Delving Into the New World of the CBS Drama Intelligence

[Editor’s Note: This is a report from Comic Con, way back in July 2013, that we’ve held until now for relevance. Enjoy!]

On January 7, the new CBS drama Intelligence – that stars Lost alum Josh Holloway as Gabriel Black, Once Upon a Time alum Meghan Ory as Secret Service agent Riley O’Neil and CSI maven Marg Helgenberger as Lillian Strand – will air its debut episode at 9/8c.

The series centers on intelligence operative Gabriel Black, who is the first of his kind, a high-tech spy with a microchip implanted in his brain. Thanks to that microchip, he has access to all levels of technology and almost super-human abilities. Think of Black as a new version of The Six Million Dollar Man combined with a smattering of Chuck and Jake 2.0 as well as a little bit of Mission Impossible and Jason Bourne. That is one hell of a lethal combination when you really think about it, but because of these unbelievable skills Black tends to take risks and, of course, break protocol all in the name of protecting national security. This leads Black’s superior – Lillian Strand – to assign him a Secret Service Agent – Riley O’Neil – to make sure he doesn’t get out of line or – worse yet – end up in enemy hands.

Back in July, Josh, Meghan and Marg – along with series executive producers Michael Seitzman and Tripp Vinson, paid a visit to Comic Con 2013 for the exclusive world premiere of the pilot episode of Intelligence as well as a moderated panel run by TV Guide writer William Keck.

When the obvious question of similarities between Gabriel Black and Col. Steve Austin (from The Six Million Dollar Man) came up, EP Michael Seitzman shared that they “talk about it all the time”, but the main goal for the executive producers wanted to “make a how that’s as much human as technology”. And even more than have super strength in this day and age is information: Michael stated that “information is the bionic strength of today”.

Josh then talked about playing a character so different than Sawyer, the character he played on the juggernaut ABC series Lost, is that he “grew up wanting to play a spy” and now he gets to do just that; but he honestly admitted that he is “computer illiterate”.

The EP’s also shared that some of what viewers will see during the pilot season of Intelligence is CGI but some of what they see will actually be real technology that is current available.

Marg shared that she was happy to “step out” of her CSI character to play Lillian Strand in this new drama and is “looking forward to a new challenge” working for “the federal government and (being the one) in charge”.

The EP’s would not reveal any spoilers, but based on the events in the pilot, Gabriel Black was [SPOILER ALERT!!] married to a fellow spy named Amelia Hayes who seemingly was actually working for an enemy country and presumed to die in a violate shoot-out. Besides the operative work that Gabriel performs on a regular basis, he is also trying to find out whether his turn-coat wife is alive or not and what drove her to become a turn-coat in the first place. But, of course, there will be the question of whether there will be any romance between Gabriel and Agent O’Neil; but the panelists were a bit mum on the subject; however, Josh shared that “it’s all business between Gabriel and Riley”.

We will have to wait and see about that possible romantic entanglement and just how well the world of Intelligence will go over with viewers.

Intelligence will move to its regular night and timeslot on CBS on Monday, January 13 at 10 PM.