Les petits génies

Hello,

I've been following the discussion with interest - Whiz Kids was my favourite show on British TV when I was growing up. This and Tron left a big impression!

Just a quick note: the music isn't Rossini, it's adapted from Mozart's 'Elvira Madigan' (Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major). It's an amalgam of highlights from Part I of the concerto.

My favourite theme of all time :)

I do love Whiz Kids. I wish they'd release the DVD already!

• Dave

The Whiz Kids TV Show was, primary the "kicker" of my computer interests. Just a few months before the first showing in October 1983, my dad and I went to Philippines, for my 1st visit. I met my cousin, Carl, whom built his first computer out of Zilog Z80 computer chips, and he gave me computer chips to bring back to USA, in August 1983, a week before the assassination of Benigno Aguino (August 21, 1983). The computer chips were from Zilog Corporation in Philippines. I place those chips onto a shelf because I was busy with the Commodore VIC-20 computer.

Shortly after the initial showing of Whiz Kids in October 1983, I began to interface my Zilog computer chips with the VIC-20. I wanted to be just like Richie; in fact, my room was almost set up the same way Richie had his in the TV show. I was only 13 years old at that time.

Though I watched Wargames in the Cinema, I could not miss an episode of Whiz Kids when it was on TV. My mother went to church on Wednesday night as I had to stay home to watch Whiz Kids.

Throughout my Junior High and High School time, I was best known as a "computer geek." In 1983, I was a power user of the TRS-80 Model III computer system. By 1985, I was a power user of the Apple Macintosh. In 1986, I was a power user of Commodore Amiga 500 and Commodore 64 computers. I didn't go to my High School Prom because of my Geek Hobby.

At my graduations, I remember having my friends over to watch my recorded shows of the Whiz Kids on Betamax. I remembered that I had every episode of Whiz Kids, recorded, but I don't know what happened to that tape, as of 1992.

I'm still waiting for CBS to release the Whiz Kids onto VHS or DVD... Now that I'm in the Philippines, I'm not sure if I can be able to receive any videos from CBS. I had been asking at the video stores, but there has been nothing on Whiz Kids even been shown in the Philippines.

I probably haven't seen this show since 1983, but I still remember it. I don't recall when I started watching. I think possibly some summer friends whose father owned a small electronics equipment chain recommended it. I seem to recall also that Matthew Laborteaux was on the cover of an early children's computer magazine called K-Power I initially learned about, I think, from scholastic book fairs at my elementary school. I recall the magazine had a BASIC program you could type into your computer to have it simulate the exchange between Richie and his talking computer during the opening of the show. K-Power later got absorbed into Family Computer just as a small section, and then Family Computing changed its name to something else and dropped the K-Power section at which I stopped subscribing.

Incredibly, I can still replay the instrumental theme song to this show in my head. But apart from these bits of trivia, I don't remember the show itself too well!

Another reviewer mentions having trouble following the show because it kept being preempted and moved around.

Considering the flack this got for having teenage hackers doing whatever they wanted, I suspect the network either intentionally sank it or at least didn't seem to mind doing things that would harm any new show.

It's basically Wargames for TV. It leans more into fantasy at times, but much of the hacking shown was reasonably accurate.

The theme music for the series was Gioachino Rossini's La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie)Overture.

I remember scenes of a floppy disc drive spinning up, the head loading and then doing a seek - all very tech and enjoyable.

I recall plot holes even though I was just post teenage at the time. Blowing up (zooming in) on a photograph to extract detail below pixel size gains was one.

It deserved repeating a few times but I felt that it was ignored as the powers that control TV programming seldom (at that time) understood that tech series had a following, as we have seen with the Star trek and Stargate spinoffs.