What went wrong with Knight Rider 2008?

The problem was they couldn't decide if they were doing a continuation like Star Trek: Next Generation or Doctor Who or a reboot like Battlestar Galactica.

Knight Rider purists bashed it and it got cancelled. I loved KR2008. That's why I'm here now cause I heard the 2008 theme and wanted to get this off my chest. I miss it. Wish it wasn't cancelled.

Agreed. The version of kitt in the pilot was great. Then they effed it all up with the impractical shape shifts the logos all over his interior and that stupid glass ball that replaced his dash screen. And that was just the car lets not even start with the rest of the characters

A lot of the reason was ratings, it started off good, but due to continuous story-lines dragging on for so long, quite a lot of people began to tune out and didn't care.

The pilot rated pretty high. From then on, it began to be interesting, but things soon got slower as that whole FBI insider corruption thing bored a lot of viewers. The writers of the show planned to make season 2 the point where FLAG to take over and all the FBI crap to end... unfortunately by the time they got to that final episode, ratings where bad. It especially didn't help when reviewers bagged the hell of the final episode for quite a few reasons.

1) It took so damn long to get to that resolution that they would split from the FBI and return as the FLAG. One episode would end on showing something was going on inside, the next episode ignored it like everything was alright and took too long to come back to that story. It felt like a lot of filler episodes to some people before moving the plots along.

2) K.A.R.R? It was an effing stupid idea to make a new K.A.R.R, one that does what the original K.A.R.R does and goes bad! Many fans asked why the heck would the original prototype failure that became such a menace and threat be once again remade in the future, as the Knight Automated Roving Robot... and again be the prototype to the new KITT...again? You can ask a million questions into that logic. Like instead of them honoring the one that worked, they instead tried to call it KARR again, and once again making the same mistake with the kinks, bugs and glitches? It spread a lot of debate over if this show was conscious it was a KR continuation or just copying ideas of the past.

3) KARR transformed into effing Optimus Prime. KARR became a Decepticon for crying out loud.

3) The destruction of KARR was lame. Just use a strategy from the Dukes of Hazzard playbook and it's over in the blink of an eye? Lame. Pretty disapointing final episode surrounding the announcement that FLAG would return, like so many expected, wanted, and had to wait till the last minute of the season to see.

4) Fan's had already been complaining about the faults with the pilot. Quite a lot asking why the heck the Knight Industries Three Thousand became vulnerable when the nano-bytes where shut down... asking why the car's body was not suited with the original molecular bonded shell that covered the original KITT? With nano byte technology covering that shell formula, it would have made the new KITT even stronger than the original KITT? Yet Milton, a so called genius, didn't think of that. Disagreements emerged that perhaps Milton had not finished the new KITT completely, and intended to do so, but then it was simply asked, why did it not happen during the series?

4.2) The glimpses of the original KITT in Miltons garage dissembled left a bad taste in original fans mouths. It was like they had murdered the original KITT to make the new one.

4.3) By the time season 1 was finished. It left many fans disappointed in what they hoped to see, rather than what the got. I know I agreed myself with one of them that was mentioned... who hoped to see The Hoff and his KITT make a cameo again? Perhaps in a save the day role in the final episode?

5) There was alot of hatred towards the show when Milton and that chick where killed off. I didn't really care, but for some reason many people hated it, and finding some way to argue it was copying Wilton Knights death. Like all those involved in Kitts construction must die apart from the mechanics and programmers or some stupid debate like that, I can't remember the full details, nor really want to either... I forget now why I began to mention it in regaurds to the season finale?

6) The shape shifting. The lame graphics of KITT in pursuit mode, the horrible background CGI of it... not just from the finale, but the whole season.

Also, during the season, KITT didn't seem all that upgraded, not what people where expecting to see anyway. It seemed more like KITT was just a self aware computer that could access a satellite. No jumps, turbo boost was something altered, no skiing, and instead produces a bunch of over kill looking mini-guns. He seemed more like an advanced GPS system then containing gadgets that where not even thought possible, like in the original KITT when it aired in the 1980s. Today, most of the original KITT is not that spectacular, and kind of a mess of an interior if you want to admit it, but the original one, even with a thousand buttons no one knew what it did, it just looked cooler, rather than something that looked like Hal 9000 was attached to the dashboard.

However, what ticks me off is they didn't get a chance to rectify the mistakes (Apart from KARR) in a new series. I don't know what the original writers intended, but Hasselhoff himself wanted to purchase the rights, and continue the story. His idea was that the original KITT's memory/data was not destroyed, but was found backed up on hard drives, and the original KITT would receive a new body and full upgrades. Both Michael Knight and MK Jnr would become Team Knight Rider... yes, resurrecting that failed idea, however, with this series and the originals combining, it had a chance to work.

Apparently whomever owns the rights, would not sell to the Hoff. Nor would they budge on funding a new series, which I think I read somewhere they did not think it would work, as having two KITTs working together at the same time would be overkill, and just continuing on as a resurrected version of the older series, with more focus on HOFF and the original KITT, rather than his son who they thought would just become a backseat driver, so to speak.

They also had speculation over if it was going to be father and son working on the same case together, or two different cases simultaneously in different parts of the country... or both? But I say, why wouldn't they give it a go? It couldn't hurt could it? It only would have made Knight Rider even more popular by tying the two together... wouldn't it? It gives both new and old fans satisfaction... least I think so anyway... it doesn't flip off the original like say... the Robocop remake this year.

Tho, sometimes you have to wonder if it's for the best. Had CBS or whoever the hell owns the rights kept them, and just gone with Hoffs idea, they probably would have killed off both Michael Knights, combined both KITTS into one vehicle that can morph into cars/planes/boats and god knows what else, probably have Garth Knights son Michael Knight the 3rd drive it, played by someone lame like Ashton Kutcher or Justin Beiber or something that would kill KR forever in their desperate attempt to get cheap ratings from 12 year olds. Then when people scream to cancel it, they ignore them and combine this new atrocity with the Power Rangers or god knows what else.

I'm not much of a fan of Knight Rider, but I would think that hiring William Daniels to retrieve his role as "KITT" would have been much cheaper for the production rather than Val Kilmer.

It probably would have been more acceptable than what the network executives thought at the time in their big giant tower of ever flowing great ideas.

Also, the opening scene of the pilot might have been a wtf moment in middle america for all those who grew up watching Knight Rider and sharing their own childhood with their children.

Most shows like this need a season or two to get it right. What killed it was moronic impatient tv execs who didn't have the patience to give it time to develop

What went wrong was that this show was even worse than Knight Rider 2000 (you know, the pilot that didn't get picked up). Heavily based on lame CGI, bad writing (and not in a so-cheesy-it's-good way like the 80s TV show)... It felt like a bad mixture of the original 80s show with VIPER and Team Knight Rider.