Script Review - Knight Rider, Mike Tracer and Dave Andron?

[Radicalas]

I found this:

Script Review - KNIGHT RIDER
10/23/2007
Posted by Collider

Hello to all my fans in La La Land. It’s Fidel from Florida here to hip you to a blast from the past set to stun the small screen.

Sure, you already know I love me some comic books from my previous reviews, but rest assured I’m a full-service pop culture geek.

Remember the Golden Age of television? Crocket and Tubbs couldn’t find socks, B.A. wasn’t getting on no plane and a man by the name of Michael Knight drove a talking car.

THE STORY

Soldiers of fortune invade the home of Charles Kamen. During the robbery, it appears that Kamen suffers a heart attack. The villains needed his help to decode his computers and decide to go after Plan B – his daughter Sarah. As they search through his mansion, a black car breaks free and drives off.

Mike Tracer likes to drive fast. Of course, he’s just as likely to put a race car into a wall as he is to win. His deep debt and reckless living have endangered his fix-it-man friend Dylan. Thankfully, he used to be an Army Ranger, so he knows how to handle himself when trouble is afoot.

While on campus, Sarah gets a call warning her of danger and eventually gets rescued by KITT. KITT’s emergency programming takes her to the one person her father trusted – family friend and former beau Mike Tracer. Together, the trio attempt to figure out what happened to Charles Kamen. Eventually Mike Tracer learns of the Knight Rider legacy and, not to ruin anything, his place in it.

THE SKINNY

It’s like Knight Rider never went off the air. All it needs is the shot of KITT driving in the desert for the cut to commercial and it’ll be a dead ringer for the original series. While this pleases my inner child to no end, the world has changed in the last twenty years and this feels stale.

On the not so stale tip, the FBI liaison is a sexy, surfing lesbian. If I didn’t see a different writing name on the cover (Dave Andron for those wondering), I’d swear this was written by me at age thirteen. Is anyone really named Mike Tracer?

What new innovations fuel KITT (version 2)? KITT can now change appearance. (Remember Viper?) If you’re going to indulge in a recreation like this, you really need to give me a turbo boost in the Pilot. Is there a turbo boost in the pilot? No.

The Pilot’s villain, known as The Client and hidden like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, turns out to be a regular crook of the week. I was hoping for some tie into continuity or some larger payoff, but again… no.

In a world where cars now park themselves (not my car, mind you, that still starts on the second try), KITT doesn’t seem like a piece of science fiction but eventual science probability. Unfortunately, the differences between this Knight Rider and that of my youth are, like KITT’s new morphing ability, purely surface and superficial.

Reflecting on it, they were probably screwed to begin with. If they changed elements all willy nilly, like make the new driver a woman, it’d feel like they were trying too hard to be different or make a statement. If you keep it all the same though, pretty much what’s been done, it feels like a retread. That’s the problem with attempting a remake or a re-imagining – there’s a fine line between going too far and not going far enough.

THE FINAL WORD

If you’re going to get excited, do it for nostalgia’s sake. While this didn’t wholesale rape my childhood, it also didn’t make me want to add this to my Tivo. I might tune in for the potential Hoff cameo, but that’s about it.

Source: http://www.collider.com/entertainment/r ... 850/tcid/1

[Lost Knight]

What concerns me here is how NBC Universal is going to treat this new series. It's no surprise that science fiction shows like this have not survived on the network for very long, and if they did it wasn't without a hard time. (Think Surface, Threshold, Viper, Quantum Leap, and of course, Knight Rider.) So for NBC to be bringing back KR like this makes me wonder what will make it survive this time if they canceled it so soon in the '80s. I don't trust these guys very much and never really have. But the ratings are the deciding factor here, and I guess it really all depends on that. Let's just hope the network doesn't make stupid moves like interfering too much creatively, or moving the show's time slot around too much so that fans have trouble following it. Heroes is one example of a science fiction show that's doing well, so perhaps it's helped NBC have restored faith in science fiction.

[T.A.H.O.E.]

Any kind of morphing will be the downfall of the series....Viper was good as the premise went...tho it borrowed ideas from KR ....it was a cool-and still is a cool car.
I'd love one...But, KARR/ KITT just took hold of me and since then...well, fans all over the world know.....the world/ we have all changed...NBC has too.....Hopefully Glenn L & his crew will stick to their guns and stand firm on the legacy that is... Knight Rider as should we,the fans.

[LadyV2000]

I just hope the new series isn't too testosterone driven or they're going to alienate female KR fans. It always seems like whenever shows are produced featuring cars, they somehow assume only guys watch them.

[d_osborn]

VIPER-esque shapeshifting... but no turbo boost? I'm out.

[LadyV2000]

VIPER-esque shapeshifting... but no turbo boost? I'm out.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that. What is Knigt Rider without turbo boosting? Even though the thought of some shapeshifting is kind of cool, to have it replace turo boosting is just stupid. I'm realling begining to not like the sounds of all this.

[cloudkitt]

Keep in mind guys that everyone here will be impossibly difficult to please. I'm not trying to jump to NBC's defense or anything, but frankly there is NOTHING they could do that would please everyone on the board. And it would a miracle if they pleased most of the people.

But everyone here has it in there head what the perfect Knight Rider return would be, and each of THOSE are different.

Frankly, NBC would have a much easier time appealing to new viewers than appealing to the nitpicky cult fans of the original. So I'm surprised their sticking to the original at all.