by Unknown
90
• Knight Rider Legacy
Fans who believed that Knight Rider 2000 was the first spin-off of Knight Rider would be mistaken. Only two weeks after “Goliath Returns”
was seen, another two-hour episode aired called “Mouth of the Snake.” In this installment, Michael investigated the mysterious death of a federal lawyer. Many fans consider this to be one of the worst episodes of Knight Rider ever produced during its four-year run. Michael and K.I.T.T. were not given much screen time due to David Hasselhoff and Catherine Hickland’s honeymoon. What many fans do not know is that “Mouth of the Snake” became the pilot for a new series starring L. Charles Taylor in 1985. In Code of Vengeance, David Dalton was a drifter who traveled the country and fought injustices. The first movie was aired on June 30, 1985, and Dalton: Code of Vengeance II was shown on May 11, 1986. The series failed to keep an audience and was quickly cancelled.
Although Code of Vengeance failed, Knight Rider was a full-fledged hit by the end of its sophomore season, and David Hasselhoff enjoyed every minute of his time with the crew and his talking co-star. “I really prefer working with the car as opposed to other actors because I’m in my own little entity and it’s me and my talking car, and I have a blast.”
CHAPTER NINE
JUST FOR OLD TIME’S SAKE
The highly anticipated third season of Knight Rider began in the Fall of 1984 and reunited Patricia McPherson with the rest of the cast. “It was a real emotional scene when she came back,” Hasselhoff recalls. “What you saw on the screen was happening on stage.” When she was let go at the end of the first season, David Hasselhoff was very much angered. “They let Patti go and I didn’t have enough guts to fight for her because I was still fighting for myself. In the second year I really wanted her back. Both of us had survived against Dallas. I said, ‘Why are you breaking up this team?’”
The producers decided they did not really have a good answer to that question and invited McPherson back. “I think we were all surprised at the world-wide reaction we received,” she says, “although it was quite flattering to realize that I was that popular. I suppose a lot of it is down to the fact that when people start watching a show they get used to the people in it and don’t like change.” Looking back, Executive Producer Robert Foster realized his mistake. “At the end of the second season, we all began to realize that we hadn’t done any favors for Knight Rider by firing Patricia.”
Tom Greene, writer and producer for the second season, adored McPherson and did not want to write for Holden. “Someone in the network was insistent on keeping Holden instead of McPherson at the beginning of season three. I would write stories in the second season with McPherson in mind, as most fans believed they actually stood a chance with Bonnie if they asked her on a date. She was smart and accessible but the network did not believe it. Holden was a very sweet woman, but her 91
92
• Knight Rider Legacy
karma and chemistry didn’t work and most fans considered her character inaccessible therefore they could not relate. The fans flooded NBC with good reason and Patricia was brought back.”
Holden explains her departure from Knight Rider by commenting,
“That was a decision made entirely by my agent and husband/manager at that time. Apparently, they had many lucrative offers for foreign films and overseas touring that they chose to take advantage of. I was quite happy at Universal and with all my friends at Knight Rider but they felt that I needed to expand both my audience and career opportunities. I have since learned to take more responsibility for my career and life decisions, but at the time, I trusted them. (Soon afterwards, I saw the light and fired both the agent and the husband…HA!)” She also wants to tell fans that, “I consider Knight Rider to have been a blessing in my career…I have seen evidence of its popularity as I’ve traveled the globe.”
McPherson’s return to the series was full of emotion, both on the set and off. “It was just like a reunion party when I walked back onto the set,” says McPherson. “People assume that there was this bitchy rivalry between Rebecca and me because she filled my shoes. But that’s not the case at all. She’s a really nice lady and we get on tremendously well. I actually went to the season opener with Rebecca in the role. She wished me good luck when she left and I hope things go well for her.” After returning, McPherson realized how much she really meant to David Hasselhoff and Edward Mulhare when it was revealed that Hasselhoff and Mulhare pushed to have her back. Besides the cast wanting her to return, she also had a pile of fan mail waiting for her. “You’d be surprised how much of it says things like: ‘It’s nice to see a woman computer technologist for a change’. In other words…a woman in a show with brains who isn’t just a decoration or love interest. And it’s fellas writing it not the women’s libbers.”
With McPherson not having taken part in a “K.I.T.T. destruction”
episode yet, she was quite surprised to find they were going to destroy the car and totally redesign the interior. Since cars in the real world were Just For Old Time’s Sake •
93
becoming more advanced, the producers wanted to keep K.I.T.T. ahead of them by giving him a facelift. With the car acting more and more human, it became hard for the people working on the show to think of K.I.T.T. as
“just a car.” McPherson recalled, “After years of being with the car and someone else reading K.I.T.T.’s lines while we were there, it actually took on a certain aliveness. There was a certain amount of believability even within us that this car was actually real and could talk. I certainly loved the sound of William Daniels’ voice. On the set on any given day when things still weren’t working out, after the script changes, there was a good deal of ad-libbing to try to make a situation work.”
As with the previous two summers, NBC was ready to promote the season premiere. During the summer of 1984, NBC promoted K.I.T.T.’s new makeover with a special phone number that viewers could call. In it, while K.I.T.T. remained covered in a white sheet, David Hasselhoff said,
“Thinking about a new car? Then check out 1985’s car of the year. This year, K.I.T.T. has more amazing features and more incredible powers than ever, and September 30th, you can see them all. If you can’t wait, call 1900-210-KITT, and find out more.”
When viewers called the special number, they were treated to a thirtysecond message from K.I.T.T. detailing a few of his new capabilities: “This is K.I.T.T., and this season Michael will be driving the hottest car ever seen on television—me. I have new super powers like 3-D video screens and an audio synthesizer, plus a laser seatbelt guaranteed to keep Michael in his place. Special wheels that will help me drive anywhere, and a new laser shield system that even Michael’s knack for trouble can’t penetrate. And there’s even more. So let’s all be there for the special two-hour Knight Rider movie premiere on Sunday, September 30th, and thanks for calling!”
During this season, an ambitious young driver named Bill Shelley claimed that he could build a K.I.T.T. car that could be jumped time after time without having to scrap it. He built a Volkswagen K.I.T.T. car with a Trans Am body on it. Jack Gill remembers, “The first jump we did was out at his father’s speedway and it landed so poorly—the shocks blew out
94
• Knight Rider Legacy
and the fiberglass shattered. The studio gave him another chance and he built another $40,000 jump car. He jumped it over a river and it blew apart again.
“I suggest you use the Turbo Boost Michael!” [Courtesy Jack Gill] He didn’t last more than two episodes and his jumps never made it on screen.”
Hasselhoff just loved to drive but they would never let him because of the liability, so most of the time it was Jack Gill driving the car. He comments, “Anytime he would say, ‘K.I.T.T., come get me’, I would come up in the right side blind-drive car. He’d jump in and have a steering wheel on his side. The minute he jumped in, we were fighting for the wheel, trying to get out of the shot!”
&nb
sp; Just For Old Time’s Sake •
95
When asked if the semi was really outfitted with computers or if it was just a set, McPherson recalled, “Oh no, there was stuff out on the road. We used stage one and stage three at Universal, but when we were on location, there were also parts of it that needed to be in place. When we went to San Francisco, there had to be a great deal of things in the semi, but most of it was usually on the stage. It was fun to see the car driven up the semi. When it was on the set, it was driven up ramps.”
The third season quickly became one of the toughest to write and produce. Gino Grimaldi became upset when Gerald Sanford received first producer’s credit on screen, a title he felt belonged to him. Sanford adds,
“When I came on the show, he asked if I could alternate producers credit every other episode. One week, it would say, ‘Produced by Him and Me’, the next, ‘Me and Him’. I said that was okay with me.” With the compromise worked out to their satisfaction, Sanford set out to write the season premiere.
In “Knight of the Drones,” the third season premiere, a dangerous criminal named C.J. Jackson (Jim Brown) escapes from prison with the help of a transforming radio robot. Gerald Sanford recalls, “A guy from NBC came in who loved the Transformers. He came to me and asked if we could make a show out of a Transformer that switched from a radio to a robot. We got ‘Knight of the Drones’ from that. I brought Jim Brown in, but NBC was reluctant because they thought he had a bad reputation, which was nonsense. He was a total professional.” Sanford did not want a traditional opening teaser for the show, instead opting to delve immediately into the opening act, followed by the theme. This episode was shot in various parts of San Francisco and utilized some of the city’s best known sites. Sanford was given the responsibility of overseeing the production on location shoots. “Robert Foster didn’t travel with the show that much, so I went on location to San Francisco for this episode and to Napa in ‘The Ice Bandits’.”
While the idea for “Knight of the Drones” was there, the series’ star almost wasn’t as Sanford recalls. “It was a Sunday and David was having 96
• Knight Rider Legacy
problems renegotiating his contract. Foster, David, and I went out to breakfast for a meeting concerning ‘Knight of the Drones’. David wanted more money but Universal wouldn’t pay it. Since the show’s future was unknown, we cancelled the meeting. Just as we were about to leave, David got a phone call from his agent saying they’ve agreed and to go back to work. We promptly reinstated the meeting.”
In “Knights of the Fast Lane,” Michael and K.I.T.T. went up against a superb piece of automotive machinery during a bonsai race. Writer Richard Okie recalls, “That episode was actually ripped right out of the headlines. It came out of a Los Angeles article. At that time, people were taking their cars out at three o’clock in the morning and drag racing them on the streets. Robert Foster gave me the idea for it and I started researching. Casting the other cars was fun. People came by with their cars and in the end we had our choice of about eight of them. Where else would someone be willing to rent out their $200,000 sports car?”
The episode “Halloween Knight” was essentially an hour-long tribute to television and movies of days past—both romance and horror. The episode contained numerous references to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Rear Window, Gone With the Wind, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, The Exorcist, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Simon went to the Foundation’s Halloween Ball as a Cylon—a tribute to Glen Larson’s earlier series, Battlestar Galactica. Patricia McPherson finally got a story that revolved around her character and it is easy to see that it was a standout performance for the actress. One of the major faults of Knight Rider up until this point was that Edward Mulhare and Patricia McPherson were not used enough. Even McPherson admits that her character was not given much to work with in the third season.
The episode that fans had waited two years to see finally came in the Fall of Knight Rider’s third season. In “K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R.,” the original Knight Industries prototype vehicle returned and coerced a young mechanic to help him seek revenge against the Foundation for Law and Government. Richard Okie comments on the episode’s conception. “We were trying to
Just For Old Time’s Sake •
97
think of some interesting premises for episodes, and I mentioned the return of K.A.R.R. Everyone said, ‘Of Course!’ I was the first to pitch the K.A.R.R., the Knight Automated Roving Robot [Courtesy of R. Levine] idea so I was assigned the project. Paul Frees did the voice, which was a great honor. Since William Daniels’ voice was very ‘proper’, we had to go with a very gutsy voice for the other car. It was Robert Foster’s idea to leave the blinking light at the end to signify that K.A.R.R. was still alive. The producers never capitalized on it once I left the series, though.”
During this third year, producers Robert Foster and Gerald Sanford decided to make the show a bit more human as a way of breathing new life into it. While Foster and Sanford believed this would be a good move for the show, Richard Lindheim disagreed. “Lindheim wanted the show a certain way and Foster wanted it a different way, so we did our own thing. There were a lot of rewrites in the third season because they didn’t know where to go with it,” comments Sanford. Although Lindheim believed the 98
• Knight Rider Legacy
format should remain unchanged, Foster and Sanford made the right decision and proceeded with the first of (what was supposed to be) many stories that incorporated their ideas, “Junk Yard Dog.”
While viewers had come to expect the destruction of K.I.T.T. during Knight Rider’s season premiere, many fans were no doubt surprised to witness K.I.T.T.’s obliteration in the middle of season three with the episode
“Junk Yard Dog.” This episode also marked the one and only time that K.I.T.T. was damaged enough to warrant Devon calling Doctor’s Breeland, Yamata, and Von Voormin—the three scientists on Wilton Knight’s team that built the car. Gerald Sanford recalled, “They kept changing the show, trying to find a way to build an audience. They had a terrific new script by Calvin Clements called ‘Junk Yard Dog’. It was darker and more aimed at the things Foster and I were trying to do. However, they just did it that one show and then went right back to the safe, Knight Rider premise.”
In “Knight of the Chameleon,” Michael and K.I.T.T. were pitted against The Chameleon, a formidable foe that could disguise himself as nearly anyone. Dick Gautier, the actor behind The Chameleon, is perhaps best known for his role as Hymie the Robot in the 1960’s television series Get Smart. When the producers approached Gautier for the role, he gladly accepted and saw it as an opportunity to utilize his talents as a character actor. Gautier recalls, “It was great fun, I like character work (as my resume reveals) the best. The makeup was on occasion tiring but Ken Diaz (the makeup artist) was a good guy and made the time go faster.” By the end of the episode, The Chameleon had managed to steal a prototype jetpack from a government installation and took off over a lake with it strapped to his back. “That was a real jet pack,” Gautier recalls. “But it wasn’t me. No one was allowed to use it but one guy. It’s quite dangerous. You’re aloft for something like nine seconds tops and then you plummet like a rock. He’s the guy who did the spectacular entrance into the L.A. Coliseum for the Olympics. Very impressive. I had it on though, it’s very heavy and unwieldy.” Gautier enjoyed his time on the set, and especially
Just For Old Time’s Sake •
99
enjoyed the joking that took place in between takes. “The actress who played my daughter was gorgeous so the running gag on the set was ‘Go get a dictionary and look up the word incest’. Hasselhoff was a good guy and great with kids that visited the set. I think a good time was had by all.”
Gerald Sanford ended his Knight Rider career after the third season, but still carries fond memories of the cast and crew. He commented on a specific event that occurred which made him realize how much they all cared for each o
ther. “I got a call at 2 o’clock in the morning saying that Jack Gill was hurt and in the hospital. I arrived to find most of the cast and crew already there. Jack came out okay and was quite touched, as was I, at the number of people who came to the hospital.”
Season three ended with the episode “Circus Knights.” Jack Gill recalls the near disastrous turbo boost featured here:
Buzz Bundy turbo boosts K.I.T.T. through a ring of fire in
“Circus Knights” [Courtesy of Jack Gill]
100
• Knight Rider Legacy
“We had done a couple of practice jumps with Buzz Bundy, who did all of our skiing. This was going to be a ramp to ramp jump through the hoop. I had Buzz practice once with no one on the back and he did fine. We then added enough sand to simulate a human being’s weight on the back of the car and Buzz jumped it perfectly. Satisfied, I then put Hasselhoff’s double on the back. His name was Joel Kramer, who went on to double for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Joel was only involved in Knight Rider for about four episodes. I connected him to a steel bar that I had attached to the car frame. It ran up the back of the car and he sat on it. I told Buzz that whatever he does, just don’t be short on the jump. We go to shoot it and Buzz comes up about five feet short. Joel’s rig came loose and sent him tumbling over the hood of the car. Luckily, Buzz managed to turn the car to avoid running over him. Joel was a bit groggy, but okay. I asked Buzz what happened, and he replied, ‘I’m getting too old for this. That’s the last time I am ever doing one of those’. That was his last jump.”
“Circus Knights” found Michael joining a circus in order to investigate a trapeze artist’s untimely death. Unfortunately, Knight Rider’s “untimely death” was closer than many had realized—Michael and K.I.T.T.’s adventures would only continue for one more season.