knight rider online

Does anyone know where or who Devon was before he joined the Foundation? From his innumerable WW2 prison escapes and international connections I'd say MI5 or good ol' Foreign Office, but they why did he move to the states and how come he knows goodness knows how many women who he would have been chatting up whilst he should have been escaping from German prison camps!

He was with the OSS during the war, which is where he met Wilton Knight, they became fast friends, and he came to the states to help Wilton with his dream. Why would you assume that he would have been chatting up women while he should have been escaping German prison camps? Somehow that does not compute.

KI

Cos all the women he knows he should have known when he was a young man, and a simple calculation of age and history shows that when he was a youngster he was escaping prison camps ('No Big Thing' episode he boasts about having escaped from three, or was it four?) He can't have met them all much later on, there are too many of them, they crop up, on average, every four to six episodes!

That's an exaggeration and a bit of a slanderous one at that. I think you need to work a bit on your math skills, no offense.

KI

It's not slanderous. I don't mean it in 'that' way, I mean obviously he was a charming chap who was young, and he's going to know a lot of women, what good looking young chap wouldn't, it would be odd if he didn't.

Nowt wrong with my mathematics. He said he escaped from German prison camps. He had to be young when he did, and if he was young he's not going to avoid women is he! I don't mean in any slanderous sense, I know he's strictly the honourable stiff upper lip type. That's why I think he's the koolest character in it apart from KITT!

1) The way you stated it, you made him sound as much like a man slut as Michael is.

2) Women he knew do not pop up every four to six episodes.

3) The women that he did meet weren't all met at the same time. It took him probably a few months at the most to escape a German Concentration camp. The man in Knight Rider is fairly close to late fifties, early sixties. More than enough time to meet them at a gradual rate.

Yeah, he probably knew a lot of women, but the way you stated it, you almost made him sound like Michael Knight, and accredited him to much more than they showed on the show. He had plenty of time to meet them gradually, not all at once. How the heck you are associating escaping German prison camps when he was young and chatting up all the ladies that came out of the woodwork, really does not make sense, especially with your comment: how come he knows goodness knows how many women who he would have been chatting up whilst he should have been escaping from German prison camps!

And one other thing, I don't believe that they mentioned camps (I could be wrong) I think he only got captured once. He may have liberated more, but I don't quite think he made all that much of a habit of being caught so he could escape.

KI

Did too. In 'No Big Thing' he boasts about it! Watch it if you don't believe me! Besides, entering camps during wartime and in the Cold War was used as a tool of espionage, so there.

And I do not think he was a slut. When I say chatting up the girls I mean just that, chat, nothing more. Devon is far too much of a gentleman to have been any less gentlemanly. I wouldn't for one minute even think he was anywhere nearly as bad as Michael. There is nothing sluttish about talking to women and being friends with them. He would treat ladies charmingly and they wouldn't be able to help but fall for him, even if there was no relationship as we know it today from tedious TV programmes. I'm not suggesting he went about collecting girlfriends or anything.

As for my tone I am sorry if it sounded like I was suggesting something else. I'm prone to being flippant in tone, I was a politics student and you kind of get a laissez faire attitude to life from it.

I kind of get the feeling you like him... I merely used the ladies thing to indicate one example of the fact whilst he was in Europe he must have had a well connected job, getting him in touch with a number of important people, and if it was with the OSS it would be.

Ok, for one, I have seen all the episodes, I just couldn't remember the exact wording. It is correct that he broke from more than one prison camp, according to the script.:

PINK
I don't know, Devon...you don't
strike me as your typical jail-
breaker.

DEVON
(proudly)
The Gestapo felt the same way.
That's why I was able to escape from
three German prison camps during the
war.

PINK
(impressed)
Wow!

DEVON
So, if you insist I join you, at
least allow me to devise a sensible
strategy for our departure.

Now, instead of your five year old response of 'so there', you should have read, that I was in fact agreeing with you that he probably broke in to multiples, but once again, it's easier to revert back to a childlike attitude, isn't it?

In short, there really wasn't any reason to relate 'chatting up girls' with escaping from a german prison camp, now was there? I actually admire Devon very deeply, even more so, the actor, so yeah, I just would like to urge a little more respect and less 'flippant' attitude towards the man.

KI

Did Devon ever Kill any body? That's the winning question. If he was in the war, captured three times, then brought in to the SSO (corect that for me if SSO is wrong) the he had to be one heck of a solder.
I can see him being one of the men ploting away at Tom, Dick and Harry. And he would defenetly be one of the fiew survivors to escape the gustapo after going through Harry.

Link for history of "The Great Escape".

http://www.flight-history.com/arch/show ... ntentID=13

I am inherantly flippant by nature. It's a defence mechanism for a sensitive soul. I admire Devon too, I reiterate the 'he's my favourite character bit' AND the fact that having women friends is NOT dishonourable, for the hundredth time I in NO WAY suggested anything more and I am SORRY if it sounded like it.

Ahem. As for the killing people bit I don't like to think he had ever done. I prefer to think Biggles-like he found other ways of winning the day and would only ever even dream of any unpleasantness as a very last resort. You can be a very successful solider using initiative and courage as much as any, well, activity of that sort of nature.

I think it's safe to say that he probably had to kill people at some point in time during the war, but I can't point to anything canon that says one way or another. But being more of a spy behind enemy lines than an infanty type soldier (based on the small, but not insignificant amount of research I did on the OSS) it's possible that he never had to. Either way, he strikes me as the type of person who wasn't proud of taking a human life, but recongized that it was sometimes necessary. To me that seems to fit with the whole KR philosophy. The idea that sometimes you have to go above the law to catch others who operate there seems to me to be similar to recognizing that sometimes you have to kill to stop others from doing so.

Can this international politics student sound really, really dumb, but wot is the OSS exactly?

I know it's secret service but to whom is it attached and stuff?

I was wondering about that myself so here is the information on the agency's website (http://www.cia.gov) summarised:

The OSS was essentially the US's first intelligence agency- the Office of Strategic Services. It was formed in June 1942 by the remaining members of the office of the Coordinator of Information.

During the Second World War its staff utilised secret intelligence information and clandestine operations for the benefit of the Allied forces; most of its agents were trained by the superior and more experienced British Intelligence services.

After Roosevelt's death and Allied Victory, most wartime intelligence services were set for liquidation by President Truman--this included the OSS; however, a large portion of the agency remained in tact at the wishes of General William Donovan, the director of the service's activities.

He (and Truman) supported the formation of a peacetime intelligence service; upon the October 1945 expiration of the OSS this new agency was created--the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), renamed in 1947 to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

It is the current centre in the United States for international intelligence and counterintelligence, roughly equivalent of the UK's MI6, with the domestic Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) having more in relation to MI5.

I went to University in Wales! Aberystwyth! Bore Da and all that! I really miss Wales now and again, 'specially the countryside and the people, they were all so friendly. Back in London everyone seems so pushy!

3 years of international politics and I never learned about the OSS though.

What I don't get is that they really played on the fact that Devon was British, so what was he doing working for US intelligence. That's what I'd like to find out, why he went to America and worked there and stuff. Not that he was real *gasps at sacrilege* so he didn't really need a reason. And the actor was Irish...

It does seem a bit odd to me too that he was with an American intelligence service. I wonder if they had meant to flesh out that part of his past and just never got around to it or what.

But he was supposed to be so British (in that stereotypical American ideal of what a Brit is supposed to be), that it seems out of character -- like there was supposed to be a story there. I don't know. Was there any ever indication of whether or not he was still a British citizen?

Yep, Michael did say 'Brit' a few times, and Mulhare's accent is definitely a play on the Eton one.

tkr9 wrote:I went to University in Wales! Aberystwyth! Bore Da and all that! I really miss Wales now and again, 'specially the countryside and the people, they were all so friendly. Back in London everyone seems so pushy!

Just returning from a holiday in Snowdonia myself--beautiful countryside and really friendly people, only my mobile had no reception in the mountains and my hotel's roof leaked right above my bed! It was really worth it though--spending a day in Portmeirion would be a dream come true for any "Prisoner" fan! Had a bad time getting there though--the M6 was at a standstill--took me nearly 9 hours to drive there from Bournemouth!

Back on topic, perhaps Devon was working for the OSS as an instructor from British Intelligence? Or wasn't actually working for the agency but rather working with them? Purely speculation though.

This is off topic, but I can't help but marvel at the cultural centricity that we are all guilty of sometimes.

Hearing the CIA described more or less as the American version of MI6, is hillarious since I always thought of MI6 as the British version of the CIA. .

And on an interesting note, there are a number of conspiracy theories out there that claim the CIA is only a public figure head, and that the real intelligence is done by much more clandestine groups, whose anagrams we'll never know.

Ghost

Portmerion is fantastic. Went there in my third year at uni and loved it... ahem, back to topic, I think intelligence services do a cultural liason-type-thing, you know, swop a few of their men for a few of ours and do joint missions and stuff, so maybe Devon got involved then decided to stay with Wilton's private security venture.

I know what you mean about Welsh roads, It takes me 4 hours from London to get to Cardiff and NINE hours to Aberyswtwyth. It's silly, there are no main roads, must be all those mountains. Still, flippin' gorgeous mountains anyway. Need KITT really.

Ghost-Unmade wrote:This is off topic, but I can't help but marvel at the cultural centricity that we are all guilty of sometimes.

And on an interesting note, there are a number of conspiracy theories out there that claim the CIA is only a public figure head, and that the real intelligence is done by much more clandestine groups, whose anagrams we'll never know.

Ghost

Well, that's probably true to some degree although I think the CIA does its share of spying. But you look at the NSA and no one knows what they do, just that they exist.

And then there are the UN black helicopters. Sorry, I'll get out of conspiracy mode.

3 years of international politics and I never learned about the OSS though.

Guess that shows how secretive they really are.

The UN have black helicopters. No one told me, why aren't they in Iraq?

What black helicopters?

The UN have black helicopters. No one told me, why aren't they in Iraq?

How do you know they are not in Iraq?

Iraq would probably be in a better state by now if they were. I dunno. What do the black helicopters do exactly? Stealth helicopters? Noise'd be a bit of a giveaway.