Whiz Kids

Whiz Kids
The Whiz Kids Gang
Genre	Action/Adventure
Created by	Philip DeGuere Bob Shayne
Written by	Philip DeGuere (4 eps)
Directed by	Corey Allen (3 eps)
Starring	Matthew Laborteaux Andrea Elson Todd Porter Jeffery Jacquet Max Gail
Theme music composer	Paul Chihara (uncredited Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart adaptation)
Composer(s)	Paul Chihara J. A. C. Redford Ian Underwood David Bell
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	18
Production
Executive producer(s)	Philip DeGuere
Producer(s)	Joe Gannon Bob Shayne James Crocker
Editor(s)	Ellen Ring Jacobson
Cinematography	Fred J. Koenekamp
Running time	45–48 minutes
Production company(s)	Universal TV
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Audio format	Monaural
Original run	October 5, 1983 (1983-10-05) – June 2, 1984 (1984-06-02)

Whiz Kids is an American action/adventure television series which aired on CBS for one season (18 episodes) during the 1983-1984 television season. The show follows the adventures of a group of four teenagers — Richie, Alice, Hamilton and Jeremy — who are amateur computer experts and detectives. The series was inspired by the feature film WarGames.

Initially, Whiz Kids aired Wednesday nights, but it began airing Saturday nights on January 7, 1984, replacing Cutter to Houston.

Cast and characters

Synopsis

Richie Adler (Matthew Laborteaux) lives with his mother and sister; his parents are divorced, and his father works overseas, often in the Middle East, as a telecommunications engineer/consultant^[1] to several firms located there. Richie is an advanced computer user with cutting edge skills. Presumably he has inherited these abilities as well as most of his computer equipment from his father.^[2] He acquires obsolete equipment that was scheduled to be scrapped and sends it to Richie. He even sends a programmable robot, Herman.^[3] Richie collects this equipment and connects and assembles it to form RALF, his pet name for his computer system. RALF has multiple components and capabilities, including a camera which produces a primitive facial identification system.^[4]

Richie and his friends come across mysteries which they (mainly Richie) attempt to solve using his computer skills with RALF's power. Guidance is often provided by newspaper reporter Farley (their mentor). The cases often involved money-hungry criminals working inside business or government who would assault and murder people to cover-up their deeds. There were also a few episodes involving spies of the Soviet Union.

Lew Farley (Max Gail) is a reporter for the fictional newspaper the LA Gazette (although on the first episode the reporter is named Gallagher and he is played by Michael Horton). Many of his stories are exposés of crime and corruption. He is well connected and seems to know everyone from gangsters to beat cops to a mysterious patriarch.^[5] He has a cantankerous but mutually beneficial relationship with Lieutenant Quinn (A Martinez) who is head of the detective unit, and also married to Farley's sister.^[6] Farley was a Vietnam-era anti-war protester who was jailed and beaten on occasion during marches.^[7] He was inspired to journalism by a woman whose death he investigates in "The Wrong Mr. Wright".

Farley is somewhat technologically capable (carrying around one of the first laptops ever sold, a Gavilan SC),^[8] but he relies on Richie for complicated technical help. He warns the Whiz Kids of danger and helps them when they get in over their heads with criminal elements or with the government. He is often the first person they call when they are in trouble, and Richie's mother leans on him as well.^[2]

In most episodes, the three groups — the police (mostly led by Quinn), the media (usually Farley), and the Whiz Kids — wind up all contributing to cracking a case and in bringing the criminals to justice. Their relationship is often conflicted, as Quinn must keep Farley from getting too much insider information, while Farley and Quinn must keep the kids out of danger. However, each case is never solved by one group alone, and they are all usually forced by circumstance to work together, each drawing on their own particular strengths.

Richie's father is a telecommunications engineer who often works abroad and is mostly absent. He does drop in town occasionally, however.^[2] He is well connected in high level Washington political circles, something that Richie's mother alludes to and uses. Richie's mother and father are divorced, but their relationship is portrayed as still positive and friendly.^[2] She also keeps his name and refers to herself as Mrs. Adler. She says that she thinks his job-required traveling is what led to their divorce.^[1]

Richie's mother is somewhat strict and does not allow his genius level abilities to influence her duty as a mother. She makes him clean up the messes he and his buddies cause with their various hijinks, and she does not let him shirk his schoolwork, chores, or other responsibilities. (Nor does his teacher: in "Red Star Rising", their being applauded by the CIA does not get three of them off the hook for not completing a homework assignment - Alice is spared, since she actually did it!) Richie's little sister Cheryl provides comic relief in most episodes, but she does have a few important scenes of insight or family drama.

There is a slight love triangle between Richie, Ham, and Alice. Alice is a bit of a hacker herself,^[9] but she receives little respect or extra attention from Richie, which bothers her greatly. Ham really likes Alice,^[10] but she (for the most part) does not return his attentions.

On the whole, the teens do not get a whole lot of character development. Most of the episode time is taken dealing with the complicated plots, criminals exposition, Lew and Quinn, chase scenes, and hacking scenes (which are almost totally focused on Richie). However Jeremy is shown to be rather clever in his own right^[11] and the kids are involved in many activities, including go-kart racing, sports, ballet, and music. There is also a bit of a conflict between Richie and the others, as he can sometimes be domineering^[12] or arrogant,^[13] although they typically reconcile.

Music

While electronic musical pieces make up the background music for the show, a number of riffs are based on classical music. The main theme is an arrangement of the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 in C Major, and excerpts play throughout the series. Rossini's overture from the Barber of Seville is also used repeatedly^[14] Tschaikovsky's 'Love Theme' from Romeo and Juliet is used in Episode 17 to cue Richie's romantic involvements.

Technology featured in the show

There are lots of old machines from the past (especially the 1970s and 1980s) that act as props in the show. Several of the manufacturers are listed in the credits. Some machines included:

• The Gavilan portable computer
• A Heath Hero robot kit
• Apple II
• Apple IIe
• IMSAI PCS 80/30^[15]
• A code machine that is described as an Enigma Machine^[16]
• A Dynalogic Hyperion^[17][18]
• TRS-80 Model 100^[17]

Several pioneer companies of the personal computer industry were listed in the credits as providing technical support. Some are still around (as of 2010) but many have disappeared. They included:

• Apple Computer
• Autodesk
• Bytec Comterm, Inc.
• Computer Components Unlimited
• Heath/Zenith Data Systems
• Heath Co.
• Hitachi America, Inc.
• Microbot, Inc.
• Magnavox Co.
• Photonics Technology
• RadioShack
• Action Computer Enterprises, Inc
• Televideo Systems, Inc.
• ATARI home computer division
• GRiD Systems (probably GRiD Systems Corporation)
• Proton Corporation
• Tycom Corporation
• Office Systems by Xerox Corp
• Xerox Electro-Optical Company and Interlisp-D
• Mattel Electronics
• CTT Data Systems
• Dale Wilson / Code Right
• Paul Lutus / Insoft Inc. (Lutus is also credited with GraForth graphics)
• Commodore Business Machines

Activities included things like war dialing (one kid even mentions WarGames), editing hexadecimal machine code in a hex editor, brute force password cracking,^[19] denial-of-service attacks, emulation ^{[disambiguation needed ]}, facial recognition, speech recognition and speech synthesis, image enhancement, social engineering, and even computer dating. In almost every episode, the kids (sometimes at the instigation of Farley) perform what would be considered serious criminal acts within a few years of the show airing (if not during its airing); the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was first passed in 1984. They also sometimes doubt the ethics of their activity.^[20]

Another notable feature that dates the show is that characters frequently hit the 'off button' to instantly turn off their machines, often to hide what they were doing. Modern computers typically do not have a power-interrupting on/off switch but instead the 'power' button hooks into operating system software, which asks the user if they want to quit or not, or possibly puts the machine in sleep mode.

RALF

RALF itself (or 'himself' as Richie's friends call it) is a conglomeration of different machines and special effects work.

In Episode 11, Richie complains that a potential RALF-substitute does not have a disk drive, 42k, interrupts, or error correction, implying RALF has at least these (In episode 17 Richie says that RALF "is a 64k home-brew computer"). A collection of 5.25 inch floppy disks can be seen in several episodes. RALF also has a modem.

RALFs speech synthesis capabilities are displayed in several episodes. The pilot also shows a digital camera and a bitmapped color graphics display.

Episodes

Award nominations

Notes

External links

• Whiz Kids at the Internet Movie Database
• Whiz Kids at TV.com
• Whiz Kids at the Open Directory Project
• Whiz Kids at Retrojunk
• Whiz Kids fansite
• Whiz Kids fanclub