Max Headroom Episode Rating Graph

Rival Network 66 attempts to defeat Network 23 in a ratings-based election by introducing a ""watch while you sleep"" device into its programming to cause people to leave their TV sets on all night.

In the near future, when TVs can't be shut off and ratings are all that matter, investigative reporter Edison Carter and his computer-generated alter ego Max Headroom battle to keep the "blank" generation informed. In the opener, Carter stumbles across his own network's cover-up of a sometimes deadly new form of TV advertising called "blipverts".

Theora goes AWOL when she learns her estranged brother is involved in the brutal and dangerous ""sport"" of raking, which the promoters are trying to have legalized and televised.

Some shady entrepreneurs are stealing people's dreams and selling them to the highest bidders. Edison goes undercover to expose their lethal business.

Network 23 censors go a step too far when they try to shut own a secret school in the fringes, because it's using pirated Network 23 instructional programming.

Zik-Zak introduces Neurostim, a device to directly stimulate the brain and bypass the need to use television for advertising.

As the ""blanks"" -- undesirables with no computer records -- are rounded up and arrested, the networks face permanent cancellation by hackers who threaten to crash the city's entire computer system if their companions aren't released.

The Vu-Age Church is running a phony resurrection service, claiming to be able to store cortical scans of its members and keep them on-line for the day when cloning is perfected and their personalities can be placed in new bodies. Edison is reluctant to pursue the story because Vu- Age's leading televangelist, Vanna Smith, is an old flame.