Having recently watched the entire original run of Knight Rider again for the first time in years, I naturally had to give the new series a chance. Unfortunately it failed to spark the same kind of interested and I soon found my mind focusing on other things. This despite the fact that nearly every episode I've seen seems to start with Deanna Russo taking her clothes off as scientific genius Sarah Graiman. Still, I couldn't pass up the chance to catch the return of K.A.R.R. if only to see how the new crew would 'reimagine' it. Turns out they didn't so much rewrite car as turn him into a big cliché based on elements from other franchises from the Eighties and Nineties.
The first piece of trivia that people grab onto concerning K.A.R.R. is that in it's first appearance he happened to be voiced by Peter Cullen, who went on to do Optimus Prime in the Transformers cartoon. Fan pressure persuaded even Michael Bay to use Cullen again in his 2007 big screen version, so it was only natural they would try to get him to reprise the voice of K.A.R.R. as well (obviously they couldn't use the second voice-actor from the original series, Paul Frees, who passed away in 1986). So what did writers Patrick Massett & John Zinman come up with to make the new K.A.R.R. an imposing threat to the new K.I.T.T.? They turned him into a Transformer.
So obviously this K.A.R.R is not the same vehicle as the original K.A.R.R. For starters just like the Val Kilmer voiced K.I.T.T., he's a Ford Mustang instead of a Trans Am. He also has a previous history with the new Michael Knight (formerly Traceur) which had been erased from Mike's memory (shades of Wolverine and similar popular anti-heroes). One thing that is consistent is the fact that K.A.R.R. is K.I.T.T.'s prototype. Why the FLAG scientists would duplicate their earlier mistakes remains unexplained, and neither is the fact that if K.I.T.T. was an upgrade, why doesn't he have the ability to transform (maybe he's saving it for the right moment).
K.A.R.R does recall his severed attachment to Mike Traceur and spends most of his on screen time (which really isn't all that much considering the costs of animating CG robots) trying to convince Michael to 'join him' because it is 'his destiny'. Apparently Massett & Zinman thought they had to turn K.A.R.R. into a Darth Vader clone as well. Meanwhile most of the episode concerns the new Mike Knight and his few remaining buddies trying to spring K.I.T.T from Area 51 - another Sci-Fi cliché that has been overused ever since Independence Day.
On a side note, somebody here on IMDb even went as far as to list under movie connections that this episode spoofs the Transformers movie. There is no element of spoof in Knight to King's Pawn. Just a load of recycled ideas (I haven't even mentioned the fact that Bruce Davison character Charles Graiman fills everybody in on what's happening via a hologram recording he had the insight to record before his death). Also, K.A.R.R. now has two separate IMDb character pages: one for the 1982 version and one for the 2009 edition. I suppose this is plausible seeing as they are definitely different vehicles, but for those clicking on the page in search of more information about the character, it would surely be more convenient to find all of it combined in one place.
Reading up on some of the trivia en movie connections for other episodes in this first (and by all accounts last) season, there seems to be a tendency by the writers to put in silly references to Eighties TV shows in Knight Rider 2008. Deven and Bonnie were used as code-names, and so was 'Templeton Bennedict' (that one's a real humdinger). I shudder to think what they'll do if they ever get down to doing a special reunion show with David Hasselhoff and William Daniels as Michael and K.I.T.T. No doubt the dialog will be filled with references to Baywatch and St. Elsewhere.
5 out of 10
The first piece of trivia that people grab onto concerning K.A.R.R. is that in it's first appearance he happened to be voiced by Peter Cullen, who went on to do Optimus Prime in the Transformers cartoon. Fan pressure persuaded even Michael Bay to use Cullen again in his 2007 big screen version, so it was only natural they would try to get him to reprise the voice of K.A.R.R. as well (obviously they couldn't use the second voice-actor from the original series, Paul Frees, who passed away in 1986). So what did writers Patrick Massett & John Zinman come up with to make the new K.A.R.R. an imposing threat to the new K.I.T.T.? They turned him into a Transformer.
So obviously this K.A.R.R is not the same vehicle as the original K.A.R.R. For starters just like the Val Kilmer voiced K.I.T.T., he's a Ford Mustang instead of a Trans Am. He also has a previous history with the new Michael Knight (formerly Traceur) which had been erased from Mike's memory (shades of Wolverine and similar popular anti-heroes). One thing that is consistent is the fact that K.A.R.R. is K.I.T.T.'s prototype. Why the FLAG scientists would duplicate their earlier mistakes remains unexplained, and neither is the fact that if K.I.T.T. was an upgrade, why doesn't he have the ability to transform (maybe he's saving it for the right moment).
K.A.R.R does recall his severed attachment to Mike Traceur and spends most of his on screen time (which really isn't all that much considering the costs of animating CG robots) trying to convince Michael to 'join him' because it is 'his destiny'. Apparently Massett & Zinman thought they had to turn K.A.R.R. into a Darth Vader clone as well. Meanwhile most of the episode concerns the new Mike Knight and his few remaining buddies trying to spring K.I.T.T from Area 51 - another Sci-Fi cliché that has been overused ever since Independence Day.
On a side note, somebody here on IMDb even went as far as to list under movie connections that this episode spoofs the Transformers movie. There is no element of spoof in Knight to King's Pawn. Just a load of recycled ideas (I haven't even mentioned the fact that Bruce Davison character Charles Graiman fills everybody in on what's happening via a hologram recording he had the insight to record before his death). Also, K.A.R.R. now has two separate IMDb character pages: one for the 1982 version and one for the 2009 edition. I suppose this is plausible seeing as they are definitely different vehicles, but for those clicking on the page in search of more information about the character, it would surely be more convenient to find all of it combined in one place.
Reading up on some of the trivia en movie connections for other episodes in this first (and by all accounts last) season, there seems to be a tendency by the writers to put in silly references to Eighties TV shows in Knight Rider 2008. Deven and Bonnie were used as code-names, and so was 'Templeton Bennedict' (that one's a real humdinger). I shudder to think what they'll do if they ever get down to doing a special reunion show with David Hasselhoff and William Daniels as Michael and K.I.T.T. No doubt the dialog will be filled with references to Baywatch and St. Elsewhere.
5 out of 10