Knowing that something was "highly influential" in many ways by reputation, and actually watching something and seeing bits of various things which come before and after its creation--thus revealing the things which made this possible, and then the things which this thing made possible--are two entirely different understandings of the matter.
I watched a few episodes of Max Headroom when it originally aired, and thought them pretty good. After a while the novelty of 'Max' palled and I was watching more for the plot-lines. Watching it now reveals some fairly accurate and prescient computer technology, as well as some damned good media and culture criticism.
There's a fair bit of a down-scaling of production values from the start of the series to the end, most notably in the number of extra characters who might be of assistance to our heroic news reporter. Of special loss was the limited involvement of "Rik" the pedi-cab operator. His seeming insouciance, coupled with a contemplative nature when faced with a dangerous challenge was fascinating; yet he disappeared after showing up only three times. Blank Reg ends up being the 'go to guy' for things both technical and comedic, and he's good, but we could have done with a bit of both characters.
The episodes in the last half of the series tended to be more 'this week's issue' than the earlier ones, which tended to be more of what we would now call 'cyberpunk' but then called 'weird techno-stuff' (both are proper terms, by the way). The specificity of the attack on censorship in the episode "Lessons" seems to both looking forward in time to when those of wealth and power will control the advantages that education and its skills can provide, while also looking back to the previous autumn's episode "Deities" and the problems that must have arisen from featuring a religious leader of questionable moral fibre as a character with their own interests being placed ahead of their own teachings; including bedding the reporter (also an old flame of hers) in order to keep him busy while Max was stolen and used as a bargaining chip to prevent an exposé of the church's scam of reproduction of deceased loved ones.
Throughout the episodes a constant theme is one of examination of how technology can in the wrong hands be either used to inure the public to an increasing lack of control over their own lives and thoughts (Marshall McLuhan once saying "I'm becoming increasingly less and less private, and I'd much rather be (a village) idiot" is increasingly apt every day than when he said it), or to simply allow people to be just as venal and short-sighted as they are without the technology. What was at the time a bit of a far-fetched SF, has turned out to be more of an unheeded warning than anything else. the internet was a vague notion of DAARPA's at the time, as were computer viruses and people wanting to be anonymous 'blanks' in society, yet all of this has come to be old hat to us. Even the idea of transferring someone's memory and usual response patterns into a computer are far closer to reality than fiction; Siri... I need to hide a body...
I watched a few episodes of Max Headroom when it originally aired, and thought them pretty good. After a while the novelty of 'Max' palled and I was watching more for the plot-lines. Watching it now reveals some fairly accurate and prescient computer technology, as well as some damned good media and culture criticism.
There's a fair bit of a down-scaling of production values from the start of the series to the end, most notably in the number of extra characters who might be of assistance to our heroic news reporter. Of special loss was the limited involvement of "Rik" the pedi-cab operator. His seeming insouciance, coupled with a contemplative nature when faced with a dangerous challenge was fascinating; yet he disappeared after showing up only three times. Blank Reg ends up being the 'go to guy' for things both technical and comedic, and he's good, but we could have done with a bit of both characters.
The episodes in the last half of the series tended to be more 'this week's issue' than the earlier ones, which tended to be more of what we would now call 'cyberpunk' but then called 'weird techno-stuff' (both are proper terms, by the way). The specificity of the attack on censorship in the episode "Lessons" seems to both looking forward in time to when those of wealth and power will control the advantages that education and its skills can provide, while also looking back to the previous autumn's episode "Deities" and the problems that must have arisen from featuring a religious leader of questionable moral fibre as a character with their own interests being placed ahead of their own teachings; including bedding the reporter (also an old flame of hers) in order to keep him busy while Max was stolen and used as a bargaining chip to prevent an exposé of the church's scam of reproduction of deceased loved ones.
Throughout the episodes a constant theme is one of examination of how technology can in the wrong hands be either used to inure the public to an increasing lack of control over their own lives and thoughts (Marshall McLuhan once saying "I'm becoming increasingly less and less private, and I'd much rather be (a village) idiot" is increasingly apt every day than when he said it), or to simply allow people to be just as venal and short-sighted as they are without the technology. What was at the time a bit of a far-fetched SF, has turned out to be more of an unheeded warning than anything else. the internet was a vague notion of DAARPA's at the time, as were computer viruses and people wanting to be anonymous 'blanks' in society, yet all of this has come to be old hat to us. Even the idea of transferring someone's memory and usual response patterns into a computer are far closer to reality than fiction; Siri... I need to hide a body...