Fresh from having Battlestar Galactica wrested from his grip by ABC, producer Glen Larson high-tailed it to another SF dream project of his, NBC’s revival of the comic strip/old-time-radio classic Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. Based on Robert C. Dille’s seminal 1930s space hero, this updated version of the legend was being retooled for a 20th century audience – a little more enlightened, one might think, but only a little.
The first season of Buck Rogers opens with the two-hour debut movie, setting the stage for the show and populating it with heroes and villains. In some ways, the tone of the premiere is different, but in other ways it sets the template for the entire first year: Gil Gerard is clearly The Hero, but sometimes that means he’s The Hero on a Shatneriffic scale – he’s in almost every scene, and a healthy share of the scenes he’s not in involve his friends back on Earth worrying about him. Still, Gerard’s performance is worthy of praise here – he can milk the wink-and-a-nudge punch line, but he does find some of the gravity of Buck’s situation, being stranded out of time with no hope of returning to the time and the people he remembers. (If this show were done today, there’s a very good chance that this gravity would be played as overwrought pathos, so it’s actually a nice balance.)
The supporting cast is solid and talented across the board, though their characters aren’t always as good as their performances. There are many instances where Erin Gray gives Colonel Wilma Deering the kind of steely determination that one would expect of someone who holds such a high rank in the Earth Defense Directorate, but just as often she’s reduced to doe-eyed half-whispers of “Oh Buck!” – partly a product of the charcter’s 1930s origins, but also partly a product of the show’s 1970s pedigree. She seems to be at the mercy of the script and whoever happens to be the director of that week’s episode. With small actor Felix Silla in the suit and cartoon voice veteran Mel Blanc providing the voice, Twiki, of course, steals the show at every opportunity, and shamelessly so. I had forgotten how steady, unflappable and yet funny Tim O’Connor was as Dr. Elias Huer; sadly the writers couldn’t decide between Huer as level-headed genius and Huer as impossibly clueless comic straight-man.
The first season is quite a mix storywise; some of its stories are hackneyed holdovers from 1950s sci-fi B flicks, some are episodes of the Love Boat transposed into space, and a few are interesting. With writers like Alan Brennert (Twilight Zone, Star Trek: Enterprise) and Jaron Summers (Star Trek) on board, you might kid yourself momentarily about finding some serious SF, but don’t fool yourself too much – Buck Rogers’ millieu isn’t hard science fiction, but spandex, lip gloss, and as much special effects spectacle and big-name guest star power as the show could squeeze out of its budget. The guest star aspect of the show can’t be played down – getting Jerry Orbach, Michael Ansara, Richard Moll, Frank Gorshin, Jack Palance, Ray Walston, Peter Graves, Jamie Lee Curtis, Cesar Romero, Roddy McDowell, Buster Crabbe (the original silver screen Buck Rogers himself!) and even a decent guest turn out of Gary Coleman, all in one season, was, if not one coup, then a whole series of them. (But just as often, the guest casting coups were undermined by putting these legends from the silver age of Hollywood on the screen next to models-turned-actresses who, despite being easy on the eyes, could barely act.) This may well be the cause of the many reports that Gil Gerard and the show’s producers and writing staff threw more sparks than a malfunctioning spaceship control console in clashes over story content and the direction of the series as a whole.
This, of course, led to yet another show being yanked out of Glen Larson’s hands, and the very noticeable change of tone between seasons. Incoming producer John Mantley had been the showrunner for much of Gunsmoke’s time on the air, and he was given a half-season order and instructions to redirect the show in a much more Star Trek-influenced, action-adventure-with-a-brain direction. Gone were Dr. Huer, Dr. Theopolis, Princess Ardala, Killer Kane, and indeed the entire Earth-under-siege element of the show, and the characters who were retained – basically Buck, Wilma and Twiki – were now assigned to the starship Searcher, seeking out lost human colonies, new life, new civilizations and, on a whole, a little less lip gloss. Universal and NBC made it known very forcefully that this would be a whole new show: Mantley proposed a transitional episode to see off the departing characters and introduce the Searcher/colony plotline, and was turned down.
The most visible change in season two, however, was the addition of Thom Christopher as Hawk. Even more unflappable than Dr. Huer (no pun intended), Hawk was a further indication of the Star Trek influence, commenting on human foibles and strengths and always remaining the outsider. The character was key to the two-hour relaunch of the series, which also saw the addition of Wilfred Hyde-White as the doddering science Dr. Goodfellow, Jay Garner as Admiral Asimov, and a new robot named Crichton to serve both as a useful tool for dropping exposition into the story and as the straight-man for Twiki’s one-liners. Also worth noting in the second season episodes is a new musical direction courtesy of Bruce Broughton, who has since moved on to much bigger and better projects.
The second season episodes suffer from a strange dichotomy – they’re trying to be smarter, but they’re also trying to maintain the lightheartedness of the first season…and they never quite achieved either extreme successfully. As politically incorrect as the first season may seem now, with its scantily-clad women and wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor, it’s just more fun than season two. Even halfway through what episodes were produced for the second season, one can see a gradual reversal of some of the changes – one episode focuses on a group of telekinetic dwarves’ overtly sexual fixation on Wilma, and the services of Mel Blanc were re-engaged after several episodes with a new and, it must be said, laughably wimpy voice for Twiki. When going through the second season episodes in order, I cheered to hear Blanc return as Twiki’s voice.
Season two isn’t short on familiar names either; Star Trek’s Mark “Sarek” Lenard puts in a headlining appearance in the double-length Journey To Oasis, and frequent-flyer original Trek director Vincent McEveety is behind the camera for several installments as well. But ultimately, it wasn’t enough to save Buck Rogers from cancellation.
The DVDs contain no bonus features, unless one counts the story synopses accompanying each episode. This set also features a bane of my digital video existence – easily-dirtied and easily-damaged double-sided discs – but at the same time, it’s two seasons, the entire run of the show, in a package that costs less than what some SF franchises charge for only one season on DVD. I guess I can’t knock that too much.
What is Buck Rogers’ place in the modern SF TV pantheon, especially when producers of more recent shows have obviously had old favorites like Buck and Battlestar Galactica in their sights when issuing edicts of “No cute kids and robots – EVER!”? It’s hard to say. The first season of Buck Rogers has such a huge quotient of cheesy fun that it’s hard not to crack a grin. I love serious science fiction, but there’s a place for light-hearted stories too, and I don’t mean Tripping The Rift. There’s a kinder, gentler side of SF that shines here, and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with it. There’s also something to be said for the show’s unabashed use of the last gasp of the great Universal Studios contract player system – if you can find me another SF show that had such a consistently star-studded lineup in the space of one year on the air, I’d like to hear about it.
However you slice it, Buck Rogers was a lot of fun. The DVD set could’ve used some extras (and reportedly the cast, including Gray and Gerard, were up for it – but Universal wouldn’t pay to secure their participation), so one point off there. But otherwise…in the words of a certain quad: “Beedy beedy beedy…hey Buck, you’re my kinda show.”
