I was tempted to mention the Budgie Men episode as the main LOL moment.
Watching Buck Rogers In The 25th Century
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
Off the top of my head I can think of one really great sci fi show from the 70s. The Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby. It had smart writing, good acting for the most part and in some episodes nice use of locations. By the time the 80s rolled around we were getting more intellectual programming with a mix of the more dumbed down stuff.
Hulk was a standout, yes. But most early-'80s sci-fi TV was still quite dumb; this was the decade of Knight Rider, Automan, Voyagers!, and Manimal. We got the smart, allegorical V miniseries in '83, but its sequel mini and weekly series got progressively dumber. It wasn't until later in the decade that we started to see glimmers of intelligence. The Twilight Zone revival started in '85 -- though it was alongside the well-produced but often staggeringly stupid Amazing Stories on a different network. We got the heartfelt Starman in '86, Max Headroom and ST:TNG in '87, and Alien Nation and Quantum Leap in '89. So it wasn't until the end of the '80s and into the '90s that we started to see multiple smart, successful genre shows coexisting.
As for the '70s, they also gave us ST:TAS and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, plus imports like Blake's 7 and Star Blazers. And there was some good stuff in the bionic shows early on. Kenneth Johnson started out on those before moving to Hulk.
That's a very interesting article. I hadn't heard of this proposed alternate series before, but it would have been cool to see. Thanks for the link.
Good to know you know of B7. But really, lumping it in with Star Blazers? What about Phoenix 5, eh?
Only in the sense that they're imports from elsewhere. I wouldn't call that a lump, since it's "everything else" rather than a single grouping.
Interesting that you would compare Buck Rogers to Flash Gordon this way, as FG was created because BR was and had been so popular for several years. Alex Raymond was specifically requested to create a character and strip to compete directly with BR. His efforts were so superlative that Flash Gordon soon became much more popular, resulting in three serials starring Buster Crabbe, versus only one for Buck Rogers, among other things.
Yes, of course. That's part of why they have similar narratives, because one was inspired by the other.
I can't recommend enough the excellent remake Star Blazers 2199
Now, this is how you should do them.
Yes, that is literally what I meant by "got progressively dumber." As in, each installment dumber than the last.
Well, the whole idiotic "Star Child" thing, for one. And the "happy ending" resulting from using a chemical weapon of mass destruction. And the whole thing of throwing out the original's allegory on fascism in favor of action-adventure. Probably pretty much everything that was added after Kenneth Johnson's involvement ended.
The De Vorzon/Conlon theme is interesting, but I preferred Joe Harnell's theme to the original miniseries, which was basically a pastiche of Bernard Herrmann's North by Northwest theme (plus a sub-theme for the really long supporting-cast credits which was a riff on Holst's Mars). I also liked Dennis McCarthy's themes for the TV series, especially the post-retool theme.
I see what you mean, but I liked the melody, and I liked it that it was softer and more romantic than the previous military-march theme.
But the Final Battle wasn't a total victory, only they had poisoned Earth for the lizards. Diana should have been killed for that proper happy ending cliche, or the great leader who we never saw.
No doubt because they already planned to do a series afterward.
Presume you know that in Johnson's version Elizabeth's loyalties remained unclear, and they aborted the Doomsday Device by self-destructing that Mothership and fleeing in the shuttles, following Diana.
Think the bio-weapon was there. Tyler was a wheelchair using veteran.
Diana was one of the main draws, which was why her role kept getting bigger from original mini to sequel to series. This was the age of Dynasty and its celebrated catfights, and the rivalry between Diana and Lydia let V: The Series do something similar. Plus Jane Badler was hot, and a better actress than V probably let her be most of the time. (She was a high point of the generally mediocre Mission: Impossible revival in '88-'90.)
But yeah, killing off Martin was a bad idea, which was no doubt why they later brought in his "identical twin brother" despite the fact that Visitors wear human masks so why did they even need to be twins underneath?
Well, you know. Aliens. They are mysterious and inscrutable.
Like the time a Visitor decided to tan her fake skin. Fake skin she adorned with typical and, err, conspicuous mammal characteristics...
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