Friday Night Blog: Knight Rider

So for the last few weeks, viewers of the Sci-Fi channel have been able to catch a couple of new shows, one being Joss Whedon's Dollhouse (more on that when I've actually watched it...), and the other is the new version of Knight Rider.

Knight Rider was a major part of my childhood, watching David Hasselhoff defeating baddies and helping single mothers weekly, with the help of his super-powered Trans Am car, KITT. I loved the show, I wanted KITT (why were the toys all a little bit, well, rubbish?) and just thought it was the bees knees (along with Airwolf of course!

The original show ran for four years from 1982, eventually trailing off into a dire fourth season (Super Pursuit Mode?) before the plug was pulled. The concept flared up a few times over the years (Knight Rider 2000, Knight Rider 2010 and Team Knight Rider) but nothing really caught on.

A new pilot was made and aired last February, featuring a new car, the Knight Industries 3000 (voiced by Val Kilmer), and a new hero, the son of Michael Knight, Mike Traceur (played by Justin Bruening). David Hasselhoff appeared in a cameo, handing the torch onto his son, but looking very creaky! This went down quite well in the US, and prompted a new series to be commissioned.

Some changes were made between the pilot and the series - more action was included, a whole base for KITT was created, taking it away from the "one man can make a difference" of the original, to "one man, one woman, lots of tech people and a couple of shifty feds can make a bit of a difference". KITT was upgraded slightly, and Mike Traceur "died" because a lot of people knew who he was from his black ops days in and after Iraq, and he became, guess what? Michael Knight!

So, is it any good? Well, Bruening is a likeable lead, and is easily supported and matched by his co-star Deanna Russo, who plays Sarah Graiman, nano-technology specialist, daughter of KITT's creator, Charles Graiman (Bruce Davison), and also looks damn fine in a bikini (it's part of one of the plots, OK?!)

The plots are OK - lightweight and fun and mustn't be taken too seriously. If you compare them to some of the original series scripts, then they stand up well. Battlestar Galactica they ain't. Having all the tech people and the feds around the "KITT cave" kind of distract from the original mission. Half the time, when KITT goes wrong, then it's down to the techies to fix him - the original could have done it himself.

And as for KITT himself, well, he's now a Mustang, but he's still pretty cool. The original scanner has been replaced by a double strip, and thankfully they've replaced the "woo-woo" sound it made in the original (it was missing in the pilot). Turbo boost didn't appear in the pilot, but it does in the series. The only trouble with it now is that KITT apparently has to transform himself into "Attack Mode" to do it. This means that he has to "grow" new spoilers, wings, and a great big air intake on his bonnet, bringing horrible echoes of the aforementioned Super Pursuit Mode. With the neon lights, it looks like Westwood has pimped my KITT. It's horrible.

You see, another of KITT's gimmicks is that he's able to transform himself into other cars, using some nano-technology or something. For example, he can change colour or become a Ford F-150 pick-up truck. This is all well, if a bit implausible, but in the first episode of the series, Traceur jumps into the back of KITT in pick-up mode with another man. KITT then transforms himself around them, so that they end up in the front seats of the Mustang-KITT. Hmmm.

All in all, it's quite an enjoyable series. I've read that it gets rebooted halfway through the first series, bringing it back more to the "one man" mission, and then I think it got cancelled. Ho hum. Still, it's quite a fun hour to spend if you want to take your brain off the hook.

And as for the theme music? Desecration is the word that springs to mind...

(Thanks to The Knight Rider Archive for all the info!)

Friday Night Blog: Star Trek

And so the future begins again.... J.J. Abrams, the man who brought us Lost and Cloverfield and Alias gets his hands on Paramount's crown jewels, and delivers a new Star Trek, not exactly for a new generation, as he's rebooted the original Kirk and Spock series, rather than creating a new crew.

In a time-twisting plotline that rewrites history, Abrams effectively wipes Starfleet's future history, from the moment his protagonist, the Romulan Nero, arrives from the future (around Picard's time), destroys the USS Kelvin, and kills the father of the still-being-born Jim Kirk. The future of Star Trek - all the films, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager all now exist down another leg of the trousers of time. The only thing that remains intact is the future Spock (who also travelled back to try to stop Nero) and the prequel series Enterprise.

Got that? Good.

So is it any good? Well by rebooting the series that means we have to have new actors playing the iconic roles. This is tricky, because the actors have to give us the essence of the characters, without sinking into parody.

Karl Urban gives us a brilliant McCoy, all gruff and grumpy and sarcastic, Chris Pine actually manages to feel like Kirk, while avoiding Shatner's stilted delivery, and Zachary Quinto gives a brilliant performance as Spock, once you can get over the fact that he's not still playing Sylar from Heroes. You half expect him to raise a finger to Kirk's forehead and start slicing....

The other crew members remain much as they were, generally character-less, except they all seem to be geniuses at something or other. For example, Anton Yelchin's Chekov (with his over-the-top accent - Walter Koenig's was dodgy, but this is just too much) is suddenly a transporter expert, being able to lock onto fast-falling objects. The usual Trek genius, Scotty (played by Simon Pegg with his tongue firmly in his cheek) doesn't appear until the last third of the film, so I suppose they had to find someone to fill his shoes for that scene. Uhura is the only character to have more of a developed character than she ever did in the original series, acting as a surprise love-interest for a major character.... And Zoë Saldana isn't exactly ugly, either!

There are enough nods to the original series to keep the fans happy, enough differences to make their blood boil, and probably enough to keep the non-Trekkie entertained too. The film looks brilliant, from the Enterprise's new iBridge (I like the idea that the viewscreen is also a window now, rather than just the old screen), to the more realistic, down-and-dirty engineering section, all pipes and water and steam. Looks like Abrams been watching his Firefly...!

I liked the film, but I didn't love it, but then I've never really been a fan of the original series (more of a Next Gen boy). I felt the plot, although emotionally engaging, was a little slight, and I'm pretty much sick to death of time-travel shenanigans in Star Trek, which I'd hoped we'd left behind. I'm sure there'll be more films to come, and this is a likeable, fun version of the crew to go on new voyages with.

Rendez-Vous

Seriously, if you haven't heard this album, then you have no excuse not to hear it now. You can get Jean Michel Jarre's incredible 1986 album Rendez-Vous for only £3 as an MP3 download!

It's majestic, fantastic, awe-inspiring, eerie, beautiful, and wonderful. Go buy it now, and tell me what you think! (You can also get Oxygène for £3 too!)

Friday Night Blog: Credo

I believe...

...that belief in God and Darwinism needn't be mutually exclusive. After all, who's to say that God didn't click his fingers, and, ta-dah!, Big Bang? Of course, the whole Adam and Eve, and dinosaur-denial thing is bollocks, so maybe we should still hunt down Creationists and make them suffer.

...that selfishness is the only sin. Iain M. Banks wrote that in one of his books, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You only sin when you put yourself and your needs in front of evryone else's. Be nice to everybody and we'll all get along nicely.

...we're closer to living a "heathen" lifestyle than we ever have in the last 2000 years. We don't believe in God until we want something and then we'll pray like buggery. Why not call God, Odin, or Thor, or Loki, and have done with it. Plus we all then get to believe in Valhalla and when we die, we have a big party with lots of food and drink and sex. Result.

...that the more stupid you are, the louder you have to talk.

...the world would be a lot better off without people in it. Fears of Global Warming aren't about saving the planet, they're about saving our (generally) worthless arses. The planet will reset itself when we're gone, and the cockroaches will take over.

...we are all geeks. Everyone is a fanatic about something. It annoys me to be called a geek (in a disparaging way) when I know all about Star Wars or Knight Rider or whatever. Hey, you, Mr. Hardcore Football Fan! You know who scored the winning goal in the 1992 FA Cup? How many caps Steven Gerrard has for England? You do? Oh. Guess what? You're a geek!

...sometimes I touch.

...that Peppa Pig is probably the greatest body of animation work produced this century. It has a clarity, a simplicity and a soul that a lot of other children's (and adults') TV is sadly missing. A whole range of emotions can be conveyed in just a narrowing of Peppa's eyes, or a tilt of Daddy Pig's head. Genius.

...pop music is underrated and sneered at by those who think they know better. Pop is popular - of the people, by the people, for the people. That doesn't mean we have to accept the pap forced upon us by shows like The X Factor. In the eighties, pop encompassed everything from Echo and the Bunnymen through to Fields of the Nephalim, to Phil Collins and out to Samantha Fox. It was diverse and eclectic, and we didn't all have to sit in little boxes.

...that eating implements made out of wood are the work of the devil. Chip forks, lolly sticks and ice-cream spoons should all be piled up and set ablaze.

Friday-Night Blog: Adam And Joe

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here tonight to talk to you about something very close to my heart. Over the past few months, I've been privileged to have listened to some of the funniest radio ever broadcast in the history of the world. Ever. And some of it is just silly.

Yes, I'm talking to you about Adam And Joe on BBC 6Music. You may remember Adam and Joe from their late-night Channel 4 TV show, or from those soap powder commercials they did a few years back, but don't hold that against them. You see, for the last few years, Adam "Ad" Buxton and Joe "Joe" Cornish have been doing a Saturday morning show on the digital station from 9am to midday.

But I've never heard it.

I don't have a DAB radio. I usually work on a Saturday morning. And a third reason which I can't think of at the moment, but I felt I needed one to make this work. No, I just listen to their fantastic podcast, which is available through the BBC6 Music website, or through iTunes.

The weekly podcast includes all the tasty nuggets from their radio show, such as their ground-breakingly original feature, "Text the Nation", in which our heroes set a topic and get their loyal listeners to text in ("But I'm using e-mail, is that a problem?"). Recent themes have included bad interviews or auditions, public pretending (strange things you do to cover up embarrassing events) and favourite cakes. No wait, that wasn't exactly one.

And then there's "Song Wars" ("the war of the songs, a couple of tunes by a couple of prongs"). Adam and Joe construct songs based on a theme and then leave it to the listeners to decide which one is the best. The best ones have even made it onto an album, available on iTunes.

Adam and Joe are just plain funny, the sort of people that you would want to listen to on a Saturday morning. Or a Tuesday evening. Or a Friday lunchtime. Whenever you want to listen to their podcast. Or you could Listen Again to the whole show through the website or the BBC iPlayer.

Or you could become a member of Black Squadron, the elite team of listeners who listen to the show at 9am on a Saturday morning. You'd also get to hear the music they play, which I'm lead to believe is quite good (as you'd expect from a station called 6Music...) I don't know, I only listen to the music-free podcast.

And then you will know about the power of Adam and Joe. The idiot-holes. Thank you for your attention, and good night.



"Stephen!"