Sadly, I think we can assume David Hasselhoff will not star
No, see, they just turn him in to a robot, too. Problem solved.
Then we start with the $6 Million Dollar Knight Rider spinoff, and eventually the Knight Babies start fighting crime robotically on big wheels, and the cycle of television phylogenesis is complete.
You forgot the A-Team and MacGuyver!!
But - to be fair - TV in general is pretty formulaic and schlocky. Some of my favorite shows were more formulaic than monster of the week Anime programs.
But we watched it for the “Yeeahhaaaawww!!!” as the Duke boys jumped a bridge that was out, or the montage as the A-Team turned a tractor and a chicken coop into a kill dozer, or a vocoder “By your command.”, or MacGuyver making flaming pine cone bombs that causes Jeeps to blow up (I told you we shouldn’t have gotten the ones with open fuel tanks!)
Part of me has disdain for the lack of originality, but part of me is like “Why not?” update established premises and polish it up. Honestly movies allow for more concise story telling with a satisfying build up and end that doesn’t have to be repeated next week, resulting in fatigue.
But, then again, the new Transformers movies were god awful, illogical messes, and the new TMNT ones weren’t much better…soooo… cautious optimism. It could work, it could just be crap. But that really is with any movie.
Is someone maintaining a list of Reboot/Nostalgia Franchises that Don’t Suck? So far I’ve got:
I may be missing some.
Or was the Master?
First of all the lorry isn’t clearly a police box, and second, knowing the engineering sytle of the Doctor, instead of a super cool black Trans Am with leather seats, KITT would have been built on DeLoran with added wiring on the outside ad a lot of bolt-on pieces.
I couldn’t remember another one until just now, “Automan”.
Oh, and another favourite of mine, “Cover Up” (poor Jon-Erik Hexum).
Very much this!
I see your Automan and raise you StreetHawk (please please watch to the voiceover, which in order to distinguish it from Knight Rider, is at the end of the intro):
I had no idea there was a Jerry V. Dyke. Thankfully, this show never made it to UK (AFAIK).
Also:
Not sure how I could confirm this, but I’m dead sure Microsoft hired Chuck Wagner (Automan) to play the doctor in their vision video back in 2011. Just because they could.
I have fond memories of this short-lived show with a flawed premise.
Speaking of short-lived shows with a flawed premise:
I think Glen A. Larson’s strategy is pure spaghetti method.
I think that these shows haven’t aged well. Especially the ones set on a sci-fi set have a lot of zeerust, because the technology has changed and the futuristic aspect of the show didn’t age well.
They are still light entertainment from a different era and things are changed, some plot are cliche and some of these cliche are impossible nowadays. I remember an episode of Quincy, where the key for solving a crime was to find if two person were mother and daughter. At the time no DNA test was available, so the episode was Quincy to examine blood test result exams to find out.
" In the year 2000, conventional handguns have been banned…"
Ohmahgawd, what a dystopian future! Mah 2nd Amendment!
Or the many, many plots that only worked in a time before mobile phones…
I love how, in that publicity still, that the hawk appears to be perched on Melody Anderson’s head.
Noight Roider’s an excellent program.
Roit you are, chuck.
I could live with a Knight Rider reboot if it’s a complete self-aware 1980s parody, like this one.
Bonus: Automan’s Chuck Wagner makes a cameo.
Here’s another good one.
