3 and most of Series 4. However after this their rights expired, the rights to all the series are now owned by Challenge as of 2004

login to vote