SciFiWire paid an exclusive visit to the set of Knight Research’s SSC (Satellite Surveilance Center) — better known by its nickname: The K.I.T.T.Cave! The lab is an elaborate set at Santa Clarita Studios, just north of Los Angeles, and represents K.I.T.T.’s multilevel underground hideout. The computers on the set were inspired by futurists at Microsoft, executive producer Gary Scott Thompson told them. “We met with their technology people to see what they have coming up, and we were surprised that we were actually coming up with ideas that they weren’t going to be doing for another 10 or 20 years or so. But we used some of their ideas.”
Among the high-tech equipment: tables that that can download information from a telephone or computer set on top of them and computers that can manipulate images at the flick of a finger. “I just move my hands over the computers, and someone in the back is flipping lights and buttons to make it look like I’m doing something,” cast member Paul Campbell (Billy) said. Bruce Davison confessed that he’s really a technophobe: “I’m not into this technical gadgetry at all,” he said. “I had to learn a lot, but it has been fun.”
According to SciFiWire, “the producers promise that the series will be less campy than the original 1980s show, while remaining funny and family-oriented. But there will be lots of eye candy: Thompson said the first episode has more than 700 special effects. “I’m not sure we will be able to keep up that level of fast action, but we’re going to sure try,” he said.
“The show will update the characters and premise first introduced in a television movie/backdoor pilot that aired on NBC in February. Bruening’s character has been given a mysterious past involving his experiences in the Iraq War, and he will have disdain for Blackwater personnel in particular.
“When someone says, ‘So your car can talk; so what, so can mine?’ then Knight says, ‘Yeah, but can your car do this?'” Thompson said.”
