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William Shatner's TekWar series follows his Tek novels and the Tek tv movies. It is a crime show that's equipped with an sf frame,
showing us a future of cyberspace and electronic drugs, a future of androids and robots, a future that like the future of Star Trek is created to focus on some problems we have today.
TekWar is a perfect example for the differences between books and audio-visual media: The future described in the books is a bit different from its
visual realization. The brave new world Shatner has created loses a bit in this translation. While the novels presented us a James Bond - style kind of
adventures, the tv show seems to be a bit smaller. Not only have the androids and robots nearly disappeared (except Winger and some others); they aren't any more an integral part of the story. But aside from this, TekWar shows us a future that could become reality, a future that is not as perfect as
Star Trek might make us believe.
TekWar is not really an extraordinary show, but it focuses on a future other shows rarely tangle with. It isn't an average show either, but it cannot capture the magics of Star Trek or The X-Files. The show is definitely better than the other Shatner show, T.J. Hooker, but Jake Cardigan seems much more to be kind of a Kirk clone with a slightly more difficult past. The show can't capture the atmosphere and the pace of the novels, but nevertheless it would have been nice if it hadn't been canceled. Some shows have potential (which TekWar definitely had) but make use of it only after the first or the second or even the third season (like TNG, DS9 and VGR!).
July 15th, 1998
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