Theeeeeere once was a show in 1984, got canceled after it's first season, called "Automan". It was about an LA cop with a background in creating computer games (a nerd's nerd named "Wally"), who got a bit ahead of himself by creating an artificial intelligence on a PDP-11. He went one farther by figuring out how to manifest this being as a Star Trek style hologram. The computer nerd was played by Lucille Ball's son Desi Arnaz Jr. It was at least a million times as campy as any other show of the time, even knight rider. I've recently obtained the whole series from bittorrent and started watching it however, and I think it is the bahm.
First of all, they get to cruise around in a holographicly enhanced Lamborghini Countache called "the Autocar" which zips through traffic and around corners exactly like the vehicles in "Car Wars". Or if you're not familiar with that game, like Pac-man. Of course they never stop and think to equip the thing with a seat-belt, but I'm (uniquely) capable of forgiving them such campy transgretions.
Underneath all of the camp and all of the "If you can whip up holograms of anything and walk through walls and sweet talk computers, why didn't you just XYZ instead of doing it the hard way?" is hidden some astoundingly well thought out crime/detective stories. There is always 2, sometimes even three levels of "bad guys" predating upon one another. The threading is excellent, in that each character has their own unique understanding of what's going on around them and their own agendas. Threading is rare in well written movies, let alone TV shows. And of course there is more 80's camp, geekiness, and bad parody than any earthling human can possibly appreciate except for me.
If you'd like, I can cook you up a VCD of the pilot and you can stare in slack disbelief at the sheer audacity of the show. It's fully MST3K'able! but I luvit.
Posted by jesse at July 28, 2004 01:59 AMWasn't that the show that had the floating ball of light named (cleverly enough) "Cursor"?
Man... that puts it up with such other obscure 80s shows at "Bring 'em Back Alive" and "Tales of the Gold Monkey."
Posted by: Jon at July 28, 2004 04:29 PMhey, I remember that show. Thought it was great.
Didn't realize that it only lasted one season though. Bummer. I remember that little globe that would buzz around. Didn't it change into a motorcycle also?
Hook me up with a copy .. :)
Posted by: Jim Lucas at July 28, 2004 04:35 PMYep, "Cursor" was a spinning ball of light similar to "bit" from Tron. (I suspect that Tron was either an inspiration for this show, or this show is what the special effects crew from Tron did next :]) He had communicational difficulties that predate those of The Cheat and Pom Pom. He could "draw" or "res up" literally any object and make it real, assuming there was enough power available. He spent most of his time drawing the Autocar, but at times he would do the Autoplane, Autocopter, Autobike, even an Autogun for the Clint Eastwood episode. They of course all glowed.
He would additionally draw Automan's clothes when it was nessessary for him to go out in public, since's Automan's native form glowed like a radioactive tube of aquafresh. In certain episodes he would draw up rigged tennis balls and golf balls, and even diamonds and suitcases full of cash.
Finally Cursor proved to be even more of a cheuvanist pig than Automan himself; and that's saying something :) He would click and whir and dance aroun attractive females, give kisses, gawk at cleavage, etc etc. Roxanne refered to him as a "Fifty-watt Romeo"
Posted by: Jesse Thompson at July 28, 2004 04:57 PMI loved automan when i was growning up anyone know where i can find sthe episodes for download?
Posted by: tim at August 17, 2004 06:31 AMAww, man..
I got them from suprnova.org but it looks as thought they do not have any torrents active at the moment. I burned all my episodes to VCD and then deleted the original files. However, if you can tell me how to rip a VCD back into a usable file, I can get trackers going and put them back up fer ya :)
jesse i think you can just explore the disc and open the MPEGAV folder and take out the AVSEQ file and just put that up, its easy to convert from there..... can anyone remember Manimal what a show.
Wow. I threw one of them avseq files into Windows Media Player and it just played. cool :)
Yeah I don't recall Manimal, but it appears to be another Glen Larson job. w00t
Posted by: Jesse Thompson at August 27, 2004 07:09 PMi remembered the show i always thought it was called "autocar" i was 14 at the time and thought it was really cool ! i do remember on one or two episodes the lamborghini actually turned into a jet! do you remember that?
Posted by: jeremy weiler at September 10, 2004 08:48 PMYep, that was the "autojet". They did refer to the vehicles this way. It transformed into the "autocopter" a bit more often. You know, I'll bet if they did a season two, they would have made an "autoboat" :)
Posted by: Jesse Thompson at September 10, 2004 11:33 PMI've been trying to recall the name of a tv show that was in the form of a mini series, I think. It ran sometime in the late 70's and went through the early 80's. It had four different shows in one show. Each show ran about 10 minutes and it went to the next show immediately. It kind of reminds you of a soap opera. One part was about this family either of aliens or were like lizard people living with humans. It reminded me of the show V. Another episode was about a giant spider. Can you help me out??
Posted by: jeremy weiler at September 11, 2004 07:13 PMInteresting, it doesn't ring any bells for me. Was it on Cable or Network TV? Can you recall what channel it ran on? How old were you when you saw it?
Posted by: Jesse Thompson at September 11, 2004 11:10 PMit was cable and i was about 7-10(1977-1980)the show was about an hour long and each segment lasted about 15 min,then the next week it would pick up were each left off,i have tried to remember the show for many years! oh well!hey how about bj and the bear? or buck rogers
Posted by: jeremy weiler at September 12, 2004 07:54 PMNot sure about Bj and the bear but I recall Grizzly Adams :)
Posted by: Jesse Thompson at September 12, 2004 09:53 PMAnyone remember a show where a guy was electrically charged and controlled the output with a watch id love to know what that was?
Shows i want back on the box which arn't mentioned are:Salvage 1, Lucan, Kinvig(uk) and Manimal
i love that show,,,, does anyone know where to fint some episodes?
regads
Posted by: Gregorio at October 31, 2004 12:42 AMYeah, go to SuprNova and nab some via Bittorent. That's how I got mine :)
Posted by: Jesse Thompson at October 31, 2004 01:15 AMHey guys:
I'm looking for a TV serie called TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY; If any of you have the series at home, could you please upload them through a bittorrent server or something? Thanx