Miniature KITT

Here we have the iconic Knight Industries Two Thousand, colloquially known as KITT. It's rendered here as a 28mm scale model for the 7TV metaskirmish game, painted by yours truly. 
 

7 Hours of Painting

The Coke machines aren't finished, of course. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage the logo without spilling white paint all over the parts that are supposed to be red...

These are zombie miniatures for Last Night on Earth. I managed to finish 12, probably another two dozen to go. 

Sean came over to paint with me, and made a lot of progress on his Blood Bowl team. We also watched seven episodes of Knight Rider in glorious high definition. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

A Satisfying Knight

Tonight my brother Sean came over, and on a whim we watched the two-hour pilot episode of the 1980s action hit Knight Rider - in high definition, no less.

For those too young to remember Knight Rider, it's about a man, Michael Knight, and his amazing car, the Knight Industries Two Thousand, or K.I.T.T., an artificially intelligent, indestructible, super-fast Trans Am with a wide range of James-Bondian special features. Together, Michael and K.I.T.T. fight crime.

The pilot introduces viewers to Michael Long, an undercover cop who is shot in the face and left for dead only to be rescued by the mysterious Knight Industries. His face is reconstructed and he lives again as Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff). In this first adventure, Michael, K.I.T.T. and his benefactors at Knight Industries track down the industrial spies who "killed" Micheael Long, bringing them to justice and setting the stage for four more years of adventures.

The show is every bit as entertaining as I remember from my teenage years. It's actually a little - just a little - smarter than I remember, at least in this initial outing. The car's technological feats are outlandish, of course, but a little less so today with self-driving vehicles on the horizon. Hasselhoff is an amiable star with narrow but serviceable emotional range, and the scripting is just as smart as it has to be for this sort of genre fare.

My favourite moment of the pilot derives from a sub-plot involving two car thieve who want K.I.T.T.; they think it's merely a very nice Trans Am. At one point, frustrated by their failure to break into the car with a lockpick, one of the thieves hefts a brick.

"Oh, please let it bounce off the window and hit him in the face," Sean said. And that's almost exactly what happens. The thief heaves the brick, and it bounces off the bulletproof side window and hits his partner squarely in the face. Michael Knight then arrives and drives off, blissfully unaware of the attempted robbery. Sean and I both howled.

As cheesy as action-adventure television of the 1980s could be, I find a lot to admire in them. The heroes are refreshingly unconflicted in their pursuit of justice and decency, the stories are simple but timeless, and the occasional clever thread of social commentary works its way into the narrative. It's also just plain fun to observe the fashion, architecture, design and technology of the times; at one point Devon, Michael's handler, speaks to him via a huge mobile phone held in a briefcase.

I look forward to screening the rest of the show over the course of the next few months. 

Knight Watch

One could argue that this is the golden age of television, that we are living through an era of high-quality dramas and comedies unmatched in the medium's young history. Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Damages, the revamped Battlestar Galactica...it's an embarrassment of riches out in what was once called a vast wasteland.

But what have we sacrificed to reach this pinnacle of programming? Simple: 80s and 90s cheese, and only one man can save us:

David Hasselhoff. 

Hasselhoff ruled the airwaves for years in decades past with two signature hits: Knight Rider and Baywatch. Imagine if Hasselhoff could be persuaded to reprise the roles of not just one, but two of his most iconic characters: crusading agent of F.L.A.G. Michael Knight and heroic lifeguard Mitch Buchannon. Together with a rebuilt KITT, the now-amphibious artificially intelligent supercar, they form the...

KNIGHT WATCH.

Picture if you will the pilot episode, in which Michael Knight, grizzled and cynical, tries to retire quietly to the golden beaches of southern California - only to meet his double. And imagine Mitch Buchannon's mirrored alarm. Neither man has a twin - as far as they know.

But remember, Michael Knight wears another man's face, as described in the original pilot of Knight Rider. Michael Knight was once police detective Michael Long, until he was shot in the face, only to be rescued by an eccentric billionaire and given a new face and identity through plastic surgery. He became Michael Knight, "...a man who does not exist." It turns out that eccentric billionaire modelled Michael Long's new features after his long lost son, Garth Knight...who shows up in the distance, watching Mitch and Michael...waiting.

KITT, of course, joins the Baywatch rescue team, using his turbo boost to leap from the beach into the waves whenever someone gets into trouble. Together, once they've resolved the mystery of Garth Knight and their identical faces, they fight crime and solve problems twenty-six episodes a year as the KNIGHT WATCH!