My impressions of Knight Rider

[Braedley]

On the urging of one of my brothers, I've decided to give Knight Rider a chance. He admits the show has flaws, and I've seen this over the 4 episodes I've already watched.

The Good: The stories are generally well written, and the pacing of each episode is good, even if some of the ideas are unoriginal. The acting is fairly well done. HUD in K.I.T.T. is also well done, although these effects are fairly easy to make convincing.

The Bad: The other SFX. This is a show that centres around a car, so lets make the in car scenes look good. Right now they're doing what every other show has done for filming in car scenes: stationary car in front of a green screen with canned shots of passing roadway filled in. This is especially jarring during one episode where Mike has to race K.I.T.T. around a canyon, and in the exterior shots, they're on the wrong side of the road, yet when we jump to interior shots, it looks like they're on the right side of the road. The better way is to use a film truck and match the path of K.I.T.T. for later green screen fill. Canned shots brings me to my next point, which is excessive use of them. I know that they're basically a necessity for location changes (SG-1, SGA, and BSG each use them for this purpose, as do basically every other show out there), but in the case of Knight Rider, many of them can be made shorter or totally eliminated. SG-1 realized this, and as a result, the traversing wormhole shots were cut down. In SGA, there are few traversing wormhole shots when a puddle jumper is involved. Maybe it's just that I've gotten used to SG-1 and SGA canned shots for transitions, but Knight Rider's just don't feel right to me.

The Ugly: Conservation of mass and conservation of space. This is something that they should have stolen from Michael Bay and Transformers. It's one thing for K.I.T.T. to go from Ford Mustang to Attack Mode, as the cars are basically the same size, but to also be able to go to a Ford F150 or a cargo van? There simply isn't enough extra space to do this. K.I.T.T.'s highly advanced AI and active restraint system I'll pawn off with SOD, but his ability to double is size (and probably his mass) is one hand wave too far for me.

Any one else have any opinions?

[Bounty]

There's a new Knight Rider show? Do they seriously think anything can live up to the original?

[charlemagne]

There's a new Knight Rider show? Do they seriously think anything can live up to the original?

Well, it can't

I've been watching it out of sheer curiousity and for the nostalgic value of it, Knight Rider was a show a grew up with, and me and all of my friends fantasized about owning a black Trans Am and all. The pilot was kind of cool, nice action, nice chases and it even had Hasselhoff in it

The tech really is way over the top most of the time. KITT morphing into a pickup truck has to be dropped and forgotten, because it is stupid for the reasons Braedley mentioned. Also, KITT has a "printer" that can create keys out of thin air and there's other just stupid stuff. I can live with KITT changing colour and the "attack mode", though.

But the show suffers most from targeting the wrong audience most of the time, at least in my opinion. The show should be targeted at people like me, who grew up with the original Knight Rider, and it may sound silly, but I think a show with a more serious tone but keeping the sheer silliness of a talking badass car could have worked.

Instead, they go for silly and even childlike humour a lot, and then the episodes may suddenly change to gritty when people get shot, Michael Knight pulls a gun and the action is cut in a BSG-like "modern" shaky-cam way, which just clashes hard with the overall tone. Sometimes it feels like two totally different shows crammed into one episode. (Sometimes the humour works, like in an episode where Mike and some geek chick working at Knight Industries go undercover under the names of Devon and Bonny ) Parts of it are good, and parts just are very low quality, stupid and feel rushed.

The ongoing story about the new Michael Knight, who's ex special ops and got somehow brainwashed in Iraq, trying to get into classified files about his past, crossing paths with other ex soldiers he apparently worked with but can't remember, that might just go somewhere if they'd focus on it. But they only mention bits of it and totally forget about it the next episode.

I for one hope they figure out where they want the show to go and decide on one tone and atmosphere they'll stick with. But I'm not holding my breath.

[charlemagne]

Ghetto edit: Oh yeah, and please for the love of god, drop KITT being curious about humanity, researching it and trying to become more human. It is so old and boring, I can't stand this "AI wants to become human" crap any longer. Also, Knight Industries has plenty of experience with AIs - original KITT and all - they should've come up with a more advanced AI anyhows.

Although, one funny line originated from that: KITT's watching old western movies to research on friendship, Michael says something like "Yeah, every cowboy needs his sidekick", and KITT replies "Come on Michael, you're so much more than a horse."

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sounds like another Team Knight Rider, but without Tom Kane's voice and that VTOL C-5 Galaxy.

[Bounty]

Or Viper with an AI.

[Braedley]

I'm of the opinion that they tried to draw as wide an audience as possible, but in doing so they alienated the group of people that should form their core audience, namely fans of the original and fans of current sci-fi. I'm sure most people here would fall into one of those two categories, if not both. We expect a fit and finish that just isn't present in Knight Rider right now.

[charlemagne]

We expect a fit and finish that just isn't present in Knight Rider right now.

Exactly, like I said, it could have been cool. I would have loved to see some more believable tech, like no doubling of KITT's size, and maybe some sense of more developed AI in KITT, because so far the car is just the same, but with more fancy gadgets. They just replaced Hasselhoff with some not-so-memorable guy and blew the whole operation way out of size, with 1700 people in the complex and all. Although replacing the truck with a plane is cool.

[Marcus Aurelius]

There's a new Knight Rider show? Do they seriously think anything can live up to the original?

Well, it's difficult to have more chest hair and campy fist fights. Or friendly banter between Michael and the foundation staff.

[The_Mystic]

While the pilot last spring held out some promise of a good series, the producers fell well short with the actual implementation. I gave up on the show after the 3rd or 4th episode. I found the canned shots far to disruptive to the pacing of the show, and the green screened shots felt far too 1990-ish for my liking. Even my wife (who is far from a sci-fi buff) was interested in the show after the pilot, but gave up on it when the stories got boring.

Overall, this series could have been great, but it has so far only managed to achieve a mediocre status.

[Braedley]

I didn't originally see the pilot (perhaps because I was working feverishly on my senior project), but I recently watched it. With the exception of KITT's console display, I liked him much better in that. The effect they used for the nanopolymer skin transformation, IMHO, was much, much better, although it would have been hard to do the F-150 effect with it (although as stated, why do we even need the F-150), and attack mode would still need some explaining (like where exactly are the weapons during normal mode). They gave a lot of information behind the nanopolymer skin in the pilot that they perhaps should have reintroduced in the first episode in a subtle manner. Sure, they say he has nanopolymer skin, and that it can mend itself, but that's about it.

[charlemagne]

The last episode was named "I wanna Rock'n'Roll all Knight". Earlier episodes include highlights like "A Hard Day's Knight", "Knight of the Living Dead" and "Knight of the Iguana". WILL THEY PLEASE GROW UP AND STOP DOING THIS? Those titles don't make the slightest sense and aren't funny.

Also, they did a Halloween episode.