knight rider online

"Michael Knight, a lone crusader in a dangerous world, the world of the Knight Rider."

So we've all heard this phrase a bazillion times but when I was a kid I never paid much attention to what it actually meant. Who is the "Knight Rider"? Is KITT the Knight that's being "rode" so to speak? Is Michael Knight the Knight Rider? Any thoughts on the title of the series, how Glen Larson came up with it? Has anyone ever heard of Knight Rider having a different "pre-production" title?

Knight Rider was called Knight Rider ever since Glen Larson's first draft. In The Knight Rider Legacy book, he told Joe Huth that he always liked the title "Knight Rider", and always knew he wanted to call the hero Michael Knight. As David Hasselhoff is always fond of referring to him, Michael Knight is "The Knight Rider" (which makes this the only 1980s "Super-machine" show that is named for the human, not the machine, ie. StreetHawk, Airwolf, Blue Thunder, etc.)

The title has its roots in the old westerns, and the mysterious cowboys that ride by night (Knight Rider is essentially an update of The Lone Ranger. As a sidebar, check out the pilot to Lone Ranger if you can -- it's available on DVD in many places -- the two characters have an awful lot in common).

Other characters changed and evolved through Larson's early drafts. K.I.T.T. started out as T.A.T.T. (Trans Am Two Thousand), and later the car was the Knight 2100 before finally becoming the Knight 2000. Devon Miles was Devon Shire (Richard Anderson's Dr. Wesley started as Dr. Miles). Lonnie was Michael Long's partner before Muntzy was added, and Lonnie started out as a kind of Stevie, in that she and Michael were an item (although she was to be killed, as Muntzy was later). A lot of these concepts were still in place as the short network presentation version of the pilot was being filmed!

That's very cool to know but did you also know that in Larson's original first draft for Knight Rider he wrote originally in Hawaii (82), Tanya Walker was also Michael's love interest?

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ON TANYA WALKER
dancing slowly, physcially, with her arms draped around the neck of Michael Long, a large young man with ruggedly sensual features. He holds her close, moving only enough to give credibility to their place on the dance floor. The music ends.

MICHAEL
The dance is over.

She looks up dreamily.

TANYA
Who cares..I've never been happier and I don't want it to end.

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Thought I'd share that little tidbit.

=VK=

Yes, that's the same draft I referred to in which K.I.T.T. is known as "T.A.T.T." Other differences to the finished product include Tanya being married to "Lawson" (who in later drafts is renamed "Charles Acton"), Wilton introducing Michael to K.I.T.T. instead of Devon, and a scene that would become a kind of Knight Rider motif (a similar one was later used in Andron's pilot movie): Michael and K.I.T.T. zoom past another vehicle on a deserted highway. Here it was a Ferrari.