Welcome to Knight Rider.
Here is something I’ve been pondering for a number of years. Knight Rider, the ultimate TV show about a talking car and one man making a difference with the backing of the Knight Industries and its legal team, FLAG (Foundation for Law and Government).
As a geeky fan then and now, I still watch it with great enthusiasm. And I’ve followed the series through the spin-off shows: Knight Rider 2000 in 1991, Team Knight Rider 97-98 and the complete revamp in 2008.
A quick sneaky peak into Knight Rider 2000, set in the year 2000, showed FLAG almost on its knees. This was some 14 years after Michael and KITT fell from grace on our TV screens. The film for TV was quite dire. KITT now named KIFT (Knight Industries Four Thousand) was red, front wheel drive and looked ridiculous. The front overhang was not going to withstand a turboboost and thankfully the show didn’t have one.
But going back to the plight of FLAG and its cash strapped ways and it’s not hard to see why. FLAG were incredibly wasteful. Now when I say wasteful what I mean is, picking up the mess it left in its quest of one man making a difference.
Out of the 86 episodes, there are 6 that stand out. So buckle up, put yourself into auto cruise and I’ll take you through the waste that is the FLAG, the Foundation for Litter and Garbage.
Trust Doesn’t Rust #9
This was the first time we see KITT’s vulnerability because his evil twin KARR comes back to life thanks to 2 drunkards.
KARR was the first car made by Knight Industries but he had one fundamental programme flaw. He was not altruistic. He would always look out for himself. He would get himself out of trouble regardless of the consequences to others around him.
He was deactivated and placed into storage. Here is the first time we see the waste of FLAG. He was supposed to be dismantled but no one could be arsed to do it.
During the series we learn that KITT has the ability to increase his memory capacity quite a bit per day if needed. He is also sent updates and data on cases. Surely then they could just update KARR’s CPU programme and he will be good again right? Not exactly. No one at Knight Industries thought about doing this and thus they set about making another car. Imagine the expense!
And they rushed the job to get the second car ready. FYI, some of you will have noticed KITT had a solid VOX box to KARR’s more elaborated LED one. In the Glen A Larson and Roger Hill paperback books, it is explained that this was so because they had to rush KITT and didn’t have the parts. Told you I was a geek.
Back to KARR’s wayward behaviour and his self-preservation ways were ultimately to be his undoing. Going head-to-head with KITT, he would always be the one to swerve than collide with a car as indestructible as himself.
And so he did at the climatic end of Trust Doesn’t Rust. KARR flew off the cliff edge (keen eyed viewers would note it was a clip of The CAR car jumping off the cliff) and he would explode in the sea.
FLAG didn’t think to retrieve the bits of their incredible top secret miracle machine. A car powered by a turbine, batteries, oil, smoke generator and packed with all sorts of chemicals and microchips. Instead it was left to pollute the sea and the creatures around it. And those who paddled in the Californian beach.
The Knight Foundation could be held guilty for many environmental crimes here. Thankfully no one in California had reported anything to COP yet.
Goliath #23 -24
Again we see a twin, Michael’s twin Garth who isn’t actually a twin because the 2 don’t share any form of DNA what-so-ever. Michael having had extensive plastic surgery to disguise who he really is, Michael Arthur Long. Yet Garth, as thick as mince, has it in for his non-biological twin.
Garth is hellbent on revenge or some such because he was a very naughty boy. He did some bad things and got banged up in Africa. All the wealth and good of his late fathers work and estate could have been his if he wasn’t such a jerk.
With the help of his beloved mother (dearest), smacks of Psycho ring through this, they were able to obtain the formula for KITTs indestructible shell to be applied to Goliath. An 18 wheeled behemoth of a vehicle.
What could possibly go wrong? Well quite a lot actually. Firstly Michael pitted the light weight sleek and slender KITT against the weighty big rig and lost. He even managed to dent the bonnet! This is the first time we see a weakness to the molecular bonded shell. Something that actually shouldn’t have happened.
However over this 2 episode special, our team from FLAG get the upper hand and Goliath is blown up in the desert. And here again is where FLAG failed to clear up its own mess.
It left the sulking brute in the desert to waste away although it wouldn’t because it had that marvelous molecular bonded shell. And what would anyone want with a broken big rig that was the strongest thing on earth? Nothing right? Wrong! Because……..
Goliath Returns #40
Well bugger me in Burnley! Goliath as the title suggests, returned some 16 episodes later thanks to Adrianne St. Clair who you’ll have recognised as Adrianne Margeaux from Soul Survivor #31. She managed to get out of jail and get Garth out of jail too.
So much for FLAG bringing justice to the good. They buggered it up and both were free again. If you ever had anyone nasty put away by FLAG, look over your shoulder. Chances are that person is right behind you.
Adrianne also managed to get Goliath out of the desert and resurrect him to fight another day but she needed one thing. KITTs CPU. Apparently you just needed to take it out, plug into the fag socket of your truck and it had all the capabilities of KITT.
There is a flaw in this though as KITT was good so putting good into evil soulless Goliath would have made a good truck. You would like to think that since Soul Survivor, KITT’s CPU security had been upgraded. Then again we are talking about the wasteful FLAG so probably not.
And so Goliath Returns with him, Garth and Adrianne driving off a cliff edge. Something about America sees a lot of cliff edge endings. So here ends #40 but there is no talk of Goliath or his passengers being rescued or their bodies retrieved. We must assume them dead because they never bothered Michael or KITT again. Bit of an injustice here considering what they planned but then they would have only escaped AGAIN.
And we end with another sea polluting mess FLAG left in its wake. All that diesel and oil seeping into the wildlife of Californian costal areas. If you ever go Stateside, best to stick inland. For your safety if nothing else.
A Good Knight’s Work #42
This is a quick one. What happens when KITT turbo boosted off a multi-storey car park into Cameron Zachary’s high rise penthouse apartment on what looked like the 20th floor? I’m no building expert unless it’s Lego but I’m Imagining costly structural damage and again the cost of retrieving KITT from way up there.
Kitt vs Karr #52
And so because of the lazy arsed ways at FLAG not gathering those broken parts of KARR from the beach, he fixed himself and was found 2 years later looking great. His original voice by Peter Cullen changed to Paul Frees who added more malice. Let’s face it, Peter Cullen is a legend and a hero of ours. He voices Optimus Prime.
KARR’s time spent in the sea did him no good and once freed, he was out making mischief for himself again. He even gave a man with a pace maker a heart attack. He was so bad arse!
At the end of KITT vs KARR, KARR, he goes head to head in a turbo boost fight with KITT hoping to destroy his counterpart. Naturally it wasn’t going to happen because KITT was perfect shape while KARR had just sustained injury to circuitry and those 2 years in the salty water had not been kind.
He fails his planned mission and explodes with KITT coming out the other end like nothing had happened. You might be wondering why KARR went head-to-head again when he swerved last time because of that programme? Well it’s a question no one has been able to answer.
The episode scans the ground where KARR had exploded. Springs, bumpers, various recognisable car parts litter the ground around KARR’s CPU. Still beeping, still flashing. KARR is still alive. And there is every possibility that FLAG didn’t send a team there to sweep the waste lands. Let’s face it, so far they haven’t cleaned up after themselves so what makes this any different?
You know, a highly advanced computer CPU, parts of a molecular bonded shell and engine parts that were more advanced than what you have in your car now in 2021 even though KITT and KARR both sounded like vacuum cleaners!
Now just imagine what would happen if Adrianne, who no doubt will have been freed/escaped from prison if she didn’t drown, got hold of this and pulled Goliath out of the sea? Sadly no such episode ever materialised. Shame really as I’d champion her cause against the polluting waste lords that are FLAG and the Knight Industries.
Phew, there we have it. What a mess that FLAG is. Probably explains why it also went under the various names of Knight Industries etc to avoid litigation or some such legal stuff I don’t understand.
So just be careful who you base your role models on. I’m off to the beach to empty the can of old engine oil from the Beetle. What’s good for my hero is good enough for me right?
Wrong. FLAG. What a shit show!
*All pictures of the show are owned by Universal.
