The character, originally a suave government agent, was retooled as a lone drifter for a new pilot, which aired as the television movie Code of Vengeance, to surprise ratings success in June 1985.

[2] Feeling the format was too similar to Cover Up, a show Larson had created for CBS that began airing in September 1984, NBC declined to pick up All That Glitters as a series.

The new pilot reimagined David Dalton as a flashback-prone Vietnam veteran who drifts across the country, encountering people in trouble, and helping them to find justice with his unique fighting skills.

[3] In this second pilot, Dalton is a "mysterious stranger" who arrives in a small town in Arizona where he meets Nadine Flowers, a young mother (played by Erin Gray), her son A.J.

[9] Other prominent cast members included Charles Haid as "Jim Blanton", Keenan Wynn as "Willis", Randall "Tex" Cobb as "Willard Singleton", and Joe Dorsey as "Chief Milford Carsworth".

[10] In a nod to the show's origins, Keenan Wynn's character is shown watching a Knight Rider episode, with KITT's voice clearly audible, as armed thugs surround his home.

[3] The pilot was eventually aired on June 30, 1985, as the NBC Sunday Night Movie, opposite a new two-hour special episode of Call to Glory starring Craig T.

[11][12] Scheduled to resume filming in Los Angeles in January 1986 after a holiday break,[3] the network instead ended production on Dalton entirely and in early February ordered Universal Television to re-edit these four completed episodes into two feature-length movies.

[20][21] When he discovers that Major Bennett is now aiding the New Patriots, a conservative paramilitary group of Vietnam veterans bent on overthrowing the United States government, he sets off for the Florida Everglades to stop them.

[22] The New Patriots' plan is to commit acts of domestic terrorism while framing an Arab group for the atrocities in the belief that this will allow them to seize control of the government they feel betrayed them in Vietnam.

[23] Deriding the film as "poorly written, badly acted, sloppily directed and choppily edited", he called it "another slap in the face of the men and women who went to Southeast Asia to do a dirty job and came home to even dirtier exploitation".

Against stiff competition from the final installment of ABC's top-rated North and South, Book II miniseries, the movie failed to crack the top 20 in that week's Nielsen ratings.

After just one season on the network, the show was cancelled abruptly after the July 20, 1986 airing of two repeat episodes placed 55th for the week in the Nielsen ratings against 5th-rated Murder, She Wrote on CBS.

[5][32] Dalton is on his way to Houston when he meets a "feisty rancher" named Rhonda Jo (played by Susan Walden) and is forced to deal out his unique brand of justice against cattle rustlers trying to steal her prize bull and do her harm.

[5][30] Other prominent roles included Larry Drake as "Jack Ferguson", Paul Carr as "Elliot", Chris Douridas as "Willy", and a special appearance by country music star Mickey Gilley as himself.

One reviewer noted that star Charles Taylor "has the bod for" an adventure hero[33] while another opined that he thought "Knight Rider or The A-Team or Jonathan of Highway to Heaven took care of these baddies on their series".

[5] The novel Knight Rider: The 24-Carat Assassin, published in September 1984 by Target Books and credited to Glen A. Larson & Roger Hill, was an adaptation of the "Mouth of the Snake"/"All That Glitters" episode.