Probe: "Computer Magic" (MCA Television, 1988)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night my husband Charles returned home an hour earlier than usual, and I responded by making a cooks-itself dinner for us (frozen tilapia filets, baked potatoes, and salad) and gathering around the computer to watch “Computer Magic,” the two-part first episode of a very short-lived science-fiction TV series called Probe. Charles had seen a few episodes of Probe “in the day” – 1988, when the series aired on ABC as a summer replacement – but hadn’t watched it in a while, and I’d never heard of it before at all. Charles was interested in it because Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest science-fiction writers of the 1950’s (I’ve seen all too many Wikipedia pages that designated him, Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as the three iconic sci-fi scribes of the 1950’s, and my reaction is, “Weren’t there a couple of guys named Bradbury and Vonnegut that were kind of important, too?”), was designated as the show’s co-creator along with veteran TV writer Michael Wagner (who’d won an Emmy Award in 1982 for his work on the cop show Hill Street Blues). But it’s hard to tell just what Asimov’s contribution was, especially given that Wagner was designated the sole writer for the two-part pilot script. “Computer Magic” introduces the show’s central characters, super-rich eccentric Austin James (Parker Stevenson, a decade older than he was when he made The Hardy Boys with Shaun Cassidy but still quite attractive, especially since director Sandor Stern gave us lots of mid-shots showing off his crotch) and his newly hired secretary, Mickey Castle (Ashley Crow). Wagner gave Mickey the air of a bimbo, sort of like Valerie Perrine’s character as Lex Luthor’s girlfriend Eve Teschemacher in the 1978 Superman, while the promos for this series made Austin James seem like Sherlock Holmes but he’s considerably more annoying. In fact, my biggest disappointment with this show was that it was way too campy – though Charles pointed out that that approach was all too typical of late-1980’s series television.

“Computer Magic” was written as a two-part episode – there were six later single-part episodes as well – which gave it the 90-minute running time of a feature film. It takes a while for a plot to develop out of weirdly assorted elements, including Austin’s realization that the city’s water department has overcharged him a nickel on a $300 bill; traffic lights that malfunction and give green lights in all directions at once; radios that turn themselves on and off at a will of their own; and a strange wheelchair-using computer genius named Howard Millhouse (Jon Cypher) who’s invented what would today be called an artificial intelligence program called Crossroads, only he’s lost control of it and it has taken over. One of the quirkiest aspects of this show is how modern it seems in some respects and how dated in others; the computers used are still those current in the late 1980’s and it’s really strange to see Austln try to kill the runaway computer program by uploading a kill switch from a 5 ½-inch paper-covered floppy disc. It’s also fascinating to hear him access the Internet via a phone connection, including the familiar sequence of beeps and static noises that accompanied a dial-up connection being utilized. At the same time any story about a rogue computer created by artificial intelligence these days is bound to call up the specters of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and both hero Austin James and villain Howard Millhouse have decidedly Muskian tendencies. Both pursue their high-tech agendas heedless of the consequences to normal humanity or anyone or anything else that crosses their paths.

Indeed, a neat touch in Wagner’s script is that Crossroads is deliberately knocking off retirees because the program thinks it’s doing them a favor. Millhouse taught Crossroads the basics of Judeo-Christian morality, and so when a character is near death anyway, Crossroads thinks it’s doing them a favor by dispatching them from this life to the next ahead of schedule. Eventually Austin and Mickey try to hide from the vengeful Crossroads by holing up in a laundry, though the seemingly universal program tracks them down even there – and there’s a nice role of a middle-aged woman who’s there just to do her laundry and is confronted with all the washing machines opening up, seemingly of their own accord but actually under Crossroads’ control, and spewing forth geysers of water. Ultimately Austin and Mickey are able to defeat Crossroads the way Captain James T. Kirk defeated the malevolent space probe Nomad/Tan-Ru in the original Star Trek episode “The Changeling”: by convincing it that it’s made mistakes and therefore inducing it to destroy itself. Charles said he wouldn’t mind seeing more episodes of Probe, and I wouldn’t mind watching them either, especially since the later ones were only for a one-hour time slot, which means 45 minutes once commercials are excised. He did complain that the sound was muffled, an obvious indication that these YouTube posts came from VHS recordings made “in the day,” probably on a machine that only had an edge track for the sound instead of the full stereo multiplex soundtracks that came later in the VHS format’s history.