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Automan (the "Automatic Man") followed the
adventures of a police officer and computer programmer named Walter
Nebicher (Desi Arnaz, Jr.), who had created an artificially intelligent
crime fighting program that generated a hologram (Chuck Wagner) able to
leave the computer world and enter reality to help fight crime.
While
in the real world, Automan posed as a government agent who helped
Walter by the name of "Otto J. Mann." This was a secret to all the
regular characters, except Walter's close associate, Roxanne Caldwell
(Heather McNair).
Nebicher
could merge with Automan to become one being, sharing both
consciousness and skills, while retaining Automan's invulnerability to
such things as gunshots and explosions. During the "merges" only
Automan's form, a human head atop a glowing body made of circuit
patterns and flickering light, could be seen.
Automan had a sidekick named Cursor, a free-floating, glowing, shifting polyhedron-shaped, mote
of energy which could three-dimensionally "draw" and generate physical
objects as they were needed, generally becoming the object in the
process. Cursor could not become another object until dissolving the
current object (usually a reversal of the "drawing" effect) and
reassuming "his" normal form. Exceptions to this included the
fabrication of more conventional outer clothing to hide Automan's
unusual body appearance, and a variable dark colored vehicle lined in
glowing blue piping. Jokingly referred to as the "Auto Mobile" in one
of its earliest appearances, the most common forms taken were a car, a
plane, and a helicopter, all of which could defy the laws of physics
such as making a 90-degree-angle turn.
Cursor could make the
vehicle appear or, by making contact with it, cause it to change from
one form into another, such as shifting from a car into a helicopter,
and could then detach in order to perform other tasks. Cursor could
create vehicles with a more conventional appearance but could not then
separate from them as he did the unusual-looking forms without the
object dissolving. It is also notable that Cursor was always the first
to appear from a computer, after which he immediately "created"
Automan's physical body. Automan and Cursor were generally only able to
become corporeal at night, since running both had enormous power
requirements.
Automan was the only TV program to feature the
use of a Lamborghini Countach as transport; the Auto Mobile's most
common form was such a car. When driving, Automan turned his car at 90
degree angles (a result of Nebicher's programming). Automan was
unaffected, but his passengers were generally knocked from one side of
the car to the other.
The show also starred Robert Lansing
as the often-drunken Lieutenant Jack Curtis and Gerald S. O'Loughlin as
Captain of Detectives E. G. Boyd, Walter's superiors. Both believed
that Automan was a friend of Walter's from the FBI. Captain Boyd, a
technophobe who had no use for computers, often held up Lieutenant
Curtis as the kind of cop he was convinced was the ideal for police--an
ideal to which he believed Walter could never rise.
Influences
Automan
was inspired by, and took a leaf from the pages of, Steven Lisberger's
film Tron, which had come out a year earlier. In order not to seem to
be plagiarizing Tron, Glen A. Larson involved Donald Kushner, who had
been an operating producer of Tron, and his partner, Peter Locke, as
operating producers of Automan. This alone lent credibility to the
program.
Although similar in appearance, the special effects
used to create the Automan look were completely different from the
hand-painted effects used in Tron. Automan cinematographer Charles
"Chuck" Barbee reports that what they actually did was use reflective
material and portable projectors, though the end result looks simply
like some kind of blue/green screen chromakey overlay.
Information gathered from Wikipedia.com
AUTOMAN OTHERWORLD STREET HAWK KITT KNIGHT RIDER DVD TV SHOWS SCIFI TELEVISION HASSELHOFF KNIGHT INDUSTRIES 2000 AIRWOLF