A police academy with a disparate group of young cadets is taught by gruff curmudgeonly veteran cop Sgt. T.J.Hooker (William Shatner) who is a strict taskmaster and disciplinarian. Part way through the academy training process a crime wave and a shortage of uniformed officers forces the recruits into service early. But that is not the end of their training and not all of these recruits will become real cops even though they are assuming aspects of active duty.
The finiteness of the young group of officers is reflected in the man teaching them. An ex Green Beret who had a distinguished tenure early in his law enforcement career, Hooker lost a partner and was himself shot on duty. Though heroic he has been marginalized by the culture and the system. His wife dumped him but sometimes she lets him babysit their kids if he remembers to pay alimony.
What we see at first looks as though it was initially conceived as a reworking of 'The Rookies' - an ABC-TV series produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg which followed young cops during their first days in uniform. This show could have gone the same way but instead came to revolve around the strongest character study in the pilot arc i.e. that of T.J.Hooker.
Very little of what is shown would be in the series this would eventually become. Essentially what we see is the introduction of the disgraced, downtrodden but nevertheless resilient hero and his new partner - the best of the class. Out of all the cadets that might be the one to have Hooker's back it is not necessarily the recruit we in the audience might imagine from what we see though several of them look promising in different ways.
The result was a streamlined direction making for a more coherent narrative and a smaller, thus less expensive, roster of cast members.
The finiteness of the young group of officers is reflected in the man teaching them. An ex Green Beret who had a distinguished tenure early in his law enforcement career, Hooker lost a partner and was himself shot on duty. Though heroic he has been marginalized by the culture and the system. His wife dumped him but sometimes she lets him babysit their kids if he remembers to pay alimony.
What we see at first looks as though it was initially conceived as a reworking of 'The Rookies' - an ABC-TV series produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg which followed young cops during their first days in uniform. This show could have gone the same way but instead came to revolve around the strongest character study in the pilot arc i.e. that of T.J.Hooker.
Very little of what is shown would be in the series this would eventually become. Essentially what we see is the introduction of the disgraced, downtrodden but nevertheless resilient hero and his new partner - the best of the class. Out of all the cadets that might be the one to have Hooker's back it is not necessarily the recruit we in the audience might imagine from what we see though several of them look promising in different ways.
The result was a streamlined direction making for a more coherent narrative and a smaller, thus less expensive, roster of cast members.