Format
Originally, Chatsworth Television intended to make a British version of the French show Fort Boyard, but when it became clear that the fort would not be available at the time of the pilot show, Fort Boyard's creator Jacques Antoine was consulted about developing an alternative format that could be shot elsewhere. As a result, the show ended up using a concept similar to Fort Boyard, but was substantially different in presentation and style. It was filmed on a very large set, originally at H Stage in Shepperton Studios, but in later series at an adapted aircraft hangar named Aces High Studios, at North Weald Airfield in Essex. A UK version of Fort Boyard was eventually made by Channel 5, long after Channel 4 ended The Crystal Maze.
The set was divided into four "zones" set in different periods of time and space. For the first three series, the zones were Aztec (set in a small village in 1518, the year before Hernán Cortés destroyed the Aztec empire), Futuristic (on board a space station far away from Earth in 2494, abandoned after the Second Galactic War of 2245), Medieval (set in a castle where the host lived in 1302) and Industrial (set in an industrial chemical plant and claimed to be where the games were made). From series four onwards Industrial was replaced by Ocean (set on the S.S. Atlantis, a sunken ship trapped in an air bubble on the edge of an abyss in the Pacific Ocean. According to Tudor-Pole, in 1947 the captain got drunk and the ship hit a mine. There is gold in the cargo, but it cannot be removed as it is responsible for balancing the ship over an abyss. The band was the last group of people to leave, since they didn't know the ship was sinking, and one left behind his banjo). In the show, O'Brien claimed he found Ocean zone when he was unblocking a drain in Medieval. He said that it was located underneath Industrial and that he was trying to restore the ship. At the centre of the maze was the Crystal Dome, a giant geometric acrylic glass 'crystal' where the teams play their final challenge after playing games in each of the four Zones.
In each episode, a team consisting of three men and three women (including a team captain and vice-captain) would enter the 'maze,' starting from a pre-determined Zone, and play three or four games of various types in each zone before entering the Crystal Dome. The teams were put together by Chatsworth from individual applicants, only meeting each other for the first time on the day before filming their episode, unlike the UK version of Fort Boyard which was made some years later, in which teams applied and played as teams.
The objective of the show was to amass as many 'time crystals' (golf ball-sized Swarovski glass crystals) as possible by playing the games in each zone. When the team reached the Crystal Dome, they had to collect as many gold "tokens" as possible in order to win a prize. Each crystal that the team won earlier would allow them five seconds of time in the Dome.
Before each game in a zone, the team captain (or vice captain should the team captain be locked in) would choose which contestant would play and which type of challenge the game would involve. Games were classed as "Physical" (tests of speed and strength), "Mental" (tests of brainpower often involving Maths or word association), "Skill" (tests of dexterity and accuracy) or "Mystery" (tests of logic and cunning). The chosen team member would be sent into a chamber to play a game, and their team-mates could advise them from outside (except in specific mental games where the team would be instructed not to confer, although general encouragement could still be shouted in). Successfully solving the puzzle would release a crystal. In the early series, the captain's choice of game and contestant was genuine; in later series, it was not a free choice and was 'imposed' on the team by the production team, sometimes with some discussion between the producers and the entire team before the contest began. This allowed the production team to match games to people most suitable to play them, rather than risking the Captain selecting an inappropriate person to play a game and making the resulting game dull or uninteresting for viewers.
Although not visible in the show, there was in fact a lengthy delay (15 minutes or more) between a player being sent into one of the puzzle chambers and them actually beginning to play the puzzle. This occurred because the show was filmed using only two mobile cameras; as soon as the outside scene of the player jumping into the chamber was filmed, filming had to stop for one of the cameras had to be set up on a rig inside the chamber. Contestants were usually sent to "the green room" (a hospitality area) during the process. Shots where the player looked directly into the camera during the puzzle also had to be edited from the show.
Each game had a time limit of two, two-and-a-half, or three minutes. If the contestant failed to exit the chamber in time, they would be 'locked in.' In some games, known as 'automatic lock-in' games, the contestant could also be locked in by committing a foul, for example by touching the floor if this was forbidden for that game, or by setting off an 'alarm' three times. If the contestant breached the penalty rules in an 'automatic lock-in' game, they would be locked in straight away, irrespective of whether or not they had won the crystal, and regardless of how much time they had left. A small number of games didn't allow contestants to exit without winning the crystal, usually achieved by having the crystal freely accessible but requiring a puzzle to be solved to get out. For example, one game in the Medieval zone had a crystal that was easy to collect, but upon picking it up would lower down a portcullis and trap the contestant in the room. The contestant would then have to build a mechanism to raise the portcullis and escape. Contestants who were 'locked in' were unable to play further, unless the team captain chose to buy a contestant's freedom at the cost of a previously-earned crystal, which could be done at any time after the lock-in.
Buying out a 'locked-in' contestant required a team member to physically take a crystal to the chamber where the contestant was locked in, leaving the crystal there in exchange for their 'bought-out' team-mate. This was represented as a lengthy trip that effectively took a second contestant out of action for several games. In fact the trip time was very short compared to the camera setup delays between the games (and locked-in contestants would likely be waiting in the green room rather than actually inside the chamber), and thus such delays were purely scripted. It was claimed that if the contestants did not rejoin the team in time, they would both be excluded from the Crystal Dome finalé: a danger that was stated in several episodes, but did not actually exist. If both the captain and vice-captain were locked in, a new captain would be elected on the spot, although again, this never actually happened.
After competing in all four Zones, the remaining contestants entered the Crystal Dome, a 16-foot-high (4.9 m) replica of the 'time crystals' surrounded by a seven-foot circular moat and entered by a 3-foot-wide (0.91 m) 'drawbridge' which was hydraulically retracted once the team were inside. Similarly, one of the Dome's triangular panels was hydraulically opened and closed to let the team enter, then lock them inside. Inside the Dome, gold and silver banknote-sized 'tokens' made of foil were blown around from beneath the wire mesh floor by six huge fans mounted on a slowly rotating giant turntable, leading to O'Brien's catchphrase, occasionally delivered in a cod American accent: "Will you start the fans, please!" or Tudor-Pole's various elaborate intros, for example "Let the mighty winds blow!"
After much experimentation with samples of dozens of different foils, the production team found only one which worked properly in the Dome without either falling to the floor and staying there, blowing straight to the top of the Dome and staying there, or 'sticking' to the wall panels. Unfortunately, this foil-like material was only manufactured in silver, so the gold tokens were actually silver ones which were sprayed with gold paint by the production crew.
In the Dome, and after the fans and turntable were up to speed with all the tokens swirling around, the team's aim was to grab the tokens from the air and post them into a roughly house brick sized clear plastic container mounted at waist height on the outside of one of the dome's panels. Tudor-Pole called it The Cosmic Pyramid, while O'Brien termed it The Letterbox. The container had a pneumatically-operated door on the inside, marked with a red saltire-shaped cross, which opened when the collection time started and closed when time was up. The team had to collect at least 100 gold tokens to win, but each silver token gathered would cancel out a gold token. Hence, the team actually had to collect 100 more gold tokens than silver ones. In series two, a gold and silver gauge would appear on-screen whilst the team played in the Dome so viewers could watch how many gold and silver tokens the contestants had collected. This was scrapped from series three onward.
The ratio of silver to gold tokens within the Dome was five to four (625 silver and 500 gold), and the gold tokens were very difficult to tell from silver ones when blowing around inside the Dome, especially since the paint on the 'gold' tokens tended to flake off, although neither of these details were obvious to the viewer. The shape and size of the Dome meant that every sound within it (including a contestant's own voice) appeared to come from a single point roughly ten feet above the Dome's mesh floor, and directly above its centre. This could be disorientating to the contestants.
In the first series, a final balance of 50–99 gold tokens entitled team members to a 'runner-up' prize, but this was dropped in later series. Originally, it was also planned to offer a 'double-or-nothing' Gamble Game to teams winning 50–99 gold tokens. This consisted of a small 'wire-frame' model of the Crystal Dome with some pieces removed, which the team (if they accepted the Gamble) would have to re-assemble within a time limit. However, the Gamble Game idea was dropped shortly before the first series was filmed. In the case of the Christmas specials, done with a team of children, they were awarded the prize regardless of their performance in the dome.
Originally, prizes consisted of individual adventure days out, such as a flight in a Tiger Moth or a day spent mud-plugging, and contestants chose their own gold and silver grade prizes off set, just in advance of filming the Crystal Dome part of the show. From series four onwards, the contestants would choose a single prize (usually once-in-a-lifetime adventure holidays) shared by the whole team. Winning teams were few and far between; a testament to how much of a challenge the show actually was. All players that participated won a commemorative crystal saying "I Cracked the Crystal Maze, 1990–5," despite the fact that the vast majority failed.
Read more about this topic: The Crystal Maze