646f9e108c In 1987, NASA astronaut William &quot;Buck&quot; Rogers tests the space shuttle Ranger 3. His flight was to last only five months, but a meteor storm damages his life-support systems, freezing him solid, and casts Ranger 3 into an orbit which returns him to Earth - over 500 years later. Soon after Buck departs, Earth was devastated by a nuclear war caused by a renegade group of military officers. In 2491, after Buck has survived due to the freezing, he is revived and tries to adjust to life on 25th-century post-nuclear Earth. In the second season, Buck joins the crew of the Searcher, a starship dispatched to locate former Earth colonies in deep space. A 20th century astronaut emerges out of 500 years of suspended animation into a future time to become Earth&#39;s greatest hero. I was a addict of this show when it was first ran,lo over thirty years ago. More straight ahead in its approach than &quot;Star Trek&quot; and twicedifficult to take seriously,this show was &quot;Cheese&quot; for the Sci-fi loving kid of the late 70s. That was me,grade school addict of cartoons and things involving rocket ships,robots and laser guns.<br/><br/>With an opening credit sequence intro(narrated by none other than &quot;Voice of God&quot;-like basso profundo William Conrad)that is priceless and memorable,this show was able to both incorporate a cool,&quot;Star Wars&quot;/&quot;Battlestar Galactica&quot; element into what seemed to be little more than a sort of Disco era sensibility. The Out-of-his-element title character(played by soap opera stud Gil Gerard,fantastic hair)helps future Earth,now reconfigured from devastating nuclear damage,against hostile aliens and various other rogues. He&#39;s paired with comely Col.Wilma Dearing(comely Erin Gray)and a cute,utterly one-dimensional robot named Twiki(voiced by the greatest animated voice talent ever IMHO,the late Mel Blanc)and supervised by a kindly professor(Tim Ryan)who is in charge of some sector of New Earth&#39;s security.<br/><br/>To be sure,this show was the extension of the very popular comic strip,comic book, radio serials and movies from the 1930s and 1940s,and while I have absolutely no running familiarity with those shows,I&#39;d probably be right in guessing that those &quot;buck Rogers&quot;much reflected those erasthis one. My critique(actually,more of a loving,back-handed soft slap)of this show comes from the fact that when I reflect back on it,it seems like it had the ambition and production values of a big budget Sci-fi,but lacked the imagination to be anything more than a futuristic discotechque,full of all the right images(i.e. spaceships,deep space,laser guns,laser blasts,force fields,unitards,costumed humansaliens,etc.),but flavored too heavily by the era its really from(i.e. male-female attitudes,hairstyles,&quot;future music&quot;that sounds suspiciously like Brian Eno/Devo,dated,potentially anachronistic slang and lingo,etc.). Its first season was a hoot and a lot of fun to watch.When they tried to extend this to a next season and add new characters,the show faltered greatly. To me,a cheesy show really needs their characters to stay kind of static or it loses something.<br/><br/>Here&#39;s wondering how and why this show hasn&#39;t gotten a bigger push to become a motion picture. Off the air for over twenty-five years,I feel like this could make for a reasonably good(or at least not TOO cheesy)movie for a whole new generation of people not familiar with the famous future man from the &quot;present&quot;. Well they finally released the T.V. series that poke and spoke about the future in 1980&#39;s reality , and It was fun . Until John Mantley and … Surprise NBC decided that they knew more about GOOD Science Fiction show s than the real pro&#39;s like Gene Rodenberry and Glen Larson . The first 2 seasons presented in the complete DVD collection are worth the money and viewing pleasure , But be forewarned . The 3d and final season that John Mantley Produced :( except for a few episodes ,&quot;TIME OF THE HAWK&quot;,&quot;JOURNEY TO OASIS&quot;(With Mark Lenard), &quot;TESTOMONY OF A TRAITOR &quot; is rather good .One of the better episodes &quot;FLIGHT OF THE WAR WITCH&quot; Has Ms. Julie Newmar (HOOORAAAHH)in which she was purrrfectly evil. Whatever your &quot;Flights of Science Fiction &quot; are this will truly start your engines !!!
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