Excalibur

The first time I tried to play Excalibur, I bounced off it hard. Surely, I thought, reading a fandom wiki shouldn't count as interactive fiction. When do I get to press buttons other than Next Page? Yes, technically, as you read pages more of the wiki unlocks, but you do have to be in more of a reading mood than a gaming one to get the most out of this "game." That being said, get yourself into the right mindset and Excalibur is dreadfully immersive.

It takes real talent to make a wiki entry feel authentic without being, for lack of a better term, a little too cringe, but Excalibur pulls it off. The entries feel fan-written, occasionally tangential and sometimes toeing the line on speculation, but edited well enough to pass as a genuine attempt at archiving. The premise of the show also feels quite authentic, the kind of halfway house mess that came from showrunners fueled by big dreams and expensive drugs clashing with network executives who just wanted their own Star Trek. I especially liked the profiles of the show's behind-the-scenes staff, the directors and writers in particular, and how each of their personalities influenced their respective episodes.

I came away from Excalibur wanting more: more entries, more episodes, more fandom drama burbling just under the surface, more explanations for all the weird stuff (Spoiler - click to show)(what the heck was going on with Terrence Lannark?). But, and please forgive my pretentiousness here, is that not the point? Excalibur the show was a victim of its time; an attempted revolution foiled by incompetence and erased by the powers that be. The Excalibur wiki, in-universe, is an attempt to reclaim something that is now fundamentally incorporeal, surviving only in a handful of photographs, a collection of amateur transcripts, and the aging memories of the people who loved it. Like trying to bottle smoke from a campfire, the result will only ever be a pale imitation of what once was.

A later reveal is that (Spoiler - click to show)one of the most dedicated users on the wiki was actually born long after Excalibur was lost. They know the show, much like us, only from secondhand accounts and the crumbs of the original vision left behind. I found this detail very touching, and I think it speaks to the inherently compelling nature of lost media, as well as its melancholy. Within all of us exists a starved explorer, an urge to discover and collect and uncover and share. Sometimes, it just takes a Doctor Who knock-off to whet that appetite.

I'm rambling now, but Excalibur is the kind of work that makes one want to wax philosophical. I've barely even mentioned how funny it is. If you take anything from this review, let it be that you should give this one a try (or two). Let it suck you in, and you might find yourself also wishing you could watch just one episode of this strange little gem.