Forgotten Television: TekWar

In the year 2044, tek is a technology based digital drug that creates a simulated reality, it is addictive and can cause brain damage.  Jake Cardigan is an ex-police officer who was convicted of murdering his partners and dealing tek.  He was sentenced to 15 years in a cryo-detainment but was released after 4.  After he regains his freedom, he learns that his wife divorced him and remarried and that his 15-year-old son no longer wants to see him. His remaining partner, Sid Gomez (Eugene Clark) from the police force, now works in the private sector for a firm called Cosmo, run by CEO Walter Bascom (William Shatner) and Bascom was the one that secured Jake’s early release.  Jake is offered a job at Cosmo and in return, Bascom will help find the evidence to clear his name in the hopes of winning his son’s love back. His first job as an investigator is to find a missing scientist, who has invented a device that could destroy all the tek, except for one Tek lord’s product, making him the sole provider of the drug.  Along the way, they meet an android version of Beth Kittridge (Torri Higginson), the scientist’s daughter who has the memories of the real Beth who could possibly help him clear his name.  The rest of the series is basically Jake and Sid along with the Cosmos team investigating crimes usually based around tek and the Tek Lords who push the drug.

TekWar is based on the novel series of the same name, ghost-written by Ron Goulart from stories and outlines by William Shatner.  It was developed for television by Stephen Roloff starting with the first season consisting of four television movies the first premiering on January 17, 1994, and the second season consisting of eighteen episodes starting in early 1995 following the normal weekly hour-long format.  Shatner had the idea for TekWar in the 1980s using the idea of putting his other television character T.J. Hooker int a futuristic setting. The novels are set 200 years in the future, but when trying to pitch the ideas to studios, it was turned down as being too expensive to produce, when Marvel comics wanted to do a comic book series based on TekWar, Shatner agreed but they needed to be set only 50 years forward. This got studios interested and the series into production.  The show was not well received by the critics with the Los Angeles Times saying, “No one will confuse William Shatner’s TekWar with serious science fiction.”  Entertainment weekly gave it a “D” rating saying, “This is basically your average cop show in a post 20^th century setting: Dullbladerunner.”

I must agree with the critics on this one. The premise of technology becoming a drug is interesting and a bit prophetic for a show conceived in the 1990s, but I wasn’t a fan of T.J. Hooker to begin with, so setting a similar character in the future isn’t all that interesting to me.  The program lacks any of the subtlety, moodiness or atmosphere of Blade Runner and doesn’t replace it with interesting characters or original plotlines.  The show is basically a predictable buddy-cop police procedural with some flashy technology and a few special effects.  William Shatner does a decent job as the CEO of Cosmos who always seems to have an ulterior motive and Torri Higginson is likeable and interesting as Beth Kittridge.  Greg Evigan’s Jake lacks any real depth or complexity, he does connect well with the audience, it isn’t enough to carry the show. Overall, the show isn’t terrible and does have some entertaining elements and plot elements but lacks any real complexity that could have taken it to the next level.