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Does any remember Buck Rodgers with Gil Gerard?

^Yeah, I sort of like the LIS film. The only thing I regret about it is the missed chance to use Bill Mumy as the grown up Will.

As to Buck Rogers, it's light hearted camp fun. I used to enjoy it as a kid. I once summed it up like this:

<Young woman runs up to Buck, anatomy jiggling in skin tight spandex> "Buck!" <jiggle> "Buck! we need your help!"


mmmmm, the Markie Post episode.....
 
Ask, and ye shall receive... :D

markie1.jpg
 
Yes, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY on NBC 1979-1981. I liked the Earth based season 1 more than the Searcher based short season 2. The series was best when Erin Grey's Colonel Wilma Deering was working with Gil Gerard's Buck on missions.
 
Oh, the irony of the timing of this thread! I happen to be watching some episodes on DVD this week in my workshop.

Yes, of course it was campy.
Much of it is hard to take (I couldn't make it all the way thru "Space Rockers.")
But it is, if nothing else, pure fun.
 
Klaus said:
Ask, and ye shall receive... :D

markie1.jpg
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Yep, that's pre-Night Court Markie Post. I remember watching that on the DVD set. The series is just a haze for me. I can't remember episodes. I didn't watch after I saw the first pilot movie in the theater.

I knew it was a reworked TV pilot the moment I saw it. With the used Battlestar Galactica effects and all. It might have been a movie over seas also. According to an article in Starlog in the 1980's --it was an interview with Glen Larsen, the producer. I wish Starlog was still around on line.

The magazines that took their place never filled the gap. Starlog had respect for sci fi past and present and interviewed actors from all eras. The modern magazines call the old genre heroes "retro" to make them feel old and out of place. Some things were built to last.

This show in paticular knew not to take itself seriously. Unlike Battlestar Galactica (the 1978) version.:vulcan::lol::):klingon::bolian::bolian::bolian:
 
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Klaus said:
RandyS said:
Grrr.

There was nothing even remotely campy about Buck Rogers or the original Galactica.
Click to expand...

By my definition, this certainly qualifies as campy:

princessardala.jpg


..I'll agree that oBSG wasn't campy. It was just bad, partly because it did take itself so seriously.
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I remember the character actor on the left. He also starred in an episode of the Next Generation. He was in a lot of TV shows in the 70's and 80's. He was a excellent actor.
 
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Python Trek said:
Goliath said:
I remember Buck Rogers with Gil Gerard.

Or, to be more precise: the rank stench of that series haunts me still.
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The show was campy fun, just like oldBSG, the '80 Flash Gordon movie, and about a dozen other goofy things that have given me hours and hours (and hours!) of pleasure. I am much more annoyed by cynical, mean-spirited, "sophisticated" crap (the Lost in Space and Land of the Lost movies) than I am by harmless, good-natured crap (the Lost in Space and Land of the Lost TV series). Buck was a fun show. I was 10. I played with the toys. I remember it fondly. :techman:
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I remember the toys at the time were by Mego. They rejected the idea of creating Star Wars toys in 1977 because they thought the movie would never catch on.
 
^ I actually thought Hawk was one of the better aspects of the (extremely putrescent) second season.

The goofy old scientist and the stupid 'Kriton' robot, on the other hand... needed to be / should have been airlocked in the expeditious way.

Cheers,
-CM-
 
NextGen123 said:
I remember the character actor on the left. He also starred in an episode of the Next Generation. He was in a lot of TV shows in the 70's and 80's. He was a excellent actor.
Click to expand...

Tim O'Connor. He was in the classic Outer Limits episode "Soldier" and appeared a lot on the shows of my childhood like Gunsmoke and Hawaii Five-O and The Rockford Files. I had forgotten all about him being on TNG. He is still alive, I believe.

I have been watching some "Buck Rogers" episodes on Netflix in the past few months and that has been one of the fun things about it, seeing actors like Buster Crabbe, Woody Strode, Jack Palance, Sam Jaffe, Vera Miles, Cesar Romero and so on.

But on the whole... the material has not held up well. I was 9-10 when it came out, so it was right in my wheelhouse and I tried never to miss it. And it does have a certain corny charm, especially early on, but... The writing is bad, with a tendency toward bad jokes and predictable dialogue. The art direction is awful, everything has a bright plastic look to it. Their pistols look no better that something from a toy aisle. The plots seem like those of any other '70s cop or adventure show, but "in space!"

Still, Gerard and Gray are really good, they pretty much strike the right tone and can get me to go along for a lot of it. And watching some of the guests over-act can be fun. And the Earthbound Buck-as-secret-agent-slash-fighter-pilot stories are a nice change from a space opera. So they made it a space opera. The second season is awful, the snooty robot and the eccentric professor and the always-frustrated admiral... Terrible. Although Gray was cute in her white mini-skirt uniform.

--Justin
 
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I, too have rediscovered this show after almost 30 years thanks to Netflix. It's OK. Not nearly as good as the Flash Gordon film of roughly the same era. Pamela Hensely is great to ogle. Gerard genuinely looks like he's enjoying himself. Erin Gray was such a good sport. They put her in all kinds of outfits and wrote sometimes ridiculous lines for her to say. and yet, she looks like she's having a pretty good time too. We all thought that the effects and sets were pretty good in their day. But, look at the huge jump in quality between this and TNG just 6 years later. It was shows like this that made Roddenberry demand a budgeted $1m per ep to insure a quality presentation.
 
jbny67 said:
NextGen123 said:
Where else could you see Frank Gorshin, Jack Palance, Peter Graves and many more on a sci fi TV show?:):)
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They even had Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon in one episode. Although they didn't use the name Flash. I think he was called Brigadier Gordon on the show.
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Buster played Buck Rogers, too, in the '30's.
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Is Gerard or Grey acting in any TV or movies today? I just read in an earlier post how they will star in the internet version of Flash Gordon by the ST:Phase II production staff.
 
My favorite BR episode of the whole show is in the second season, actually. It's called "Testimony of a Traitor". Buck is accused of being responsible for the nuclear war that nearly destroyed Earth.
 
Ah yes, well I liked it when I was 9 but you can re-watch it over different periods of your life and really find out how awful it is. I watched a few episodes a few years ago and never really had a desire to look at any more.

One of the few great things about the series was the spacecraft models!!

http://www.universalhartland.com/code/buck000m.shtml

The most current take onthe Buck Rogers character was in comic book form and it melds the old and the new quite well:

http://www.amazon.com/Buck-Rogers-F...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311213492&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Buck-Rogers-SC-Scott-Beatty/dp/1606901524/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

RAMA
 
Klaus said:
RandyS said:
Grrr.

There was nothing even remotely campy about Buck Rogers or the original Galactica.
Click to expand...

By my definition, this certainly qualifies as campy:

princessardala.jpg


..I'll agree that oBSG wasn't campy. It was just bad, partly because it did take itself so seriously.
Click to expand...

See, I wouldn't qualifiy that as campy either. I would, however, call it a pleasure to look at.:bolian:
 
RAMA said:
One of the few great things about the series was the spacecraft models!!
Click to expand...

They did have some nice ones, and some not so great. The Searcher has to be one of the most unattractive "hero ships" in SF history. I can remember being disappointed as a kid, "That's just the luxury space liner from last season! What a gyp!"

--Justin
 
J.T.B. said:
RAMA said:
One of the few great things about the series was the spacecraft models!!
Click to expand...

They did have some nice ones, and some not so great. The Searcher has to be one of the most unattractive "hero ships" in SF history. I can remember being disappointed as a kid, "That's just the luxury space liner from last season! What a gyp!"

--Justin
Click to expand...

I find it to be under-appreciated...and sure they did it to save money, but from what I recall, the designers on the shows said the recovered Earth technology after the war was modular and duplicated, so one type of spacecraft would probably be re-used for different missions.
 
Colonel Midnight said:
^ I actually thought Hawk was one of the better aspects of the (extremely putrescent) second season.

The goofy old scientist and the stupid 'Kriton' robot, on the other hand... needed to be / should have been airlocked in the expeditious way.

Cheers,
-CM-
Click to expand...
You have a point there, but they were all introduced in the same episode so I mark that as the point the show lost me.
 
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