What if Ron Moore did Buck Rogers in the twenty-fifth century?

I'm not fielding your question, because it has nothing to do with my remarks.

 

The novel was written in 1929. Radioactivity had only been discovered a few decades earlier, and was still a major mystery. Heck, the tradition of sci-fi and comics using radioactivity as a magic plot device was around much more recently than that. Saying that radioactive gas put someone in suspended animation is no more nonsensical than saying that a radioactive spider bite could give someone the proportional strength and abilities of a spider, or that a gamma radiation overdose could turn them into a hulking green rage monster, or that radioactive fallout could cause people or ants or various animals to grow to giant size as in countless American and Japanese monster movies.

So why dwell on it? Obviously nobody's saying that a modern adaptation would use the same origin. I was just pointing out that the way the 1979 television series handled the origin was different from what earlier versions had done.

 

Except that the average 20/21th century man isn't a MacGyver, most could be a Stoogie.

 

But it's still a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.

 

The closest thing to a modern day retelling of Buck's story even though it's more than 20 years old would've been the original idea for Robocop 2. Where Robocop would've thrust 25 years into the future after being hit by a high powered cannon, he awakens to a radically altered future, there's no more OCP and no more cities people live in massive "plexes".

The '79 Glen Larson version was limited by it's budget and I'm sure Universal didn't want a repeat of what happened with Battlestar Galactica nor did NBC. But I do think that the pilot for the series contained several good ideas that could've been expanded upon had they wanted to go that way.

 

I'm sure they were intelligent early in the 20th century, but I don't see a plausible way of getting them into the 25th century short of an alien abduction.

 

Well lets just say, I don't want Buck Rogers ending up in the 25th century only to fight the Chinese.

I liked the fact the 1970s show used stargates, but it was never quite explained exactly who built those stargates, and why there was always a convenient stargate waiting to take Buck where ever he wanted to go. I think if stargates are used there should be some explanation for them. These stargates are obviously not the same kind as used in Stargate SG1. They are based in space, so a reason must be found why they are not on planet surfaces.

 

If y'all don't want to use the Draconians, can I take Aura home? I promise she'll find a good forever home.

 

^Aura? Do you mean Ardala? Aura was Ming the Merciless's daughter in Flash Gordon.

 

This does not require much explanation. Maybe putting a stargate on the planet's surface would transport the planet-- or part of it.

But why is it necessary to explain who built them?

 

I watched "Planet of the Slave Girls" (more lurid title than the actual content) the other day and was surprised how much it had going on though it was the second episode so maybe it gets cut more later.

And Farscape probably was the closest modern take with Crichton(sp?) being the displaced 20th Century man even if the storyline was otherwise more Blake's 7.

 

So Futurama doesn't count at all?

 

The first season of Buck Rogers was pretty good until the clip show, then they seemed to lose some steam. But the final two hours/two parter was pretty good.

 

And, yet, that is exactly what they got. BSG was refilled in the second season to become G1980. Buck Rovers was retooled in season 2 into something almost equally kiddy. Both were cancelled after their 2nd seasons.

As for Buck freezing... my concept would have Buck actually freeze in one of those deep seadiving suits that use breathable liquid oxygen. Buck is frozen but preserved until recovered in the 25th Century where modern medicine is able to revive him.

Keeping the show in the Sol system eliminates the need for stargates, no matter how cool they are. I always assumed Earth built the stargates, since they were constantly in contact with/looking for Earth colonies.

 

I can't consider Galactica1980 to be Battlestar Galactica's second season, it was clearly meant to fulfull actor's contracts and make up for what ABC lost with the original series. Buck Rogers was a cheaper show that remained high enough in the ratings to get renewed and a new show runner.

 

A simpler explanation, and one that's often used in SF, is that a space-warping technology can't work in a planet's gravity well due to the disruption/interference it creates.

Well, not exactly. Battlestar Galactica was cancelled after one season; Galactica 1980 was a separate series created midway through the following season as a spinoff, partly to amortize the expense of the original series' sets, FX, costumes, etc. and partly (so Wikipedia alleges, though it's news to me and lacks citation) because there was a letter-writing campaign to protest the cancellation.

 

"Plausible" isn't ever going to be a factor in getting a character to jump four or five centuries into the future. Most people seeing the film won't even give it a second thought.

 

Actually, I wouldn't consider that a simpler explanation, although it is a common one.

Misattribution; I know better than this.

 

There is a Buck Rogers movie in the works.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/05/08/the-return-of-buck-rogers

 

Sorry about the misattribution, Silvercrest. I have no idea how that happened. It's fixed now.

I guess I meant it was simple in the sense that it's a pre-existing explanation that's already used in a lot of SF, so it's easier just to adopt that existing explanation than to come up with a new one.

And it's kind of simple, or at least straightforward, in that it's a logical outgrowth of the physics. The shape of a spacetime metric (like a space warp or a gravity well) is affected by the distribution of mass and energy around it, so if there's a big mass like a planet or star in the vicinity, it can disrupt the metric. So you don't need to make up any new, ad hoc excuses for why it would have to be in space -- it already pretty much makes sense to begin with.

Although, come to think of it, the suggestion that a stargate-type warp would "take a bite" out of a planet kinda makes sense too, since such a space warp would entail immense energies and gravitational forces. It probably wouldn't be safe to create or operate such a warp on the surface of an inhabited planet, because it could really tear things up in the vicinity.

But possibly to be directed by Frank Miller, though it says at the bottom that that isn't decided yet. If Miller gets the gig, I will have zero interest in seeing it.