What do today's kids really know about David Hasselhoff? They know him as a leather-jacket-wearing judge on America's Got Talent, as the German dodgeball coach in Dodgeball and as a hamburger-eating drunk on the Internet. But do they know what he did? What he accomplished? I'm not talking about the Baywatch franchise -- no, not even Baywatch Nights. I'm talkin' about Knight Rider. It was just a simple show about a guy and his car, solvin' crimes and jumping through moving trains, but Hasselhoff elevated the material, creating a hit, spawning numerous remakes and forging an American icon. Has he been given a medal yet? He should be. To celebrate the return of the Hoff to America's Got Talent, we thought we'd take a look at the rich history of Knight Rider, from 1982 to today.
Conceived as "the Lone Ranger with a car," KR starred Hasselhoff as Michael Long, a cop who had been shot in the head, but who was given a new face and a new name by billionaire Wilton Knight. Drafted into Knight's Foundation for Law and Government, Michael was given a car, the Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT) -- a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am controlled by a sentient computer with a dry sense of humor. The pair would intervene in situations that required a hands-on approach, usually average citizens getting leaned on by criminals, but sometimes it was something as simple as a string of burglaries. Also, it turned out that Wilton Knight gave Michael not only his last name, but also the face of his son Garthe, a criminal in prison in Africa. Probably not the best face to give someone who's supposed to be enforcing the law, but it sure came in handy when Garthe came back to the States and tried to steal some missiles. KITT had his evil counterparts as well: Garthe's bulletproof truck Goliath, and the Knight Automated Roving Robot (KARR), a KITT prototype who had a strong self-preservation mechanism and was voiced (in his first episode at least) by Transformers voice actor Peter Cullen, who plays Optimus Prime. Sadly, he did not transform.
The first KARR episode, "Trust Doesn't Rust":
This TV movie was not only a direct sequel to the original series, it was also a pilot for a series that never got off the ground. In it, Haselhoff returned as Michael Knight, but this time it was the distant year 2000! Handguns were banned, criminals were sentenced to cryonic suspension, and Knight was called back in by his old boss Devon to test-drive the Knight Industries 4000 (it's two times as many!), which was thankfully not called "KIFT." KITT's artificial intelligence, meanwhile, had been dismantled and his programming scattered to the wind for medical research, and one microchip was in the brain of another cop with a head wound. Putting what's left of KITT in his '57 Chevy, Michael eventually had to ditch the car in the river, but he later upgraded KITT to the 4000 body, which was sadly red and not black. Knight re-retired at the end of the movie, and the series wasn't picked up with the new head-wound cop driver, but the 4000 model (a customized Dodge Stealth) would later cameo in the CHiPs '99 TV movie and an episode of Black Scorpion. Poor KIFT.
Why the franchise kept going farther and farther into the future, I have no idea, but next came KR 2010, set in a Mad Max-style future. Hasselhoff isn't even in this one; instead, Richard Joseph Paul played Jake McQueen, a human smuggler bringing people in and out of a restricted area who modified an old Ford Mustang to look kinda futuristic. His on-board computer was a woman he used to go out with, who had uploaded her personality into a computer system before she was killed. They could only talk to each other for three-minute increments, however. Because... who cares? They roam the desert fighting for justice, or at least, they would have if the series had gotten picked up. Which, thank God, it didn't.
The Foundation for Law and Government returned in this 22-episode series, and this time, there were five supercars fighting crime for the government: a car, two trucks and two motorcycles. The three full-size vehicles were all fairly run-of-the-mill Fords, which foreshadowed the 2008 car-commercial revamp, but they each had fun names like Danté, Beast and Domino, and the two motorcycles could combine to form a High Speed Pursuit Vehicle. They each had their own distinctive personalities, too, including a tough Jack Nicholson-type, a snooty Brit and Nia Vardalos, and when they introduced a member of a proposed European Team Knight Rider, it chose to speak only German, predating Volkswagen's heavily-accented spokesBeetle by a good decade. Michael and the original KITT had cameos, but we only saw "Michael" in shadow, and at some point KITT had been replaced by the Knight Reformulation One (KRO), a black Ferrari that killed five people before being deactivated. Jesus! Designing supercars is a dangerous business.
A shadowy Michael and Das KITT in "Legion of Doom":
Knight Rider (2008)
A TV-movie introduced us to Michael Traceur, the illegitimate son of Michael Knight who reconnects with a childhood friend who is also a hot, 24-year-old professor of nanotechnology. Turns out she and her dad had built a new KITT (the Three Thousand, which doesn't mess up the acronym), and it has Val Kilmer's voice! After a pep talk with his dad (Hasselhoff cameo!) at his mother's funeral, Traceur agreed to join the new FLAG, and the Three Thousand got some upgrades, including the ability to transform into different cars, including a pickup truck, a van and a Crown Vic (again, all Fords, since Ford was a sponsor). Also, his hood could operate as a computer touchscreen, which seems strange, but was helpful for outdoor presentations. The show was cheesy and occasionally heavy on the T&A, but it had a fun supporting cast of nerds, and when KARR showed up in the finale (as you knew he would), they got Peter Cullen back to do the voice -- and this time KARR actually turned into a robot! Take that, Michael Bay!
The first regular episode, "A Knight in Shining Armor," complete with transforming KITT, dueling geeks and an in-transit striptease:
Watch more Knight Rider, Knight Rider Classic and Team Knight Rider on Hulu on TWoP!
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What do today's kids really know about David Hasselhoff? I know that he went to Lyons Township High School in La Grange, IL (my alma mater!). They have a plaque of him in the main hallway. Seriously.
I know that he's not Big In Germany. Really, he isn't. Trust me.
Team Knight Rider was a disgrace to the franchise all together. They got away from the "one man" idea. The new one was just getting good since they dropped alot of the dead weight. The Team Knight Rider writing crew did not do a good job.
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