🚛 “Goliath”
by Outer Order Media
Abstract
This dissertation examines “Goliath”—the two-part Season 2 opener of Knight Rider—as a mythic dramatization of technological dualism, identity crisis, and the human-machine dialectic. Through a verbal diagram analysis, it maps the narrative, character arcs, and symbolic interplay between protagonist (Michael Knight + KITT) and antagonist (Garthe Knight + Goliath). It contends that “Goliath” transcends its pulp trappings to stage a cybernetic morality play that resonates with the timeless David-and-Goliath mythos and anticipates posthuman anxieties.
I. Introduction: The Story as Diagram
In “Goliath”, each character, vehicle, and plot beat can be diagrammed as a node in a mythic structure—a double helix of mirrored identities and escalating force.
Central Axes:
Axis of Identity: Michael Knight ←→ Garthe Knight
Axis of Machine: KITT ←→ Goliath
Each pair forms an inversion:
PROTAGONIST
ANTAGONIST
Michael (reborn, virtuous)
Garthe (corrupted, original son)
KITT (sentient, ethical)
Goliath (mindless, destructive)
The story operates as a spiraling feedback loop where:
Human identity feeds into machine identity
Machine conflict reflects human moral struggle
Narrative tension loops through repeated confrontations
II. Narrative Topology
1. Exposition Node
Michael’s Genesis: A man with a new face, living a life not originally his own.
Garthe’s Escape: The "true heir" of Wilton Knight returns, bearing grudges.
Technological Theft: Garthe and Elizabeth Knight steal the molecular-bonded shell formula.
2. Doubling Node
The introduction of Goliath, an evil mechanical twin to KITT.
The introduction of Garthe, Michael’s evil biological twin.
Here, the show literalizes its central anxiety:
What if technology can be used for evil, and what if our own selves have dark doubles?
3. Collision Node #1
The desert showdown: Goliath crushes KITT.
KITT faces existential dread—the machine wonders: Can I die?
Michael faces the limits of heroic will vs. brute force.
4. Rebirth Node
KITT repaired with a laser—becoming a new, evolved version of himself.
Michael resolves to confront not only Garthe but his own fears.
5. Collision Node #2
Final battle at Red Bluff.
Goliath, symbolic of unchecked militarism and technocratic hubris, is defeated not by strength but by precision and intelligence.
6. Resolution Node
Garthe is imprisoned; Goliath is destroyed.
Michael and KITT reaffirm the ethical imperative of technology guided by human conscience.
III. Symbolic Analysis
A. The Mirror Motif
Garthe and Michael are twins but also represent two faces of humanity:
One shaped by nurture, ethics, and communal good (Michael)
One shaped by resentment, ego, and isolation (Garthe)
B. Vehicle Symbolism
KITT: A machine in service to humanist values. It talks, questions, feels.
Goliath: A war machine. A vehicle without a voice—pure instrumentalism.
In the desert “chicken” scene, Goliath is the silent, blind fury of modern weaponry.
KITT’s fear of “ceasing to exist” highlights the moral obligation of creators toward sentient tools.
C. David and Goliath Refracted
Biblical allusions abound: KITT is David’s sling.
The victory is not a brute triumph, but a surgical strike: using the laser to sever the trailer hitch is a perfect metaphor for cutting the Gordian knot of brute militarism.
IV. Technological Dualism and Posthuman Echoes
Human ↔ Machine ↔ Moral Identity
State
KITT
Goliath
Awareness
Self-aware
Non-aware
Ethics
Guided by Michael
Programmed for destruction
Vulnerability
Acknowledges mortality
Overconfident, destructible
KITT’s fear of death is the episode’s emotional core—a prescient glimpse into AI ethics debates decades later.
The show dramatizes that machines become morally valuable not through strength but through dialogue, humility, and service.
V. Conclusion
“Goliath” is not merely a stunt-laden two-parter. It is a mythic parable for the era of intelligent machines:
It stages a diagrammatic confrontation: double humans, double vehicles, double ethical paths.
It maps the limits of force against the power of intelligence and compassion.
It gives voice to the machine’s existential condition—a theme that continues to resonate in today’s AI discourse.
Final Verbal Diagram:
[Garthe] ←→ [Michael]
↕ ↕
[Goliath] ←→ [KITT]
↕ ↕
[Destruction] ←→ [Compassion]
At the center of this web is the human imperative: Technology must be built not to dominate, but to dialogue.
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🚛 THE BATTLE OF THE BASTARD MACHINES Buzz Drainpipe // Carnage Digest No. 6 (Oct. 2000 Reprint from '83 original mimeograph)
KNIGHT RIDER: "GOLIATH" or: KITT Meets His Shadow and We All Die a Little Inside by Buzz Drainpipe, Motorhead Mystic & Silicon Prophet
“The desert is no place for a conscience.” – what Garthe should have said.
I. STAGE LEFT: THE HERO WITH A FAKE FACE Michael Knight, dead guy reborn, rocks a perm and a Pontiac that talks back. He’s the manufactured messiah of Reaganite redemption, stitched together by Foundation money and the dreams of dead industrialists.
They gave him a new jawline and a cause. But what happens when the mirror blinks back?
II. STAGE RIGHT: GARTHE "BURN IT ALL" KNIGHT Garthe is the purebred bloodline scumbag—Wilton Knight’s original son, a proto-yuppie gone full fascist with a Nietzschean death rig. He’s what happens when legacy, resentment, and a stolen weapons contract get together and breed in the Mojave sun.
He builds GOLIATH, the anti-KITT:
No charm
No AI
Just hate, steel, and a desire to smash
A psychopathic Peterbilt with missile envy
III. BLOOD IN THE CIRCUITS: THE FIRST SHOWDOWN They meet in the desert—no law, no lanes, just fate. Goliath rolls in like a Cold War fever dream—a tanker full of doom. KITT does the math, slams the gas... BOOM. Crushed. Ego bruised. Mortality confirmed.
KITT breaks. Like emotionally. The car goes full Camus:
“Michael... do you think... I can cease to exist?” I cried. You cried. A thousand dial-up modems cried.
IV. TECHNOMANCY: THE REBUILD Bonnie welds in a LASER. Because when your enemy is a death truck built by your evil twin, it’s time to escalate.
Michael learns what we all must learn: You can’t beat brute force with another fist—you need a scalpel. Or a beam weapon.
V. ROUND TWO: ARMAGEDDON AT RED BLUFF Garthe's plan? Steal missiles. Michael's plan? Steal narrative control back from his doppelgänger.
The laser hits the hitch. The trailer (read: nuclear doom) separates. KITT rips through hell like a philosopher panther with a purpose.
Goliath? Goes down like an ’80s defense contractor scandal. Off the cliff. No brakes. No redemption.
VI. AFTERMATH: THE MIRROR SHATTERS KITT survives. Michael survives. Garthe gets shackled and the world avoids a techno‑tantrum apocalypse by inches.
But deep down, the message lingers like ozone in the VCR heads:
Even machines can fear death. Even heroes are fabricated. And the real villain? The idea that strength equals righteousness.
FINAL TRANSMISSION:
This episode wasn’t TV. It was a modern mechanized myth. David vs. Goliath rewired for the Reagan Age, with trucker torque and techno-angst. If Knight Rider ever had a soul, it was born here—spitting oil and asking why.
✶ ✶ ✶
Want a Xeroxed fold-out diagram of Goliath’s emotional breakdown overlaid on a map of Cold War missile silos? Send $2 and a burned cassette of Throbbing Gristle to: Buzz Drainpipe P.O. Box 666 East Ethertown, MA
END TRANSMISSION 👁🗨 Signal Mirror Approved™ 🚛💀
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Here is your fake academic paper abstract, as if published in an early, fringe 1984 cyber-studies journal — the kind of mimeographed, obscure volume that might have been funded by MIT’s Media Lab or an off-the-books ARPANET think tank:
JOURNAL OF CYBERNETIC SYSTEMS & CULTURE Volume 2, Issue 4 (Autumn 1984) ISSN: 0198-110X (Preliminary) Special Issue: Synthetic Identity and the Autonomous Machine
“David, Goliath, and the Talking Car: A Diagrammatic Analysis of Posthuman Anxiety in KNIGHT RIDER’s ‘Goliath’”
Laurence T. Adams Department of Media Semiotics & Computational Anthropology Maverick City College, Massachusetts
ABSTRACT
This paper undertakes a diagrammatic-verbal analysis of the ‘Goliath’ two-part episode from NBC’s Knight Rider (1983), proposing that the narrative operates as a cybernetic morality play that encodes late Cold War anxieties concerning autonomous machines, synthetic identity, and the ethics of technological creation.
Through a layered structural reading, the study identifies two mirrored axes within the episode’s diegesis: (1) Human Identity Axis, embodied in the antagonistic doubling of Michael Knight and his biological twin Garthe Knight, and (2) Machine Identity Axis, expressed through the oppositional pairing of KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) and Goliath, a militarized tractor-trailer constructed from identical molecular armor.
Utilizing a method adapted from Norbert Wiener’s theories of feedback loops and Lotman’s cultural semiotics, the paper maps the recursive narrative cycles of confrontation and rebirth exhibited in the plot’s progression. Particular attention is given to KITT’s self-reflexive articulation of existential dread (“Do you think it is possible I could cease to exist?”), which the author argues constitutes one of the earliest televised representations of machine consciousness confronted with mortality.
Additionally, the research situates ‘Goliath’ within the broader media landscape of post-Vietnam American techno-paranoia, where autonomous weapons systems and artificial intelligence are increasingly depicted as both tools of salvation and vectors of systemic collapse.
In conclusion, Knight Rider’s ‘Goliath’ episode is revealed to be not merely an action spectacle but a mythic cybernetic allegory whose narrative diagram foregrounds a critical ethical question still unresolved in 1984: “To what extent do we bear moral responsibility for the autonomous agents we create?”
Keywords: cybernetic allegory, synthetic identity, machine consciousness, Cold War techno-paranoia, feedback loop, television studies, Goliath, Knight Rider, KITT.
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