Original Airdate: 10/3/00

Writers: James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee
Director: David Nutter

Guest Cast:
Stanley Kamel as Edgar Sonrisa
Kristin Bauer as Lydia Meyerson
Paul Popowich as Darrent McKennon
Douglas O’Keeffe as Bruno Anselmo

Semi-Regular Cast:
Geneva Locke as Young Max
Chris Lazar as Young Zack
Fulvio Cecere as Sandoval

Synopsis:

Max, a genetically-enhanced human prototype, is hunted by her former military handlers through the edgy, underground street life of 21^st Century post-apocalyptic America.

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In the year 2009, a group of genetically-engineered children escape from a military installation in the Wyoming Mountains. Despite the best efforts of Colonel Lydecker and his men, Max and a few others make it past the perimeter guards to freedom. Ten years later, the United States finds itself mired in a depression brought about by The Pulse, an electromagnetic shockwave that wrecked havoc on American economy by obliterating every computer system in operation. Fugitive Max now works as a seemingly ordinary bike messenger in Seattle.Unbeknownst to her friends and co-workers, max searches for her Manticore “siblings” and steals from Seattle’s richest citizens to finance her investigation. It is during a seemingly routine burglary in a posh high-rise that she stumbles upon Logan Cale, a.k.a. “Eyes Only”, an underground cyber journalist who is the only voice of truth left in a corrupt city. Logan is using his fortified apartment to keep a source, Lauren, and her daughter, Sophy, out of harm’s way. A former employee of criminal entrepreneur Edgar Sonrisa, Lauren can put him away for life with her devastating testimony.Although Max has no intention of compromising Logan’s operation, she also has no interest in joining his “Eyes Only” crusade to save the world. Logan tries to change her mind by offering information - he knows a lot about Manticore, the escape and her unique genetic make-up. But Max, too busy looking out for herself, refuses to risk her neck for people she doesn’t even know. So Max goes about her business, trying to ignore a nagging conscience, but can’t for long. Sophy is soon kidnapped by Sonrisa’s men, and Logan is shot.

Max infiltrates Sonrisa’s mansion during a party and convinces him that she can deliver Lauren into his eager clutches. Instead, she turns the tables on the crime boss and his thug Bruno, who gun each other down. Finally, in order to rescue Sophy from Sonrisa’s remaining goons, she has to sneak past these killers as well as Lydecker’s men, who have gotten wind of her location. Outsmarting the gun-toting villains, Max pits Lydecker’s operatives against Sonrisa’s, slips Sophy out the front door and returns her safe and sound to Lauren.

Transcripts:
Check out the original writers draft of the pilot, and the transcripts from the pilot episode and compare their differences!

Dark Angel Pilot (Writer’s Draft)

Dark Angel Pilot (Episode Transcript)

Notes:

The plot of the ‘Dark Angel’ pilot is remarkably similar to a James Patterson novel, ‘When the Wind Blows’, which includes a genetically enhanced young girl named Max, who is on the run from a top-secret facility, but still searching for the others who were there with her.

Dark Angel holds the record for having the most expensive pilot produced in television history. The budget was somewhere in the low millions.

Information Credits:
tvtome.com

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