“I hate to disappoint you, but there’s nothing left to kill.”

Justin’s rating: But where are all the internet ads?

Justin’s review: LAST TIME ON TEKWAR…

William Shatner had someone ghostwrite him an entirely new scifi franchise starring him, William Shatner, and some other people about AI and virtual worlds and handguns the size of New Hampshire.* Books, games, and comics emerged, and in the Year of our TekLord 1994, we were treated to a quadrilogy of Canadian TV movies. It was truly the halcyon days of cyberpunk, and we would never see the like again.

Maybe it was too much TekWar in a year, or too little, all I know is that this was the peak of the TekCraze — such as it was — and the franchise ran out of gas soon after. But hey, now we can go back with our 2020s eyes to examine a 1990s series set in the 2040s.

The second movie in the series, TekLords, sees ex-cop/drug addict Jake Cardigan investigating a sentient computer virus that’s attacking people logging into the virtual world. This leads him to encounter the titular TekLords, crime bosses who oversee future-narcotics. Backing him is a team with a hacker and his former (and I guess current) partner, all overseen by the laconic Mr. Shatner. I’m sure Shatner would’ve put himself as Jake if he wasn’t in his early 60s, so he gets to settle for the role of a wise mentor.

Jake continues to struggle with his ex-wife moving on and marrying another guy while he was in cryoprison (for a mere four years), isolating his son in the process. She’s beyond cold over this, acting as if Jake’s the unreasonable one. I guess we need some family drama to drive our main character’s goals, but you can feel the movie grind to a halt when it switches over from police procedural to “Don’t take my son from me!” with melodramatic music.

The story may be forgettable, but the real attraction in these films is the world-building. There’s a surprising amount of high-tech set dressing combined with Toronto’s modernist architecture to portray a visionary 2045 that had to be more complex than throwing characters onto a starship centuries later.

Holograms, virtual worlds, AI lawyers, those chunky-sleek cars that ’90s scifi loved to show off, mobile video calls, every scifi noise in Hollywood’s sound effect databases, self-driving cars, digital aging software, holo-disguises, and flat-screen TVs (hey, this was still very much the bulky CRT monitor era of home computing, so that’s futuristic!) are par for the course, and it’s all a lot of fun. And don’t forget some basic yet effective mid-90s CGI, all on a budget of just north of $4 million.

A naughty computer virus that takes on the form of a dead girl and can infect people’s minds is nothing more or less than TV adequate. High-tek distractions notwithstanding, my attention kept drifting away from this flimsy tale. It still was only the second episode of a TV series that needed some time to come into its own, after all, and I’ve found that second episodes are almost always bland disappointments in any show.

*That’s a small state but it would make for a pretty big handgun even so.

Intermission!

• Ooh I’ll never get bored of zooming around a CGI computer innards
• “Bluebells! And daisies!”
• The holograms look pretty good. I miss holograms as a sign of the future.
• “You’re warm. You’re alive.”
• Pigeons are extinct in 2045. But we throw crumbs in their honor.
• “Oh don’t get excited sugar, I wasn’t talking to you.”
• Running backwards in a circle around your prison cell is goofy as hell
• “I got your meat right here, you cheesy little pus-ball.”
• Room starts exploding with convenient fireballs? Say things like “This is HOT!” or “I like barbeque but not this much!”
• Virtual attorney, Juris comma Prudence
• “She gets around a lot for a dead lady.”
• Indoor hammocks, it truly is the future
• The holo-masks are very nifty
• “I thought I was tuned in to the Funky Jake and Sisko Show.”
• That’s a very messy toast
• “Boo!” ZAP
• “Going turbo! 500 terabytes, maximum bandwidth!”
• Hacking the internet, er, matrix makes you spin in your chair a lot
• “I can’t own what I can’t feel.”
• The big finale setpiece felt like Jake running through a laser tag facility