n exasperated woman is stuck by the side of the road after her car breaks down. The woman, Mel (Price-Francis), just can't seem to get any help. In the distance, she sees someone coming toward her on foot, but something's wrong with the person. It's a man (Paul) who's walking as if he's drunk—and he's wearing only his underwear. She jumps in her broken-down car and locks the door.
When the strange man gets closer, she knows something is definitely wrong with him. But then he somehow fixes her car and walks away. Against her best judgment, she offers him a lift to Chicago. She just broke up with her boyfriend and now she's on her way to the WatchFire, a cop bar she inherited from her grandmother.
As she talks about her recent breakup, the odd man looks at her as if he's never seen a person before. Suddenly, she notices he looks a whole lot like the guy in the Cole Briefs billboard ad, right down to the briefs. She knows he needs her help, but everything about him is just too weird. When he eats a candy bar, wrapper and all, and begins to say things that make no sense, she says goodbye.
Mel finally gets to the WatchFire, only to find herself at odds with the English barmaid (Wilson), whom Mel inherited along with the bar. Suddenly, her strange hitchhiker walks through the door and back into her life. The man, who is now calling himself Cole, is looking for someone named Rhee (Joanie "Chyna" Laurer).
What Mel is about to find out will take her to a new level of strange as she discovers Cole isn't just another hard-luck case—he's an alien on the trail of the hedonistic killer who murdered Cole's wife and child. Cole is the ultimate stranger in a strange land, and he needs her help before Rhee has
a chance to kill again. Worse yet, an alien scientist named Zin (Wyn Davies) has plans to bring others to Earth like Rhee, and Cole is the only one who can stop him ... with a little help from Mel.
Welcome stranger in a strange land
Highlander's Adrian Paul takes up the mantle of justice once again, this time in Tracker, a promising new syndicated series that begins as a cross between the films Starman and The Hidden. His character, Cole, has morphed into human form based on an image from a Cole Briefs billboard, and he has to track down 218 escaped alien criminals. Unfortunately, he also has to learn how to work his body and figure out life's other little complications, like how to eat. At least he doesn't have to decide between boxers and briefs.
The pilot episode does a good job of introducing us to Mel and giving us a hint of what Cole is about. The main bad guy in this episode is Rhee, played by wrestler Chyna, who looks and acts a whole lot like Chyna. We don't meet the real bad guy until the end of the episode, when Wyn Davies shows up to cause some trouble. His evil scientist has the potential to be a good villain.
The producers have deemed Tracker a romantic action comedy, and while there's enough action and possible romance, there isn't a whole lot of comedy on display. The tightly wound Mel and the fish-out-of-water Cole seem like a good odd romantic couple, and there are some nice moments between
the two. However, the pilot has only a couple of humorous spots, and it doesn't seem any funnier than any other action series.
While the humor may build as the series progresses, there are still enough other elements to recommend Tracker. Fan favorites Adrian Paul and Forever Knight's Geraint Wyn Davies going up against each other could be great fun to watch if it's done right. Both actors get a chance to play very different characters than those for which they are known. Also, the pilot script is fairly well written, and the direction in which the alien mythology appears to be going has potential.
The production and special effects are a mixed bag. There is a fairly cool "hyperspeed" effect that allows Cole to move quickly while everything else stops, but the other special effects are weak, with glowing light being the primary indicator that something alien has happened. That may well be a sign that the series is more than a little bit underfinanced in the production department, a ailment from which syndicated series often suffer.
