Viper (TV series): Difference between revisions
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[[File:vipercast_5419.jpg|frame]]
'''''Viper''''' is a live-action science fiction TV series that was created by [[The Rocketeer (
Season 1 takes place [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|in the near future]], where the fictitious Metro City is being overrun by a [[The Mafia|mafia]]-like organization of [[
Meanwhile, Michael Payton, the Outfit's lead getaway driver, lies in a coma after wrecking his [[Everybody Owns a Ford|Dodge Stealth]] in a botched heist. Seeing this as a final chance to save the Viper Project and promote his own political career, [[Big Brother Is Watching|Big Brother]]-type Councilman Strand secretly orders for Payton to be pronounced dead and have a microchip surgically implanted in his brain to erase his criminal persona. After the operation, Payton wakes up with total amnesia and is told he is Officer Joe Astor, a false identity invented by Strand to explain why a supposed expert pursuit driver was transferred to Metro's police district just in the nick of time. Astor proves to be a suitable driver, but things quickly turn sour.
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Parts of Astor's previous memories begin surfacing in the form of dreams and bizarre flashbacks, and he quickly puts together he's not exactly who the police say he is. He ultimately accepts his [[Mind Rape|mindrape]] as a second chance to live a clean life and, upon realizing both sides of the law are corrupt, he hijacks the Defender with the help of its civilian inventor, Julian Wilkes, and a sympathetic Metropol motor pool officer, Franklin X. Waters. The three crime fighters spend the rest of the season working out of a [[Elaborate Underground Base|secret base]] converted from an abandoned power station. This course of action regularly puts Astor up against his old allies (and enemies) within the Outfit, who all easily recognize him despite being total strangers to him.
With a heavy emphasis on identity and morality, and featuring a soundtrack composed by [[Roxy Music|Eddie Jobson]] and [[Batman:
Seasons 2 and 3 are far less ambitious in design, but can still be entertaining on their own merit. The setting is shifted back into a strictly modern (i.e. lower budget) environment, despite still taking place in Metro City and explicitly being set ''after'' the events of the NBC series. Here, the Viper team is a legitimately employed police force fighting their city's latest crime wave. The show is almost completely recast, with Frankie being the only permanent character over the course of the entire series. The storytelling is also much more episodic, following a traditional [[Cop Show]] format where the heroes try to take down a different random criminal each week. There is no overarching group of villains, and the episodes carry little to no continuity between each other. Jay Ferguson takes over as soundtrack composer and maintains this role for the rest of the series.
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Think of it as a '90s version of ''[[Knight Rider]]''.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Action Girl]]: Gerraro in Season 1; Westlake in Seasons 2-4.
* [[Action Series]]: In varying degrees.
* [[Affably Evil]] [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Both leaders of the Outfit (Mr. Townsend in the pilot and Lane Cassidy for the rest of Season 1) are this. Cassidy manages to hide his corrupt motives by being a [[Villain
* [[Amnesiac Dissonance]]: Season 1 toys around with it, but "Split Decision" hits it ''hard.''
* [[Animal Motif]]: The Defender has narrow, snake-like headlight "eyes" and battering ram "fangs." Then there's the fact the transformation sequence for Season 1 was deliberately modeled after a snake shedding its skin.
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** For the Season 1 pilot: "They'll have to catch us first."
** For the series as a whole: In his first on-screen appearance, Payton is shown stealing an experimental satellite component. {{spoiler|At the end of "Split Decision," the final line of the series is Astor telling Westlake how he "stole" the Viper for their skiing vacation.}}
* [[Brain Uploading]]: The episode "Once A Thief" deals with Joe meeting one of the [[
* [[Car Fu]]: Payton uses it as a means of escape in the pilot {{spoiler|and "Split Decision."}}
* [[Cartwright Curse]]: Joe had a bad case of this in Season 1.
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* [[Evil Counterpart]]: The Firehawk, which is driven by a former Viper test driver who went [[Axe Crazy]] after failing to cope with rejection. Going back to the ''[[Knight Rider]]'' analogy, it's basically the unholy fusion of KARR and Goliath.
* [[Expanded Universe]]: [[DC Comics]] released a 4-issue comic book miniseries in late 1994. It features an original plot set in Season 1.
* [[Fantasy
* [[Five-Man Band]]: The Outfit's Highwaymen division is a corrupt version of this.
** [[The Hero]]: Michael Payton
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** [[The Chick]]: Andi
* [[Genius Cripple]]: Julian Wilkes.
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]:
** [[Full Metal Jacket|Dorian]] [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles|Harewood]] as Julian Wilkes.
** And then a much younger [[Breaking Bad|Bryan Cranston]] played the villain in "Wheels of Fire."
* [[Hey, It's That Voice!]]: James McCaffrey would later become the voice actor of [[Max Payne (
* [[Hope Spot]]: Elizabeth tries desperately to tell Joe that she really cares for him despite being (a reluctant) part of the brainwashing plot. Joe abandons her, but then Julian persuades him to accept her and let her help him put his life together. {{spoiler|Just as he arrives at her house to forgive her, [[Stuffed in A Fridge|she's blown up by an Outfit-planted bomb to punish Joe for not bringing the Viper to them.]]}}
* [[I Just Want to Be You]]: In "Past Tense," {{spoiler|the woman who was hired to impersonate Payton/Astor's missing wife so she could assassinate him ends up breaking down and revealing she feels this way about the real Claire.}}
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* [[Jerk
* [[Magic Plastic Surgery]]: Subverted. Payton's eyes are dyed a different color and a few minor adjustments are made to his facial structure to hide his real identity, but ''nobody'' fails to recognize him once they see him in person.
* [[Mid Series Upgrade]]: The Viper RT/10 used for the first three seasons is replaced by the newer Viper GTS at the beginning of Season 4. The corresponding Defender model gets some new gimmicks, including a [[Awesome but Impractical|hovercraft mode.]]
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: {{spoiler|Strand being sent to sleep with the fishes}} immediately cuts to innocent children laughing and playing.
* [[Mythology Gag]]: Two big ones in Season 1
** KITT's most recent appearance before ''Viper'' was made was in ''[[Knight Rider]] 2000,'' where he was installed in a Dodge Stealth that [https://web.archive.org/web/20130305031320/http://kr2k.com/bts1.html the studio customized to look like a Plymouth Banshee]. One could interpret the events of the pilot episode to mean Joe wrecked KITT to upgrade to the Viper.
** The Season 1 episode "Wheels of Fire" involves the Baxley, a legendary concept car that Julian states was his inspiration for the Viper. It was depicted as a red Lincoln Futura: The same model of car used for the [[Batman (TV series)|1960's Batmobile.]]
* [[Not Even Bothering
* [[Recycled Soundtrack]]
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDfAma4h830 This] early Season 1 promo features Basil Poledouris's "Anvil of Crom" from the ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' soundtrack.
** Jay Ferguson would later reuse the opening theme he created for Season 4 in [[Tremors|Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.]]
* [[Retcon]]
** In "Winner Take All," Westlake's commander refers to the Season 2 car as "The latest prototype," marking it as a new, completely separate model and leaving the fate of the Season 1 car open for speculation. In "The Return," one of the very first things Joe does is refer to the Season 3 [[Cliff Hanger
** "Once a Thief" establishes Joe's microchip completely erased his original consciousness and the only way to reverse the effect is to re-install his memories from an external backup. "Split Decision" suddenly changes this, stating all of the older memories are actually still there and the microchip just generates some kind of active firewall to prevent him from using them.
* [[Stock Footage]]: Season 1 occasionally reused one of the Viper's earlier transformation sequences as a transitional shot. It got worse later on, where Season 2's "On a Roll" and Season 3's "Wilderness Run" copied and pasted entire chase sequences from Season 1's "Firehawk" and "Thief of Hearts." The former example even used [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpwH-HqVhRw#t=8m40s almost the exact same dialogue] as the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZg_VAOwV_g#t=45s original scene].
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[[Category:Action Series]]
[[Category:American Series]]
[[Category:Viper]]▼
[[Category:TV Series]]
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