Interesting. Student's perspective is limited by his/her age and phase of development, apparently wanting expressly _not_ to be either "Batters" / Jennifer Lopez or "Bleats" / Val Kilmer at this stage of his/her unfolding life. That's fine and fitting, but skews his/her angle-of-view accordingly.

"Dark Angel" of course has become a ratings success, and "Batters" has garnered a number of awards. Student errs in saying "The Pretender" was not successful; it had a good long run before abruptly being cancelled.

Tracing influences in "Dark Angel" to both "Blade Runner" and "Brazil" is fairly astute but the remarks concerning those influences are not insightful; more like name-dropping than analysis.

Saying that the motif of "running" soon becomes tedious denies the long-running success of the original "The Fugitive" series and the recurring reprise of a plot that "A Tale of Two Cities" can be said to "own". Likewise "The X-Files" could be described as a very successful "running" show, told from the viewpoint of the chaser (seeking elusive answers).

Student should ponder the success of "Billy Jack", a very amateurish and low-budget film that nonetheless caught the passionate interest of its intended audience, deliberately. Tom Laughlin later taught a class at UCLA on how to craft a film sure to succeed at the box office, or at least sure to realize a significant profit.

That said, I find I'm a little "creeped out" by "Dark Angel", knowing there are some who say James Cameron is aligned with interests of the NWO crew, and finding possible propaganda elements woven throughout the show. One explanation is simply that the show's creators took a close look at what was capturing the imagination of teens and young adults on Internet, and made sure those elements were included - but another is that the elements are included for "conditioning" to accept certain schemed-for societal changes.

(Those are my thoughts; your own may differ; happy to hear about them if so.)