The BEST episodes of Max Headroom
Every episode of Max Headroom ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Max Headroom!
It is the day after tomorrow, and television networks rule the planet. The TV sets themselves do not turn off, and the programming is designed to keep citizens in a state of complacency. Society is in a shambles, with poverty rampant. In the shadows of the Networks, untold millions live on the streets with only a TV to their names, and many can only make their living by selling dead bodies on the organ transplant black market. The one ray of hope is Edison Carter, investigative reporter for Network 23. Edison covers the stories that matter, and he is the voice of the people who have no other. Edison, of course, winds up on the wrong side of some very bad men who try their best to have him killed. An attempt to find out what he knows by reading his brain with a computer inadvertently creates a stuttering, manic computer simulation of Edison that calls itself Max.
#1 - Grossberg's Return
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/2/1987
Rival Network 66 attempts to defeat Network 23 in a ratings-based election by introducing a ""watch while you sleep"" device into its programming to cause people to leave their TV sets on all night.
#2 - Baby Grobags
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 5/12/1988
Edison Carter is on the trail of some rather dark people who are stealing babies from the baby pods where they are grown while Bryce carefully considers working for Grossberg and channel 66.
#3 - Lessons
Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 5/5/1988
Network 23 censors go a step too far when they try to shut own a secret school in the fringes, because it's using pirated Network 23 instructional programming.
#4 - The Blanks
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 5/5/1987
As the ""blanks"" -- undesirables with no computer records -- are rounded up and arrested, the networks face permanent cancellation by hackers who threaten to crash the city's entire computer system if their companions aren't released.
#5 - Deities
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/25/1987
The Vu-Age Church is running a phony resurrection service, claiming to be able to store cortical scans of its members and keep them on-line for the day when cloning is perfected and their personalities can be placed in new bodies. Edison is reluctant to pursue the story because Vu- Age's leading televangelist, Vanna Smith, is an old flame.
#6 - Whackets
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/16/1987
A video narcotic is causing people to leave their TVs tuned to Big Time Television twenty-four hours a day.
#7 - Neurostim
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/28/1988
Zik-Zak introduces Neurostim, a device to directly stimulate the brain and bypass the need to use television for advertising.
#8 - Academy
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/18/1987
Network 23 becomes the victim of signal zipping - illegal interruption of their satellite feed. When Bryce tracks the zipping to Big Time Television, Reg is arrested and sent for trial by gameshow on ""You the Jury"". Meanwhile Edison and Theora trace the real zippers to the Academy of Computer Sciences, and Bryce's old schoolfriends.
#9 - Security Systems
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/21/1987
Carter is accused of credit fraud and becomes a fugitive after delving into the hostile takeover of Security Systems, the world's most powerful corporation.
#10 - Body Banks
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/14/1987
Breughel and Mahler are stealing live bodies from the Fringes and selling them to Nightingales Body Bank. The wealthy Plantaganet wants pituitarys from the bodies for an operation which could save his aging mother. While Carter races to save a Fringer girl's life, Cheviot is more concerned that Max is offending Network 23's biggest sponsor, ZikZak, who have decided to buy him.
#11 - War
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 4/28/1987
In the middle of a global ratings sweep programmer packager Frank Braddock tries to sell Network 23 a package covering the activities of a terrorist group, the White Brigade. Edison and Murray become suspicious when Breakthru TV, who have bought the package, start broadcasting terrorist bombings as soon as they occur.
#12 - Dream Thieves
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/9/1987
Some shady entrepreneurs are stealing people's dreams and selling them to the highest bidders. Edison goes undercover to expose their lethal business.
#13 - Blipverts
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 3/31/1987
In the near future, when TVs can't be shut off and ratings are all that matter, investigative reporter Edison Carter and his computer-generated alter ego Max Headroom battle to keep the "blank" generation informed. In the opener, Carter stumbles across his own network's cover-up of a sometimes deadly new form of TV advertising called "blipverts".
#14 - Rakers
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 4/7/1987
Theora goes AWOL when she learns her estranged brother is involved in the brutal and dangerous ""sport"" of raking, which the promoters are trying to have legalized and televised.