As plots for a TV show go, the new CBS show Intelligence, whose pilot aired tonight, is not original. Combine a man with a computer, use him in our government’s service to fight the bad guys, and you get lots of cool visual effects and someone who’s screwed up in more ways than one. Chuck was the unwilling subject a few years ago, and before that we had the Lee Majors as the Six Million Dollar Man (although that was in part a life-saving thing), and Robocop (more machine than man).
Intelligence, though, has the hunky Josh Holloway and major cool virtual reality scenarios. This show hit several buttons for me – as a fan of political thrillers (Brad Thor, Daniel Silva) and sci-fi, AND Josh Holloway, I really liked the combination. Purists may feel that this was a bit of a retread with a current-day geopolitical edge, but hey, I like a good action/thriller/manputer show.
Holloway plays Gabriel Vaughn, a military veteran and husband of a CIA operative, who disappeared after a terrorist event in Mumbai. The government believes that Amelia became a traitor and worked with the terrorist group that she had been in deep cover with to pull off the event, and died in that event, but Gabriel needs to know the truth. Vaughn works for the US Cyber Command, in their Clockwork program, which USCC head Lillian Strand (Marg Helgenberger) says is this generation’s Manhattan Project. Gabriel has been implanted with a prototype computer chip that “connects him to the information grid – Internet, Wifi, telephone, and satellite,” without any external hardware. He has developed the ability, then, to create virtual renderings of any given event, using the information he has gathered, that he can walk through and view from many different perspectives, including seeing extrapolated information, news reports, and related data. (He can also unlock doors and check out your Facebook account.) He likens it to a dream – part reality, part filling in the gaps – and this lets him get to the heart of issues quickly. Gabriel is determined to find his wife – or learn what’s happened to her – and he’ll use his enhanced abilities to get to the heart of the matter.
He is introduced to his new bodyguard/partner, Riley Neal, a Secret Service agent (Meghan Ory), who has been tasked with protecting not only Gabriel, but the technology he carries around. Initially put off by the amount of information he easily calls up about her (including a sealed juvenile criminal record), she comes around by the end of the episode and you can see a partnership forming.
In this episode, the scientist who created the original chip, Dr. Shenandoah Cassidy (John Billingsley), is kidnapped by Chinese intelligence agents and forced to implant a second chip that he created after retiring (not by choice) from USCC into a female Chinese agent. When that agent doesn’t wake up with enhanced abilities, the Chinese take Gabriel and Riley prisoner, and tell Dr. Cassidy that he must remove the original chip from Gabriel and use it on the female agent. Dr. Cassidy, however, helps Gabriel to escape and assists in freeing Riley. They discover, through Gabriel’s abilities and Riley’s insight, that the computer programmer who has worked with them on this project, Amos, has been helping the Chinese all along.
Gabriel isn’t some kind of superman – his new computer skills haven’t enhanced his physical abilities, but he’s still a formidable physical threat. Holloway said that this a role he’s long waited for, having had martial arts and weapons training for years. If you were a fan of Lost (which I was), you probably liked Sawyer – Gabriel has the same smirk and charm.
Is Amelia dead? At the end of the episode, Lillian Strand trades the bad Chinese operative for information – about Amelia – and is told that the Pakistanis have film of her getting on an airplane three months ago. Did she turn traitor? Gabriel needs to know – and we get the feeling that he’ll stop at nothing to get answers and find his wife.
CBS offers several short videos for Intelligence (sorry, they’re not embeddable) – you can see them here. So far, this is the extent of the extras that CBS has created for this show. Intelligence settles into its regular time slot next week, Mondays at 9 pm central/10 eastern.
Oh, and the Chinese agent with the enhanced chip in her head – she wakes up.
