Today I feel inspired to write about one of my favourite subjects: Old Sci-Fi series. You will now think that I will go on about Star Trek TOS, which I of course love endlessly! But no... I want to go all nostalgic about Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Just look at the DVD cover (to the right). It just says it all. This TV show was made 1979 and was running to 1981. I saw and loved this series growing up.
The Plot:
The series is set to start in the year 1987. NASA launches a manned deep space probe "Ranger 3" which is piloted by Captain William "Buck" Rogers (Gil Gerard). By some mishap the probe is blown out of its trajectory, Buck's life support system is frozen and he falls into a cryogenic sleep. While instead of the 5 month orbit around the solar system the probe plunges into deep space and returns to earth 500 years later. The year is now 2491 and Buck is revived from his deep sleep only to discover that shortly after he was launched a nuclear holocaust had wiped out most of humanity. Because of his piloting skills Buck becomes a valuable member of the Earth's Defence Directorate, which is headed by Dr. Elias Huer. Buck also finds himself a part of a fighter squadron headed by Colonel Wilma Deering. Among his other compatriots are Twiki a likable robot who becomes Buck's pal and Dr. Theopolis a mechanical brain who is part of Earth's Computer Council. In the first episode Buck tries to leave the compound on earth where the Directorate is located, only to find that the humans living outside are crude and violent mutants.
In a newspaper article the creator of this TV show says "General-audience appeal is the key. We expect to please the science-fiction fans, but also we have to attract people who don't ordinarily look at sci-fi. Sci-fi does have a reputation for failure on TV, and we hope to break through that. We want to attract women viewers and I'm sure that Gil Gerard will do that. " I enclose a picture of Gil Gerard (to the right) at his peak of sexiness and then YOU can decide if he does IT for you! ;-)
The producers also had the men in mind, that is why they had Erin Gray play Wilma Deering in very tight clothes (see picture to the left). In an interview Erin tells us about these tight outfits "You seldom saw Wilma Deering sitting down with her legs crossed, it was almost impossible". This must have been the reason why spandex was invented/developed during the the 80's! ;-)Let's go on about the appeal for men in this show. This girl Pamela Hensley who played princess Ardala in the show did not have any tight clothes problem. The reason for this was that she only wore sexy very small glittery undergarments with a long silk or glittery cape. And let us not forget those wonderfully glittery head pieces, sometimes with horns, that she wore on finer occasions (see picture bellow).
The acting skills on the show was hilariously bad! I can only say that this show deserves it's cult status! Oh... And I must not forget to mention and post pictures of the monsters that was in this show. They were GRAND! One of the main characters on this show was actually a little robot called Twiki. He did not speak to much, but when he spoke he always started his sentence with "Bidi bidi bidi" and then said something like "what a bummer" or "shall we dance". He sometimes wore Dr.Theopolis (a mechanical brain) around his neck. You can see this in the picture bellow.
I wanted to enclose pictures of the monsters and creatures that can be found in this TV show, but I couldn't find any good ones. I think you get the idea anyway! ;-)
Thank you for reading and I hope that I could somehow tell you how great this show is due to its tackiness and bad acting. I can't do anything else but love it!
Have a great day and enjoy life!
/Veronika
