Buck In The 25th“…And America launches the last of NASA’s deep space probes…”

Of the two US space operas available to me as a child, and then again as an “ironic” Def II viewing late teenager, I always much prefered Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. It wasn’t just Erin Grey’s catsuits, but the more day-glo adventures of Gil Gerrard seemed more fun than the doom laden Battlestar Galactica crew. How little I knew what DOOM LAIDEN really meant, watch the all new Galactica for that. But Buck, Wilma (hmm, I guess names go in cycles) and of course Twiki were just plain fun. And that’s before proto-Emo-bird-boy Hawk turned up on the scene.

I got to thinking about it recently, when the South Park Richard Dawkin’s episode when, in a manner only really empathetical to site admin Alan, Cartman freezes himself to get a Wii. In explaining the five hundred years he sleeps, Parker & Stone use the Buck Rogers theme and graphic style as short hand, and it is very funny. And so in order, here is the Buck Rogers opening credits, and its a pretty good theme tune (terrific build):

Cartman’s trip:

B-b-but, even better, the rather spanking theme tune is actually based on a long, sappy song which ran over the almost interminable credits of the pilot. Compare the one minute intro above to the whole four minutes, which posits Buck as futuristic, if fast asleep, James Bond as future babes do all sorts of cavorting around him. Its less Buck Rogers and more Emmanuelle in the 25th Century. I know which intro I prefer, but culturally, this is a very different beast. I think in the pilot they may have had to cover Twiki’s eyes*! Watch and learn.

*Except of course Twiki had the dirty old man voice of Mel Blanc and as such was older than all of the cast.

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