| Knight Rider | |
| Episode 106: Knight of the Living Dead | |
 | |
| Air Date | November 5, 2008 |
| Written by | Gary Scott Thompson |
| Director | Leslie Libman |
| Episode guide | |
| previous Episode 105: Knight of the Hunter |
next Episode 107: I Wanna Rock & Roll All Knight |
A tech is murdered inside Knight Industries headquarters, and everyone is locked inside until they can find out who did it. Meanwhile, Mike, Sarah, and KITT are on a plane in a wild storm, and KITT's self-destruct program has been activated.
Summary[]
It is Halloween and Billy is flaunting around the The S.S.C. in his costume, Capt. Jack Harkness, the “time traveling bisexual” (or omni-sexual as Billy refers to him) from Dr. Who. Zoe is dressed as a cheerleader, Ruvai thinks Billy is trying to tell them something and the robots Katie and Lisa are dressed as the Pixar Lamp. Ruvai informs them they are receiving an encrypted message. Billy’s analysis of it reveals it to be a message from a CIA operative. However, the message is highly degraded, and Torres tells Billy to enhance the image. They realize the signal is live, but the operative’s homing beacon is not on and they can’t locate him. The S.S.C. starts to lose the signal and the CIA won’t take their call. Billy and Zoe try their best to decrypt the message, but are stopped once a large, scary monster face with a top hat and loud screeching sound appears, knocking Billy, Zoe and Ruvai off their seats. It turned out to be Mike, playing a Halloween prank on them all. To everyone’s surprise, Torres likes the joke, and despite Sarah’s objections, does nothing to punish Mike, saying everyone needs to relax a bit. Billy researches the code the “operative” gave them, Samhain, which is the ancient Celtic festival Halloween is based on. Mike sends Billy and Zoe a video of him planting a relay transponder above the S.S.C. in the air vent, so no one would know he sent the message from the Cargo Plane.
On the plane, Sarah berates Mike for pulling off such a prank while K.I.T.T. tries to deduce why Mike would do such a thing. After Sarah tells K.I.T.T. that Halloween is Mike’s favorite holiday, K.I.T.T. asks Sarah what hers is. Sarah says that it is Christmas, because of the presents, and Mike presents her with a gift, which Sarah refuses to open fearing it to be a prank. It turns out to be a pumpkin snow globe. Sarah likes the gift and starts to kiss Mike for it, but Mike lets a fake spider drop from his mouth freaking Sarah out. Meanwhile, K.I.T.T. dons his Halloween costume (a Mustang Warrior in Pink), and tries to figure out more of Mike and Sarah’s relationship, upsetting both of them with his invasion of privacy. Back at the S.S.C., Dr. Graiman joins in on the pranks and scares Billy with his “severed hand,” (a robotic hand). Dr. Graiman takes Zoe to do his security rounds and finds the mainframe room unlocked. They go in to find one of the techies lying on the floor. Dr. Graiman and Zoe both think it is another one of Mike’s pranks, and Mike thinks it is Dr. Graiman's prank. Zoe freaks out when she realizes the techie is actually dead. Dr. Graiman finds that the mainframe has been breached and compromised. The lights go out, and three shot are fired, at Dr. Graiman and Zoe.
The S.S.C. goes into lock down. Torres tells Billy to run security checks while Ruvai and the FBI agents go into the mainframe room to see what has happened. On the cargo plane, K.I.T.T. cannot reestablish contact with the S.S.C. due to protocol. Sarah begins to override the protocol with a backdoor. Sarah informs Mike and K.I.T.T. that Dr. Graiman always told her that good programmers give themselves backdoors. K.I.T.T. queries if there is a backdoor into him. Sarah avoids the question and K.I.T.T. becomes upset with Sarah’s lack of response. Back in the S.S.C., there are no finger prints in the room, the surveillance cameras have had loops programmed into them, wiping all traces of the crime, and there are no anomalies at any of the exits in the past 24 hours. Billy suggests that they try an audio-fingerprint of the room. As Billy heads towards the mainframe room, he meets up with Zoe, who has come to. She kissed Billy, much to his shock and disbelief, and walks away. Sarah talks to K.I.T.T., saying she doesn’t know why her father would have built a backdoor into him, and tells him that if he helps her reestablish contact with the S.S.C., they can ask him together.
Torres goes to see Dr. Graiman as he comes to. Charles informs him that K.I.T.T.’s self-destruct mechanism has been activated by whoever was in that room, and that they have less than 30 minutes to do something about it. Torres wants to know why Dr. Graiman programmed it into K.I.T.T., saying he had no right to. Charles retorts saying he had every right, because he was not going to have another K.A.R.R. on his hands. Torres tells Charles to shut it off, but only the person who activated it can disarm it with a hand print scan.
Sarah regains contact with the S.S.C., much to Torres’ surprise, and Charles tells them about the self-destruct sequence. Sarah accesses K.I.T.T.’s systems to try and figure out a solution. Meanwhile, Billy has taken the audio-fingerprint of the room and has begun to decipher it. He is left with just one unknown sound-wave that he needs to try and reconstruct into an audible form. However, he needs an existing match, which he doesn’t have. Back on the plane, Sarah can’t stop the countdown, and K.I.T.T. suggests they jettison him from the plane. Meanwhile, the techies at the S.S.C. have been able to virtually reconstruct the bullets from the gun. Billy and Ruvai deduce that the shooter is less than five and a half feet due to the trajectory, and that the shooter is female because of a DNA sample pulled from the bullet.
Zoe suggests that they download K.I.T.T.’s files and expend his shell. Charles tells Sarah to begin the upload, but K.I.T.T. informs them that the raw data would not be able to recreate him. Charles assures K.I.T.T. that he will download him into a backup neural net and that he will protect him. K.I.T.T. refuses, saying the neural net is not him and that he’d rather die than become something he is not. Mike convinces K.I.T.T. to unlock his files, assuring him nothing bad will happen. Meanwhile, Billy is able to identify the shooter, as Ruvai.
Torres has Ruvai arrested and confined to quarters. Surveillance footage shows Ruvai heading towards the mainframe room right before the first incident, but all other footage has been wiped. Charles is convinced it isn’t her, that she was just making her security rounds like she does every night. Zoe is convinced it is. Mike and Sarah both don’t believe it to be her either, but K.I.T.T. isn’t sure, citing the evening of deception as his main point. Sarah realizes they can deactivate K.I.T.T.’s self-destruct manually by removing his propulsion system. However they wouldn’t have enough time to, according to K.I.T.T., but Mike and Sarah begin anyway.
K.I.T.T. wants to know what it is like to not remember, but Mike tells him they will make him remember. K.I.T.T. begins to play back some of his favorite memories he has collected, mainly focusing around Mike and Sarah. Sarah is baffled to hear K.I.T.T. using contractions instead of proper grammar. K.I.T.T. didn’t even realize he was using them. In the rec-room, Billy and Charles realize the voice print of Ruvai’s from the mainframe room is a fake as they have picked up the same voice print in the rec-room. They try to figure out who would record voices then piece them back together; Charles comes to the conclusion that who ever this is knows everything about them. Suddenly the fire alarm goes off, and it is coming from Ruvai’s pod. However, when fire personnel arrive at her pod, there is nothing wrong. Charles calls Torres and tells them the shooter is still on the loose.
Back on the plane, K.I.T.T. informs Mike and Sarah why Dr. Graiman uploaded the self-destruct program: because of Dr. Graiman's fears that K.I.T.T. will one day be able to self-program. Sarah tells him this isn’t possible. K.I.T.T. rebukes her stating that his original prototype, K.A.R.R. could. Mike thought that K.I.T.T. was one of a kind and doesn’t believe there could be another Mustang, called K.A.R.R. out there. K.I.T.T. informs Mike that it is not a Mustang but a cybernetic-exoskeleton programmed for self-preservation, and that its name is actually the Knight Auto-Cybernetic Roving Robotic-Exoskeleton. Mike looks at the images K.I.T.T. has of K.A.R.R., and believe he knows something about K.A.R.R., but doesn’t remember what.
Charles scans Ruvai’s hand to see if it deactivates the self-destruct sequence, proving if she is the killer, but nothing happens, making Ruvai innocent. Billy realizes that there was no sound print of the killer leaving the room, meaning that the killer is still in the mainframe room. Mike realizes that the whole incident is a diversion to upload K.I.T.T. to the S.S.C. and tells Sarah to stop the download, however the download is finished. In the mainframe room, Torres, Charles and Ruvai find a hidden compartment under one of the desks with a tied up Zoe.
The fake Zoe suddenly takes Billy hostage and removes the hard drive with K.I.T.T.’s back up data. The fake Zoe tells him to cancel the lockdown and open the doors. Meanwhile, Mike comes to the conclusion that they have to jettison K.I.T.T. Billy opens the tunnel doors and begins to lead her out, much to the puzzlement of Ruvai and Torres. The fake Zoe tells him to open the next door, but Ruvai and Torres show up and aim their guns at the imposter. Torres demands Billy to not open the doors, but the fake Zoe has her gun aimed at him, and Billy doesn’t know what to do, except to say “I hope this isn’t a Halloween Prank,” telling Zoe what to do.
Mike begins to jettison K.I.T.T., but the ramp jams, forcing Mike, Sarah and the pilots to get ready to abandon the plane. Zoe enters the air vent above the tunnel where Mike had planted his prank and drops down on the fake Zoe taking her out. Charles run in with the hand scanner, and forces the imposter to place her hand on it. The self-destruct sequence stops and K.I.T.T. is saved. Torres pockets the hard-drive and Ruvai arrests the imposter. Torres asks who she works for, but she just says, “You should ask yourself the same question,” then the imposter bites a pill and dies instantly.
K.I.T.T., Mike and Sarah arrive safely back to the S.S.C. Torres informs them that the imposter was named Terri Lee and that she had cosmetic surgery to make her look and sound like Zoe. Charles tells Torres that there are only three neural nets that support the files they downloaded, K.I.T.T.’s, the back up and K.A.R.R., and Charles believes K.A.R.R. was never decommissioned properly. Torres tells him that K.A.R.R. killed seven people, and there is no way the government would keep him around. Charles hopes Torres is right.
Errors[]
- After Sarah suggests deactivating the self-destruct manually, K.I.T.T. calculates that it will take 11 minutes and 17 seconds, which would be 47 seconds short. However, when K.I.T.T. starts replaying his favorite memories, the countdown reads 17 minutes and 20 seconds to self-destruct.
- While K.I.T.T.'s "memories" from inside the S.S.C. could conceivably be supplemented by security footage, others, such as those of himself either parked or driving down a road, have no plausible in-universe visual source.
External Links[]
- Trailer (Courtesy of Knight Rider Online)