I was a addict of this show when it was first ran,lo over thirty years ago. More straight ahead in its approach than "Star Trek" and twice as difficult to take seriously,this show was "Cheese" 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.
With an opening credit sequence intro(narrated by none other than "Voice of God"-like basso profundo William Conrad)that is priceless and memorable,this show was able to both incorporate a cool,"Star Wars"/"Battlestar Galactica" 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'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's security.
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'd probably be right in guessing that those "buck Rogers" as much reflected those eras as this 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 humans as aliens,etc.),but flavored too heavily by the era its really from(i.e. male-female attitudes,hairstyles,"future music"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.
Here's wondering how and why this show hasn'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 "present".
