Knight Industries—Arms Manufacturer?

[Lost Knight]

So tonight's episode's plot revolved around missing missiles developed by Knight Industries. Whatever happened to Wilton Knight's vision of non violent solutions to world problems and his dislike of violence?

And how does Charles Graiman fit into all of this? If he's the C.E.O. of Knight Industries and his work was based on mostly (or only) nanotechnology, what gives?

[cloudkitt]

The missiles weren't necessarily designed by Knight Industries, but the system that "minimizes collateral damage," which would be consistent with Knight's vision.

[PHOENIXZERO]

Wilton Knight I'm sure had government contracts and did design weapons as well as planes, the Knight Foundation and FLAG were his way of "giving back" at least from what I remember from the TOS pilot..

Aside from that, it's been over 20 years, a lot could have changed with Knight Industries. The founder's ideals probably wouldn't remain respected if there were more lucrative avenues to make money, especially if they needed. Plus we don't know exactly just how tight KI is with the government these days. It would be interesting to see who actually controls the company now.

[DJGM]

. . . It would be interesting to see who actually controls the company now.

Indeed ... from what I've seen so far, Charles Graiman and Alex Torres seem to be co-directors
of Knight Industries, over-seeing operations and assignments at Knight R+D and the SSC, while
the overall Knight Foundation (assuming that actually still exists in this continuity of KR) may
have an overall Director or CEO ... maybe the grandson of Wilton Knight or Devon Miles.

I seem to recall, back when the return of KR was only being talked about, and being passed
from pillar to post whether it was to be a new TV series or cinematic movie, I thought of
the idea of Devon's grandson being the new boss of the Knight Foundation and/or FLAG.

[viper_defender]

Well thats not really a surprise...

Since the 1980s I have been wondering where they got the money to develop MBS on the original Kitt, its something an arms outfit to come up with not to mention other obvious military applications like the micro jammer.

[NeoRanger]

The arms manufacturer thing didn't sit well with me either. I always found it commendable that Wilton didn't equip KITT with any kind of weapon system (specific situations excluded, of course) and that Michael wasn't carrying a gun with him. It's been suggested before that the missiles weren't made by KI, but the system itself was, but I don't recall that distinction being made in the episode. I don't know; if this leads to a plot point about the current head of KI and FLAG, I'm all for it. Otherwise, for me, it'll be one of those sore points about this show's mythology.

[Kaine]

well, at least we know that Knight Industries produces airplanes and has some skills with artificial intelligence.
so at least the chip to make the Cobra-missles intelligent to prevent collateral damage and the propulsion system are likely manufactured by Knight Industries. the warhead propably not though, at least that's what i chose to believe.

[goldbug]

Whatever happened to Wilton Knight's vision of non violent solutions to world problems and his dislike of violence?

While a commendable philosophy, this was hardly practiced in the original series (as well as any KR that followed). The fact that Michael was getting into a fist fight virtually every week (including crashing through doors and on occasion, using a gun) shows that Wilton was hoping for an ideal world, but sometimes the solutions included violence. Violence, whether it involves a gun or a fist, is still violence.

[KamenRider]

I think Wilton was an idealist who recognized what kind of forces existed in the world and what those forces might do with new technologies.

But I think this is also why he focused on the idea that one man can make a difference and by doing so stayed very true to those ideals. In conjunction with the efforts of the Foundation itself, I think he saw a necessity to be met in having an field agent to..well, as the announcer so awesomely put it "be a champion of the helpless and the powerless in a world of criminals who operate above the law." Essentially, trying to stop such situations *before* there was massive violence. Afterall, he didn't set out to make an army of computerized tanks loaded to bear with weapons to enforce America's will. But rather he chose to create a kind of ultimate officer/agent to secretly serve the people with a mobile means of having the latest crime fighting technology at his disposal.

Just a random thought.

It might be interesting to bring in Michael Knight into the series proper as someone who is now at odds with some of the things the Foundation has been doing since his heyday. Michael basically seeing himself as sort of a keeper of the flame, wanting things to stay more true to the ideals of the Foundation as Wilton and Devon saw it. Wheras the guys running it curretly are perhaps blurring the lines a bit too much and justifying it as adapting to a "post 9/11 world".

That's not to say that Michael didn't disagree with Devon on plenty of occasions but still..

Maybe there is stuff going on with the Foundation even Graiman doesn't know about.

[goldbug]

Maybe there is stuff going on with the Foundation even Graiman doesn't know about.

Agreed. Personally I would love to see a storyline where the status quo gets changed up. The SCC goes from being a government operation to a private operation again under FLAG instead of the FBI.

Your points are totally valid, but I guess my take on it is that we are in a different world now than we were in 1984 (in SO many ways). We live in a world now where Russia isn't the only big bad with nukes (which was the big worry in the 80's). We have countries such as N. Korea and Iran developing (if not already having) nuclear capability and clearly we are a target for terrorist activity. Innocents who may be targeted by such groups (IMO) fall into Wilton's "helpless and the powerless" who need protection, and that's what Mike and KITT are doing.

[Lexicon]

Alex Torres is not part of Knight Industries. He's a government employee just like Carrie Rivai is but Torres works for the less than honest part of the military which wants to turn KITT's technology back towards weaponry as KARR (new one)was intended to be. If you read between the lines on the new show, you can tell that the FBI is NOT paying the tab for the KITT project. In fact, it's coming straight from the same people in the military who want to bring back KARR or similar weapons. Knight Industries clearly does make military hardware but the pilot movie seemed to lean more towards military support systems (Prometheus) than guns n' ammo like the show does. In the original show, there were several episodes where technology developed by FLAG (or Knight Industries) that has military applications were used as plot devices, namely the laser beams that KITT and KARR both used as well as the laser reflectors. However as we all know in the original show, it seemed as if Knight Industries was ignored for the entire run apart from a few episodes and FLAG essentially became the legacy of Wilton Knight and filled the role of Knight Industries by developing advanced technology and researching various thingamajigs.

[PHOENIXZERO]

I'm pretty sure it was mentioned somewhere either an article or interview from several months back that Torres's reason for being there was to look over the "KITT Project" to for his military application or something like that. I know he didn't flat out say it in A Knight In Shining Armor but how he said "he's learning, just like he's supposed to" along with his past involvement with Mike and being apparently involved with KARR certainly cements that I think. I wonder if they're going to be resolving this in episodes 10 and 11 or if Torres is going to not bite the dust in the two-parter and will be left open to return later on..

[_K3000_]

Interesting facts being made here and i support most of them
My idea is that this all has to with Torres for some reason this guy is not who he appears to be!

[Lexicon]

If you look carefully in Knight Of The Living Dead, you'll see Torres pockets the drive with the files on them right after the assassin kills herself and she said, in response to his question of "Who do you work for?", "Maybe you should ask yourself that same question." as if she knows exactly who he is and what he's doing there. Also, when Graiman says "KARR is still out there." and walks away, Torres has this look of frustration and guilt on his face like Graiman wasn't supposed to figure that one out. Torres (and Graiman) also know EXACTLY what happened to Mike and we know Torres is directly responsible for it per Graiman's line in the first episode talking about what Mike will do to him if he remembers what happened.