two minds, but with one single memory

[spatch]

One of the series I've been watching in earnest recently has been Max Headroom.

Oh hell yes.

Bleak mid-80s future dystopia on ABC prime time? Yes, please. Did it last long? Not a chance. I love the world of Network 23, the Fringe, the Blanks, news reporters with controllers guiding them through the urban wastelands, and the ghost in the network machine, Max Headroom himself. It's sad that the character is remembered now as mostly a wacky shill for Coke ("C-C-Catch the wave! Don't say the P-Word!") because as originally conceived, Max is a very interesting fellow.

He's the brainchild, quite literally, of Network 23's star reporter Edison Carter. For those not familiar with the story but who want to keep up: Carter's brain was info-dumped into a computer simulation after the flesh-and-blood reporter was involved in a motorcycle accident. The simulated Edison was dubbed Max Headroom. Why? It was the first thing the simulation could say. (It also just happens to be the last words Edison sees when he flies off his motorcycle into a parking garage bar.)

So here we have a simulated man, living inside the Network 23 computer system (which of course is linked to every component of the network, from the television feed to security cameras to employee databases) with the memories and some of the personality traits of his human counterpart. He's more mischievious, but just as inquisitive. Since Max was born unto television, he thinks television is life. He repeatedly interrupts a Rambo-like action show to ask why the hero hadn't been arrested yet. "Just look at him! He's shooting everything up!" ("It's okay, Max," he's told. "It's a children's show.") He has no qualms about bad-mouthing the sponsors and when it comes to the network feed, he comes and goes as he pleases. It's great to think of this AI as a child, learning all sorts of things. "He was born at the age of 27," Edison mentions. "There's a lot of memories of mine he's got questions about." Including what "drinking" is and why it causes fuzzy holes in one's memory. ("That memory is from a graduation party," Edison says. "You graduated a lot," Max replies.)

Even as creative as the premise is, there are of course some typical techy quibbles. I think I'm going to give the "we can track you and whoever else we need to find via satellite, and see wireframe computer schematics of everything around" a pass, because it's the news controllers who get to do that, and guide the reporters around (and it does make for some fun.) Even if that omnipresent technology wouldn't be in the hands of snoopy reporters in the first place. We also won't get into how Max can communicate with anybody through a regular TV set, no matter how a "two-way link" is justified.

The storylines, however, are pretty much the same:

VICTIM OF THE WEEK: Help! There's some Really Bad Stuff going down!
EDISON CARTER, STAR REPORTER: I'll investigate.
THEORA JONES, CONTROLLER: I'll help!
MAX HEADROOM: Hi! I'm M-M-Max!
NETWORK 23 EXECUTIVE: We have a vested interest in this Really Bad Stuff. We must not let Edison Carter uncover the secret!
THEORA JONES: Here's the directions to the bad guys, Edison!
BAD GUYS: Ha ha! We're doing Really Bad Stuff.
EDISON CARTER: I've found the secret! It's shocking and terrible!
NETWORK 23 EXECUTIVE: Pull the story!
JEFFREY TAMBOR'S CHARACTER: Edison, we have to pull the story. It's an order from high up!
THEORA JONES: They turned your camera off, Edison!
MAX HEADROOM: Max to the res-res-res-res-rescue! Here-HERE-here, let me show the foot-foot-foot-(footage?) footage.
THEORA JONES: Max, you did it!
EDISON CARTER: This is Edison Carter reporting live and direct with some Really Shocking News about Really Bad Stuff going on in this city.
JEFFREY TAMBOR: Great story, Edison! The ratings are through the roof!
NETWORK 23 EXECUTIVES: This is the point where we should sack the entire news team, but we never do. Besides, it's not like we'll get arrested for this illegal stuff, and we've got the bestest ratings ever. Now let's hatch another insidious plot for Edison to uncover next week.

After three episodes, Edison Carter has uncovered and exposed two dirty plans hatched by Network 23 itself, and one dirty plan supported by a Network 23 exec. And he's done all of his tattling directly on his show. Carried by Network 23. Yeah. And I know some of the stories that are coming up. He's bitten the hand that feeds him enough that it's only got a few fingers left.

The original British Channel 4 tele-film ("20 Minutes Into The Future") was even bleaker than this, actually, and ended itself pointing in an entirely different direction than the US series did. I'm not sure if Channel 4 meant to pick it up as a series, or if the US got in on this as an afterthought. In the original film, Max ends up at Blank Reg's pirate network Big Time, and turns himself loose upon the airwaves. For the series, Max stays in Network 23, becomes the most popular presenter on the network, and mucks about therein. It would've been interesting to see Max get out and about, but keeping him close to home gives him more Secret Stuff to get into. Besides, we still get enough of Blank Reg to keep me happy. I honestly think he's my favorite character, and I'm glad he was translated directly from the original tele-film.

And I still like the series. I still think Amanda Pays is awesome hot. I still like the setting and the concept and Max's persona. There's a lot of dystopian satire that shines through, just as it would do in Robocop a year or two later. And it's got some science-fiction themes which still resonate very well with us today. I think I'll keep both seasons.

Comments

[ron_newman]

Is this series on DVD now? (Wikipedia, not always the most reliable source, says it isn't.)

[nathanjw]

I don't think so. I watched it with a group of friends a couple of years ago, and we were busy tracking down sketchy copies on file-sharing networks.

[tcb.livejournal.com]

http://www.amazon.com/Max-Headroom-Complete-DVD-Set/dp/B001DD0KVM/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3FSH3N525H2DZ&colid=1MG7UHTZ5MB8Z

[nathanjw]

Huh. That looks pretty sketchy ($180? for a 5-disc set with a disc missing?), has amazon's "bootleg" tag, and the rest of the Internet seems to think there's never been an official release.

[ron_newman]

Yeah, I saw that. So Spatch, how are you watching this show?

[spatch]

TechTV ran the series a long time ago. Someone TIVO'd the entire run. Then along came the Internet. It's a wonderful thing.

[giantfightbot.livejournal.com]

I loved the hell out of this show--to this day, whenever I see William Morgan Shepherd, it's always "HEY IT IS BLANK REG! BIG TIME TV!"

When people have no idea who/what I am talking about, it makes me sad.

Amanda Pays also brightened up The Flash, which I remember liking a lot but am not sure how well it's aged.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My wife's pointed out that Amanda Pays' characters in THE FLASH and MAX HEADROOM are essentially the same character. . . .

I'm fine with that, since I like that character, and like both shows.

[giantfightbot.livejournal.com]

And both of those characters are similar to Joe Regalbuto's role in Street Hawk, another show I loved as a kid but that probably didn't age well.

(I must admit that I had to resort to IMDB for his name since I mostly thought of him as "that one dude on Murphy Brown," which is a bit generic.)

IMDB also tells me that the actor who played Bryce the young genius in Max Headroom went on to be a co-founder of a mobile software company. Nice.

[spatch]

That's nice about Bryce.

The Bryce in the Channel 4 film, by the way, was much more mercenary. He's the one, in fact, who suggests to the Network 23 brass that they outright kill Edison Carter.

Watching that first, even with the knowledge that US-Bryce was more of a conscience-addled soul, was a bit jarring.

[cloudscout.livejournal.com]

Funny. I just started watching Street Hawk last night. I hadn't seen it since it originally aired in the 80s. The pilot episode is about what I expected from a cheese standpoint... not as bad as Knight Rider, though.

I watched the entire Max Headroom series a few months back and was really happy with how well it stands up over time. I felt that the entire dystopian future it presented continues to be eerily plausible... as much so as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash/Diamond Age future concepts.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

I've been rewatching The Flash, and it really hasn't aged well *at all*

[mr-bad-example.livejournal.com]

It's funny: When it first aired, I gushed about how it had this awesome retro-futuristic production design, and how you really couldn't tell what era it took place in. But no. It took place in 1990. 1990 was definitely the era it took place in.

But still, it was a product of its time, but it's not awful.

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I loved The Flash. I managed to catch an episode on TV a few years ago. Yeah, it was so very cheesy--funny how I didn't notice that when I was 10. Still, I will forever love John Wesley Shipp for that show.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

We have the DVD's over at our place. Woot!

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

Seconded on Amanda Pays. What she saw in Corbin Bernsen still puzzles me to this day.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I had the chance to re-watch several episodes on some now-forgotten cable channel (sleuth?) three or four years ago. I still really enjoyed it, too. I found some of their cynicism about the omnipresent influence of "ratings" and its equivalent on corporate america to be remarkably prescient.

[spatch]

"We haven't had a ratings war in 5 minutes."

Brilliant stuff. And I'm thinking, though I'll have to watch more episodes to confirm it, but all those wasteland TVs can't be turned off so they gotta be tuned to something.

[giantfightbot.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall a couple of pieces of throwaway dialogue from a Metrocop that some character had an illegal off switch on their TV.

Damn Metrocops.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Hey, and Amanda Pays is also awesome hot on The Flash.

[spatch]

Amanda Pays was pretty much the reason why I watched The Flash.

Yes, indeed.

[tcb.livejournal.com]

The storylines, however, are pretty much the same:

*snarf* It's been ages since I've seen MH, but I you got it pretty pinned right there.

Amanda Pays is awesome hot.

Word.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

"Amanda Pays is awesome hot"

Yes please.

I don't think I've watched the show since it was first on.

[28bytes.livejournal.com]

Max was also a popular recording artist, as I recall.

Relax. You are quite safe here.

[spatch]

On trumpet: Peter O'Toole! (Just taking a rest between bars...)

Paranoimia (both the single and the 10" mix) are awesome.

[wring.livejournal.com]

omg i didnt know the origin of his name =)) that's awesome. max headroom used to scare me.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

Yup. There's even a small callback to it later, when we meet the head of the Chinese network counterpart -- who's only seen on screen, and whose name is Ped Xing.

[wring.livejournal.com]

=)) i love it

[jimmystagger.livejournal.com]

I have a huge Headroom pin. I used to watch that show all the time.

[haardvark.livejournal.com]

"I wonder where this wire goes?"

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Man oh man...Max Headroom was too far ahead of it's time. There wouldn't be a show that got a worse shake than it until Firefly.

[spatch]

I think Freaks & Geeks came in between the two, but I agree with you there. They have joined the Pantheon Of Intelligent Shows The Networks Killed, and we're all the poorer for it.

However, even though the series runs were short, they do make for dandy viewing when watched back-to-back or on a regular daily basis. Like a miniseries of sorts. You just sometimes don't get any story arc closure (unless you pull a movie deal to close off loose ends and kill a few darlings.)

[blinovitch.livejournal.com]

REG: Dom, I do believe I love you.
DOM: Like a sister, I hope.
REG: Well, I always did have a thing for nuns.

[ckd]

Also, it inspired the Max Headroom pirate signal.

[cursethedark.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty awesome. Never caught the show when it was on; little kids only have control of the TV when the cartoons are on. (And this was back in the 80's, when the cartoons only had early mornings and afternoons.)

I used to have the Flash DVD set, so I knew Amanda Pays sounded familiar. Yeah, she was a looker. (And while the Flash doesn't hold up all that well now, it's still fun to watch. The Trickster episodes are fantastic, as is the episode "Ghost in the Machine.")

[mr-bad-example.livejournal.com]

"Ghost in the Machine" was great. I think the Nightshade character returned for another episode later on.

I dug the Trickster episodes, too. I plotzed when Mark Hamill reprised the role in that one episode of Justice League Unlimited.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Aw, man, I should dig this up and watch some. It's been awhile.
Your recap reminded me of my beloved Phantom 2040 (which also cannot much be found outside of VHS), which I now also want to go back and watch.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think of this show as one of the very few times that a visual medium was actually building on contemporary print science fiction at a comparable level of sophistication. That almost never happens.

A lot of the Bryce- and Max-related stuff in Max Headroom was basically a knowing parody of William Gibson's Neuromancer and related stories; they borrowed some phrases and concepts directly (at one point Max is referred to as an "autonomous ROM construct", which doesn't make a lot of sense in the TV context, but does make sense as a description of Gibson's character Dixie Flatline, who had a similar origin).

In the early to mid-1990s, about a decade after Gibson and his friends were shaking up print SF, suddenly cyberpunk broke into mainstream media for a few years and all these people were attempting to make cyberpunk shows and movies about virtual reality and cyberspace cowboys hacking the Net. I remember thinking that Max Headroom's time had finally arrived, but he was gone by then. Then again, they did cast Frewer in that stupid sequel to "Lawnmower Man"...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Also, when this was airing on ABC, it was my first exposure to the concept of a network deliberately trying to kill a show it didn't understand. They preempted it and bounced it around constantly, and I think it was sometimes dead last in the broadcast ratings.

The vast majority of people I tried to get to watch it just thought it was confusing and actively irritating.

[cloudscout.livejournal.com]

Something you may not be aware of, Channel 4 brought Max Headroom back recently to advertise the impending digital conversion. It's creepy. They actually got Matt Frewer to reprise his role... except now it's a somewhat geriatric version of Max displayed on an old CRT TV sitting on a wheelchair being pushed around by a nursing home orderly.

Go watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKt7AJLIFL0

[alphacygni]

Just yesterday I caught the Star Trek: Next Gen episode with Max Frewer guest starring, so I just had Max on the brain myself. What a strange, strange man Max Frewer can be when he wants to be.

[spatch]

I've been watching the series run of Eureka, where Frewer plays this bizarre Australian hunter/biologist who, among other things, develops a paternal fondness for a flock of robotic geese and has a long-standing feud with a shaggy dog who escaped from the science lab with an IQ of 150.

He's only a supporting character and only shows up when the story needs him, but he's always very amusing to watch.