Max Headroom (TV series) Totally Explained

Everything about Edison Carter totally explained

Max Headroom (1987 – 1988) was a short-lived but ground-breaking American science fiction television series which aired on ABC. The series was developed from a British television movie, 20 Minutes into the Future, that was developed to provide background for the Max Headroom character, originally developed for Channel 4's The Max Headroom Show in 1985-1986. The Original Max Talking Headroom Show was a Cinemax show that came out later in 1987.

Television series

In 1987, the story told in 20 Minutes into the Future, a made-for-television movie, formed the basis of a full-fledged drama television series. The film was re-shot as a pilot program for a new series broadcast by the U.S.-based ABC television network. The pilot featured plot changes and some minor visual touches, but retained the same basic storyline. The only original cast retained for the U.S. version series were Matt Frewer (Max Headroom, Edison Carter) and Amanda Pays (Theora Jones); original cast member W. Morgan Sheppard later joined the cast as "Blank Reg". Among the non-original cast, Jeffrey Tambor co-starred as "Murray,” Edison Carter's neurotic editor.
The U.S. series expanded on the cyberpunk themes in the British TV movie but otherwise had no other connection to the British music video show. In perhaps a unique arrangement in the history of television, the U.S. spin-off series featuring Max Headroom was a fictional drama, while its main character was originally created for a non-fiction entertainment show in Britain.
The series began as a mid-season replacement in spring of 1987, and was sufficiently popular to be renewed for the fall television season, but the viewer ratings couldn't be sustained, due to direct competition with CBS's Top 20 hit Dallas and NBC's Top 30 hit Miami Vice, and Max Headroom was cancelled part-way into its first broadcast season; leftover episodes aired in spring 1988. Plans for a cinema version titled Max Headroom for President were mentioned in the media, but the film was never produced. Comico comics also had plans to publish a graphic novel based around the story. Nothing ever came of it apart from the odd comic shop poster, which can occasionally be seen on eBay. The poster had a picture of Max Headroom saying comics will never be the same again.

Characters

Max Headroom

See Max Headroom (character)

Edison Carter

Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) was a hard-hitting reporter for Network 23, who sometimes came close to uncovering things that his superiors in the network would have preferred to keep private. Eventually, one of these instances required him to flee his workspace, upon which he was accidentally injured; Bryce Lynch downloaded a copy of his brain into a computer, giving birth to the character Max Headroom.
The series depicted very little of the past described by Edison, though he did meet a female priest that he once dated when his reporting put him at odds with the Vu Age Church that she now headed.
Edison cares about his co-workers, especially Theora Jones (who looks upon him as a friend and big brother) and Bryce Lynch (who regularly easily agrees to help Edison, despite all but ignoring everyone else's requests).

Theora Jones

Theora Jones was played by Amanda Pays and first appeared in the British-made television pilot film for the series. Along with Matt Frewer and W. Morgan Sheppard, Pays was one of only three cast members to also appear in the American-made series that followed.
   Theora was Network 23's star controller and, working with the network's star reporter, Edison Carter, she often helped save the day for everyone. She was also the pseudo-love-interest of Edison Carter, but that subplot wasn't explored fully on the show before it was cancelled.
   Network 23's personnel files list her father as unknown, her mother as deceased, and her brother as Shawn Jones.
   The Ogg Theora open video codec is named after this character.

Bryce Lynch

Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), a child prodigy and computer hacker, is Network 23's one-man technology research department.
   His birthdate is 7th October 1988. In the show Bryce appears to be 16 or 17 years old, so in the episodes that we see on screen Bryce is living in the time frame of 2004-2005.
   In the stereotypical hacker ethos, Bryce has few principles and fewer loyalties. He seems to accept any task, even morally questionable ones, as long as he's allowed to have the freedom to play with technology however he sees fit. This in turn makes him a greater asset to the technological needs and demands of the network (and the whims of its executives and stars). However, he also generally doesn't hurt or infringe on others, making him an uncannily neutral character in the Max Headroom universe. The character seems to have been loosely based on Alan Turing.
   In the pilot episode of the series, Bryce is enlisted by network CEO Ned Grossberg to investigate the mental patterns of unconscious reporter Edison Carter, to determine whether or not Carter has discovered the secrets of the "Blipverts" scandal. Bryce downloads the contents of Carter's memory into the Network 23 computer system, and manages to boot them as a computer program. The resulting personality, an unhinged and unrepressed version of Carter's personality, is dubbed "Max Headroom" after its first words (the last words seen by Carter before being knocked unconscious). Ironically, it was Bryce, following orders from Grossberg, who fought a hacking battle of sorts (a la the opening scene to Hackers) with Theora Jones that led to Edison hitting his head on a traffic barrier and falling unconscious.
   After the first episode, Bryce is generally recruited by Carter and his controller Theora Jones to provide technical aid to their investigative reporting efforts.
   Bryce is only seen outside of his lab in two episodes:

In "Academy", Bryce returns to his former college to track down a student who is committing denial of service attacks ('zipping') on Network 23's transmissions. Bryce's core morals, as shared with other students of the college, are discussed further in this episode. Initially Bryce resists helping track down the attacker, seeing it as harmless experimentation, even though an innocent man is framed for the crime (which is punishable by death).
In "Security Systems", he's reluctantly forced into a temporary exile with the fugitive Edison Carter when his off-hand comment that "SS even does security for Network 23" makes them realise too late the mistake they've made in trying to hack A7 from Bryce's lab. At first annoyed at being displaced from the safety of his hidden lab, Bryce is soon happily looking forward to slipping under Security Systems 'radar' using "a pink bus with a 5 watt UHF transmitter".

Blank Reg

Blank Reg was played by W. Morgan Sheppard, one of only three cast members to also appear in the American-made series that followed.
Reg is a "blank", a person not indexed in anyone's database. He broadcasts the underground Big Time Television Network from his bus. He is a good friend of Edison Carter, and saves him on more than one occasion.
He dresses in cyberpunk style and has a Mohawk hairstyle.

Ned Grossberg

Ned Grossberg is a recurring villain on the series, played by Charles Rocket.
   In the UK telefilm Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future upon which the American series was based, the character was called Grosman and was played by Nickolas Grace. Rocket portrayed Grossberg as an American yuppie with a characteristic facial (and neck-stretching) twitch.
   In the pilot episode, Grossberg is the chairman of Network 23, a major city television station with the highest rated investigative news show in town, hosted by Edison Carter. In the Max Headroom world, real-time ratings equal advertising dollars, and advertisements have replaced stocks as the measure of corporate worth.
   Grossberg, with his secret prodigy Bryce Lynch, develop a rapid-speed advertising delivery medium known as Blipverts, which condenses a full advertisement into a few seconds. When Carter discovers that Blipverts are killing people, Grossberg orders Lynch to prevent Carter from getting out of the building. Knocked unconscious, Carter's memories are extracted into a computer by Lynch in order to determine whether Carter uncovered Grossberg's knowledge of the danger of Blipverts. The resulting computer file of the memory-extraction process becomes Max Headroom, making Grossberg directly responsible for the creation of the character.
   In the end, Grossberg is publicly exposed as responsible for the Blipverts scandal, and is removed as chairman of Network 23.
   A few episodes later, in Grossberg's Return Grossberg reappears as a board member of Network 66. Again, he invents a dubious advertising medium and convinces the chairman of the network to adopt it. When the advertising method is shown to be a complete fraud, the resulting public reaction against the network leads to the chairman being removed, and Grossberg manages to resume the chairmanship.

Other characters

Murray (played by Jeffrey Tambor)

Ben Cheviot (played by George Coe)

Lauren (played by Sharon Barr)

Breugel (played by Jere Burns)

Angie Barry (played by Rosalind Chao)

Mahler (played by Rick Ducommun)

Gene Ashwell (played by Hank Garrett)

Mr Bartlett (played by Andreas Katsulas)

Dominique (played by Concetta Tomei)

Edwards (played by Lee Wilkof)

Episode listing

Season 1: 1987

Title	Original air-date	#

"Blipverts"	March 31, 1987	1
"Blipverts"	Investigative TV news reporter Edison Carter uncovers the disturbing secret of a new TV technology called "Blipverts,” high-intensity commercials with the ability to overload people's neural network causing them to explode.

"Rakers"	April 7, 1987	2
"Rakers"	Theora's brother ends up tangled in the web of a mafia-organized sport called "raking,” a deadly mutation of motorized skateboarding.

"Body Banks"	April 14, 1987	3
"Body Banks"	A man forces a meeting with Carter after two thugs kidnap his girlfriend as an involuntary donor for a transplant operation. Meanwhile, Max demands to know some details about some fuzzy parts of his (and hence Edison's) memory.

"Security Systems"	April 21, 1987	4
"Security Systems"	An unknown buyer is planning to acquire Security Systems, the biggest security center in the world; the CEO of the company, however, while expressing her fear about the takeover, refuses to reveal more detail.

"War"	April 28, 1987	5
"War"	A terrorist group claims responsibility for a series of explosions - live and on air, with the aid of Network 23's competitive network, Breakthru TV.

"The Blanks"	May 5, 1987	6
"The Blanks"	The city's computer system is plagued by failures due to the Blanks, a group of anarchists who removed themselves from the central databanks.

Season 2: 1987-1988

Title	Original air-date	#

"Academy"	September 18, 1987	7
"Academy"	Someone is "zipping" Network 23 — hijacking its satellites. While Blank Reg fights for his life on a Courtroom TV gameshow, Theora believes Bryce may be hiding something.

"Deities"	September 25, 1987	8
"Deities"	A New-age church wants Max so it can make good on its claims to preserve its members' personalities forever rather than merely fleecing them with claims of doing so. And the leader of this group knows just how to use Edison to get to Max.

"Grossberg's Return"	October 2, 1987	9
"Grossberg's Return"	After his fall from the CEO chair at Network 23, Grossberg takes the helm of Network 66, and he's got an axe to grind.

"Dream Thieves"	October 9, 1987	10
"Dream Thieves"	The Networks are running out of creative material for new programming, so they turn to the audience's dreams. The process has some nasty side-effects, though.

"Whacketts" (alt. "The Addiction Game")	October 16, 1987	11
"Whacketts" (alt. "The Addiction Game")	When a building collapses, the survivors climb into the wreckage to rescue… television sets? Why is everyone watching Whacketts?

"NeuroStim"	April 28, 1988	12
"NeuroStim"	Zik Zak's new promotional giveaway, the Neurostim bracelet, implants memories directly into your mind. Their bold new plan could spell curtains for Network 23… and Edison Carter!

"Lessons"	May 5, 1988	13
"Lessons"	Edison discovers that the automated censor system is sending metro cops to arrest 'blanks' who are pirating pay per view educational programs: the only source of education for ghetto children.

"Baby Growbags"	Originally unaired in the U.S.	14
"Baby Growbags"

Further Information

Get more info on 'Edison Carter'.

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