Blipverts
the Max Headroom chronicles: Episodes
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Blipverts the Max Headroom chronicles: Episodes |
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Title |
Blipverts |
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Production Number |
1.1 |
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Air Date & Number |
31 Mar 1987, 1.1 |
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Length |
48 minutes |
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Cast |
Also Starring Guest Stars Charles Rocket... Ned Grossberg Co-Starring Viola Kates Stimpson... Eyewitness Irene Olga López Pearl Shear... Gladys McWilliams Featuring Skip O'Brien Matt Roe... Tall Security Guard John Davey... Metrocop with Stunner Taylor Presnell... Security Guard * Heath Jobes... Tall Metrocop * * This casting match is pending verification. |
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Crew |
Teleplay by Joe Gannon and Steve Roberts Based on the British Screenplay by Steve Roberts Directed by Farhad Mann Edited by Edward Salier |
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Watch For... |
Carter's sexual harassment line. Carter sniffing Theora's hair. Bryce getting out of the bathtub to use his computer - unlike in the telefilm. Bryce incorrectly pronouncing "data." Florence attempting to purloin Theora's credit tube. Theora's car in her bedroom. "No, we didn't!" Theora's lucky teddy bear. |
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Quotes & Sound Bites (All sound files in MP3 format)
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Synopsis |
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(Note: This synopsis is written to be completely "standalone" and is without reference to the very similar telefilm synopsys. For a comparison of the two shows, see [insert link here].) In a bleak, dystopian future where a downtrodden underclass is ruled by warring television networks and their advertisers, one tough investigative reporter, Edison Carter, strives to make a difference. He is one of the best-known on-air personalities, and "satellites globally" for what has long been the top-rated among thousands of television channels, Network 23. Like all television reporters, he works solo with a minicam linked back to the network via his base "controller." While in the field on a hot lead, the network executives inexplicably can the story. His controller, Gorrister, commits the error of leaving him cut off and vulnerable in the field, and Carter punches him out on his battered return. Carter then demands a new controller, "the best," and "one he can trust," and gets "the best," the beautiful and skilled Theora Jones, hired away from World 1. When he tries to continue investigating the story, Carter is blocked at a high level. With Theora's skilled system cracking skills, he eventually learns that the Network 23 executives know something about the mysterious event. With Theora's help, he breaks into the R&D lab - on the hidden 13th floor! - of Network 23's clandestine teenaged technical genius Bryce Lynch. There, he discovers a secret "Rebus tape" that shows how a new form of compressed commercial, a "blipvert," designed by Lynch and exclusive to Network 23, causes extremely slothful viewers to explode. Grossberg and most of the Network 23 board, driven by ratings and advertising revenue issues tied to their biggest advertiser, the powerful global corporation Zik-Zak, want the profitable and compelling blipverts to continue, despite the risk. While Carter is viewing the secret tape, Bryce Lynch sends network security guards to capture him, and he is sent running for his life. In an epic computer command battle between Bryce and Theora, Lynch manages to force up an exit barrier that knocks Carter from his speeding motorcycle. The last thing he sees before unconsciousness is the clearance warning on the exit gate: Max Headroom 2.3m. Theora comes running to the rescue, but Carter, his camera and the motorcycle are gone, swept up by the guards. When it becomes critical to find out how much Carter learned about the blipvert problem, Network 23 president Grossberg allows Bryce to perform a cerebral scan of the unconscious Carter, transferring his memory into an AI program that theoretically could read out Carter's memories. When the AI clone is started up, all it can remember at first is "Max... Max Headroom." To keep the secret of the Rebus tape and the blipvert problem, Grossberg decides to have both Carter and his controller - Gorrister - disposed of. Two thugs, Breugal and Mahler, kill Gorrister and take Carter's unconscious body to a "body bank," a wrecking yard for human parts. While searching for Carter, Theora stumbles on Gorrister's delivery to the body bank and is led to Carter, who she buys back and takes to her apartment to recover. Meanwhile, Grossberg delightedly shows off "Max Headroom" to the network board as the world's first fully programmable presenter. Network 23's ratings soar within minutes of putting Max on their broadcast - not that they have much choice, as Max has escaped into the network's computers and is no longer under anyone's control. Carter corners Bryce Lynch in his studio and pries the story out of him, meeting Max in the process. Although the Rebus tape is in Grossberg's hands, the viewing of it is in Carter's - and thus Max's - memories. Carter confronts Grossberg at his press conference announcing Carter's death and after showing the Rebus tape to the world, demands an answer - on global satellite television - about the blipvert problem. The final decision to go live with the story comes from Network 23 board member - and now president - Ben Cheviot. Grossberg is out, Lynch is reformed (somewhat), Cheviot takes over Network 23, and Max Headroom is loose in Network 23's computer, ready to c-c-c-cry havoc at every turn. |
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Notes & Commentary |
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This episode is a remake of the original telefilm, with as many interesting changes as exactly repeated bits of dialogue. The telefilm was intended to leave Max with a pirate network, a fictional stand-in for the real Channel 4. In the rewrite, leaving Max attached to the big network gave more story possibilities. The pirate network, Big Time Television, is brought into the story in a later episode. When Lorimar picked up the rights to continue the story as a series, they completely recast the show, keeping only Matt Frewer and Amanda Pays, with William Morgan Sheppard brought on in later episodes. Instead of one American actor among an all-British cast, the series had one (and later two) British actors among an American cast. Nearly all of the computer graphics are recycled from the British version. This leads to some slight inconsistencies. There is no clue in this episode as to the city in which the story is set. (The telefilm clearly, if briefly, located itself in London.) The exploding viewer is captured on a "Rebus tape," which becomes a pivotal object in the story. It appears that "Rebus" was intended to represent the possibly secret "two way" nature of the television system, whereby the networks can spy on viewers. Other references in the series are to the "two way sampler." We never see the helicopter pilot Martinez in this episode, only hear his voice.
The dialogue is an odd mix of leftover Britishisms ("zed" for the letter Z) and "fixes" of prior terms for American audiences ("blipvertisements" on first reference, for example, since "advert" - the root for blipvert - is much more common in the UK the US.)
Among the news headlines that flash past on Theora's console are:
The missile and medic stories are the same as in the telefilm. The "man sings Shakespeare" story - is that a riff on the singing, Shakespeare-quoting Breugal as portrayed by Hilton McRae? Bryce Lynch's birthdate is given as October 7, 1988 (European style: 7/10/88). If his age is 18 or thereabouts, this places the story in 2006. Theora's decoding of Bryce's door passcode uses a thermal scan of the keypad, but the highlighted keys have little to do with the passcodes she provides to Carter. At least four letters she specifies are not on those keys. (The codes are identical to those from the telefilm, which did not use the "thermal scan" gimmick. They had to remain the same because the same alphanumeric "decoding" matrix graphic was used.) Bryce's exit code is BZ2VH. His entry code is IJ2FI. Theora says, "I know all about little boys." Carter turns it into an innuendo, but Theora clearly means something else. Is she referring to her younger brother, a subject not raised until the second episode? Breugal and Mahler are a riff on the 19th century Scottish body snatching team of Burke and Hare, who started off stealing newly buried bodies for physicians to use in anatomy lessons, and graduated to delivering still-warm corpses. The two parts are cut down in this version and the reference is probably lost on most American viewers. Carter's personal ident code is 74928BDG6629. The nurse receptionist at Nightingale's Body Bank is named "Florence." (Florence Nightingale? Famous nurse? Get it?) Among the networks shown on the ratings graphic of stations with ratings in the billions:
This episode uses the first-cut opening credits, with a score but no dialogue clips. |
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Organization, format, design and all original content ©2005-2009 James Gifford |
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