ORBzine - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV Review
[Season 1 !Season 2]
1st Season 1979
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 1]
Awakening (1)
Shown 20 Sep 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 2]
Awakening (2) TVM
Shown 20 Sep 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 3]
Planet of the Slave Girls (1)
Shown 27 Sep 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 4]
Planet of the Slave Girls (2)
Shown 27 Sep 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 5]
Vegas in Space
Shown 4 Oct 7
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck performs this mission with Major Marla Landers [ Juanin Clay ]. She was the first of a series of female sidekicks, because Wilma Deering [ Erin Gray ] had not signed to continue the rest of the series.
Malton Velsoi [Richard Lynch - Battlestar Galactica ] kidnaps a woman and holds her prisoner aboard his space station, a casino. Buck and Marla go undercover as gamblers in a Mission: Impossible style mission.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 6]
Plot to Kill a City (1)
Shown 11 Oct 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 7]
Plot to Kill a City (2)
Shown 18 Oct 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 8]
Return of the Fighting 69th
Shown 25 Oct 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 9]
Unchained Woman
Shown 1 Nov 79
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 10]
Planet of the Amazon Women
Shown 8 Nov 79
Shown 12th January 2007 [Friday]
Buck is kidnapped, then auctioned off to sex-starved women.
Dr Theopolis negotiates with a foreign planet - whose negotiator is his evil counterpart!
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 11]
Cosmic Wiz Kid
Shown 15 Nov 79
Shown 13th January 2007 [saturday]
Gary Coleman, the wee kid from Diff'rent Strokes, is still alive in the 25th Century! He's President of a distant planet, where he's also chief scientist, engineer, etc ... Unfortunately, he's kidnapped and ransomed by Albert Popwell [TBG in the first 4 Dirty Harry films].
The Prez's babelicious bikini-clad bodyguard goes to Earth and begs Dr Huer to help. Huer refuses, so she kidnaps Buck [who's going on vacation] and forces him to help her.
Meanwhile, Huer secretly sends Wilma on a solo mission - to rescue the Prez! She meets a human-hating robot, one of a handful of interesting characters in this show. It seems a prototype for the character Crichton, who appears in the dreadful Season 2.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 12]
Escape From Wedded Bliss
Shown 29 Nov 79
Shown 15th January 2007 [Monday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 13]
Cruise Ship to the Stars
Shown 27 Dec 79
Shown 16th January 2007 [Tuesday]
Buck, Twikki and Wilma [in a horrible wig] travel incognito aboard an interstellar cruise-liner. Their mission is to guard beauty queen Miss Cosmos [ Dorothy R. Stratten ]. Buck and Twikki also take the opportunity to find female companionship.
Twikki meets a female counterpart, who goes boody-boody-boody instead of beety-beety-beety. Buck's woman has even more annoying qualities. She's a damsel-in-distress blonde [ Kimberly Beck ] whose alter-ego secretly asserts herself - physically! She becomes Trisha Noble - who's brunette [shorthand for evil], 10 years older and Australian. She also has telekinetic powers, but since she co-habits another person's body that's hardly a shock.
The real villain is the manipulative boyfriend of the dual-personality woman. This is shockingly reminiscent of Dorothy Stratten's own relationship ...
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 14]
Space Vampire
Shown 3 Jan 80
Shown 17th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck and Wilma are aboard a space station when it is boarded by a Vorvon - a fellow in dodgy Nosferatu makeup. He can drain his victims' essences, then make them do his bidding. And he makes Wilma into a seductive monster ...
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 15]
Happy Birthday, Buck
Shown 10 Jan 80
Shown 18th January 2007 [Thursday]
Traeger, an earthman lost on a space exploration mission decades ago, secretly returns. He has developed a skill - well, more of a superpower: he can manipulate energy with his mind, and alter the molecular structure of things just by touching them. He wants revenge on his former boss, Dr Huer.
Buck is assigned to protect a courier [ Morgan Brittany ]. Traeger recruits a doctor [Blaxploitation star Tamara Dobson ] to help kidnap her.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 16]
A Blast for Buck
Shown 17 Jan 80
Shown 19th January 2007 [Friday]
Someone is teleporting strange objects into Earth Directorate's HQ. Buck, Wilma and Dr Huer must solve the mystery within one hour, a deadline set by the teleporter's user.
This is basically a clip show. We see the best bits of previous episodes, and get info on what happened to the surviving villains.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 17]
Ardala Returns
Shown 24 Jan 80
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 18]
Twiki is Missing
Shown 31 Jan 80
Shown 22nd January 2007 [Monday]
Twiki is kidnapped by a trio of telekinetic babes, led by Anne-Marie Martin . Their boss runs a mining operation, and has realised that if he duplicates Twiki's AI upgrades [courtesy of Buck, of course] he can make his mine more efficient.
Buck decides to rescue Twiki, but he's on his own. Wilma and the rest of Earth Directorate are busy trying to deflect a Space Berg [like, a comet???] that's about to smash into Earth!
Can Buck convert Anne-Marie to his side, then save Twiki and get home in time to save Earth? All within 42 minutes [plus advert breaks]?
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 19]
Olympiad
Shown 7 Feb 80
Shown 23rd January 2007 [Tuesday]
Cold War at the Interstellar Olympics. Buck and Wilma must help a couple of athletes defect.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 20]
A Dream of Jennifer
Shown 14 Feb 80
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 21]
Space Rockers
Shown 21 Feb 80
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 22]
Buck's Duel to the Death
Shown 20 Mar 80
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 23]
Flight of the War Witch (1)
Shown 27 Mar 80
Shown 27th January 2007 [Saturday]
A mysterious sphere lands on Earth. It contains a message, basically inviting the Eartlings to visit - through a vortex, in another universe.
Buck's the one who discovers it, although nobody tells Dr Huer this fact. Buck volunteers to go into the Vortex, and the others give him prelonged goodbyes. He's done plenty of dangerous missions before, and there's no need for this. Dr Huer says he was a test-pilot when the Stargates were invented, implying that interstellar travel has only been common for a few decades. Wilma, however, gets all weepy and tells buck he made her feel like a woman. FFS, how completely pointless and out of character can things get?
Princess Ardala's spies get her the message, and she takes her warship through. The inhabitants of the alternate universe apparently intended for her to come, although by relying on her spies they're taking a very roundabout route!
The War Witch [ Julie Newmar ] employs a torturer who is a transmute. Like several other villains in the series he can break molecular bonds in an object just by touching it. But why bother, if everyone in the other universe is an energy being?
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 24]
Flight of the War Witch (2)
Shown 27 Mar 80
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 1, Episode 10]
Shown
Shown th January 2007 [Wednesday]
2nd Season 1981
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 2, Episode 1]
Time of the Hawk (1)
Shown 15 Jan 81
Shown 30th January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck and Wilma are now aboard the starship Searcher. Dennis Haysbert [ Now and Again ] is helmsman!
Buck has to track Hawk down. To do this he has to confront Lance DeGault [ Quantum Leap ] and his sidekick, who was also the War Witch's torturer.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 2, Episode 2]
Time of the Hawk (2)
Shown 15 Jan 81
Shown 31st January 2007 [Wednesday]
Buck helps the Hawkman get his wife to safety. The healers certainly LOOK human, although Hawk's actions indicate that they are aliens. How silly - even Trek made the non-humans wear putty on their faces to differentiate them!
The climax is a trial reminiscent of those in 1950s westerns such as The Last Wagon
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 2, Episode 3]
Journey to Oasis (1)
Shown 22 Jan 81
Shown 1st February 2007 [Thursday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 2, Episode 4]
Journey to Oasis (2)
Shown 22 Jan 81
Shown 2nd February 2007 [Friday]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [Season 2, Episode 5]
The Guardians
Shown 29 Jan 81
Shown 3rd February 2007 [Saturday]
Buck and Hawk go on an away mission. An old man gives Buck a glowing green box which gives him flashbacks to his mom's house and his space mission. The entire crew start having troubling visions of the future.
2- 6 5 Feb 81 Mark of the Saurian 2- 7 19 Feb 81 The Golden Man 2- 8 5 Mar 81 The Crystals 2- 9 12 Mar 81 The Satyr 2-10 19 Mar 81 Shgoratchx! 2-11 26 Mar 81 The Hand of Goral 2-12 9 Apr 81 Testimony of a Traitor 2-13 16 Apr 81 The Dorian Secret
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