I remember watching this show as an eight year old and thinking, "Gee, this is like a Knight Rider rip-off". I thought the same think about Street Hawk. Apparently, the writers never really thought this concept through. I mean, this helicopter can pilot itself, to come rescue its pilot, which is no small feat for a machine with rotors, but at the same time, it completely limits the action possibilities. What happens if the pilot is locked up in a basement. What's Airwolf gonna do now? Anyway, I'm sure she was converted into a sightseeing chopper somewhere in LA.

I guess this is another one of those shows that came and went, but somehow left an impression. Perhaps this is because most of us saw these shows in our most important formative years when we were easily impressionable. Another thing I noticed about shows like this (and Automan, Manimal, or Otherworld) was that apparently the producers really didn't care if the actors could act or not. Then again, it seems the writers didn't really care about plot much either. In any case this show is a great companion to Knight Rider, Airwolf, Automan and of course, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang.

This show, like Manimal, Automan, Matthew Starr and that one about the super-crime-fighting motorcycle (Streethawk, I believe), will always haunt my dreams. I think I prefer that they stay in my dreams. That is to say, this show gives me chills when I think about it. The concept of being lost in a strange land inhabited by weird cultists (no, not Kansas!) really got to me...AS A CHILD. I think if I saw this show now, I'd probably laugh for five minutes and then get bored. In other words, this show had great potential, but no staying power.

Automan is one of those forgotten shows from the early 80's (see "Manimal") that had so much to offer in terms of campy crime fighting and a so-unbelievable-it's-extr emely-stupid plotline. For example, Automan can manipulate anything digital (which in 1983 was mostly Casio watches, the occasional floppy drive MAC and the keyboards used for the automan soundtrack) and somehow this gave him the ability to foil terrorist plots, embezzlers and Michael Jackson-imitating pickpockets. The special effects were advanced for 1983; cursor's ability to materialize anything he can draw was a visual feat back then. We shall sure miss you Automan, man.

This is one of those shows you can't believe even existed. Manimal is one of those things (like Automan, or Hardcastle & McCormick) that are buried deep within the dumpster regions of our brains, and occasionally, the winds of random memories (or drugs) give us a whiff of them. Manimal came out in the extremely fertile Knight-Rider 80's, where there was no such thing as "ridiculous" in a TV-show. The makers apparently thought it would be cool to have a Magnum-PI type character who could turn into an animal. This show was a huge hit in Italy for years.