The Bounty Hunters

Revision as of 19:09, 8 October 2014 by Cyc (talk | contribs) (→‎Bibliography: tweak)

Running for five seasons, The Bounty Hunters was a popular weekly holovid series lightly based on the myths surrounding the infamous Bounty Hunter. [1]

Overview

Seen every week, the lead-in narration of the show's opening titles broadly set up its backstory:

In 2972, a crack commando team was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Inner Sphere underground. Pursued by the government they once worked for, they survived as soldiers of fortune, ultimately passing the torch to a new generation of heroes. Today, if you have a problem, and you can find them, maybe you can hire the Bounty Hunters.[1]

Though tapping into his wide name recognition, rather than base their series around the limited information known or rumored about the actual Bounty Hunter and his companions, the producers instead developed their own mythos almost completely unrelated to the real person. The show revolved around the grandchildren of the original "Bounty Hunters", a military unit who had been unjustly accused of crime before escaping and functioning as a benevolent mercenary unit, devoted to the ideals of their fathers and grandfathers. Week after week the team traveled across the Inner Sphere battling injustice, defeating criminals and improving the lot of those who hired them, always just staying a step ahead of the Special Forces operatives pursuing them, all neatly wrapped up in ninety minutes. [1]

Debuting in August 3047 in the Free Worlds League before spreading like wildfire to the rest of the Inner Sphere within a year, while other holovid shows of the era captured greater market shares, "The Bounty Hunters" was supreme among key younger male demographics. The show and its accompanying merchandising made its stars and producers rich beyond most people's dreams, at least until 3050 when the entire Inner Sphere was turned upside down by the Clan Invasion.[1]

Much like the Solaris Games, the show's fortunes suffered in 3050 with the news media beaming footage of the war into homes in the Draconis Combine and Federated Commonwealth. Though maintaining its massive ratings in the untouched Free Worlds League, the producers made the fateful decision to reboot and reimagine the show to tap in general hatred of the invaders. In its fourth season, the Bounty Hunter crew were captured by a somewhat shady retired general, who pardoned them in exchange for working for the very unnamed government that had been chasing them. Little more than blatant propaganda to tap into the general hatred of the Clans, the Bounty Hunters now faced a nameless "enemy", with plotlines that paralleled the course of the Clan War.[1]

Unfortunately the Combine and FedCom audiences were even less interested in fake versions of the real events they were experiencing and ratings in both realms bottomed out completely, while the massive plot change alienated the League and Capellan Confederation audiences. While unceremoniously wound up, the show was indelibly etched into the minds of the men who grew up watching it; even decades later the rolling beat of a snare drum is enough to prompt many to mentally recite the lead-in to the "The Bounty Hunters"s theme song. The popularity of the series was such that many people in the Inner Sphere cannot separate the fiction of the holovid with the reality of the actual Bounty Hunter. [1]

Notes

  • The opening titles, premise and fourth season re-imagining that destroyed the show are all thinly veiled references to the The A-Team.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Interstellar Players, pp. 83-84, "The Bounty Hunter - Mindless Entertainment to Unmitigated Drek"

Bibliography