Wednesday 14 July 2010

B is for BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (ORGINAL)

I'm writing about both of these because they were on T.V. at the same time and were both developed by Glen A. Larson and even used the same props, costumes and sets.
I loved Buck Rogers as a kid. I guess you could say it was the beginning of my geek journey, along with seeing Stars Wars at the age of 4 years old in 1977. Obviously, being a kid I didn't know that it was cheesy and tacky but even now as an adult looking back at the shows...I still love it, maybe because it it so cheesy.
Buck Rogers was a NASA pilot on a mission in 1987 is 'accidently' frozen for 504 years and wakes up in 2491. There's all sorts of shenanigans and adventures as Buck learns about the future and Earths past. Actually, there were some pretty kick ass, strong women on Buck Rogers...Colonel Wilma Deering and main villain Princess Ardala, who wants to take over Earth and Buck.
It was also chock full of 'guest stars' including; Gary Coleman, Cesar Romero, Jack Palance, Roddy McDowell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jerry Orbach, Julie Newmar...and oh yeah, Mel Blanc as the voice of Twiki!

 Battlestar Galatica was more serious and darker than Buck Rogers. From Wikipedia:
Humanity lived on twelve colony worlds in a distant star system. They fought a thousand-year war with the Cylons, warrior robots created by a reptilian race which expired long ago, presumably destroyed by their own creations. Having never been commanded to cease fire, these warrior robots waged war against the colonials. Mankind was defeated in a sneak attack on their homeworlds conceived by the Cylons, carried out with the help of Count Baltar (John Colicos). Protected by the last surviving warship, a "battlestar" (the word, presumably coined by Glen Larson, is short for the phrase "line-of-battle starship") called Galactica, the survivors fled in available ships. The Commander of the Galactica, Adama (Lorne Greene), led this "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of 220 ships in search of a new home on a legendary planet called Earth. The episodes dealt with the fleet's struggle to survive the Cylon threat and to find Earth.
But for me as a 5-6 year old; this is the show that gave me one of my first crushes, besides Shaun Cassidy, and that was...Starbuck as played by Dirk Benedict. Don't even think I knew why I like him but he was my favorite, maybe because he was charming and funny.
I haven't seen the new Battlestar but have been told by many people I should watch it...so here I go!
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