Super Force is an American action-adventure TV series which aired from October 1990 to May 1992. The series is about a former astronaut turned cop who uses a highly advanced powered exoskeleton and motorcycle to fight crime in the city of Metroplex during the then future year of 2020. Among the features of the black battle suit were enhanced strength and armament and a force field that protected the wearer from virtually all known weapons, whereas the motorcycle had an array of James Bond-type gadgets and weapons. Syndicated by Viacom, Super Force was designed to be a companion series to Superboy, and the second series in a proposed two-hour block of action programming that also included Lightning Force. Unusual for a series that only ran 30 minutes per episode, Super Force debuted with a two-hour TV pilot film, which was later split into four episodes for syndication purposes.

Plot summary

Astronaut Zachary Stone (Ken Olandt) returns from his acclaimed deep-space mission to Mars to find that his father is dead and that his police detective brother Frank (Marshall R. Teague) is missing, presumed murdered and falsely accused of being a crooked cop due to fabricated computer evidence. Frustrated at the seeming lack of concern or progress by the authorities, Zach takes it upon himself to find those responsible and bring them to justice, joining the Metroplex Police Department as a detective under precinct captain Carla Frost (Lisa Niemi). After his first failed attempt almost leads to his death in Metroplex's aptly-named "Crime Zone", Zach meets F.X. Spinner (Larry B. Scott), a research scientist at Hungerford Industries who has developed a prototype suit of space armor that was never put into production due to lack of government funding. After the murder of Hungerford Industries founder E.B. Hungerford (Patrick Macnee), a close friend of the Stone family, Zach convinces F.X. to modify the suit for urban warfare purposes. Combining the armor with an experimental heavily-armed, jet-propelled motorcycle, the two form the backbone of the vigilantism crime-fighting team called "Super Force", ably assisted by the Hungerford Computer (voiced by Macnee), an artificial intelligence supercomputer created from a blend of Hungerford's personal records, psychological profile and company files to convince the world that the brilliant and charming but somewhat reclusive British billionaire scientist is still alive so that his company would not fall into the wrong hands. During Season Two, Zach added enhanced strength, intelligence, and senses, as well as a limited form of extrasensory perception to his crime-fighting repertoire, the result of a neural link with the computerized Hungerford and his near-death experience in the final episode of Season One. Also joining the Super Force team that season was Esper Division police officer Zander Tyler (Musetta Vander). The RoboCop-inspired Super Force suit, motorcycle, and nightstick were designed and built by Robert Short, the special effects expert who also created the red superhero suit worn by John Wesley Shipp in the 1990 live-action TV series The Flash. Satori, a recurring villain in Season One, was played by G. Gordon Liddy, the man famous for planning the Watergate scandal break-in. Other guest stars with interesting pasts included LSD guru Timothy Leary and former adult film stars Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn.

Characters

Heroes

Villains

Episodes

Season One

"It is the year 2020, and the world has changed. In 2020, times are tough. This man's tougher."

Season Two

"Out of the fire of Earth attraction. Beyond the limits of the world where man and machine and spirit unite. Born by the power of lightning into the twenty-first century. It is the end of the beginning. It is the time of Super Force."

Home media

Visual Entertainment Inc. released "Super Force – The Complete Series" on DVD in Region 1 on October 12, 2017.

Critical response

The series holds a rating of 6.9 out of 357 reviews on IMDb. On Realgood.com the show holds a score of 59%.