In a bleak, dystopian future where a downtrodden underclass is ruled by warring television networks and their advertisers, one tough investigative reporter, Edison Carter, strives to make a difference. He is one of the best-known on-air personalities, and "satellites globally" for what has long been the top-rated among thousands of television channels, Network 23. We're brought "20 Minutes into the Future" with a fast zoom to their towering building.
Like all television reporters, he works solo with a minicam linked back to the network via his base "controller." While in the field on a hot lead, the network executives inexplicably can the story. His controller, Gorrister, commits the error of leaving him cut off and vulnerable in the field, and Carter punches him out on his battered return. Carter then demands a new controller, "the best," and "one he can trust," and gets "the best," the beautiful and skilled Theora Jones, hired away from World 1.
When he tries to continue investigating the story, Carter is blocked at a high level. With Theora's skilled system cracking skills, he eventually learns that the Network 23 executives know something about the mysterious event. With Theora's help, he breaks into the R&D lab - on the hidden 13th floor! - of Network 23's clandestine teenaged technical genius Bryce Lynch. There, he discovers a secret "Rebus tape" that shows how a new form of compressed commercial, a "blipvert," designed by Lynch and exclusive to Network 23, causes extremely slothful viewers to explode. Grossberg and most of the Network 23 board, driven by ratings and advertising revenue issues tied to their biggest advertiser, the powerful global corporation Zik-Zak, want the profitable and compelling blipverts to continue, despite the risk.
While Carter is viewing the secret tape, Bryce Lynch sends network security guards to capture him, and he is sent running for his life. In an epic computer command battle between Bryce and Theora, Lynch manages to force up an exit barrier that knocks Carter from his speeding motorcycle. The last thing he sees before unconsciousness is the clearance warning on the exit gate: Max Headroom 2.3m. Theora comes running to the rescue, but Carter, his camera and the motorcycle are gone, swept up by the guards.
When it becomes critical to find out how much Carter learned about the blipvert problem, Network 23 president Grossberg allows Bryce to perform a cerebral scan of the unconscious Carter, transferring his memory into an AI program that theoretically could read out Carter's memories. When the AI clone is started up, all it can remember at first is "Max... Max Headroom."
To keep the secret of the Rebus tape and the blipvert problem, Grossberg decides to have both Carter and his controller - Gorrister - disposed of. Two thugs, Breugal and Mahler, kill Gorrister and take Carter's unconscious body to a "body bank," a wrecking yard for human parts. While searching for Carter, Theora stumbles on Gorrister's delivery to the body bank and is led to Carter, who she buys back and takes to her apartment to recover.
Meanwhile, Grossberg delightedly shows off "Max Headroom" to the network board as the world's first fully programmable presenter. Network 23's ratings soar within minutes of putting Max on their broadcast - not that they have much choice, as Max has escaped into the network's computers and is no longer under anyone's control.
Carter corners Bryce Lynch in his studio and pries the story out of him, meeting Max in the process. Although the Rebus tape is in Grossberg's hands, the viewing of it is in Carter's - and thus Max's - memories. Carter confronts Grossberg at his press conference announcing Carter's death and after showing the Rebus tape to the world, demands an answer - on global satellite television - about the blipvert problem. The final decision to go live with the story comes from Network 23 board member - and now president - Ben Cheviot.
Grossberg is out (but still alive), Lynch is reformed (somewhat), Cheviot takes over Network 23, and Max Headroom is loose in Network 23's computer, ready to c-c-c-cry havoc at every turn.
- Affably Evil: Bryce Lynch has a terminal Lack of Empathy and creates an advertisement that may kill untold numbers of people but he's not actively malicious. He's also quite enamored of Max and his other creations.
- Big Bad: Grossberg is the heart of everything awful going on.
- Blipvert: The basis for the episode and the Trope Namer. Focused data is capable of killing lazy and indolent viewers by causing all their neurons to fire at once.
- Brain Uploading: How Max Headroom is created.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Grossberg takes the cake but most of Channel 23's executives are awful people.
- Crapsack World: Poverty, all powerful megacorporations, and the fact you can sell bodies (which are still warm) of murder victims to organ leggers.
- Did Not Think This Through: Grossberg sees tremendous potential in replacing Edison Carter with Max Headroom as a TV personality. The problem being that, aside from a digital stammer, Max Headroom *IS* Edison Carter.
- Insufferable Genius: Bryce Lynch is this as well as an amoral Mad Scientist. He's also a teenager.
- Line-of-Sight Name: The last thing Carter saw before his injury became his AI clone's name.
- Organ Theft: A legal business which isn't too picky about the bodies delivered to them for harvesting.
- Your Head Asplode: What happens to certain viewers when they see Blipverts.
