The next episode, in alleged production order, was called “ The Trial” and has very little known aside from that title.You can read a full act-by-act summary of the script here. As the title implies, it dives into Theora’s background and reveals her father’s identity. And we’re talking an actual war here, with weapons, between corporations. To quickly summarize, Edison Carter’s controller, Theora, gets kidnapped by a group called the “Video Freedom Alliance” around the same time that fighting starts to break out between the Yakuza-owned megacorp Zik Zak and a competitor called Zlin… in Antarctica. The completed script of the tenth episode, “ Theora’s Tale,” was leaked (is that the right word to use in this case?) and can be found online.On the other hand, weirder things that have been lost for far longer have resurfaced before, so it’s not impossible that someone out there has pieces of it in some form. So far as anyone knows, it seems that no surviving footage of the incomplete episode exists, which is a real shame. This obviously plays off the concept of the “ Nielsen family” and is a perfectly brilliant subject for Max Headroom to tackle. “Families” was about “an ironic study of the television ratings system,” wherein the networks of Max’s world had pared down the numbers necessary to test shows to a ridiculously few, essentially rendering all programming preferences to those of a handful of families. The ninth episode, “ Families,” was being filmed when the news came in and as a result was not completed.Season 2 initially had a 13 episode order, and according to a number of early 2000s fansites I’ve found, all 13 episodes at least had treatments written, if not full scripts. This was the last one finished before the execs pulled the plug, but apparently it was not the last to be shot. In terms of airing on TV, there was one episode which was completed but never aired (on ABC, anyway)–episode 2.08, “ Baby Grobags.” That’s not really what we’re here for, though, is it? It’s on the DVD and easily watchable. Production was still in full swing at the time, though, so what did we miss out on by this abrupt ending? or Max Headroom season 3? And hell, even in spite of the cancellation, their plans for Max’s world weren’t done–a Max Headroom theatrical movie, anyone? However, it seemed the world wasn’t quite ready for the dystopian adventures of Max, and the show met with cancellation after two exceptionally short seasons. If you’ve read that you know I had a pretty high opinion of the series itself, a fine example of 80’s cyberpunk on its own and one of the only TV programs to venture into that territory at the time. Earlier this month I introduced Max Headroom, the fictional show starring the computerized celebrity of the same name.
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