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Well, in Star Trek TOS (and a lot of TNG episodes) there were aliens identical to humans. Just wondering if in the first season of Buck Rogers all the not-terrestrials we met are just alien who are identical to humans or an example of "the lost tribes" they search for in Season 2.
In hindsight, it is incredible that the series shows that it takes some kind of FTL technology to travel from one solar system to another in a short time. Other series of those years (for example Battlestar Galactica) had not even bothered with such a detail.
The galactica can ramp up their speed to light speed.
The Eastern Coalition Destroyers accelerated to "star speed" which I doubt was light speed.
But they kept saying that everyone had to move as fast as their slowest ship.
I suppose its possible they are moving at relativistic speed? But that would mean that the Cylons back at the core worlds have been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. If you're heading away from home that's fine, but on the way back, they'd have to time travel at some point to account for the drift, so home is still slightly familiar.
The galactica can ramp up their speed to light speed.
The Eastern Coalition Destroyers accelerated to "star speed" which I doubt was light speed.
But they kept saying that everyone had to move as fast as their slowest ship.
I suppose its possible they are moving at relativistic speed? But that would mean that the Cylons back at the core worlds have been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. If you're heading away from home that's fine, but on the way back, they'd have to time travel at some point to account for the drift, so home is still slightly familiar.
The simpler explanation is the writers were just scientific illiterate o they thought the viewer couldn't understand such a complex concept as relativistic speed.
The simpler explanation is the writers were just scientific illiterate o they thought the viewer couldn't understand such a complex concept as relativistic speed.
Ok, I admit I don't quite remember the series, but were all the humanoids we encountered on the show supposed to be offspring of humanity? Or were they "real aliens", and the showrunners didn't even bother to put a lumpy Star Trek forehead on them?
I think I answered this earlier in the thread, but no, Buck Rogers was extremely vague about whether its humanoid aliens were human colonies or not. The Draconian episodes seemed to imply that Draconia was a far older and more powerful civilization, but in a lot of cases, you really couldn't tell one way or the other.
In hindsight, it is incredible that the series shows that it takes some kind of FTL technology to travel from one solar system to another in a short time. Other series of those years (for example Battlestar Galactica) had not even bothered with such a detail.
Yes, Buck Rogers was unusual for the time in acknowledging that. I attribute that to story editor Alan Brennert, also a prose SF and comics author, who basically did his best to turn the show into Star Trek redux once he was brought onboard after the pilot. Unfortunately, he was let go about 2/3 of the way through season 1, and it got dumber afterward.
Galactica did acknowledge lightspeed, but it was portrayed as the battlestar's maximum speed. The show expected us to believe that the fleet passed through numerous star systems -- even more than one galaxy -- in about a year while never surpassing the speed of light. And it portrayed crossing from one galaxy to another as basically like crossing a state line, with no gap between them. I don't think they really knew what the word "galaxy" meant.
I think I answered this earlier in the thread, but no, Buck Rogers was extremely vague about whether its humanoid aliens were human colonies or not. The Draconian episodes seemed to imply that Draconia was a far older and more powerful civilization, but in a lot of cases, you really couldn't tell one way or the other.
Thank you. I read read some summary of the episodes, but except for a few slightly odd names, nothing indicates that Buck encountered actual aliens. One could rationalize by saying that if there has been a great exodus after World War III, 500 years is more than enough for cultures to differ substantially from the original one.
To 12/13 year old me Ham Tyler was just an amazing character (actually still is to 51 year old me) and is exactly who I'd want on my side in a guerrilla war! (I always forget that he doesn't show up until V:The Final Battle!)
I remember watching the series and while I'm sure it wasn't quite as I recall, it felt like a main cast member left every week!
I bought the DVD boxset of the first series 15+ years ago, watched it through once and have barely looked at it since. Some of the episodes are fun, especially if you're inebriated while watching them, but it didn't remotely hold up to my childhood memories unfortunately. Original BSG on the other hand did I thought.
I don't know I would still like to think that either humans or something very close to humans could evolve on another planet. Ours is surely not the only planet blessed with bipedal hairless primates
I can see why you felt that. Looking over the Wikipedia article, here are the cast departures over its 19 episodes:
Ep. 1: Martin (though his "twin brother" came back in #14)
2: Robert Maxwell
4: Young Elizabeth (replaced by adult version; actress returns as clone in #9)
11: Elias Taylor, Chris Farber
12: Ham Tyler, Robin Maxwell, Mr. Chiang
13: Nathan Bates, Charles, Howard K. Smith
So that's 11 actor departures (10 character departures) in 13 episodes, which averages out to almost one per week, even though it was concentrated in two blocks, three in episodes 1-4 and then eight in episodes 11-13.
I don't know I would still like to think that either humans or something very close to humans could evolve on another planet. Ours is surely not the only planet blessed with bipedal hairless primates
Most unlikely. Even on Earth, when unrelated organisms independently evolve to fill the same ecological niche, they generally end up looking quite different -- e.g. nobody would confuse a bird and a bat. Another planet might well have bipedal brachiators with binocular vision, but I very much doubt they could wear human clothes off the rack or would look like humans with latex glued to their faces.
For that matter, expecting another planet to have categories that correspond directly to primates or reptiles or any specific Earthly category is like expecting another planet to have the same continents or mountains as Earth. Those categories came about through a mix of random chance and environmental selection, so the probability that the same decision points would all be replicated exactly on another planet is minuscule. There might be some broad-strokes similarities, but the specifics would be different.
Given the vastness of the galaxy, I'm willing to believe there might be a handful of species that have coincidentally evolved into forms visually similar to humans, maybe even close enough that one could pass for human in the dark or from a distance. But there's no way they'd constitute the majority of alien sophonts, and the odds that their homeworlds would be anywhere near Earth would be microscopic. You might have to search the galaxy for millennia before you stumbled upon one. (Even at FTL. Even if you could explore, say, one new planet per day, it would take over 2700 years to explore a million planets, and the galaxy probably has far more terrestrial planets than that.)
I don't know I would still like to think that either humans or something very close to humans could evolve on another planet. Ours is surely not the only planet blessed with bipedal hairless primates
it's really an incredible coincidence how all these aliens have physical characteristics similar to those of white Caucasian terrestrials . There is more ethnic variety on Earth than in all of outer space!
I can see why you felt that. Looking over the Wikipedia article, here are the cast departures over its 19 episodes:
Ep. 1: Martin (though his "twin brother" came back in #14)
2: Robert Maxwell
4: Young Elizabeth (replaced by adult version; actress returns as clone in #9)
11: Elias Taylor, Chris Farber
12: Ham Tyler, Robin Maxwell, Mr. Chiang
13: Nathan Bates, Charles, Howard K. Smith
So that's 11 actor departures (10 character departures) in 13 episodes, which averages out to almost one per week, even though it was concentrated in two blocks, three in episodes 1-4 and then eight in episodes 11-13.
Very few shows can do it. I recently watched a couple of Knight Rider's Episodes and I felt profoundly ashamed that a version of me had really enjoyed it in the past.
There's that "We're all space brothers" stuff, and then President Reagan Nukes the Galactica.
At the back end to issue 4, here's a 2 or three page preview to Galactica 1981, where they show a new Battlestar being built in Detroit, but it was never made/produced.
. There is more ethnic variety on Earth than in all of outer space! 
