Next Dimension: Tooo the Crystal Dome!

My intrepid blogging expedition, whose aim is to shoehorn The Crystal Maze into as many of our exchanges as possible, continues this evening, with another three-dimensional homage to the show – this time, the iconic Crystal Dome itself. The shadows are a bit intense, but the deflector and emitter animation is a lot of fun and working better than I’d have expected. The geodesic structure of the Dome was created simply by altering my previous time crystal and making a second Atom Array for the framework.

For the circa 100 per cent of you reading who haven’t ever seen the programme – or were quickly bored by my essay and didn’t read it, not that I could blame you – a team of six journey through the maze, pitting themselves against fiendish and frustrating mental and physical challenges. For each of these games that they beat, the team receive a time crystal. Each crystal wrested from the maze is worth five seconds inside the Crystal Dome, a glorified wind tunnel full of gold and silver tokens.

The crystals bagged by the team were placed on a podium and ‘went out’ in five-second intervals. For the record, no team ever came close to that many crystals – I believe ten was the max. Some even got to the Dome with just one!

Inside the Dome, the team must collect and post one hundred gold tokens into the letterbox (or ‘cosmic pyramid’ as Ed Tudor-Pole labelled it). For every silver token that inadvertently slips through, one gold is taken away. Really it was just blind luck – there was no time to sort them, so stuff stuff stuff the letterbox was the general plan of attack. Sadly it was a plan of attack which led to many teams posting a sub-zero tally of what they were after, and that wonderful water sports day out in Hay-on-Wye passed them by.

I’ve said before, it’s by far the weakest section of The Crystal Maze in terms of the mechanic, but it’s unquestionably memorable and I’d still rather like a go. It’s a good job there’s that live theatre experience thing starting up in London soon!

Here is a rare occasion – a team who actually won! It’s the full episode, but on playing it should start immediately before the Dome:

Start the fans, please!

• 3d
• animation
• Art
• cinema 4d
• crystal
• crystal dome
• crystal maze
• ed tudor-pole
• model
• richard o'brien